No filter

I think this woman has verbal tourette's, an affliction I just made up based on the syndrome itself.  It describes people who just come out with whatever -- regardless of how inappropriate.  I can say some pretty blunt things myself, but I would never say something this ill-manned to someone I didn't know. 

"Wow, you dress better than a hooker," yelled a bizarre woman with whom I swim many mornings.  Whaaaaat?!  Well, I don't actually swim with her because she can't swim.  We are in different lanes, but I see her there.  We were getting dressed in the locker room and she actually exclaimed the "hooker" remark to the entire room.  No one knew where to look or what to say. 

Then she laughed raucously.  This is a woman who tells everyone off if they are in her way, which rarely happens because she is so dawdling herself.  The only people she can pass are the water joggers.  The other odd thing about her is she has to swim with a snorkel because she can't breathe in the water.  Who does that?  Hey, learn!  You're fifty. 

"I'll take that as a compliment," I said.  "You should because most hookers dress very well," she replied.  Really?  The hookers I've seen dress like.......well........hookers.  I don't.  My usual outfit in the locker room is leggings and a T-shirt, with some kind of cotton camisole underneath.  In the winter it's sweat pants and a big jacket.  Hardly "hooker wear".

If she thinks I will ever favour her with a "hello" in the future, she can dream on.

I am madly training hard for my 2K Lake Windermere Open Water Swim in 10 days in Invermere B.C.  Naturally over-doing it, I injured my bad upper arm again, so need "graston-rod" treatment.  If you've ever had it, you'll know how painful it is, but it gets the job done.  Having my first one tomorrow morning. 

Ugh.



       

The 2014 Gardening Edition

As I have mentioned, enduring one- and two-degree nights in early June, flowers here harden off and become absolutely magnificent!  Mine are no exception and I am very proud of the little toughies that have hung in there on my back patio.  Granted, I feed them drugs, but nonetheless they are thriving:

 

 





A Complete B-tch

Had a yak-fest yesterday on the phone with a very old and very dear friend.  We go back 35 years.  Brought back memories of a complete b-tch we both knew.  This was a woman who went out of her way to be an obstructionist and a contrarian.  Thanks to her own personality, she snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory.

Time and time again.

I had to deal with her for 25 years.  It was no picnic.  Thankfully, I can be a supreme b-tch myself, so was able to bring out the heavy artillery when required to protect myself from the venom.  I think "bitchiness" comes from a deep hatred of oneself, but manifests itself by imposing the self-loathing on others.  Don't you?  And why is it usually women who are the b-tches?

Thankfully, moving to Calgary removed this person from our lives. 

Do you think women who divorce their husbands should be allowed to keep the ex's name?  I think the ex should have to give approval.  My stepson agrees.  When I divorced I had to think about whether I would go back to my maiden name because I certainly couldn't keep my married name.    When I re-married, I took on my husband's.

So, that's how "Nancy Griffith Marley-Clarke" came about.  Man, what a handle!   

 

  

Views from a Mall

Sitting around the Chinook Centre, waiting for my shopping son yesterday, I snapped a few of the milling throngs:

How could you possibly go out in public wearing a skirt like this?

 

Ripped jeans are the order of the day in Calgary.

 

What a perfect outfit for the public thoroughfare!

 

Good for you, Mom.  Let's get the kids started early on what-not-to-wear!

 



 

 











Another "victim" complains

"I want people to know what happened to her.  I want her to be remembered."  So said Toni Omeasoo, mother of a baby who died in native foster care when a bassinet collapsed. 

You can't believe that the mother, who had her child taken from her for presumably good reasons, would come out and blame "the system" for her baby's death.  Hey, why was your baby taken from you in the first place??!!  Over to you.  The natives insist on their own foster-care system, but when a native kid dies within it, somehow the rest of Canada is at fault.

Huh!!!???

This was her response to the government of Alberta's decision to release the names of children who die in care.  She's glad that now everyone knows that her child was taken from her and died in the custody of her own people.  The natives in this country are ridiculous.  They wallow in a culture of irresponsibility, entitlement and non-Canadian-ness.  Did the rest of us put them there?  If so, why do we keep them there?  I am eternally grateful my maternal great-grandmother married off-reserve and joined the rest of Canada.

And let's get something straight.  Natives are not a "nation".  To be a nation you have to have your own army, infrastructure and be able to generate your own money.  They don't.  Look up "sovereign" and "nation" in any dictionary and you'll see the definition, which doesn't apply to natives.  But they have coopted the language and the rest of us have bought into it.  I mean, just because you call yourself a "sovereign nation" doesn't mean you are one.  But we have allowed it -- especially the Supreme Court which has rendered some calamitous decisions of late, thanks to the wording of The Indian Act -- a hurried and cowardly compromise if ever there were one.  The chickens are coming home to roost and it's to the peril of us all.

Sadly, a mother in her forties and her 2-year-old son were found dead of drug overdoses on the Stoney Reserve not far from here a couple of days ago.  That's perfect, do drugs with your son and kill yourselves.  Sad.      

Here is a picture of the incompetent mother and her late unfortunate baby:

Sad.



Unforgettable

We had the traditional visit to Banff with son today.  His first.  Naturally, we took a few photos at the Banff Springs Hotel:






Gene relaxing with a gorgeous view of the Rockies

Why do I look so fat!!??  Well, at least the shoes and scarf matched! 


 



Haze

Son Gene arrived yesterday for his first visit to Calgary since we moved here three years ago.  Can't believe it's been three years!? 

Driving to Cochrane this morning was weird.  Because of the many wild fires in BC, the mountains -- usually looming majestically in the distance -- were cloaked in a haze.  Couldn't see a bit of them, which was unfortunate because for Easterners visiting here for the first time, their first look at the Rockies is amazing! 

We finally have gorgeous weather in Calgary.  When it's nice here, it's beyond the beyond.  Just heat, but no humidity.  I love it.     

What were we doing??!!

We were manning the barricades back in the late sixties.  I mean, we were fighting for the right to be..........well..........anything we wanted to be.  Remember?  Our mothers actually had to quit working when they married.  And when I worked for IBM in the early '70s you were not permitted to marry another IBMer, or one of you had to quit. 

Seriously.

While never a "women's libber", I did fight for the right to have a career.  I wanted to earn my own money.  I did not want to have to ask a man for money for nylons. 

Seriously.

But I liked being a woman, still do.  What I don't understand today are the women who were afforded a good education, took up seats in institutions of higher learning on someone else's money, but are not in the workforce??!!  What did they think we were doing back in the sixties?  We were fighting for their rights.  Why have they decided to throw in the towel and sit around watching Sesame Street?

I am not proud of who they have become. 

 

More about the "natives"

I don't think anyone does any research about what is a nation.  I do and it's clear that the "natives" are not a nation.  And by the way, I object to their calling themselves "natives", as you know, because no humans are indigenous to North or South America.  We all arrived here from either the Garden of Eden, or Africa and subsequently from European countries. 

But I digress.  For purposes of this blog, I will refer to them as "natives", although you know I don't agree with that definition.  Anyway...........

"A sovereign state is a nonphysical juridical (they mean "jurisdictional) entity of the international legal system that is represented by one centralized government that has supreme independent authority over a geographic(al) area.  International law defines sovereign states as having a permanent population, one government and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states.  It is also normally understood to be a state which is neither dependent on, nor subject to, any other power or state."

By that Wikipedian definition, Canadian natives are not sovereign because they are completely dependent upon Canada for funding.  And they do not enter into relations with other states or nations -- except when they paddle to the UN to complain.  They are not independent, nor do they have their own army and they do not generate their own currency.  The rest of us supply that. 

How Canadian natives can call themselves a "nation" is ridiculous.  I wish Canadians would wake up and smell the scam and I wish the natives would be either independent, or join the rest of Canada and be "Canadian". 

Period, the end.

 

 

 

Here and there

 

A great example of Calgarian table manners.  Yuck!

 

Couldn't figure out whether this was a woman or a man!?  But it was a woman.  Most older oriental women dye their hair black, but forget to dye the roots.  It also kills their hair and they end up looking like this poor soul.    

 

The Way Things Turn Out

My mother was as conventional as I was not.  At her funeral I said, "I was as big a surprise to her as she me."  Although very different, I learned everything I needed to know about being a home economist and honouring family traditions.  She was traditional as I learned to be, but I am not "conventional".  There's a big difference between the two. 

Lillian Griffith's was also the charity home in our wonderful neighbourhood of Lindenlea in Ottawa, where I grew up.  And so it was that in the '50s she befriended a family of three children a couple of streets over.  The oldest was a sweet boy I will call "David" (not his real name).  With a younger sister and brother, David was a fast friend of my late brother, John.  David's parents were unconventional, something my mother could not understand in a million years.  She thought the children were being "neglected" because their parents did not bring them up as she did hers.  I mean maybe they had hot dogs for breakfast?  So what?  Their parents actually sat on the front lawn in shorts and enjoyed the weather.  In contrast, my mother never wore anything but dresses -- even at the cottage -- never sat on a chaise lounge and never exposed one inch of inappropriate skin. 

As I said, we were a surprise to one another.

David usually spent all day with us, eating three meals a day because my mother fretted about his well-being.  Here's the surprise:  David gained a Masters Degree in Engineering and is a very successful entrepreneur, his sister became a teacher up north and a professional bush pilot, and little brother a decorated member of the armed forces. 

So much for my dear mother's fears.  I learned all this through 'Classmates', to which I don't subscribe, but every now and then I get a "private message" from someone.  David came through.  Corresponding, I learned he did not know what had happened to his dear childhood friend, my brother John, but told me about his own success and that of his siblings.  Apparently he knew my brother was gay; I did not.  Duh?  That is why their friendship ended.  But what a wonderful childhood they had!

He also told me my father, the scientist, was the person who influenced him to embark on a scientific career.  

So, even hotdogs for breakfast have no effect on future success.  What a wonderful world!   

Oh, perfect!

"Oh, please!  F-ck off!", I laughed at the pool this morning.  I was joking with a young man I swim and chat with most mornings.  Now you have to realize that I always use this expression in a jocular, rather than offensive, manner and no one ever takes offence because I can accurately judge who to say it to and when.

What prompted my greeting was the continuing agitation between the aquafit-ers and the lane swimmers.  "I am sick of the lanes always being closed to accommodate the aquafit class, while the rest of us are jammed into two," I had said to him a while ago when he was forced to join our now-too-crowded lane.  It irritates me so much that I would never take an aquafit class, I added.  He laughed and that's what started our regular little chats. 

So, when he laughingly said this morning, "Aren't you going to join the aquafit class?" as he slipped under the lane line, I delivered my greeting.  I should add that at the time, I had been laughing with another guy I swim with who was dropping the "f" bomb left, right and centre about the poor marshalling he had experienced at the triathlon he had done over the weekend.  "I was even hit by a truck at an intersection!" he said.  "The only good thing about it was I got to give a cop sh-t!"  By this point we were all laughing. 

Having not formally introduced myself to the other young man and since we chat so often I said, "I'm Nancy."  He politely offered his hand and introduced himself.  "What do you do," I added.  "I'm a neurosurgeon at Foothills."  That's when I said, "Oh, perfect!  I just told a neurosurgeon to F-ck off," I laughed.  "Hopefully, I never have to meet you in your operating room!"  But he simply laughed and said he thought it was very funny.

This neurosurgeon had been trained in Venezuela, hence his manners and politeness.  He is in Calgary because his wife has a big job in oil and gas.  He told me about what it took to get certified in Alberta and all I can say is, good for him.  He is not 12, as I assumed, but 41 and the second top neurosurgeon at Foothills.  You never know who you will meet at the Crowfoot Y pool!

I am sure you get the impression that I don't swim, just chat, but we all do.  Very hard.  In fact, I have upped my laps to get ready for the Lake Windermere 2-K swim I am doing in August.  Did it last year and am determined to do better than the lollygagging time I did last year.

This time I'm going to be serious.     

Petunia hotline

Petunias get spindly and leggy if you just plant them and walk away.  But not if you are absolutely ruthless when you plant them.  You have to hack them back to about three inches, which means cutting off any existing blossoms.  But if you are patient, in about 10 days you will have the most magnificent, fattest plants you've ever seen. 

This I learned at a dinner party a number of years ago and I have done it since.  When they have taken off, you have to selectively cut them back on a rotational basis -- just one or two at a time -- all summer long and they will get even fatter and produce an abundance of gorgeous blossoms.  And remember not to just pull a faded blossom out of it's stem.  You have to snap off the stem down to the next joint.  After having given up on them a few years ago, I now buy lots and enjoy them immensely.  Here are a few of mine this year:

Just hacked these back again this morning.

 

Of course, you have to buy good potting soil and give them drugs.  When I first plant, I use Miracle Grow Starter liquid once every two weeks and after that, just regular Miracle Grow plant food.  I love taking advantage of the low price and proliferation of the regular, "lowly" petunia.  Hope I'm not being too presumptious, but I see an awful lot of sad-looking petunias in my travels around Calgary.

One year I was waiting for B to pick me up outside an Ottawa restaurant and I noticed how meek and pathetic the petunias were in their window boxes.  So, I started picking and pruning and the manager came rushing out, after a patron told him I was defacing them.  "No, no, what are you doing?" he almost yelled.  "I am fixing your pathetic petunias."  After I explained how the process worked, he let me continue.  A few weeks later I drove by and they were glorious. 

So dear readers, it's still not too late to get crackingly ruthless and have lovely flowers by early August.  And by the way, I never buy the wave variety; flowers too small and spindly.  They are for folks who don't know how to grow the regular variety. 

That's Stampede for you!

"Any cowgirl like you I'm going to help," said the young man behind me in the liquor store as he carried out a case of wine for me.  How nice was that!?

B and I have been wearing our cowboy gear every day to wherever we venture.  Boots, hats, the works.  All day I had my hat and boots on and I have discovered I finally feel like a Calgarian during Stampede.  And this week is Stampede.  Funnily, ethnics do not wear western wear, only white folks.  Last year they introduced a Stampede educational seminar series for ethnic people to help them integrate and get into the spirit.  It didn't work. 

But I'm enjoying this celebration big time!



 

Scary

I didn't know that 42 percent of Canadians 16 to 65 years of age do not have the minimum literacy skills to cope with everyday life.

I didn't know that 80 percent of inmates are almost illiterate.

I didn't know that five to 15 percent of school children are reading-delayed.  If they don't master reading by grade three, they will never catch up.

I didn't know that people with low literacy skills are twice as likely to be unemployed.

I didn't know that 50 percent of adults with low literacy skills live below the poverty line.

I didn't know that literacy problems cost Canadians $10 billion a year. 

This is scandalous in a country where teachers are some of the highest-paid professionals in any category.

There is something terribly wrong here.  Educated in the good, old Ontario system of the fifties, I remember having learnt to read in grade one.  They used phonics, which some smarty-pants officials in Toronto dropped for a generation.  Dumb.  I think it's back and it's what works. 

Someone needs to give their head a shake.     

An Outing

Drove to Bragg Creek today.  It's a lovely place, hard-hit by the floods last year, but mostly recovered.  Ended up at a local golf club -- beautiful if I played, but I don't.  What is it I always say about golf?  Ball too small, club too long.  Unhittable.

There were some fabulous photos on the walls of Tsuu T'ina chiefs, on whose ground the club is and which I post below:

Chief David Crowchild, after whom the Crowchild Trail is named.

 

Old Sarcee, after whom the Sarcee Trail is named.

 

Jim Big Plume, don't know much about him.

 

Chief Bull Head.









  

Where to start?

Well, have been off-line for a while.  We were in Ottawa and the Gatineau for about 10 days, visiting with step-son, step-daughter and B's Houston grandchildren.  Having vacationed up at Lac Pemichangan and The Gatineau Fish & Game Club for 25 years, it was glorious to be back.  Going to start with the flight to Ottawa, where I was seated beside a very charming fellow.  Turns out he was an off-duty WestJet pilot, so asked him all the questions that still bug me about flying.

Like, where is that plane?  How could it just drop off the face of the earth?  He didn't have any answers.

Landed in Ottawa and stayed overnight at The Westin.  Funnily, I didn't call any of my old "friends" 'cause I don't really have any!  Grew up in Ottawa, but it's not home anymore.  Calgary is.  What I marvelled at in Quebec were the trees, the topography and the water.  Oh yes, and the loons. 

Surprised my old hair stylist, Dan, the day we left when I just walked into his salon.  He stood there pretty much dumb-struck.  I cried a few tears of joy.  He dealt with my locks for more than 20 years and was the guy who told me that, "grey hair will be the status symbol of the nineties."  I went for it and have no regrets. 



I swam every day about a kilometre, from our dock to Penney Point, then across the big channel to the Steers' dock, then back to ours.  I am now ready for my open-water Lake Windermere swim in August.  No problem.  Here are a few shots of my trip:

The best French fries on the planet, Casse Croute fries, slightly soggy and deep-fried in lard.  Ummmm!

This is what happens when you eat too often at the Gracefield Casse Croute,  I call this the "Gracefield figure.

Step-son Scott, awaiting his fat fix!  There are no Casse Croutes anywhere else in the entire world except Quebec.

What can I say about this duo??

The menu, big and bigger.  And always the salt and vinegar.

Loon family at our dock, baby on the back of Mum

Grandchildren's wildflowers, picked for our table.  Caitlin now knows all their names.

Caitlin and Jack admiring the fire they built