Now I understand....

...what my late father was talking about -- sort of.  Everything in the universe was perfect, he used to say, which was why he was a devout Catholic, while at the same time a brilliant mathematician.  I couldn't understand how he could be both when I was a questioning teenager.  "There is so much we don't understand dear," he used to say, "but perfect math and numbers underpin everything, which means there has to be a God to have made it all so perfect.  Nothing is random."

Just watching 'The Code', a brilliant BBC series about how mathematical patterns and numbers govern everything in the universe.  And they are consistently uniform, regardless of whether applied to plants, animals, sea creatures, insects, people, flora, fauna or the planets and stars themselves.  Amazing!

Don't ask me to explain anything, but watching the series I am cluing in a tad.  I was terrible at math -- much to his patient and loving chagrin -- but I am now beginning to understand prime numbers and what they can and cannot do.  I also now have a clue about "pi", the infinite number formula.  My Dad lived in a "math" world and wrote about it every day of his life-- both before and after he retired.  He was not of "this world" and I think without my mother he would never have eaten, got dressed or left the house.  But she gave him an orderly life and he repaid her by pretending to be "normal".  A kinder, more patient and loving gentleman you could not meet.  In fact, I never saw him lose his temper or say a critical word about anyone.  Ever. 

He would have been 115 years old and I am only just figuring him out.              

Finally questioning their own

"The salaries should match the governance structure.  It doesn't make sense that politicians are paid more than $90,000 each to govern an on-reserve population of 7,000," said Harley Frank, a former Blood Tribe chief in response to revelations that the current chief and 12 councillors collectively paid themselves more than $2 million last year. 

Finally, the natives themselves are waking up to reality within their midst.  When you factor in travel claims, the total hits $2.13 million.  Chief Weasel Head's total remuneration and expenses were $133,130, while one councillor actually hauled in....wait for it....$210,982!

Just so outrageous.  "If you're getting paid that kind of money, I expect tremendous results," Frank said.  "And then you have people on that reserve living hand-to-mouth."  Yes folks, chiefs and councillors are raking it in, while their subjects live in shacks and defecate in buckets.  And whose fault is it.  Never mind, that was a rhetorical question.

No wonder they don't want their theft to be revealed in audits.  The Blood Tribe's biggest expense in fiscal 2015 was salaries and benefits, which clocked in at....wait for it again.....$45.96 million -- a figure that topped last year's by $669,850.  For governing 7,000 people?

Maybe now that natives know what their leaders are up to, they will start to demand reason, reality and accountability from these carney barkers.     

   

"...going forward"

What's with that new fad phrase?  Just dumb.  "I hope that next year is better, going forward."  Why do we need the "going forward" part?!  We don't.  The meaning is obvious without those two superfluous words, but one hears the expression everywhere out of the mouths of every expert on everything on every TV and radio show.  G-d!  Almost as hideous as the repetition of the word "is", as in, "The thing is is......"  G-d again.   

I do despair when it comes to grammar.

We're all huddled in our homes with the windows closed and furnace filters changed, trying to escape the smoke from forest fires in Washington.  The Rockies halt the spread of the BC smoke, but winds have pushed Washington's smoke up into southern Alberta and I'm pissed off about it.  Not that it physically bothers me -- thanks to my heart/lung capacity due to swimming -- but one has to keep everything closed, as dust accumulates on everything.  Guess we'll all have to pay for the smokers who have to get emergency oxygen.  Can't believe our young, dumb neighbours still sit out back smoking?! 

You should have seen the shape my filter was in when I changed it!  Absolutely clogged.  Supposed to clear by Thursday, which leaves me another day to binge-watch BBC on Netflix. 



 

 

Potty talk

At a dinner party last evening, talk turned to toilets -- or the lack of them in certain parts of the world, such as Eastern Europe.  One couple had just returned from three months there, visiting Bulgaria, Romania, the Czech Republic and other places in which I would never set foot, let alone spend money.  I had introduced the topic by saying I don't go anywhere where I might have trouble finding a toilet; they told me you have to pay to use them most places and that they actually have "toilet police" stationed outside to ensure people don't crawl under. 

See, that's why I would never go.  We then continued on the toilet theme, discussing such riveting topics as hovering, squatting (done in India, yuck), paper-on-the-seat or not.....etc.  I expressed shock when one woman said she never puts paper down in a public toilet!  G-d forbid!  That's one of my all-time cardinal rules: never ride bareback on a public toilet.  Ever. 

All at once I felt my age.  "What has it come to that our main topic of conversation revolves around toilets?"  It's definitely our age.  The National Arts Centre springs to mind when it comes to insufficient numbers of women's toilets.  Bumped into our family doctor a few years ago while waiting in an endless line to pee.  "Can you please give me a note to use the men's?" I asked him, looking on with envy at the no-line men's toilets.  Apparently, the industry has now upped the building code on women's toilets in public facilities.  But one has to wonder, what are we doing in them?  I guess hiking down and up pantyhose and other such time-consuming tasks, versus men who simply have to zip, go and zip.  However, I also suspect fewer men wash their hands post-pee.  Yuck again.    

But the world travellers told us horror stories about being swarmed by Romas, reminding me it's not for nothing they have the reputation they do.  And the wife was actually terrified when a Muslim taxi driver started screaming and raving about the gay pride parade they were driving past.  "Geez, wouldn't want to be his wife, daughters or sons," I said.  Don't get me started on that file.

Just had lunch with a friend I met at the pool and it gave me great pause.  A better swimmer than I when we met, she now has arbitrary brain cancer and needs a cane to get around.  Makes me realize there are worse things than toilet problems. 

It's war!!

Those were the two words that B's ex said to him when they separated.  Having read "The Women's Room", she thought she was "libber incarnate", a clone of Gloria and blood sister to Germaine and Betty -- in spite of the fact that she earned none of her own money and did not work outside the home, something I would never advise any mother to do.  My mantra has always been, "Don't ever give up your day job, girls". 

So, B had to defend himself and thus engaged one of the best family law lawyers in the country, Bob Montague.  Sadly, sadly Bob died on Sunday.  He was only 71 and I was shocked to my core -- so much so that I began to weep uncontrollably.  Not that we were personal friends, but I credited him with enabling us to have a daily and close relationship with B's children, all because Mr. Montague won us majority custody in 1983, when this was unheard of.  The raw emotion of all those years ago, when it was an hourly fight over every cookie, came spilling out. 

Our case was also helped by Dr. Arthur Leonoff, a family psychologist who interviewed each of us -- children included -- and decided that B should have majority custody because he was prepared to grant access to the mother.  "I have no confidence that the mother will do the same," he wrote at the time.  Such was the precedent set that Montague and Leonoff subsequently co-wrote a family law textbook, based on what they had achieved for us.  We are forever grateful and hope that other fathers benefitted from our case.  No longer did fathers have to sit on the sidelines and toss money at their kids.  They could actually co-parent.

It's a great loss and a sad day for the legal community.  Rest in peace, dear Bob.   

       

Surprising

Today is our 32nd wedding anniversary and the only one who remembered was my stepdaughter, the one with whom I am now unfortunately least close.  But thank you, "S", so appreciated.  (My non-relationship is thanks to her renewed relationship with her mother, which became close when stepdaughter herself became a mother, and now everything has to appear to be perfect.  Too bad because I am the loser, but so are her kids who don't really know me.  Apologies for the ego there.)

Together 35 years, B and I have officially been married 32 and raised four children together.  What chaos it was many times!  We faced a myriad of obstacles because one parent was involved and fought anything and everything, and another was completely absent and uninvolved.  Two children suffered from the presence of a parent and two from the absence of one.  Should I be a child psychologist?  Maybe. 

But hey, we hung in there and now enjoy four wonderful grandchildren.  What other purpose does my life now have but to be a grandmother?

None.        

Sex in a canoe?

Apparently Ontario is the sex-in-a-canoe capital of Canada.  Fourteen percent of all upstanding citizens of that supposedly conservative province have had sex in a canoe.  Next is B.C., but far back, where seven percent of residents have bobbed and tipped getting it on in that vessel.  This compares to the least edgy provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan where only two percent of folks have indulged in such risky behaviour. 

These are a couple of weird facts I came across the other day in The Herald.  All were absolutely fascinating.  Here are a few more:

Married couples without children?                       Nova Scotia is tops at 53.8%
 

Percentage of singles?                                           Nunavut, 25.3%
 

Litres of beer per capita?                                       Yukon, 125.2%; fewest beers per year, Ontario at 70.7%

Number of marijuana users?                                  Ontario, 4,386,897; fewest is PEI at 48,886

Daily cigarette consumption?                                Quebec, 15.6 (no surprise there, Quebeckers love to smoke)

Annual total of Kraft dinners purchased?              Ontario, 40,611,406

Number of Tim Horton's?                                      Ontario, 1,858

Top baby names across the country?                      Liam, Emma, Ethan and Olivia (G-d I hate those names!)

 

Charitable donations?                                              Alberta at $2,316 (impressive); Quebec the lowest at $660 -- even lower than Newfoundland, $906, with a much smaller population (guess they're too busy smoking.)

So, a few facts to bore people with at your next dinner party.