The latest fashion "no-no's"

The latest edition of 'Avenue' magazine in Calgary featured these monstrosities:

I am definitely out of the fashion loop.  Can't abide the new "too-small" suits which are all the rage with young men.  I mean seriously,  Pants too short, jacket too tight.  Ridiculous.  Feature Cary Grant ever, ever wearing this mess. 

This is supposed to be high fashion.  Really!?  A disaster.  Nothing matches anything and those shoes??!!!!





Where to start?!

The wheelchair was the final touch.  Our trip to Toronto was supposed to have been a lovely visit to family, but instead it turned into a nightmare of gargantuan proportions.  An old injury in my right hip became dangerously inflamed and aggravated because I stupidly decided to stroll through the Eaton Centre.

What a dumb idea!  Right outside our downtown hotel, one of the entrances looked perfectly innocent.  Until we started to meander.  Frankly, I knew it was a mistake, but kept going -- why I have no clue?!  I think we ended up in Buffalo by the time we turned around to walk back, but by this time it was miles! 

The next day I was completely unable to walk.  Not only did B have to call Calgary, get a prescription approved and pick it up a few blocks away, he also had to walk Yonge Street to buy me a cane.  But that wasn't the end of it.  He also had to secure a wheelchair for the remainder of the weekend.  And my dearest husband is in his 75th year!!  (I guess if one survives having been born a member of  'The Raj' in India in the early forties, one can survive and conquer anything.  He does.)   
But seriously.  How charming is moi in a wheelchair in the public thoroughfare?!  I hate people like me in elevators and public areas and want to put a fork in their entitled eyes, but there I was, trapped and being smashed into walls and corners by my well-meaning husband who suddenly lacked any sense of distance, space or vision as he pushed me from pillar to post. 

In the middle of the night I was in such excruciating pain he called the front desk and an ambulance and stretcher appeared.  Off we went to St. Michael's emergency, where we were stuck for five-and-a-half hours while staff ran around treating street drug addicts.  I was only in pain, not near death, so we waited and waited and waited.  Finally, a doctor appeared, gave me a shot and some pills and sent me on my way.  Apparently in Ontario no XRays are taken for "back pain".  Really?!

There are other Toronto tales; here are a few:

Yonge Street is still a dirty, disgraceful mess.  Beggars, crazies and druggies with dogs litter the sidewalk sleeping.  Rudy Giuliani where are you?!?!  You could not pay me to live in Toronto.  Ever again. 

In the hotel elevator, before I became a cripple, I met three Air Egypt crew who tried to look calm in the face of the tragedy that had just unfolded.  We chatted and no one even mentioned it. 

One good thing about The Centre of the Universe is that it is a magnificent urban forest, with huge trees everywhere.  Our hotel courtyard was teeming with birds, adorable, right in the heart of downtown. 

A cashier told me about a device which can read your credit card inside your purse and wallet just by standing near you for a few minutes.  He told me to get the three half-circles removed so crooks can't do this again.  It happened to me a couple of months ago in Banff.  Some guy in Detroit was using my credit card!!??  Good thing B tracks me around town or we would not have noticed. 

The non-music in hotel lobbies is hideous.  Just electronic noise with no beat and no point.  I think the theory here is to drive patrons insane so they order more wine.  With the pain I was in, I bellied up every chance I got! 

Toronto's waterfront -- once a polluted mess -- has been replaced not with parks and beauty, but with cheek-by-jowel-chock-a-block ugly condos.  Ugly money won there. 

Trapped in my wheelchair at the airport I found myself next to two teenaged slobs who had plunked their fat asses (why are all teens fat now?)  into the handicapped seats while one braided the other's hair.  I kid you not!!  I almost said something, but was restrained by B, who by this time had had enough of me. 

Final word of advice:  If you are on Celebrex, never go off!!  Oh, and by the way, got a $250 bill for the ambulance.  Happily, my insurance will cover it, but you and I are still paying for the drug addicts' rides.   

  

 

"Can't you control your wife?!"

This blog reflects my opinions -- often 'out there' -- but never libelous.  Period the end.  However, it appears some people don't like my opinions and think they have the outrageous right to attack B about them.  As I always say, if you don't like my blog don't read it.   

For the third time in our marriage, B has been "spoken to" about either my blog, or a letter to the editor.  The first was when he was on the board of our condo in Ottawa and I had written a letter to The Citizen objecting to the unnecessary cutting down of perfectly healthy Linden trees, which I loved because they were just outside our balcony and provided birds and shade.  The board was outraged because the letter was accompanied by a picture of me beside the doomed trees.  That's when the famous "Can't you control your wife," admonishment was delivered by the male-chauvinist board president.   

The second was here in Calgary, when I wrote a letter to The Herald, explaining what I thought papal infallibility meant.  Subsequently, I received a letter from some "no one" in the Fourth Degree Knights of Columbus, edifying me about what the whole thing meant.  "Hey, write your own letter to the editor and don't ever speak to me or send me a stupid, pompous, condescending letter like that, again," I said the next time I had to see the oaf. 

Never saw a letter, by the way, but thankfully he stays away from me in droves. 

The third was today, when unsuspecting B received a phone call from a flunky of a club to which he belong(ed), objecting to a blog I had written about what I had seen and heard at an event we had attended.  This sap actually demanded I remove my blog, which I only did out of respect and concern for B.  In support, B immediately resigned from this club, to which we have given thousands over four years.  In fact, we had recently given a significant cash donation for a renovation project, which we will now not enjoy.  The fact that they had a lackey call, rather than someone in management, was particularly galling and cowardly.  Do these people not realize that I contributed half the money we spent there?  Guess not because I was referred to as his "guest".  It's obviously not a case of "because it's 2016" here in Calgary. 

Yes folks, male chauvinism is alive and well in Cowtown.

So, here I sit, having tried for many years to instill in my daughter and step-daughter the values and rights that I cherish and that women have worked so hard to achieve.  I was on the vanguard of "women's lib" in the late sixties, yet am still confronted by a bunch of yahoos who think they can tell me what to write and how to think?!  Reminds me of the Middle East, where women are forbidden to get an education -- or the book burning frenzies in Nazi Germany.  Sincerely hope these complainants (all males, by the way) don't have daughters.  In fact, I also hope they don't have sons. 

What's next?  Are they going to scroll through everyone's facebook, instragram and twitter accounts to see if anyone is saying something they don't like?!

I think I know who "tattled" on me and reported the blog to club management because, frankly, only one or two take any notice of me and my letters to The Herald, let alone are aware of the fact that I have a blog.  So, as you read this, you know who you are.  Why not comment on the blog itself?  Anyone can.  Why sit in the bushes and hide, while you report and finger me?  You remind me of the NDP female MPs, who publically accused others of sexual misconduct, but hid under the couch while doing it and ruining careers.  I would think that your organization would have more to do, in the face of declining revenues in desperate Alberta, than crowd your agenda with crying, complaining and wringing your hands over what I write in my personal blog.



    

Have some dignity

The spectacle of the women holding press conferences and waving placards as Jian Gomeshi left court yesterday was an appalling display of crassness.  What has happened to women?  Have they no self-respect, no dignity?! 

Please.

With the right to remain anonymous, these complainants -- along with the veiled NDPers, who accused a couple of never-charged, but now-ruined, MPs of the same thing a while ago -- have successfully ruined the talented Gomeshi's entire life.  And he wasn't even convicted of anything.  All of these broads continued to aggressively pursue him in relationships, with the latest harridan bragging that she herself was sexually-inappropriate, outrageous and often over-refreshed when she worked with him.

If I had a dime for every guy who was sexually-inappropriate with me when I was younger, I'd be a very rich woman.  But to get behind a microphone and scream about it would have accomplished nothing -- except to get me fired or demoted.  I mean, all you had to do was say no.  You didn't have to acquiesce, you didn't have to sleep with the guy (as many of these women willingly did anyway) and you didn't have to make a huge deal about some guy making a pass.  Show a little decorum. 

Although none of us was there when the passes and encounters took place, I will grant that Gomeshi probably went too far in his advances.  But to brand the guy a maniac and ruin him?  It's such an insult to women everywhere who know how to behave and conduct themselves with some class in interpersonal and working relationships.  What a waste of a career.  Any by the way, I can no longer stand to listen to the hapless and clueless Shad.

As I have always said, women are their own worst enemies.     

More Montreal..........

A true American "Trump" man we met at the hotel.  He was a money manager.  Would you ever trust your savings to this guy??!!  BTW, he took the selfie, obviously "over-refreshed".   

The greasy guy in the seat in front of me on the plane back to Calgary.  This is why I hate flying.  Would it kill him to wash his filthy hair, I mean it's not as if he actually has to style it!!??

Old Montreal's version of "wheel-chair accessible".  Seriously, you either have to go down or up two flights of ancient, rickety stairs to relieve yourself.  No Montrealer seems to care about the handicapped; they should just stay home. 



No clue?

Seated beside the president of Concordia, I had no clue that he was gay.  Not that I care one way or another, but he had never before brought his partner to any university function, so I was surprised.  Looking and acting totally straight in all the years I have known him, he must have thought it necessary to hide his true self, which is sad.  But he now seems comfortable and even talked about the antics of their two teenagers, another surprise for me. 

We were in Montreal for a long weekend so B could give a speech to the incoming Garnet Key Society members.  This was the introduction of the 59th Key; B had been in the fifth.  We love Montreal and any excuse to get there we'll take.  Although many restaurants here in Cow Town claim to have "Montreal smoked meat" on their menus, they really don't.  This is what a smoked meat sandwich should look like, folks:


The real deal at Reuben's on Ste. Catherine



And you've gotta have the fries and the slaw and the dill.  It was delicious.  We also went to Mass at the magnificent St. Patrick's Basillica:

 



Poor taste

Watched the Whitehouse Correspondents' Dinner against my better judgement.  The first thing that struck me was Obama's snap-on bow tie.  Huh!!??  Is there no one in his circle who knows how to actually tie a proper bow tie?  I tie all of B's and it's quite easy, once you know how.  "You just tie a bow, Griffy," said my late, dear friend Mike the day he showed me how to do it.  Obama's bad tie was completely unacceptable. 

But he was funny.  The boob who followed him was not.  Who the h-ll is Larry Wilmore anyway?  I had no clue, but was quite certain his was a performance in very bad taste.  All his "jokes" centred around being black -- and a disgruntled one at that.  Sadly, he transferred all his "blackness" onto Obama and just kept turning to the President and hammering away about it.  Did he actually use the "N" word?  I think so.  It was so cringe-inducing that I switched channels in disgust. 

I am not a big fan of Obama, but I am quite sure his accomplishments trump his blackness.  It was a disgraceful and embarrassing performance by a black guy with a HUGE chip on his shoulder.