Lots of kids

That funeral we attended the other week has stayed with me. That gracious late lady was 95 years old and had eight kids -- all of whom were there except the eldest girl who had died. Made me think of the bygone days of huge families. Sheila's first child, Patricia, was tragically killed in an accident in the train yard where she worked. Her next one, Joe -- the one we were all totally in love with in high school -- now seems to have a neurological disorder and is very shaky. If Sheila and her husband had stopped at two children, the funeral would have been very different. Only Joe and his wife would have been there and they have no children. So, a sombre affair it would have been. Instead it was a rousing, gay wake with children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren everywhere. After Pat and Joe came five boys and finally a second girl. One of the sons said in the eulogy that his parents decided to try once more for another girl and they got her. And this girl is a real corker -- sort of like her mother.

I had two children, but happily Brian had two so when we got together I ended up with four. I'm not saying it's been care and stress-free, but it has been busy and interesting! We had two couples over for lunch yesterday; one has four children, the other one. After yapping on about my children and grandchildren and after the other couple yakked on about all theirs, I realized we must be boring the third couple to death with our yammering. Their son has yet to marry and there are no grandchildren, so they didn't have much to contribute to the conversation. But I love them both dearly, so we shut up.

Happily, their son is a success. If you have one kid, it better be perfect.

Just saved $1,675.00

We are down to one car, having disposed of the GT Mustang. The car we are "down to" is mine. A darling little Honda Civic five-speed hatchback. Anyway, took it to a body shop and they told me they would re-paint it for a measley $1,700. Drove straight to Canadian Tire and bought a $25 can of Honda paint and did it myself. So, that's how I saved $1,675. While I was in there, I had the usual Canadian Tire melt-down -- you know, no clerks, no help and no logic. I was careening down the auto aisles talking to myself and sort-of-raving... "I hate place, I hate this place, I hate this place," I ranted. A sweet young man heard me and offered to find me Honda spray paint and he did. Being an old bag has its rewards.



How much do you have to hate your life to spend months and years cutting wine bottle corks in half so you can install a homemade cork floor. That was the feature in the "Homes" section of the Saturday paper. A guy spent a thousand years cutting up corks so he could have a do-it-yourself cork floor. When I saw the photo of his shrew wife, I sympathyzed. I too would have high-tailed it to the garage and either got corked or cut up corks just to get away from her.


This was a Paul Newman weekend and 'Harper' was featured. It was made in 1966, for me not that long ago. I was 19 and in university. I was schleping around in the kitchen and not really paying attention until I heard Paul say to Robert Wagner, "She's just trash, a nympho, fungus really, only look at her in the daylight and you'll get it, you'd never have children with that bitch." I wheeled around and paid attention at that point. Can you imagine talking like that about women today?! It was horrifying. But at the time, I am sure I agreed and wasn't jarred at all. Of course we all knew girls like that, how great was it that we were so superior to the neighbourhood sluts, remember? What a time warp that movie was for me.

Just want to say a work about the flooding in Pakistan. How come Pakistan doesn't have an infrastructure to deal with it? Why do all these countries look to Canada to solve their problems? That's where our taxes go: to infrastructure. The next time you are pissed off in a construction zone and swear at a flagman, remember these are your tax dollars hard at work. If you don't want road construction and infastructure, move to Greece.

Finks, creeps and nerds

Remember when a fink was a nerd or a creep? I can recall several boys in high school who we used to call "finks". Such nomenclature is now not used. These guys are now nerds or creeps, although "creep" was a term we also used back in the day. Having grown up here, I sometimes run into "finks" from high school. Guess what? They are still creeps. Yuck.

We just welcomed a grandaughter into the world in Houston. Big debate about names and it got me thinking about names that no one would consider using. How about starting with mine...and then there are:

• Nancy
• Helen
• Buelah
• Doris
• Linda
• Dorothy
• Cheryl
• Agnes
• Betty
• Hope
• Carol
• Gertrude
• Alice
• Maude
• Clementine
• Margaret
• Wanda
• Diane.....I could go on and on, but you get the picture.

Same with boys' names. Why is that?

Could not tear myself away from another episode of 'Teen Mom'. This time "mom" was having a hissy fit because the boyfriend/father had talked to another girl. All the while, their baby was crawling around, ignored and helpless, until it fell off the bed and smacked its head on the floor. They managed to notice the kid only after it started screaming bloody murder. Well, totally understandable because mom and boyfriend were getting it off in another corner of the room. For all I know, they were making another! How annoying that the kid hurt itself. Kinda wrecked the mood. Too bad it hadn't swallowed a tack or choked on a peanut and died. Seriously, that's how uninterested the parents were. But then a funeral would have thrust "mom" into the spotlight again on the local tv news. That would have been perfect. She could have had her 15 minutes of fame and headed straight for the bar to start all over again.

I talked to a couple of savvy teenaged girls the other evening and asked them about drug use in their circles. Both said that drugs were not the problem, but there was a lot of drinking and pregnancy. Yeah, right. Don't the two go together!? Get drunk and get pregnant.

A little grammar hit me the other night. I was listening to a tv reporter and she said, "A cyclist such as him..." Now, if you add the unspoken word "is", you know that "him" is incorrect. It has to be "he". I passed that little trick onto my students and I hope some of them remember it. It is very easy to know when to use "he" versus "him" or "she" versus "her". You just have to add the unspoken verb and you have it. You don't even have to know what particle of speech is required or what it is called.

I love 'As it Happens' -- that CBC radio show. Don't always listen to it, but last night they had a bird expert on who informed listeners that 400,000 acres of wetlands had been created in hitheto fallow farmers' fields by paying the farmers to irrigate fallow fields. What a fabulous initiative! Before the gulf oil disaster, an acre of wetland was being lost every 40 minutes. Who knew?! So, the disaster has spawned the creation of more wetlands. What beauty God has again generated.

The only other thing I want to rant about is that there are 425 gondoliers in Venice -- all male. Finally, they have allowed a women into a gondola. BUT. She can only take out a gondola if a male allows it. If he is sick or wants to take the day off, etc. What have I been ranting about?! Women are still in the same trench in so many venues.

Hideous hair, teenaged moms and other horrors

Came across an old ID card of mine from about 15 years ago and was struck dumb by my hair. What was I thinking! It looked like a ground hog had died and been buried on my head -- all swirls and waves and curls. Absolutely hideous. I must have thought I looked great, or I would not have left the house.

There is a new TV series called "Teen Mom" and if ever there was a way to scare teenaged girls straight out of the back seat of a car, this is the show! It follows the dismal life of teen girls who have made the dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb decision to have a baby and keep it. All of them are weeping testimonials as to what a dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb idea it all was. There they are, absolutely stuck at 15. And the boyfriends (I wonder how some of them were even old enough to have done the deed) are usually long gone. Most of them got pregnant to keep their boyfriends. Duh! If ever there was a reason for a guy to hit the road it's a pregnant girlfriend.

Ties into an article I read this morning about studies that show that, guess what, working mothers who put their children in daycare in the first year of life and go back to work don't have screwed up, unhappy offspring afterall. At least no more so than mothers who stay at home. Well, yeah, teenaged mothers in the projects on welfare are probably not the most stimulating parents on the planet. The teenaged mothers in the show I watched are not really Sesame Street mummies, brimming with creative water play moments and trips to the library for story time, all the while drilling their urchins with alphabetic flash cards and classical music. No, these girls can't wait to get out to the bars to get away from their drooling burdens and find a new boyfriend. So pathetic.

Apparently, mothers who have a partner and go back to work are, well, happier. No kidding. And being happier and more prosperous makes them, well, better mummies. I'll drink to that.

You can't make this up

After women were denied the right to compete in ski jumping at the Vancouver Olympics, it seems the Pan American Sports Organization (PASO) is still denying women the right to compete in canoeing, kayaking and numerous weight classes. It's unbelieveable, but not surprising. Afterall, PASO's committee is made up of 41 men and one woman. And apparently, just like the goons who run the Olympics, the coaches, sponsors and administrators simply help themselves to any female athlete they fancy. And why not, they are the ones who choose and sponsor the teams. It's still about money and sex, I'm afraid. Happily, a case against this mess is being filed at the Ontario and Canadian Human Rights Tribunals, but it's appalling that women have to go to these lengths to compete in their sports. Absolutely appalling.

I began my love affair with swimming and sports at good old Camp Davern, a local YWCA girls camp. I opened the paper this past saturday and there was a huge spread on Davern featuring letters the campers had written home. They were lovely letters, penned by 11 and 12-year-old girls. Put me in mind of the letters home I had written when I first went at the age of nine. I found them in my mother's things after she died and had a good laugh. The first letter was very nice and addressed them as "Mummy and Daddy". I was asking politely if I could come home because I was too homesick. I had signed it, "Love, Nancy". The next letter said, "Dear Mother and Father" and still asked nicely, but no "love" at the end. By the third I was demanding to be picked up. "Mother and Father", it started; I had dropped the "Dear" altogether and signed it "Your daughter". I do remember being very homesick, but it abated and I loved it.

After my expose and rant about Brian's ex, I started thinking about mine. He has been "lost" for about 10 years, but after a couple of calls to old friends, I found a valid phone number and left him a message. Gave the number to my son (and will to my daughter, when she returns from Europe) and my only hope is that they will contact him and he will be responsive. Or not. But my fear was that I would learn he had died without our children having talked to him in many, many years. His choice, but I know it would have been very tough to deal with. He drifted away years ago and lives as a semi-hermit and recluse. God's timing, as ever, is perfect because I don't think either of my kids would have been able to deal with him a minute earlier. So, I again turn it over to the Lord and let him work his magnificence.

The other news is that in the process of tracking down these other women, who knew him long before I met him and who still try and keep in touch, I have re-connected with them. One lives in Perth and when I called her, she screamed with joy; so did I. Visited her yesterday and I thought we would crush each other with hugs and weeping. Needless to say, I always adored her and now I have her again. We plan to keep this up and she is so anxious to re-connect with Gene and Susanne. As she said, just because Bob isn't in the picture doesn't mean people who need to be around the kids should be shut out. Absolutely. I am anxiously awaiting our next get-together.

Zen and Everything

I am reading a book about Zen. One comment that hit me was..."One of the things that you realize when you see the nature of the self is that what you do and what happens to you are the same thing."

That's about it.