Category: Uncategorized

Mystery of the universe.

How is it that hours after I have washed and dried my towels and bedding, they are still warm?

It is a delightful mystery!

I read an article that addressed the mental load that women carry in addition to the physical demands they cope with as mothers and wives.

But it is true of all women, not just those with children and husbands.

We are the ones expected to do not just the physical chores of maintaining our household, cleaning, laundry, cooking, dishes, etc. but the mental work too.

We are the ones who maintain relationships. We are the ones who provide the emotional support for others. We are caretakers, we nurture, provide sympathy, advice, help. We find the right medical help. Buy and administer the medicine, make sure of the right dosage at the right time.

We organize social events, parties, get togethers, dinners. We make sure we have household supplies, food. We prepare checklists, schedules. We make sure things are done on time. Appointments are made and kept. Arrange transportation. Plan vacations and make reservations and all that goes with it. Keep track of bills and payments, bank accounts and credit cards. Check on emails. Write letters. Make invitations. Prepare paper work and fill out forms.

We are also expected to be concerned about the world. Up to date on current events. Maybe even volunteering to help clean up pollution, fight poverty, take care of the elderly, rescue abandoned pets.

And then we do all the physical work too!

We also have to do all this at our jobs!

No wonder we are exhausted.

(A nod to my Mother – if only I had of realized how much you did when I was growing up. I am truly sorry I did not. I am so grateful Mom. Forgive me.)

I recently watched the first Star Wars movie and was sorely disappointed.

The story is great and timeless.

So why, Mr. Lucas did you muck with it?

Countless fans have already bemoaned the changed scenes, so I don’t need to rehash that. Especially the who shot first scene of Han Solo. But I also was unhappy with the stupid looking creatures added and the times the words did not match peoples mouths (the words had been changed).

As a writer, I know the temptation to go back and improve something created a long while ago, believing I know better now.

But I look at my old work as standing on their own and being the best I could do at that stage in my life. And what was true decades ago may no longer be true, may even be offensive today. How could I know that then?

But if someone loves my past work I am not ever going to change it. If they hate it and it is out of synch with the current times, I’ll delete it completely.

I have watched movies that have so many deleted scenes the story no longer makes sense. Why do they do that? Even the Muppet movie, of all things, deleted an entire scene from their version of the Christmas Carol. How crazy is that? And The World According to Garp removed the beginning scene, that although yes, some might find offensive, was the defining thing to the whole story. There were other parts removed from that movie that also made things a bit weird. Erik the Viking is another movie that got hacked up. But gee whiz. Modern movies are so full of graphic violence and sex and foul language that I find are a thousand times more offensive than any old movie or book.

I don’t care if the special effects of an old movie are dated, are not state of the art CGI. What matters is the story. If the story is terrific I can overlook the rest. You need to consider the time when things were produced. In the time period something was created there may be things that are politically and otherwise incorrect or offensive today. A Hitchcock movie made in the 1950’s is still very good. A book written decades ago is still thrilling. You can’t update them, they lose their magic. I think people are smart enough to realize that it is a product of the times, or if something is deliberately being offensive.

So please, give us the originals and let us decide for ourselves if we like it or not.

I find that Covid accelerated a bad trend in society.

Things are so much more different now.

It’s not just the products we can no longer get.

It’s the respect we no longer enjoy.

There were always unwritten ‘laws’ to social behaviour, that enabled us to have a civilized society, and to get along with our fellow humans.

But all that has been tossed out. People are lawless. They have no respect for unwritten codes of behaviour, like being polite and apologetic. They snub their noses at written laws because if you have enough money you can buy yourself out of trouble. The attitude is, Yeah, what you gonna do about it sucker?

We have lots of self entitled Princesses (Karens) and Kings who think nothing of killing someone because they accidently backed into their laneway, or they didn’t give them a pack of ketchup with their fries.

There is no more compromise, of cutting someone some slack, just because it is a nice gesture. Of doing favours. Of being, NICE. Just because it is nice to be nice. To have even an ounce of compassion and forgiveness. To give someone the benefit of the doubt. Because, Lord knows, we ALL f**k up at times, and are far from perfect. Seems like no one remembers their own misdeeds.

I have said this before, many times.

We do not have a housing problem. We have a HOMELESS problem.

Big difference.

We don’t need big homes built on prime land that no one but the very rich can afford. And they only buy it as a rental property. Rich people have lots of rental properties that they make a fortune from. From people who can barely, if at all, afford that rent!

We have plenty of empty buildings that just need some repairs and upgrading that could be used for those who cannot afford rent.

We take better care of abandoned animals than we do humans.

We rescue dogs and cats and horses and post it all over the internet.

But human beings?

Out on the street people spiral downwards very, very fast. As fast as the dog tied to a tree, or a kitten left in a box. And human beings have a lot more issues than just food and shelter. We have mental health to consider.

If you lose everything, pride and hope soon follow suit, and then you have nothing left to lose. There are huge repercussions from that.

Stop these greedy politicians who make billions devouring our precious lands, giving them to developers to cement over. Keep our green space. Keep our agricultural lands.

How about using what we readily have available to help people.

Yeah. Help people.

What a concept.

In high school my best friend and I befriended a girl who had a mother from hell.

This woman constantly berated this girl for being a girl. Everything about being a girl was a travesty. She was lucky that her mother allowed her to use sanitary pads – only because she didn’t have time to wash rags. Forget tampons!

Imagine being a young woman, a teenager, and not allowed to try makeup, go to dances, participate in sports, and worst of all, not be allowed to shave your legs or armpits.

It was the hairy armpits and legs that caused her the most anguish. Mother told her that if she shaved it off the hair would grow back in like trees and be blacker than coal. Her hair already was thick like a forest and midnight black. It was not going to be worse.

She was so terrified of her mother that we could not persuade her to at least shave. She dared not wear shorts or a swimming suit and donned heavy nylons to cover up the lengthy black hair, practically dying in the summertime from heat stroke.

One day, this beautiful girl shaved her legs herself. We had nothing to do with it. We weren’t there when the deed was done, but we were proud of her!

Her mother screamed at us and banned us from ever seeing this girl again.

What is the matter with people? No, don’t answer that. I already know.

Okay this is the last of my scavenger day rants.

When I was working in retail in a mall, a photography shop there had a contest on to win a free photo portrait. There were no stipulations. I entered and I won.

Everything was great. They treated me like royalty and took a beautiful posed picture of me.

Things fell apart when I went to pick up my photo.

They tried to pressure me to buy multi-packages of my photo for over a hundred dollars, and were angry with me because I refused. I earned minimum wage at my job, a hundred bucks was at least two plus days of work. And what the heck use would I have for a thousand pictures of myself of various sizes?

They practically threw my photo at me and kicked me out of their store.

Naturally, I told people to not go there. They did a great job of my picture, I still have it, but they blew future sales.

Don’t have contests and giveaways and coupons and the like if you’re going to be a bitch about honouring them.

One more tale from my scavenger days.

The local pool hall offered an evening of pool for $20. My boyfriend and I, ever on the lookout for cheap entertainment went in.

Now neither one of us drinks, and even if we did, we could never afford it.

We stayed several hours and had a great time.

We went to the cash to pay and were informed it would be $52 because we did not order any food or drink.

Nowhere did it stipulate that we had to do that as my boyfriend pointed out to the owner. My heart was beating hard. We did not have $52 between us.

He yelled at us and said we should have the decency to buy food and drinks and not just play pool. That his business could not survive on people like us who bilked the system.

We paid the bill, just. I had maybe $2 left in my account afterwards.

Another place we never went back to. He went bankrupt a month later. Boo f’in hoo to him.

I do understand how business works, but false advertising is not the way to stay in business. You have to expect that you are going to attract people who have little to none disposable income and be upfront with them.

And poor people deserve to have some fun too. We were not taking advantage of you. You offered it and we came.