Reject the Koolaid

My new food love: Crispy spinach candy

2008-07-21T14:25:00.000-04:00

Ginger Chicken with Crispy Spinach, originally uploaded by squirrelattakk.

Popeye would definitely not approve. Crispy spinach is not only crispy, it's sweet, permeated with sugar, but I cannot get enough of it. The local Vietnamese place serves a version accompanied by shrimp or chicken in a peanut sauce. I've also had it paired with a chicken in a mostly soy sauce and Flickr shows it accompanied by Ginger Chicken.

Have you eaten crispy spinach? Did you get hooked? Here's a recipe.

Why do servers put their hands on cup rims?

2008-07-20T10:47:00.005-04:00

Sometimes on my morning dog walk, I stop by the Van Houtte's coffee shop near my house and pick up a coffee to go. Their filter coffee is better than the stuff at the Starbuck's across the street and they're a Quebec establishment so I prefer to give them my business.

The way it works is that they give you the cup and then you go fill it up at the urns. But almost every time I've been there, the server who hands me the paper cup puts their hands all over the rim and then all over the lid including the sip hole. Now, I am not a germaphobe by any means, but this is just ridiculous.

It's one of the most basic rules for food servers, especially when they're also handling money. And it's not as if it's any more difficult for them not to put their hands all over the rim and lid.

Depending on my state of mind, I either ignore situations like this and suck it up (metaphorically and literally) or, occasionally, I decide to say something. Yesterday, I said to the girl, "Please don't take this personally, but you just put your hands all over the rim."

Well, of course, she took it personally and then looked at me like I was a crazy woman. Clearly, she had never been trained not to put her hands all over the cup.

Since this was the umpteenth time this had happened to me at this particular Van Houtte's, I have decided to blog about it and officially complain to company management. And until, I get a satisfying response, I'm returning to Starbuck's, one of whose good qualities is that they train their Baristas not to do this.

News Alert: I get rid of Fonzie at garage sale

2008-07-19T12:27:00.006-04:00

Fonzie with his new master Denis. And yes, Denis was vetted as thoroughly as he would have been if he had applied at the SPCA for a cat. And no, he is not taking Fonzie to an animal testing/torture lab.

Today, I am having a garage sale. And the reason that I'm blogging during the middle of it is because I forgot to double check that the ad actually made it on to Craig's List. And, well, it didn't -- until this morning when I started wondering why business was so damned slow.

Anyway, as garage sales go, I have some decent stuff on offer: boxed sets of 24, tween girl lit, the Sexual Life of Catherine M., handcuffs, a complete set of Harry Potter until someone stole the last two books when I ran upstairs to do something else, a wicker picnic basket, attractive handbags, etc.

And then I have some of the stuff that I've failed to get rid of at garage sales past and wasn't quite ready to give away: an old-fashioned girl's costume from the Shaw Festival, ski boots, some framed flower prints and a framed Tom Thomson, also a print although I have been asked if it was an original.

The flower prints, a gift, are not now and never have been my style. While I still love the Group of Seven, the frame, which I had done ages ago, was a mistake from day one and always bothered me. At this point, all I wanted was to get rid of the pictures and take whatever I could get.

A guy expressed interest but balked at my prices. Remembering that my sale motto was "priced to sell" I finally settled on $20 for the three of them.

And then the guy's friend started admiring my much-despised cat, Fonzie.

"He's available too," I said.

"You're kidding," he said.

"No," I said. "We're moving."

"You wouldn't send him to the SPCA, to death row," said Fonzie's admirer.

"No," I said. "If I were capable of doing that I would have done it long ago."

And then I gave an honest evaluation of Fonzie's character. "He's low maintenance. He needs to go outside. He's not good with children. And he bites," I said just as he bit down on his admirer's hand.

"Oh, that's nothing," said his admirer. "We have a big house in the country with lots of cats."

"He'd be happy there," I said as I pointed at Katya's house. "The woman who lives there has 12 cats and he visits all the time."

"Hmmm," he said.

"I can throw in his cage," I said.

And to his friend, I added: "I'll throw in those pictures. Free."

Negotiations followed. We exchanged phone numbers and e-mails. I took photos which I'll post later. And Fonzie left for a new home in the country where one of his new cat companions was, apparently, picked up at an estate sale a few years back.

"You just never know what will happen at a garage sale," I said as Fonzie and the guys departed.

"It was destiny," said Denis, his new owner.

Farewell Fonzie!

And they all lived happily ever after.

Because it's Friday...

2008-07-18T15:27:00.003-04:00

...I made this Wordle that goes back to RTK's roots. If you feel like it, make one and send it to me or send me the link. But be warned, it's addictive.

My cat hates me as much as I hate him

2008-07-16T21:08:00.004-04:00

My blog post about how I hate my cat Fonzie draws regular traffic from others who hate their cats. And some of them, it seems, have it a whole lot worse than me.

For example, Penny wrote:

My daughter left Mushue with me while she was moving and promised she would pick him up in 2 weeks. That was 10 years ago. She won't take him back. He is 15 lbs of pure black and the meanest thing I have ever seen.

He is so very picky about his food. The bowl has to be filled all the way to the very top edge for him to eat it. If it gets below the rim He stands there and meows till you fill it back up. And don't even think of moving him out of your chair where he has plopped his fat butt. Or else you are going to get your face torn off. He has bitten me while I was asleep because he wanted to sleep in the bed and wanted me to get up.

When he decides he wants to lay someplace he will knock everything out of his way. He has pushed my dishes out of the cabinets before.

I actually moved when he was about 2 years old and this cat found me after 3 months he just showed back up. I can't give him to any one else as he is evil and no one wants him. I can't take him to the shelter because he is not adoptable.

I have layed in bed and thought up ways to get rid of him. I have thought of stepping on and squishing his head. I have thought of feeding him anti-freeze. You name it I have probably thought of it. I have suffered so bad for the past 10 years. I just don't have it in me to actually harm him.

And Debby, another cat hater, wrote:

I absolutely can not stand my cat either. I got her over 8 years ago from a shelter. I called them a month into it saying it just wasn't going to work and they made me feel like a low live animal hater, so I kept her. They told me her nervousness was because she was a shelter cat and it would go away in time. It hasn't. I can barely pet her, and if I tried to pick her up she'd take my left eyeball out. She's ruined all of my furniture, because I thought declawing was cruel.

I've made the decision to find her a good home this year, but I still feel really guilty. But I just can not go on like this, she is driving me crazy. I have another cat (another rescue cat) that I got 18 months after and she's fine. I've had pets all of my life and never had a problem like this.

It's good to know there are others out there that also don't feel the love for their cats.

So looks like my hating is helping others in need, enabling them to step out of the closet and confess. Time, then, to up the ante.

Last month, the black cat next door, who often gets confused with Fonzie, was attacked by a vicious off-leash dog, whose owner just shrugged it off and walked away, leaving Yuki dying in his front yard. My neighbours rushed the cat to the vet where he was put down. The hit-and-run dog has never been found.

But when I heard this disturbing news, all I could think was, "Damn, why wasn't it Fonzie?"

In fact, Fonzie has pretty much left home this summer, and forged relationships with the two of the craziest women on the street. He's moved back in with Katya (a pseudonym), where I'd forgotten he'd temporarily stayed once before. And, even worse, he's taken to hanging with Emilia (another pseudonym).

Emilia is the one whose ex-boyfriend smashed the car with a golf club in the middle of the night last summer. The social workers are over at her place constantly, but what's she most worried about? Not her poor daughter , nope. She's concerned about the welfare of my cat and the fact that nobody loves him. Today, as I stepped out the front door, she was sitting on my porch feeding him.

It's partly my fault since I had hired her to keep an eye on him while I was away for a few days last week, sparking gossip among the neighbours about how any pet owner could be so irresponsible as to leave her animal in the care of the most dysfunctional family on the street.

But Emilia's cheaper than the vet, Fonzie's happier than he would be in a cage and it gives the neighbours stuff to talk about. If only I could offload with Emilia's family forever when we move.

The problem is my reputation would never recover. Looks like Fonzie is taking revenge on me.

How to exit a limo -- the old-fashioned way

2008-07-13T08:48:00.005-04:00

Hello everybody -- if there's anyone still out there.

Since we've been gone, one of the most searched for RTK items has been this photo of Ethel Kennedy and all her kids.

Well, recently I stumbled across this Jackie Kennedy photo and thought how perfectly it illustrated changing times so I'm sharing it with any of you who remain.

Sorry Y'All! We're Taking a Little Break!

2008-04-16T20:29:00.002-04:00

Hello everyone:

First off, my heartfelt apologies for the lack of posting lately. Both Tearfree and I have found ourselves snowed under with various work commitments; I am working on some big projects and haven't had time to pay attention to this beloved place, but rest assured that I am fine, kids are fine, life is slowly looking up. And thanks to all of you who sought me out in concern to make sure I was OK. I am -- just working, spinning, loving my children, and toiling away on a lot of side projects that may bear fruit soon.

Tearfree is also pondering some major career changes and trying to get her ducks in order so once again, we apologize.

We are taking a break but for those of you who want to get in touch with me, e-mail Tearfree at deirdre.dashwood@hotmail.com and she will forward your dispatches to me.

Thanks again for your concern and understanding.

The perfect is the enemy of the good

2008-04-16T09:48:00.003-04:00

First, Tearfree apologizes. I always hated it when a blog or a devoted regular commenter just disappeared with no explanation.

And then I went and did the same thing myself.

Now, I get why it happens.

It's not that I meant to stop blogging at RTK. It's just that other things took over and I found it harder and harder to find things to post about -- especially given the recent lack of softwood lumber and Rebecca Eckler problems.

And to tell you the truth, although RTK had a devoted core of readers, we just weren't growing, which I attribute to the fact that we were sort of all over the place and not really serving any one niche. Say what you will about Mummy bloggers, they know their core audience and cater to it.

Much as I have indeed been by the recent Crocs scandal and tempted by the new Eckler book, even those two monumental events didn't send me racing to the keyboard.

And yet I still don't want to lay RTK to rest, because I keep thinking that at some point I may want to revive it.

So if anyone's still left, any ideas for a "Farewell For Now" ~~final~~ post?

Another 1970s Classic: One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

2008-03-23T20:41:00.003-04:00

Seeing as I am on a 1970s movie kick, I opted last night for one of the greatest '70s films of all -- indeed, a movie many consider one of the greatest ever made.

If you haven't seen it, you must. Long before Jack Nicholson became a caricature of himself, he played the cocky resident of a mental institution, a petty criminal who scammed his way into the place because he couldn't follow the rules in prison and figured serving his time in a nutbin would be easier. Unfortunately, he hadn't bargained on the miserable hag in charge of his ward, Nurse Ratched, played with chilling brilliance by Louise Fletcher, who won a best actress Academy Award for the role in the 1975 film.

Nicholson, perfecting the swagger that made him so famous, won best actor, Milos Forman won best director and the film itself won best picture. It also won the best adapted screenplay Oscar.

Cuckoo's Nest is hilariously funny -- among the lunatics we find a very young Danny DeVito and a wild-eyed Christopher Lloyd -- but in the end, it's profoundly sad and disturbing. Produced by Michael Douglas -- yes, that Michael Douglas, who should have stayed on that side of the camera instead of horrifying us with his saggy ass in "Basic Instinct" -- Cuckoo's Nest is a film that will stay with you a long, long time, and one of the most iconic movies of its generation.

An Oldie But a Greatie: The Conversation, Starring Gene Hackman

2008-03-16T11:06:00.002-04:00

I am embarrassed to say that I had never seen this amazing film until last night, which was a big loss on my part. Francis Ford Coppola not only produced and directed this thriller about an audio surveillance guru played by Gene Hackman, but he also wrote the almost Orwellian screenplay. This film grabs you from the first first stunning opening frames, and doesn't let you go -- it's classic Coppola. The Conversation is smart, savvy and an example of the brilliance of both Coppola and 1970s film-making before the big action blockbusters showed up and ended one of the golden ages of American cinema.

Look for a young Harrison Ford playing a sinister corporate frontman and Cindy Williams -- yes, Shirley!! -- playing the seemingly doomed young woman Hackman's been hired to spy on.

An interesting bit of trivia: Godfather fans will recognize Fredo in the film -- John Cazale, a young Italian-American actor who starred in only five films before dying of bone cancer. The films -- Godfathers I and II, The Conversation, Dog Day Afternoon and The Deer Hunter -- were all nominated for best-picture Academy Awards. Cazale was dying, in fact, when he made The Deer Hunter, and the studio wanted to fire him when they found out. But Meryl Streep, who was engaged to Cazale at the time, threatened to quit if he was removed from the film. Cazale, beloved for being a very kind-hearted, gentle and generous guy, died soon after.

Even though he has an exceptionally high forehead, I found Cazale disturbingly hot while watching The Conversation.

Most sensible article yet on Spitzer scandal

2008-03-13T14:40:00.008-04:00

Since the Eliot Spitzer scandal broke, I've been shaking my head furiously at people's failure to understand it -- the idea that he wouldn't fool around because his wife was hot or unless he was getting the most tantric sex ever. Those things have nothing at all to do with it, as my new intellectual BFF, a former booking agent for high-priced Manhattan call girls, explains.

It is not about sex; it is about power. And the simple act of ordering up an anonymously pretty 22 year-old girl to do your bidding in the salubrious confines of a luxury hotel suite is an act of power.

My insights into the whoring culture were gained when I lived in Asia and discovered that almost all the men were paying for sex. Going to Thailand and getting laid was the thing to do and even men, who would have never dreamed of using prostitutes in their home countries, went along with it.

Lots of expatriate white women spent tremendous amounts of time and energy trying to figure out the sexual secrets they were sure the exotic Asian women must possess to seduce the foreign men. There were tales of women covered in scented oil who body surfed back and forth over their paying customers driving them mad with lust. And all I could think when I heard these stories was that this was not a practical activity for the average bedroom set-up -- it could only take place in a specially equipped all vinyl room with a dedicated clean-up crew.

Even back then, I just wanted to scream: "Don't you all get it?"

The only secret the sex workers had was knowing that the man with the money had the power and they were there to do his bidding and nothing else.

These kinds of stories are always all about power.

Now updated: Eliot Spitzer, WTF???!!!

2008-03-11T09:02:00.003-04:00

Update: Well, I watched the resignation on CNN and there Silda was again, this time wearing a Hermes scarf while she stood by her man. According to the New York Times, she urged hubby not to resign, which makes me wonder if she's not something of an enabler.

The other thing about this whole scandal that's got me completely puzzled is the discretion of these call girls. I can't believe no one dished, especially if it's true that this had been going on for years. Or maybe if you move in that escort crowd, you don't follow the news...

Still, if call girls are this discreet, maybe the CIA could use a few for dirty tricks operations.

And is it just me, but am I alone in thinking, we could use a good Canadian sex scandal?
------------------------
Even more fascinating than the Eliot Spitzer scandal has to be the reaction to it.

I must admit, I had the same reaction as Amy Ephron over at the Huffpost:

Why did Silda Spitzer appear at her husband's side at his press conference today? The picture in the New York Times' is so telling, so sad, so perfectly humiliating. And you just want to ask, why? Why do political wives -- especially when they seemingly have no political aspirations of their own, it's not like Mrs. Spitzer is going to run for office -- show up for their husbands when their husbands have behaved so badly?

The comments on Ephron's are a psychology course in themselves. The favourite answer when I read through was "because she loves him." But even if she does still love him, why would he want her to have to go through that? What possible benefit is it for either of them for her to be standing up there beside him? I don't even see that such a "united front" helps their three daughters, who I pity to the depths of their teenage souls.

And while I'm ranting, the other opinion, that drives me round the bend is: "Wow, his wife is hot. Why would he do it?" You just know that the person who says something like this wouldn't notice if there was a serial killer next door either.

Chute Alors!

2008-03-09T11:00:00.001-04:00

Dugan in the snow by victornado

Credit for the brilliant headline goes to the La Presse copy editor who came up with it and for the picture to Scottie photographer extraordinaire Victornado.

How is it where you are? The snowbanks are so high in Montreal there's nowhere to shovel the snow.

Readers in Toronto, how are you all coping?

Funny Little Kid Video

2008-03-04T13:45:00.003-05:00

Charlie is a legend. This video already has 9 million hits on YouTube.

This Week's Wonder Product: Tsingtao Beer

2008-03-01T17:09:00.005-05:00

It wasn't until I got into my 40s, and started cutting out wine, that I really started to appreciate beer. I didn't even like beer, in fact, until quite recently. Now I am very fond of lagers and ales and try to sample new ones all the time, and I have recently fallen in love with this one: China's Tsingtao.

Is it wrong to love a beer that is produced by a country with an appalling record of human rights violations? Probably. But it's a REALLY nice beer. And the beer-mad Germans, naturlich, did start up the brewery 100 years ago. So I will forgive myself for loving it so much. It's a light, lovely beer with a slightly herbal after taste -- my new favourite beer.

Old Navy Lies, Fat Cats, A Love of Winter

2008-02-28T09:26:00.002-05:00

Hello everyone. I have been travelling for the past week and I apologize for my lack of blogging.

Here are some observations:

1. Old Navy lies. Vanity sizing is out of control there. I am currently wearing a pair of Size 6 jeans that I bought at an Old Navy in the U.S. and they are hanging off me. I should have bought a Size 4. And that is a lie, a huge, big, massive lie. Because I am an average-sized woman. Not tiny. Not even very small. I have a bit of a JLo bum. If I were a true Size 4, there would be no way I could wear any Old Navy jeans. I'd have to buy a Size 12 in the kids' department.

I know why stores like Old Navy do this. They want to convince fatties that they are slimmer than they are, which will make them happy, which will encourage them to buy more clothes there. But I find it dishonest and wrong. That is all.

2. My cat is borderline obese. Because it's so cold and snowy this winter, he's staying in all the time and is now just eating out of sheer boredom. He used to be a meat-only kitty but now he'll eat anything. He even licked a plate clean last night that had the remnants of lasagna -- tomato sauce and melted mozzarella. Even he looked ashamed of himself. I hope the warm weather arrives soon so he can get back out there and lose some poundage.

3. Even though I have just returned from a warm climate with palm trees everywhere, my heart soared surprisingly when I got back to Toronto and took a cab home from the airport in a minor snowstorm. There is something about the black silhouettes of maples and oaks bending in a winter wind against a metal-grey sky that is beautiful to me. I couldn't live in a place with no winter. I would actually miss it.

Please, someone, explain this to me

2008-02-18T10:57:00.004-05:00

U.S. Patent #6,004,186

As someone who both breastfed and pumped -- albeit 13 years ago, I do not have a clue what's going on in this unintentionally hilarious photo of a "hands-free pumping bra." Has the technology changed that much in the past decade? Does this explain why I couldn't sell my breast pump in a garage sale ? Is there anyone out there who can tell me what's going on?

Most Awesome Action Doll Ever!

2008-02-16T18:50:00.003-05:00

And you can order it here!

Wonder Product: Lands' End Down-Filled Reversible Coat

2008-02-16T10:48:00.003-05:00

I have always been fashionable to the point of stupidity. Freezing cold out? I won't wear gloves if they clash with my outfit. I will insist on a jaunty cap even if it means my ears will freeze. I will wear stiletto boots the day after a snowstorm instead of snowboots. And this winter, I could not bring myself to stop wearing my Kenneth Cole green tweed coat with velvet buttons no matter how cold it got until one day, amid a brutally cold screaming blizzard that practically picked me up off my feet and blew me along a downtown street, I asked myself: "What is your problem?"

So I decided to go online parka shopping. I found some tempting ones on Roots.ca, but they were more expensive than I could afford. So I surfed on over to Landsend.com, and ended up buying this coat.

And can I just say how happy I am with this coat? It is reversible, quilted on one side and sleek on the other, downfilled, totally lightweight and yet utterly impenetrable no matter how bitterly cold and blustery the wind. Last week I walked up a long hill in my neighbourhood in the face of a horrific minus-30-with-the-windchill gusting wind and I didn't feel a thing. I was toasty and warm inside that coat, even though my ears were frozen in my jaunty tweed cap. Plus, it was on sale and I got a great deal on it even with the duty.

One thing to be careful of, however. Lands' End sizes are large. If you're a medium here, you'll need a small. I might have even been OK in an extra-small and I am not tiny.

The second best thing about this coat is how cute it looks when you pair it with a funky scarf and mitts and a jaunty cap!!! Yes, I am still working on giving up the jaunty caps.

The Site Meter Collection: Part XXXXIV

2008-02-14T13:34:00.005-05:00

And in Indonesia, they probably laugh at people in Regina looking for instructions on how to cook the rice for nasi goreng.

Happy Valentine's Day Dr. O and a big Mouah for all the traffic you've sent us -- and all the guidance you've given to lovers looking to make an erotic tiramisu. In your honour, here's some Dr Oetker muffin video taken from YouTube, where it turns out there's a treasure trove of Dr. Oetker archival footage.

(Heh, heh, just clicked on the spellcheck for tiramisu and it gave me pastrami.)

Happy Valentine's Day

2008-02-14T13:17:00.003-05:00

With or without you by Maya 1 at Flickr

From RTK, the Scottie News and the Daily Doxie.

Was Mommie Dearest okay after all?

2008-02-14T13:11:00.002-05:00

Well, let's just say I have my opinion (as usual), but I'm wondering about yours.

This is one of Joan Crawford's other daughter's side of the story.

Wonder Product: Roger and Gallet Soaps

2008-02-14T10:40:00.004-05:00

I am big on bathing. I would eat my supper in the bathtub if I could. I'd happily lounge in the bath for hours every day if I had the time. So given my bathing obsession, I have sampled many different kinds of soaps.

But I always come back to these -- Roger and Gallet. These French soaps are hefty and substantial, and they feel like butter on your skin when you lather them up. They are also beautifully perfumed -- the linden blossom one is my favourite because when I was in the south of France seven years ago, the linden trees were in full bloom, and so every time I shower, I am transported back to that beautiful tiled bathroom overlooking rolling hills and olive groves and cypress trees.

All of the fragrances have their charms, however, including the lettuce and carrot varieties from the Roger and Gallet nature line. The lettuce is grassy and delightful, in fact.

In Toronto, you can get these fabulous soaps at the Bay and at Holt's. Seek them out if you can -- you won't be disappointed and your skin will be satiny and fragrant all day long!

An Ode to An Old, Great Song: Haunted When The Minutes Drag by Love and Rockets

2008-02-09T21:06:00.000-05:00

For the past 20 years or so, I have deeply loved the Love and Rockets song "Haunted When The Minutes Drag." All these years, however, I believed it to be a heartbreak song, a lush, dark, angst-ridden tune about longing that I used to think was sung bitterly. But I listened to it in a different frame of mind today on my iPod on my way to spin class, and I realized with a start that it is, in fact, a love song about two people who are together in all meaningful ways, except physically. Perhaps it's just that my definition of love has matured with age.

Love and Rockets was a great British band from the 1980s that emerged, in part, from Bauhaus and was in the same vein as the Jesus and Mary Chain and other dark goth bands. They were accused of selling out when they had that one big album in the late '80s with that hit single on it, "So Alive."

But "Haunted" was recorded five years before that. I love the acidy, trippy bass lines in the song ... it still gives me the shivers every time I listen to it, especially when the psychedelic instrumentation takes over and the bass picks up and ... well, I just can't explain what else goes on there, but it is beautiful. And the lyrics are killer.

I turned someone lovely onto this song today, and now I feel a need to pay tribute to it. It's a brilliant, brilliant song. Download it!

"Pimped Out" Scandal

2008-02-09T12:43:00.000-05:00

This is a pretty interesting story about an MSNBC Washington correspondent who's been suspended for saying on air that the Clintons were "pimping out" their daughter Chelsea in Hillary's battle to win the Democratic nomination.

Others may feel it's a terribly sexist and offensive thing to suggest about Chelsea Clinton, but to me, I don't get what the big deal is. The verb "to pimp" or "to pimp out" is common slang, it's totally in the vernacular, there's even a highly rated TV show called "Pimp My Ride" -- the word has utterly lost any sting it used to have. As so often happens with language, "to pimp" has evolved to mean something really quite innocuous.

Urban Dictionary even describes the term this way, meaning it really bears very little resemblance to anything prostitute-related:

Pimp out: A term used to describe massive modification of something to make it standout and look attractive.
The term is derived from the way pimps modify their cars with various colors, lights and other hardware.

Drummer to Pianist: "Damn, your keyboard is totally pimped out! What's all that LED lights and glowing buttons!"

Geek: "I've pimped my computer out - Now it has a transparent side and florescent lamps inside it."

The suspension is already causing people to accuse MSNBC of caving to pressure from the Clintons. If so, apparently the Clintons are both 70-year-old church ladies who haven't paid any attention to pop culture in the past 20 years.

I know the subtext here -- the Clintons are always accused, usually unfairly so, of being insanely manipulative and ambitious in their bid for the nomination, and perhaps they just got fed up and felt it wasn't fair to Chelsea and so complained. But on the face of it, this seems like fair comment to me from someone who used a modern-day bit of slang to describe Chelsea's often well-timed and well-planned appearances on the campaign trail.

UPDATE: Thanks to a commenter who sent us a link to this very funny photoshopped picture:

Britney Spears, Again: I Don't Even Know This Woman

2008-02-07T10:17:00.001-05:00

You'd think I was a close personal relative of Britney Spears this week if you could see how I am reacting to her troubles.

When I found out the hospital let her out last night, I almost cried.

The girl is in a psychotic state! She was deemed to be too out of it to understand a court proceeding just the other day, yet two days later they let her out and over the advice of her doctors? And she's immediately back to her old tricks, going to the Beverly Hills Hotel, talking in an English accent, looking dazed and confused?

I feel we are watching someone die, and enabling it by watching, and yet are unable to tear our eyes away. I don't know why I can't stop watching, but I can't. Perhaps I am waiting for someone to swoop in and save her. Like the Scientologists, for example. Wasn't Tom Cruise boasting on that tape a couple of weeks ago that only Scientologists can save people? Paging Xenu! Paging Xenu!! Britney Spears could use your help, you arrogant headcases!

Poor Britney Spears

2008-02-05T23:08:00.000-05:00

The stories emerging tonight about Britney Spears and that crackpot who's been drugging and controlling her are horrifying. The poor girl. Here I've been ranting for months about how she obviously doesn't care about her kids and is more concerned with partying and visiting gas stations and Starbucks when in fact she's been on a powerful and debilitating anti-psychotic medication. And her Howard K. Stern evil douchebag "friend" has been muddying the waters by plying her with other drugs, alcohol, threatening her, scaring her, cutting her off from her friends and family, stealing from her, etc.

It just goes to show you the horrible situations people can find themselves in when they have had unhappy childhoods and don't trust the people who raised them, are heartbroken and feel isolated, misunderstood and alone. I thank God for my kids -- I've been through some crap in my life, but my children kept me from going off the deep end. As it is, I let people into my life at times when I was heartbroken and vulnerable against my better judgment -- people who turned out to be callous and dishonest and soulless and not at all the people I thought they were. But my troubles seem like a picnic in the park compared to poor Britney's!

Wouldn't it be sweet to see her get better and get her kids back, pull herself together, find someone who truly loves and understands her, who will stick by her through thick and thin, and even watch her get something of a career back? Although I must confess, I hope she finds a sweet and kind-hearted non-Hollywood guy, moves to Montana and lives a peaceful rural life in a country house surrounded by "tall thin pines and musty books"* while he farms and she bakes. I am cheering for a peaceful and happy ending for Britney Spears!

p.s. I thought she looked pretty at the VMAs. I was really pissed when people said she was fat. Drugged senseless, yes, but not fat. If I could look that good rocking a serious addiction to a cocktail of various mind-numbing pharmaceuticals, I'd be pretty pleased with myself.

*That one was for you, suitor.

Old-Man Crush = Spirit-Lifter

2008-02-04T10:25:00.000-05:00

So I had a depressing weekend for reasons I won't go into here -- just a profound sadness that kicked in Friday night and lingered all weekend until I forced myself out, on the advice of a dear friend, and went to a SuperBowl party with one of my suitors (the 50something one).

I must say, I don't pay any attention to football, but that was quite a game. That long pass from Eli Manning that was caught by that other guy while he was practically horizontal that ended up leading to the touchdown that won the game -- exciting!

But my 50something suitor blows hot and cold on me for reasons I entirely understand, since I blow pretty much entirely cold on him.

So I return home, mood slightly elevated but not significantly so. Wake up this morning feeling fairly forlorn. Notice I have messages, and start listening to them. And there is the funniest message ever, left last night while I was out, by my old-man crush. I must have listened to it 10 times, laughing harder each time, and will save it forever in my archives because it so sums up exactly what it is that I adore about him -- witty, clever, giggly and silly. The message also contained a surprise ending that would make the most humourless among us howl with laughter.

A great sense of humour has always been the biggest turn-on for me, and my old-man crush has really been blessed in that department.

In one message, my old-man crush really raised my spirits. I am really crushing on my old-man crush!

Surprise marriage in Paris!!!!

2008-02-02T13:44:00.000-05:00

The bride's been portrayed as "a man-eater in the press" and has a scandalous internet presence. The groom's a jet-setting lawyer. The wedding was a surprise even though it was expected -- sort of.

Read our previous hanky-panky coverage.

The scandal scoop

2008-01-31T20:11:00.001-05:00

Shocking!

This kind of thing is worrisome...

2008-01-31T16:10:00.000-05:00

... and relevant to Jacy's post today.

Coming up: Notes on a scandal

2008-01-31T10:36:00.000-05:00

Even though we haven't covered the subject in ages, we have learned about startling new developments with regard to this scandalous and laughable object of RTK's attention. We'll be back later today with the scoop!

Old Man Crush: A Possible Mental Illness?

2008-01-30T21:52:00.001-05:00

I hesitate to mention this, but I have a thing for old men these days, particularly men in their 70s. Yes, if you were born in the 1930s and 1940s, odds are good I will become utterly smitten with you (Dale ... this means you have a chance).

I have four suitors right now -- one in his 30s, one in his 40s, one in his 50s, and one in his 70s. Guess which one is the funniest, the wittiest, the smartest, the sharpest and therefore the sexiest? The guy in his 70s.

I know, I know ... Daddy issues! And in fact, my father was of this generation. He would have been 80 this year. And with the exception of a couple of pervs, most of the men in his social sphere and his age were witty, urbane, wise-cracking women-lovers who could flirt like nobody's business without seeming in any way lecherous. Yes, they occassionally did women wrong. But they wooed with all with the grace, charm and wit that men of this generation -- their sons, actually -- do not possess. Think Cary Grant versus Vince Vaughan. Man versus boy. Tough guy with a heart of gold versus emotional guy with a heart of stone. These were the kind of guys who called women "broads" but did so with no small amount of reverence, but also made it very clear that they would brook no bullshit. These were not wimpy men.

Because I don't really want to sleep with men in their 70s and 80s, however, I do what I always do with my old-man crush. I take care of him, just as I did my father, for whom I used to religiously make salmon loaf and maple fudge once a week, and my father-in-law, a truly adoration-worthy man with about 100 times the wit and charm of most ordinary men. On my last ski vacation with him, he was ailing, so I routinely ran a bath for him and made him tea and sandwiches in the afternoon. And at least once a day he said something, perhaps borderline inappropriate but very wise, that made me laugh with appreciation.

Today I was so worried about my old-man crush when he didn't answer the phone at his condo that I made his concierge go and check on him. He'd had a terrible cold and I was afraid he'd died in his sleep of pneumonia. He was fine, and called me up to assure me he was on the mend, and we had a good, almost tender laugh about my concern and his appreciation of it. He was utterly grateful I was checking up; I was insanely relieved he was OK. He thanked me again for the carrot cake I baked him to thank him for the water-colour he sent me that he painted last summer of the ocean and gave to me because he felt the blue/green he'd mixed was the same colour as my eyes. Old-man swoon!

Sadly, however, I can never sleep or even make out with my old-man crush, no matter how many sweet and intelligent little gestures he delivers my way, because I just can't physically go there. And that's despite even knowing that the guy pictured above once looked like the guy pictured below (and the sad thing is -- my old-man crush actually was close to this Adonis level as a younger man ... he was smoking hot). Perhaps that's the appeal. If I don't sleep with them, they can't hurt me, and I can have a lovely and flirtatious friendship with a debonair gentleman who just appreciates looking at me and is happy I exist, and wouldn't push anything beyond that.

Which is perhaps a shame, because I sure like old men.

RTK Wunderprodukt: Sticky Toffee Pudding

2008-01-29T19:06:00.000-05:00

Now available in individual portions. Dr. Oetker, eat your heart out. We recommend it with some Chilean blueberries if you're not a greenie boycotting foreign fruit.

Nine Gram Brain: RIP (Now Updated)

2008-01-28T11:29:00.000-05:00

Gah!!

Reminds me of the Trainwrecks demise. January seems to be the cruelest month as far as blog suicides go. Fare thee well, Nine Gram Brain.

Feb. 1 update: Here's an article on the whole Rebecca Eckler blogging controversy. I think it frees me of my obligation to write anything more on the topic.

Oh My Aching Arse

2008-01-27T21:28:00.000-05:00

So today my friend Nancy and I did the marathon spin. Thankfully, it was only three hours, not four -- I had it wrong. But still, three hours going full tilt, long climbs, sprints, more climbs, flat roads at full speed ... it was intense.

Six teachers teach the class for a half hour each. Every half hour, you're allowed off the bike for two minutes to have a snack or change your shirt. I went through four shirts, drenching every one of them.

And now my arse is REALLY sore. But you know what? It's also hard as a rock!

And I have reassuring Nancy update: she is going to get in touch with one of his exes, a woman in the same profession (they're all lawyers) who is well-respected and apparently very sane, smart, funny, etc. She is going to listen to whatever this woman, who's well-removed from The Bad Man now, has to say about him.

Nancy says she feels weird doing this but there is too much about how he explains his past that doesn't add up for her. I told her she was making one of the smartest moves of her life by getting in touch with this woman and hearing her side of the story. Women are so quick to demonize one another because of a man. If we actually heard one another out, I am sure a lot of heartbreak would be spared. Sisters looking out for sisters! It can never be a bad thing.

When Are You Close Enough Friends To Urge Someone To Run Like Hell From Their Newest Paramour?

2008-01-26T17:59:00.000-05:00

So I have met a new friend through spinning, let's call her Nancy. We go out for a sandwich or a drink sometimes after spin class and tomorrow, for the first time, we are both attempting, together, our first marathon four-hour class that supposedly knocks you on your rear end for a few days afterward.

I really like Nancy. She is almost 10 years younger than me, a single mother with a 10-year-old boy, and is really sweet, funny, smart, pretty -- but very lonely. She wants a boyfriend. She hasn't understood why she couldn't get one for so long after her marriage broke up. I keep telling her, feeling like some bitter old hag, to understand that a man is not the prize in life. The prize is her child, her happiness, her emotional well-being. The wrong man can screw all that up.

And boy, is she falling for the wrong man.

This guy is 50 and just out of his second marriage. In addition to the two marriages, he's also lived with two women for almost 10 years each, and had a child each with two of them. One of the women also had children from a previous marriage who grew very close to him throughout their seven-year marriage. Basically, since he was in his early 20s, he's jumped from one woman to the next with barely a single break.

The guy left every one of his wives and girlfriends, leaving a lot of broken-hearted women and children in his wake. Nancy actually knows one of his exes, who took her aside and tried to warn her about the fact that he is an effortless liar, a serial philanderer and a narcissist who needs BIG LOVE in his life all the time or else he gets bored and moves on to the next one. If the woman he's with fails to provide BIG LOVE almost constantly, he becomes resentful and looks elsewhere.

Nancy has convinced herself this woman is just bitter and is trying to sabotage his happiness because she still wants him for herself (I've met the guy briefly and how he gets so many chicks, I am not sure -- he looks a bit like Donald Trump but with slightly better hair ... ewwwwww.)

Anyway, I don't know what to say to Nancy. The guy has an excuse for every broken relationship, and in each case, including the case of his baby mommas -- one of whom he left for another woman while she was pregnant with his son -- it is the woman's fault for what went wrong. His women simply haven't appreciated his love. And this is the kicker -- all of the past relationships that have failed to make him happy, that he was driven out of by cruel and unloving women, have simply served to lead him to Nancy, the truest love of his life. Now his life has meaning! Now he knows what all the heartache was for! Uhhh-hhhuhhh.

I am the wrong person for Nancy to tell this story to, because I have my own complicated issues about love and commitment right now, but I have managed to listen to it for a few weeks as she ponders moving in with the guy. Impressively, I have managed not to kidnap this otherwise intelligent woman to save her and her child from the certain heartache that will come her way, perhaps not now, but at some point in the future.

All I can bring myself to do is to urge her not to ignore someone's patterns. Judge by someone's actions, not by his words. Look at his life. Do you HONESTLY believe all four of these women were awful, unloving shrews? He chose them. He loved them. So what does that say about him? And did they really turn on him? Or was he insufferable in some ways, causing them to turn on him?

I love women, I really do, but dear God we can be stupid about men sometimes when we're lonely and hurting. Nancy needs to take a step back and look at this guy intelligently and dispassionately because in all other areas of her life, she is so smart and successful and savvy. And yet for some reason she cannot. It is sad, but people have to make their own grim mistakes in life, I suppose. It's just hard to watch people do it when the gods seem to be shouting warnings from the sky: "Don't do it!!!!!"

The Weekend's Tennis Hottie

2008-01-26T13:54:00.001-05:00

Thanks to MDG for reminding me about this cute young guy. He won the Australian Open!

Today's Tennis Hottie

2008-01-23T17:51:00.000-05:00

Roger Federer doesn't do much for me facially speaking. But this sinewy frame? Yes please!

I Am Seriously Bummed About Heath Ledger

2008-01-22T23:33:00.000-05:00

a. He was a brilliant actor. That performance in Brokeback was really astonishing.

b. He was apparently a very kind, though haunted, person who was truly devoted to his little girl and trying to kick his drug habits and get his life under control.

c. He was physically beautiful, in my opinion, even during his recent so-called homeless person phase.

Perusing all my favorite celebrity blogs tonight, I stumbled upon a comment from someone who knew him from a movie set. I was struck by the person's comments:

"To each of you I ask this, in his memory: If you know of ANYONE hurting and alone tonight - a friend whose been through divorce, or lost a job, or someone recently finding their life in upheaval...call them or see them tonight. Tell them that they are loved, are not alone, and that a brighter day does lie ahead. LISTEN to their problems, and offer them love and friendship. We should never let those we care about feel alone and under a dark cloud. You might just save a life. Sometimes cries for help are silent...and masked with a smile."

Great advice. Decent people don't really need to be told that, but when life gets busy it's easy to forget to check in on troubled friends and those who mean or once meant something to you. I read it and called a friend whom I know is going through a tough time right now. I am glad I did.

Poor Heath!

The Drudgery Of Housework

2008-01-21T22:16:00.000-05:00

Today while toasting my son's waffles I had a thought: I wonder how many times in my 17 years as a mother I have toasted someone's waffles? How many sandwiches have I made? How many eggs have I poached? How many loads of laundry have I done? How many grilled cheese sandwiches have I cooked, how many socks have I matched, how many times have I emptied the dishwasher?

And I realized the answer is THOUSANDS. Thousands and thousands and thousands of times.

My kids, as they get older, are getting better about helping around the house. My daughter will at least start her own laundry. My son will bring his snack dishes up from the TV room and put them in the dishwasher. So there is, finally, a light at the end of the tunnel. But still, there is no escaping the endless drudgery of housework. And when you start nearing the 20-year mark of the voluntary slavery that is parenthood, you begin to understand those women in their 50s who simply stop cooking and refuse to do any more housework. If I never toast another waffle, poach another egg or fold another basket of laundry, I'll die a happy woman.

Still, cooking is far from my most despised chore -- most of the time I quite like it, especially yesterday when I made a carrot cake with cream-cheese icing that would crush the competition in any bake sale, and I didn't even think I liked carrot cake.

To me, the absolute most despised household chore is folding and putting away the laundry. Nothing depresses me more than seeing two huge baskets of unfolded clothes staring back at me malevolently. Even cleaning bathrooms and scrubbing the fridge seem like a breeze by comparison.

But I know some people who love doing laundry, all aspects of it, like the cheerful mother and daughter above. So I am curious to hear what your most hated household chores are. Dusting? Vacuuming? Oven-cleaning? Tell all.

Tennis Hottie of the Day

2008-01-21T17:07:00.000-05:00

Australia's Lleyton Hewitt. I am pretty certain he said something nasty once. But I'll try not to think about that right now while taking in his rock-hard abs.

Two Tennis Hotties in One Photo

2008-01-20T13:32:00.000-05:00

It's brutally cold here today. So there you go ... two tennis hotties in one shot to warm the cockles of your heart, or other cockles. That Spanish hottie Nadal comforting some French guy who had to forfeit the match due to injury (the names aren't really important, are they?).

I know people who are seriously hot for Nadal. Doesn't really do it for me personally, but to each her/his own.

A 16-year-old does not have the right to choose

2008-01-19T17:37:00.000-05:00

Many of you were not able to make it through the avalanche of words that comprised the ultra-dumb article I cited earlier this week on a 16-year-old's right to choose. I can fully understand your difficulty. After all, it's next to impossible to figure out what this actually means:

Britney's "virginity" was nothing but a sales-pitch to young girls. A fallacy used to manipulate little girls into following in her footsteps and we all know where that lead (sic). If Britney's virgin image made her a role model then what harm can her sister's pregnancy really do?

So, let me save you all the trouble and skip to the conclusion where the author responds to Caitlin Flanagan's much-discussed New York Times op-ed in which she writes that teenage pregnancies have "devastating consequences." The opining Mummy Blogger writes:"

Could it be that "devastating consequences" aren't always so devastating? There are happy endings contrary to what Caitlin Flanagan had to say.

I didn't make a mistake having my baby. .. The right choice for me may not be the right choice for you and the right choice for you may not be the right choice for me and the right choice for Jamie Lynn Spears may be the wrong choice for you and your family but come on, now. Let's all have some respect for people's procreational choices.

No, I wasn't sixteen when I chose to be a mother but what if I was?

Well, for starters, you would have almost certainly had no way to support yourself and your baby. You would have been relying on others, most likely adults. And you would have failed to recognise that the right to choose comes with responsibility. It's one thing for an adult to choose to have a baby -- and even then there can be complications when the adult is unable to support herself and the baby, or when the sperm donor doesn't wish to be a father, or, in the worst case scenario, when he was lied to about birth control.

A 16-year-old is not going to look after a baby on her own. Her parents and/or the state are going to have to help so "her choice" is going to involve a lot of other people who might have chosen otherwise.

Personally, I have no moral qualms about first trimester abortion, but I know people who do and respect their point of view. I would never want to talk someone into an abortion or "force" a child to have one -- and, frankly, I'm not even sure if I have the legal right to do so. What I know, however, is that I will almost certainly never have to. But in the highly unlikely event that I were faced with a 16-year-old telling me she was keeping her baby, I would tell her quite clearly that I was not going to be helping out. No financial aid. No babysitting. No nothing. If she made an adult choice, she would be on her own as an adult to deal with the adult consequences. She would be looking look after the baby on her own because it would be her choice not mine -- and I would have done everything withing my power to point out why I believed it was the wrong choice.

That may sound cruel, but it's what I would do. Now, of course, if I did it to Jamie Lynn Spears she would have the financial resources to tell me to stuff it, which is, what separates Jamie Lynn Spears from all the other 16-year-old pregos. As for Juno in the movie, while she was charming and I enjoyed the flick, her character was hardly realistic. And much as it was in keeping with that unrealistic character that she chose to have the baby and give it up for adoption, there were few real life lessons to be learned from the movie other than use birth control. This is doubly, triply, quadruply so if you are a teenager having sex who does not believe in abortion.

Big Sexy Russian Tennis Hot Guy

2008-01-19T00:16:00.000-05:00

I have had a thing for Marat Safin for many years. He is obscenely hot. Here he is at the Australian Open today. Discuss (I don't know how to make that bigger any picture, but trust me, it's a hot one.)

And here's another one:

P.S. Tearfree, I think we know what time it is. Remember the soccer hotties of a couple of years ago? It's January. We're all cold. Can't think of a better time for a daily tennis hottie!

Funny Teacher Stories

2008-01-18T19:15:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I forget how funny school was. I was reminded the other night when I went back to my high school and laughed hard a few times remembering some high school hijinks. But today I also heard stories from my son and his friends about the bad teachers they've known in their years in school, and how the entire class often works together to exact their revenge against especially authoritative and humourless teachers.

My son has an English teacher this year who my daughter also had when she attended his school. To say she is humourless is to suggest Britney Spears might have some mental problems. I heard from her fairly routinely while my daughter was in her class, and now I am hearing from her again. The principal of the school has basically told me they are just waiting for the poor woman to retire, and that every year she fights with every class about all manner of stupid stuff. Every year, every class eventually starts to try to torment her. You know the games; we all did them: "At 10:15, everyone fart!"

The black and Asian kids in my son's class this year, however, began to notice she treated them worse than the white kids. So the class got together and decided to monitor instances in which, say, she would allow a white kid to go to the can twice in a period but refuse all of the black and Asian kids' requests to go to the restroom for two hours or more. Kept track of how many times she sent black and Asian kids and not white kids to the principal's office. Counted how many times she took the white kids' side in a dispute. The evidence was overwhelming -- humourless, strict, only likes whiteys.

But it's not that they intend to use this information for any official purposes, my son and his friends say. They monitored her so that they wouldn't feel as bad about doing the old: "At 2:30, everyone pretend to pass out!" stuff. It alleviated their guilt.

I find this quite funny -- kids of all races came together to prove to themselves that the teacher is racist only so that they could continue to comfortably torment her with their goofy 13-year-old tricks and laugh their asses off together every day. The boys were weeping with laughter when they told me about some of the truly funny Ferris Bueller-ish stunts the entire class participated in, even the shy little studious and timid kids and the new Canadians who are still learning the language, and how hard they all laugh together at lunch or after school when they see each other. It kind of warmed my heart.

Poor teacher. Sort of.

I love this story, by the way, on the students of a New York high school who went on strike because their principal was such a hard-ass. Make sure to watch the video because the editing at the end is brilliant.

Do people still have secretaries?

2008-01-16T15:04:00.000-05:00

Yep. And apparently men still flirt with them. Now, can we help this person out? What do you all think the about-to-be-married man should do?

Mummy Blogger waxes dumb on teen pregnancy

2008-01-16T14:15:00.000-05:00

It's been a long time since I've ragged on Mummy Bloggers but this post on teenage pregnancy has to be one of the dumbest things I've read in a while. Rivalled only by the perhaps dumber comments praising the author for her insights.

What insights would those be? That 16-year-old girls can make good mothers? Come again.

A Surprisingly Misty Trip Down Memory Lane

2008-01-15T20:38:00.000-05:00

So tonight I accompanied my son to his high-school orientation night. He is in Grade 8 and deciding what high school he wants to attend. One of them is my old high school. Not just mine, but the high school that my parents and grandparents attended. He is interested because he's a jock and it's a big sports school, even though it's out of our neighbourhood.

So we went and it was so weird being back in that building. For one thing, I dream about the school so often that I instinctively knew my way around like I'd never left. There were still three -- THREE!!! -- teachers teaching there who had been on staff when I was a student. My name was up there painted on the wall, one of 21 Ontario Honour students of my graduating year (not bad considering about 1,200 kids were in attendance, but I did take easy courses -- two histories, two Englishes and two languages, as my older brother, who took all maths and sciences, never fails to remind me.)

But the oddest thing of all was how I suddenly got weepy sitting in the auditorium remembering my dead friend Dave.

My dead friend Dave was Ferris Bueller quite a few years before Ferris Bueller arrived in theatres. In fact, when my friend Fritzi and I went to see Ferris Bueller's Day Off, shortly before Dave's death in a plane crash in 1986, we looked at one another in astonishment as the credits rolled and said: "OK, so that's Dave."

He was charming, he was cocky, he was adorable, he was insanely silly (once stripping down and putting on our one-piece Danskin bathing suits and modelling them all despite his bits hanging out) and all the chicks loved him -- which meant many of the guys didn't. Female teachers adored him and so did all our mothers. He even had a sister who resented his popularity. We knew of the devil that lurked within, however, since we'd been friends with him since Grade 4. I got weepy, in fact, remembering how he ran successfully for student body president and then was impeached not long after for some sort of T-shirt scandal in which he and his friends were pocketing some of the profits.

It was his constant flirtation with trouble that ended up leading to his demise, in fact. At 21, he got in a small floatplane in the Muskokas with a friend who was under the influence -- Dave probably was too -- and after the friend started attempting to do tricks with the plane, it hit a boathouse. Dave died, the wealthy friend survived, and my friends and I were confronted with the first real and terrible grief we'd ever known. It was brutal. And all of us still think of him and dream about him a lot, because he was the type of friend who would have still been in our lives today if he hadn't stepped into that plane with a hotshot 22 years ago this summer.

Anyway, my son looked at me like I was completely insane but I didn't tell him why I got emotional. He thinks it was from seeing my name painted on the wall, not from having hilarious, and ultimately wrenching, memories come back to me sitting in that auditorium and remembering the glory days of my own Ferris Bueller.

"Bueller ........ Bueller .......... Bueller ......... Bueller ........"

Sports teams and driving in bad weather

2008-01-12T16:45:00.000-05:00

There's surely not a mother alive whose blood doesn't run cold when she hears stories like this one about the seven members of a New Brunswick basketball team, who were killed, along with a teacher, while driving home from a game in snow and freezing rain.

I had just put my teenage daughter on a ski bus when the report came over CBC radio news, and my mind flashed back to a novel I once read, before I was a mother, about a high school ski-trip bus, which went over a cliff killing everyone on board. And, of course, I also remembered a Quebec ski bus accident last year, where, thankfully, no one was seriously injured.

But the personal memories that bothered me the most were those of a synchronized swim meet in Jonquiere almost two years ago. To save money, the swim team coach cancelled the bus she had originally planned on hiring, and had parents car pool up along one of Quebec's most treacherous highways, the Autoroute des Laurentides. My daughter went with a friend, the friend's mother, who was driving, and a synchro judge while I stayed home. When they left, the weather was okay, but it turned nasty along the way.

I ended up in a complete panic when they didn't call at the appointed arrival time, and, since they were in the boonies, cell phones didn't work so I couldn't get through despite pressing redial every five minutes.

Later, the friend's mother told me it was the worst drive of her life and she would have stopped if the judge hadn't been urging her on. Apparently, the swim coach put pressure on other parents to drive no matter what, but some of them simply refused and checked into hotels.

I had never been comfortable about this particular trip and felt tremendously guilty for not speaking out, when the decision was made not to get a bus, and to send 10 cars along that road in winter. I felt worse when the journey ended up happening in a storm.

Unfortunately, this kind of thing happens far too often when the decisions about whether to go, what transport to use, and when to cancel or reschedule events are left in the hands of young coaches and sports-obsessed organizers, who mean well but have very poor risk assessment skills.

A van with a basketball team travelling in freezing rain in the middle of the night should be avoided at all costs.

My sympathies go out to the parents living this unspeakable loss. There but for the grace of God...

When The Handyman Can't, Dave Chapelle Can

2008-01-10T14:01:00.000-05:00

My handyman has turned out to be a disaster. A small number of fairly routine house repairs that were supposed to be done a week before Christmas are still not completed. He keeps telling me he's going to show and then doesn't, and I can't reach him for days. He claims he has gout and is on medication that is making him all wonky, but not so wonky, apparently, that he didn't trick me into already paying him before the end of the year while assuring me he'd be at the house during the week between Christmas and New Year's to finish up. He never showed.

So he is at the house today, calling me every hour because he's lost the list of jobs I wanted done, and I am really starting to lose my patience with his continuing "I'm just trying to do a favour to a pretty single mother" line of defence. So yes, I snapped. It went along these lines:

"First of all, don't worry about me being a single mother, OK? I'll worry about that. Secondly, what favours have you done me? I've paid for eight hours of work and you've been to the house a total of three hours and haven't completed half the jobs I wanted done. So you're doing me no favours. Just complete the jobs that I asked for, don't say you're coming and then never show up, and stop pretending you're doing me any favours and giving me any breaks. Because you're not." I haven't heard from him since. Eldon is a goof.

I am so riled up that I needed to watch some Dave Chapelle to chill. I urge you to check this out.

"I PLEAD DA FIF!!!"

Hello, Newman

2008-01-06T08:55:00.000-05:00

Last night I watched one of my favourite movies ever with my kids, my teenaged nephew and my friend Mitzi and her yappy thug of a boyfriend -- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Once again, I was astonished by how absolutely and utterly beautiful Paul Newman is in that movie. Don't get me wrong -- Robert Redford is no slouch; he too is unbelievable looking. But Newman? Newman is a work of art, he's a living, breathing Adonis in that film. The bone structure, the eyes, the age starting to show, the profile ... I am not sure a more astonishing-looking man has ever graced the silver screen.

Plus, the movie is fantastic, just as good now as it was in 1969, and Newman's character is not only drop-dead gorgeous, but funny as hell.

UPDATE:

Here's another shot I just found. Honestly. Has a better-looking man ever existed?

I Can't Decide: Is This a Small Victory, Or a Slap in the Face?

2008-01-04T00:51:00.000-05:00

A few posts ago I blogged about the abysmal service I got flying Continental Airlines to New York City. I sent the airline a long and, I felt, eloquent but well-mannered complaint.

Today, I received this in my e-mail. And cannot decide whether I won, lost, or we called it a draw. What say you?

Dear Ms. Jacy,

Thank you for taking the time to share your comments and concerns regarding your recent experience while traveling with us from Toronto to Newark on December 27, 2007. Please accept my sincere apology on behalf of Continental Airlines for the unpleasant circumstances you described.

We value your business and hope you will not judge us based solely on the behavior of the employees you encountered. This experience is not typical of the level of service we expect from our co-workers. Your comments were submitted in our monthly Customer Care report reviewed by all of our respective Airport General Managers and senior management as an opportunity to improve our local services. I am confident every effort will be made to locate the employee involved and immediate corrective action will be taken.

One of Continental's primary goals is to have the highest standards of excellence exemplified through our service and employees. I regret this is not what you experienced during your recent travel. Please continue to fly with us, and permit us to demonstrate our true commitment to earning your trust and confidence.

To encourage you to fly with us again and as a tangible means of acknowledging your disappointment, I will forward by separate e-mail (2) $25.00 Electronic Travel Certificates. The certificates are transferable and valid toward the purchase of a future Continental ticket and expire one year from the date of issue.

Ms. Jacy, again I apologize for the circumstances associated with your travel. Given the opportunity to welcome you aboard once again, I am confident you all will experience the outstanding service and operational reliability we traditionally provide.

Kind Regards,

Theresa King
Customer Care Manager

It Is Odd Having No Hopes or Dreams As You Ring in The New Year

2008-01-02T14:17:00.000-05:00

This year I spent New Year's Eve lying on my friend Mitzi's couch watching The Sopranos. At midnight, we briefly raised our heads off our respective pillows and noticed fireworks going off in the city around us. We muttered something bitterly to one another and returned to watching Phil Leotardo's execution.

For the first time in eight years, I was in Toronto on New Year's instead of with my ex and his family. I missed him and them badly as the clock struck midnight. Last New Year's Eve, I was scared but also hopeful. I knew we'd had a bad year but thought we were going to put it behind us. My ex even gave me a long, long hug and kiss at midnight and told me how glad he was that 2006 was behind us and a new year and a new beginning was ahead. The next morning, before our kids were awake, he made the moves on me and remarked on what a nice way that was to start 2007. A week later, I was dumped. A week after that, he was openly in another relationship.

So I suppose maybe it's not too surprising that as 2008 gets under way, I have no real hopes and dreams for the year to come. Do I hope for love? No. I don't want it. I don't want to hurt or be hurt, and that's all that romantic love has meant for me. I don't dream of the future anymore in terms of nice vacations or new furnishings or anything like that, because I am too broke as a single mother pretty much raising my kids on my own and going from paycheque to paycheque.

What I do hope for is that my kids continue to recover from the shock of 2007, and that I continue to nurture the wonderful friendships that have helped me survive the year. But I do find it to be an odd place, not having hopes and dreams for the future. Very odd indeed. Maybe it is the smart way to be, because if something wonderful does come my way this year, I will be pleasantly surprised.

Is it just me or is this off?

2007-12-31T08:21:00.001-05:00

Over the past few days, in my capacity as publisher of the Scottish Terrier and Dog News, have stumbled across several Scottie dog names that I find to be in questionable taste.

First there was this Scottish Terrier puppy called Halle. And now, there's this little guy called Knowshon after the college football player.

Now, maybe it's just me but I don't like the idea of naming a black dog after a black person just because they both happen to be black. What do you all think? Is this an over-reaction or is there something not quite right about the whole thing?

-------

Here's our previous coverage of Scottie names where we actively endorse Scottish names for Scottish dogs.

I Understand Air Rage

2007-12-30T10:49:00.000-05:00

I preface this post by reporting that my two days in New York with my son were wonderful. The weather was mild and we saw all the sights and had a blast.

Getting to and from New York, on the other hand -- that was brutal.

We keep reading stories about how air rage is on the increase. The stories always seem to suggest that rowdy drunken passengers are totally to blame. But rarely does anyone ask why these passengers got drunk in the first place. Could it be because of the endless delays with no explanation? Rude and unreasonable airline employees? Endless and unnecessary hassles? I remember reading a story a few months ago about some middle-aged Japanese housewife losing it in a plane that sat on a tarmac for hours. At the risk of stereotyping, I would suggest that a middle-aged Japanese housewife is likely among the most docile to walk among us. If she was claustrophobic, could anyone blame her for losing it?

My flight was scheduled to leave Pearson at 6:30 a.m. the other day. I got to the airport at 5:15 and faced a huge lineup at the Continental counter. By the time I got to the counter, it was 5:35. They refused to let me on the flight because I wasn't at the counter an hour before the departure time, even though I'd waited in line for 20 minutes. They told me I didn't have enough time to go through security and make the flight and so rebooked me on the 9:30 flight. At that hour of the morning, security was pretty much empty, I pointed out. Too bad for you, I was basically told.

As expected, we breezed through security and were at the departure gate by 5:50. They hadn't even started boarding the 6:30 a.m. flight. Still I was told tough luck. So we waited. And a snowstorm arrived. And the 9:30 flight was delayed for two hours, one of which was spent sitting on the tarmac. We ended up arriving in NYC five hours later than we were supposed to.

Coming home, a different problem. They boarded the plane and then we sat it in for two hours, still hooked up to the terminal. There was no explanation for the delay. But my son was ordered to take off his iPod in case there were any "emergency announcements" and despite the fact that I was sitting next to him in a stationary plane without an iPod on so I could have alerted him if we suddenly had to disembark. For two hours we sat in a stuffy, crowded plane with screaming babies and not a single person explaining the delay to us and a ban on any sort of personal amusement devices. The man behind me began to get claustrophobic. The stewardess could not have cared less, and treated him like he was a bothersome four-year-old. She was just asking for an air rage incident, though thankfully, there was none.

If airlines are up in arms about the increasing rate of air rage incidents, why don't they try treating their passengers with some care and compassion? When did it become OK to treat paying customers like animals in pens?

UPDATE: I just found this interesting article in the New York Times. The gist is that airlines treat people like crap because no one is loyal to any airline anymore and simply go for the one with the cheapest fares. And so the airlines don't feel any need to be good to their customers. Nice.

Xbox Website Sucks

2007-12-26T22:21:00.000-05:00

So I am in a mad rush tonight to pack for my son and me. We are going to New York City tomorrow for a couple of days, mostly to cheer him up because he misses my ex's family so much and is down about not seeing them this holiday. Plus, I promised him a trip for his 12th birthday and didn't deliver, so he's getting it now.

So the last thing I had time to do today/tonight was spend hours on the phone with XBox people. My son got an XBox 360 for Christmas and the brochure says it's so SIMPLE to go online onto XBox Live. Guess what? It isn't simple. It is probably the most ridiculously and needlessly complicated process I've ever encountered. When you go to the website to try to register online, the website simply doesn't accept your information. You fill out the forms over and over and over again, hit confirm, and nothing happens.

I was honestly near tears for three hours at various points today. Someone at the 1-800 number got us partially set up, but we're still only half-way. And the person on the other end of the line admitted the XBox website was extremely buggy and problematic and they had been overwhelmed with calls from otherwise tech-savvy people like me.

So I have to get up in six hours now to catch our flight and haven't started packing yet. Thanks, XBox.com motherf***ers.

Trying to Look on the Bright Side

2007-12-23T16:59:00.001-05:00

Not to be a downer at Christmas, but this has been the worst year of my life hands' down in the following categories: most dreadful misery, enduring depression, weeping, self-doubt, self-loathing, rage, heartbreak and utter despair.

And yet amid the darkness several wonderful things have happened, and so it hasn't been all bad. Here they are:

1. I learned to lean on my dearest friends like Fritzi, Mitzi and Kimberley (and family, to a lesser degree. Sometimes chilly, deranged WASPs simply cannot let their guard down, no matter how pressing the circumstances. Yes, I refer to my mother.)

2. I made many fabulous new friends, many of them through this very vehicle, RTK. Tanya has become a real face-to-face friend, I am working on Dale but he is typically playing hard to get, and I'd be sitting in the kitchens of GT or Tearfree every day if they lived where I lived. I also made friends with someone who went through exactly what I went through eight years ago, and she very generously and very kindly enlightened me on some major fronts, and served to remind me that I should always listen to my internal alarm bells.

3. I learned how to grapple with all the crap from my past, settling a lot of things in my mind and heart and easing up on myself.

4. I cried harder, yes, but I have recently started laughing harder. Yesterday I was at my friend Mitzi's after spin class and we started laughing about something and couldn't stop for an hour. Hard, tear-streamed, gasping-for-breath, collapse-on-the-floor laughter that would briefly subside and then return for another 15 minutes. Oh, it was sweet! And not the first time Mitzi and I have laughed that hard recently! Good times!!! The kind of hard laughing you can only experience consistently with girlfriends and gay men.

5. Many kind people keep telling me that I have never looked better in my life in the hair, body, skin, face, overall youthful appearance categories. It may be a total lie, but it certainly makes the medicine go down a bit more smoothly. A LOT more smoothly. Because of this, I am guessing, I have suddenly attracted a sea of suitors; a bullpen, practically. More on that later, but it's weird to me, because I have always singularly been attracted to the mysterious bad boy. Yet suddenly my bullpen is filling up with an array of different types: young, old, hot, elegant, beautiful, rich, intellectuals, jocks, smouldering bohemians, etc. All this despite the fact that I have no interest yet in calling any of them to the mound!

Have a lovely holiday, ladies, Dale and Funnypants. Thanks for making my year slightly less brutal -- it will be forever appreciated.

And now it's time for me to watch a bit of cheery holiday fare: Dexter, a TV series about a serial killer who kills serial killers.

Merry Christmas

2007-12-23T06:50:00.000-05:00

If I don't see you before then.

Karaoke Night at the Gladstone Hotel is The Most Fun I Have Ever Had in my Life

2007-12-21T01:11:00.000-05:00

I never got the whole karaoke thing until tonight. The only karaoke night I had ever been involved in was at my friend Fritzi's house and it wasn't quite the same as karaoke is in front of a crowd of strangers who cheer you on through every note and make you feel like a superstar. You know your friends are going to scream and bellow with love and adoration. When a stranger does it, it's a whole different ball game.

Yes, so tonight I went to the Gladstone Hotel in west-end Toronto for karaoke night with my friend Fritzi and all of her work colleagues. I was scared and just assumed there was no way in a million years I'd stand before a microphone and blast out a song, so I just drank Stella and watched the fun. Fast forward through several rounds of shooters and my favourite Oasis song -- "Live Forever," on my Top 10 list of all-time favorite songs -- and suddenly, literally, I was singing a different tune.

Yes, there I was writhing in glee on stage and singing "Live Forever" as the crowd of about 100 people cheered and shrieked their appreciation, Fritzi and her pals front and centre. The fact that the song has wonderfully uplifting lyrics and that it means something to me on a personal level -- only some Wilco "Summerteeth" songs or the Dandy Warhols would have been more significant, but there was none available -- made my moment even more triumphant.

The karaoke crowd is a huge-hearted bunch. Just a large group of strangers ranging from cool stoner types to sad-sack accountants, all of them encouraging and praising one another no matter how lame the song. An earnest young bespectacled guy got up and sang that God-awful Billy Joel song, "Piano Man," and everyone cheered lustily.

I now want to go to karaoke every week for the rest of my life.

Since We're On About Pop Culture, This Story Really Annoys Me

2007-12-20T10:28:00.000-05:00

I am glad to see Terrell Owens has apologized to Jessica Simpson. Because that story really had my t*ts in a knot.

Yes, that's right, let's blame the woman once again. Tony Romo has a crappy game and of course, it's Jessica Simpson's fault for being in the crowd.

How sexist and ridiculous. Let's just absolve Romo of any responsibility for his crappy performance, and lay it all on Jessica Simpson's head.

Grrrrrrrrrrr.

Papa, don't preach...

2007-12-19T10:20:00.000-05:00

This Jamie-Lynn Spears pregnancy is un-fricking-believable.

Is it just one silly girl or an indication of the downfall of western civilization, the failure of feminism -- what does it all mean?

Personally, I think Nickolodeon should fire her.

Take it away, Madonna:

A Hangover-Free Holiday Season Thanks to Vino Ban

2007-12-16T18:00:00.000-05:00

It took me more than 25 years of fairly regular social drinking to figure it out -- I cannot drink wine. The worst hangovers of my life have always involved wine. The most embarrassing drunks of my life have always involved wine, although tequila also played a big role in at least two of those nights, or at least the ones that involved public stripping.

So this holiday season, I decided to conduct an experiment. No wine at all, of any kind, not even a glass with dinner.

I have been to about three or four parties this past month. I have stuck with either gin and tonics or Heineken. And even on Friday night, where I believe I had a whopping SIX Heinekens at a very posh party held by an important and dignified man, I didn't get embarrassingly, ridiculously drunk. Yes, I was tipsy and having fun, but I was not sloshed and did not humiliate myself in front of a variety of potential suitors. I left that party with my head held high, went to my friend Mitzi's to sleep over, got up at 7:00 the next morning and went for a 90-minute spin. If I'd had six glasses of wine? I'd still be in bed right now, two days later, wishing I could puke and deeply regretting my ridiculous behaviour.

I don't know if it's the high sugar content in wine or the tanins or if I have an allergy or whatever it is, but I have sworn off it for life now. On hot summer nights I might be tempted to have a nice cold glass of French gewurtztraminer, but only one glass. I am a beer and/or gin girl now, and it only took me 43 years to see the light.

Things that bug me: Couples shoppers

2007-12-13T15:39:00.000-05:00

I was just at the supermarket where I found myself blocked at every turn by a couple shopping together on an early Thursday afternoon. Now, by shopping couples I don't mean a couple that's just stopped into the supermarket to buy a few things because usually you don't notice couples like that. No I am referring to a couple that shops together, meaning that it is a major event that neither half of the couple could perform alone because every single purchase is mind bogglingly important.

Take today's couple. They appeared to put as much effort into a food shopping expedition as most people would put into a buying a house. And not only that, they were so involved in this onerous task that they forgot they were not alone at the supermarket.

First I couldn't access the broccoli because they were scrutinizing the lettuces leaf by leaf. Next they sealed off the cold cuts counter to discuss their upcoming lunch menus. And finally when they were obstructing the cookie aisle reading packaging labels, I just took a run at them with my cart and forced them out of the way.

Coming as I do from a family of hyper-quick, stealth shoppers, I just do not get this type of behaviour. In fact, I remember a few years back when I was at the park and met some parents of a friend of my daughter's. Their daughter wanted to stay and play but for some reason, the entire family had to go do the grocery shopping together. A fight ended up breaking out and though I never figured out exactly what was going on, the gist of it was that one parent (I'm still not sure which) was a couples shopper while the other felt, the activity could be undertaken solo. In any case, they split up not long after, and I'm still curious about their whole couples shopping deal.

I've been meaning to blog

2007-12-13T15:26:00.000-05:00

Yes, I truly have been meaning to blog about all sorts of things including:

Why does Rex Murphy always tell the most boring, fact-challenged Cross Country Check Up callers that they've made an excellent point when they haven't done any such thing? Somehow, every Sunday as I prepare dinner, I end up listening to Rex while sipping an alcoholic beverage and thinking there's got to be a one-woman play in there. You know -- the one woman, the radio, the dinner preparations...
Our wonderful justice system. How is it that the lawyers on both sides of the Robert Picton case took days to sum up their case? Does anyone understand why on earth it takes so long to make a murder case in court? And does anyone else understand how it is that the judge could misinstruct the jury on something one would think would be law 101 to a judge -- namely what constitutes a murder charge? And shouldn't a judge get in trouble for screwing up like that?
Robert Latimer. How dumb can the parole board members be? Enough said.
Brian Mulroney. What was he thinking? $300,000 in cash in a hotel room! And how did this story die for years after it was published in the Globe under a Liberal government? Say what you will about Stephen Harper, I can't for one second imagine him collecting envelopes of cash.

Pine Sap in My Hair Makes Me Feel Anti-Christmas

2007-12-11T11:30:00.000-05:00

Every year my children and I go up to my aunt's farm and chop down our own Christmas tree from a massive pine grove on her property. This year we hacked down a tree that looked perfectly lovely out in the snowy pine stand. I felt totally Scandinavian because we all cross-country skiied out to the back woods and then I actually skiied the tree in, a rope around my waist, with my hair in pigtails and my Norwegian touque on. After a shitty year, a weekend in the country with my kids and my beloved auntie and my hilarious brother made me feel that perhaps this Christmas wouldn't be as depressing as I thought it might be.

Then I got the tree home.

It was much larger than I thought, with very large sprawling branches and major bald spots once it acclimatized to the indoor temperature. I can't seem to get it to stand up straight in the stand. It's so heavy that even the string that I tied to it and then adhered to a screw in my living room wall to keep it upright simply snaps. I woke up this morning and the fully decorated tree was listing badly, so that the star on the top was now at a 90-degree angle. My daughter and I spent an hour before school trying to right it. I was crouched under it for a half-hour and now have globs of pine sap in my hair, and while I smell lovely, it doesn't look so great.

At one point I wanted to take the tree and hurl it out my front door fully decorated.

I simply don't know what to to. The tree is a monster that is mocking me and making me hate Christmas. It's like it's pissed off that we chopped it down.

My Handyman, My Lady

2007-12-10T11:17:00.001-05:00

So I have had a local handyman in my house for a couple of days fixing the litany of little things that need to be repaired -- things I wouldn't be able to fix with a gun to my head. Plastering, drywall repair, replacing a lock, adding some weather-stripping, fixing an outside light that's never worked, etc etc etc.

He is Greek, and my age. Yet he calls me "my lady."

If he calls me at work to ask about something, he'll always ask me at the end of the conversation: "And how's work going today, my lady?" When I say fine, he says: "Atta girl, my lady!"

It is so silly that it is inoffensive. It has also caused me to have all sorts of songs go through my head with "my lady" in the lyrics. "Come my lady, come come my lady, you're my butterfly, sugar, baby."

My closest work pal tells me I now have my own Eldon, from Murphy Brown. Remember that guy? Didn't someone kill him? I hope no one does any harm to my handyman because he keeps assuring me that because I am a "pretty single mother, I'll make sure to give you the best possible deal." I wonder how badly he would have gouged me if I was an ugly single mother?

Strip Joints Strangely Fascinating

2007-12-07T08:22:00.000-05:00

Last night one of my closest male friends and I went to a Christmas gathering that got boring fast. As we stood outside trying to hail a cab, we noticed there was a huge strip joint just down the street. So we went in for a drink kind of on a lark.

My friend is married with young kids but certainly has his risque side. He was determined to buy me a lap dancer. I said not on your life.

This sounds sleazier than ever, and it is, but in fact it was fascinating inside that strip joint. Rather than watching the girls on stage, my friend and I sat transfixed by the people in the crowd. There was a fairly well-known TV personality getting a lap dance from a big tall girl who possibly might have been born a man. Thankfully, he was giggly, and did not looking creepily turned on the way many of the other men with naked women grinding against their pelvises seemed to be.

The weirdest thing was one extremely good-looking guy -- he could have been a Calvin Klein underwear model -- who kept hiring girls just to sit and talk to him, and not the best-looking girls either; they were the older ones who looked the roughest. And then there was the other couple who came in -- same age as us -- spotted us, turned their chairs away from the stage and stared at us intently for at least an hour. When we would make eye contact, they would start making lascivious faces at us. Clearly swingers looking for swing partners. **Shudder.**

My friend and I sat enthralled and giggling for more than an hour, transfixed by the clientele. I must admit to feeling relief that the on-stage dancers who got the most enthusiastic receptions were fuller figured, had real boobs and weren't bald in places where no one is supposed to be bald past the age of 13. But to my dying day I will never understand why a totally hunky model-esque guy has so many issues with women that he has to pay the roughest-looking strippers to sit and talk to him for hours. Big-time Mommy issues, I am guessing, and a need to be totally in control of women.

Sleazy, but an interesting social study. And no, I would not go along with a lap dance.

Fashion Victim: Another Spectacular Wipeout Brought On By Fashion Choices, Not Icy Pavement

2007-12-04T17:17:00.000-05:00

I have never been much of a klutz. Until the past week or so, the most spectacular wipeout I'd ever experienced involved me falling face-first, while drunk, off an unfinished deck because I believed, in the dark, there were stairs in front of me since there was no railing. Instead, while wearing a pretty party dress, I did a major face plant into the sod with my bum briefly exposed to a cocktail party of well-heeled and well-mannered socialites while my husband, quite endearingly, laughed so hard he could barely stand up.

That was quite a few years ago. Last week's wipeout on the icy pavement while lugging the garbage out would have been funny if I hadn't been so ill when it happened and hadn't remained sprawled there crying for a moment or two. The bruise on my tailbone is still quite colourful.

But today's wipeout really rivalled the vacation face plant of a few years ago. Running for the streetcar, my pointy-toed boots got tangled up in my wide-legged pants and I wiped out so hard that I ripped the knees of both legs of my pants to shreds. I was so embarrassed -- a long lineup of cars watched me go down -- that I was back on my feet in a split second. The streetcar driver had his face in his hands in horror as I bounded in cheerfully as though nothing happened. Soon blood was pouring out of one knee and stained the beautiful caramel-coloured stiletto boots that I love so much. Yet despite that tragedy, and the blood, I still couldn't stop laughing the entire streetcar ride to work because even I knew, without having seen it, that it was a truly spectacular wipeout every bit as outrageously funny as the one I took a few years ago. Thankfully this time no one saw my bare arse.

I wonder when my knee will stop bleeding, however?

R.I.P. Evil Knievel

2007-11-30T19:50:00.000-05:00

You know how these things happen in threes. I hope Awful Knawful isn't next.

Sick Days

2007-11-29T20:44:00.000-05:00

So I spent two days lying on my couch this week, lapsing in and out of feverish sleep waiting for the antibiotics to kick in.

The first day, I watched an entire HBO series available on TMN on Demand called Tell Me You Love Me. Well that was quite something, let me tell you. Remember thirtysomething? It was like that, but with extremely explicit sex scenes. I mean EXTREMELY explicit sex scenes. There were scrotal sacks and bare breasts and even erect penises, and some flaccid ones, on full display, and I honestly cannot see how some of those sex scenes were not actual sex scenes. I mean I just don't know where the thrusting actor would have stuck the thing if not ... well ... in the welcoming petunia of the actress lying spread-eagled beneath him. It was really quite something.

But once you get past the sex scenes, the show was actually enthralling in other ways. Three relationships, all of them in trouble, all centred around the same couples counsellor. The first a young couple in the first blush of young love with major trust issues. The other a married couple trying desperately to get pregnant and having sex constantly, but not always terribly joyously. The third couple is the most heartbreaking -- they are totally in synch on the children and family front, both good and kind people who clearly love one another, but have stopped having sex and just cannot get it back on. They were the most compelling and the couple you were rooting for with the most intensity. Just do it, Dave and Katie! Get drunk if you must and get it on!!!

If you like shows about the vagaries of romantic love, and you don't mind the odd wild sex scene breaking out, you should check it out.

The second day, I watched two of last year's best-reviewed films: Little Children and Notes on a Scandal. The first one was at least a half-hour too long at more than two hours and I found it disturbing at times because it was all about adultery and how selfish and narcissistic it really is, when you get right down to it. The adults in the movie, in fact, were the children. But the acting was great and Patrick Wilson might have the most astonishing physique I have ever seen on a man. Kate Winslet, as always, was luminous and wonderful.

Notes on a Scandal was fantastic, fast-paced and well-written. Judi Dench is brilliant as a nasty, hateful old crone and Cate Blanchett is almost sympathetic as the schoolteacher who embarks upon a doomed affair with a 15-year-old student.

Sick days .... even when you're wishing someone would come over and snuff the life out of you, you can at least catch up on your television and movie-viewing.

Hell is Strep, Garbage Day and Pining Boy

2007-11-28T16:57:00.000-05:00

Last night as I lugged out my garbage in blowing flurries while nursing a 103 temperature brought on by strep throat, then slipped and fell on the icy leaves that I failed to rake up before an ice storm last week caused them to stick like Krazy glue to the pavement, I thought to myself: "I am in hell."

This was only heightened by the fact that my 13-year-old son has started sleepwalking in the middle of the night, and wakes up either me or his sister to ask where his step-siblings are. This hurts one's heart. It really hurts when you're lying in bed unable to sleep because your throat is so sore, you're burning a sweaty hole in your mattress from the fever and your tailbone is throbbing from the major wipeout you took while lugging box and after box of recyclables.

The strep is why I haven't been blogging. Sorry ... I'll be back. I've always hated the month of November.

Back soon!

2007-11-28T14:42:00.000-05:00

You can always read the Scottish Terrier and Dog News.

Tearfree

Oh Elton!

2007-11-23T10:00:00.000-05:00

For more than 30 years, I have had two old Elton John songs on an almost continuous loop in my head -- Teacher I Need You and Elderberry Wine from the 1973 album Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only the Piano Player. And a few weeks ago, I was watching the season finale of Californication, and I was overjoyed to hear another song off that album -- High Flying Bird -- that I honestly had not heard in more than three decades. It immediately, and quite emotionally, transported me back to my childhood, and I realized I desperately needed to have that album. I ordered it off Amazon.ca for $5.99 and it arrived the other day, and has been on my iPod ever since.

I was just a little kid when that album came out. My sister was a huge fan, and I think it was playing constantly in our house for a year, and certainly on every road trip our family took for a couple of years. Listening to that achingly lovely song, Blues for My Baby and Me, I almost burst into tears, because I could vividly remember driving through Vermont in the fake-wood-panelled Brady Bunch station wagon on our way to Massachusetts while rubbing my father's aching shoulders as he drove. I was instantly there; I could even remember the colour of the trees and the feel of the fabric of the shirt my father was wearing.

The greatest thing, however, is that my daughter is listening to it and loving it, hilariously because she thinks Elton sounds just like the Scissor Sisters and also because many of the lyrics, written by Bernie Taupin, are about women and wives and girlfriends and, well, she's only ever known Gay Elton. I had to remind her that a straight guy wrote the lyrics.

But it is so gratifying to have your daughter turn you on to the great music of her childhood and her generation, and then a week or two later, you're turning her onto the great music of your youth and telling her how you remembered giving her beloved grandfather a neck rub as you listened to it on a family road trip. It was a sweet mother-daughter moment. Thanks, Elton!

(And for any of you youngsters out there who only knew the Lion King Elton, please, go back and rediscover his first few albums. I don't think he made a good one after Captain Fantastic, but almost everything prior to that, with Bernie Taupin writing the lyrics, was well and truly brilliant.)

Why Are My Female Relatives So Bizarre?

2007-11-22T16:32:00.000-05:00

So on Thanksgiving, I recommended both my sister and my mother go see Michael Clayton, a movie I had just seen and loved. My mother loves George Clooney, my sister works at a law firm and loves thrillers. It seemed a no-brainer: Michael Clayton was a really good, suspenseful legal thriller starring George Clooney!

A few days later the accusatory call arrived from my mother. She had gone to see the movie and she hated it. She wanted me to explain the significance of a few fairly meaningless moments in the movie, bits that were just meant to provide some insight into the characters' mindsets and weren't significant to the plot. But it was her accusatory tone, as though I had done her wrong by recommending the film, that irked.

A week later she calls to tell me my sister had also been to see the film and she hated it too. By this point, I got a bit hot under the collar. "What is the purpose of this call? I didn't write the film," I snapped. "I just liked it. Maybe you should contact the film-makers." She got huffy.

Yesterday, my sister e-mailed me in a similar accusatory tone. She hated the film. Why did I have such weird taste in movies? (This opinion stems back from many years ago when I raved about that notorious dud, "Raising Arizona" -- still one of my favourite movies of all time). Why did I think it was good? I pointed out it was one of the best-reviewed films of the year according to that Rotten Tomatoes site and, you know, there's no real accounting for taste, is there? You like what you like!

Tell me -- is this normal behaviour? If someone recommended a film to you and you didn't like it, would you get in touch with them to challenge them on the recommendation?

I wouldn't. The next time I saw the person, if they asked me if I'd ever got around to seeing it, and if so, did I love it, I would be honest and say: "I didn't really like it that much, I'm sad to say. And I didn't really get this part ... what did you think was going on there?"

But I'd never in a million years phone someone up or e-mail them and give them hell for the recommendation.

It made me grumpy. Perhaps I am over-reacting. But if any of you out there go to see the movie based on this post, I will have a tantrum if you suggest I was an idiot for liking it.

Wilbur Has a New Lease on Life

2007-11-21T08:53:00.000-05:00

Ever since Stevie Wonder, the horny old decrepit cat, got sick and died, my other male cat, Wilbur, is like a new man.

Stevie Wonder's arrival two years ago turned Wilbur strangely aloof. And despite him being a big, young, healthy cat who is basically the undisputed king of the kitty-cat neighbourhood around our house, Wilbur was intimidated by the horny, half-blind and half-deaf old man, much to our surprise.

My aunt, a longtime country-dweller with cats, dogs, and thoroughbred horses, knows all about odd animal politics and warned me that two male cats in the same house gets weird unless they're litter-mates. And she said the younger one will frequently, although not very happily, defer to the older one.

But since Stevie is gone, Wilbur stays inside more often and is overly affectionate, loving, and quite hilarious, playing catch with toy mice, rolling over for tummy rubs whenever he catches your eye and even being nicer to our female cat, Coco. We suspect he viewed her as a treacherous traitor when she made friends with Stevie Wonder.

Now everyone is happy, especially me, with no vomit to clean up, no yowling in the middle of the night every night, no demands for a new can of food to be opened every hour, and a nice, funny tabby cat who's got a new lease on life.

I Now Despise Henri de Toulouse Lautrec

2007-11-19T18:28:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I was informed by someone who seems to want me to join a Hate Club that I don't particularly want to join that my ex just spent the week in Paris with his girlfriend.

At first I was OK. I took a deep breath and took it all in. But then, slowly, the black misery engulfed me and I was back in that dark pit of depression with very slippery sides so that even when you try valiantly to claw your way out of it, you keep sliding back down.

I lay in bed from 3 p.m. on too stunned and too grief-stricken at first to even weep as I recalled our time in Paris, and how they were the happiest moments of my life, going to restaurants like Benoit and Le Timbre, sitting in the famed Cafe de Flores laughing and chatting, walking hand in hand along the Seine and throughout the city exploring, having constant "sexy time" in the pretty little hotel room with the beautiful bathroom that I'll never forget, having a picnic in the Eiffel Tower park, drinking champagne every night, feeling really and truly in love, even after three years together, and knowing that marrying my husband was the smartest thing I ever did. I wondered if they did the same things, went to the same places, saw the same sights, felt the same way?

Eventually the tears arrived. I even called my ex at one point, not angry, just wanting to weep to him and ask him: "Did I ever mean anything to you? Was I ever special to you? Was I just the latest bird you took to Paris?" Instead, too distraught to speak, I hung up. And you know why? Partly because I didn't want to ruin his Paris buzz. Even when I feel like a bare heart on a plate, I care enough about him not to want to ruin his week in Paris with the woman he was banging while married to me.

I ended up on the phone with my friend Kimberly til 1 a.m., sobbing forlornly as she cooed and comforted. She has been my oldest friend since kindergarten, and we are not touchy-feely and never have been, but I honestly wanted her to come over so I could cry into her bosom. I wanted to crawl, sobbing, into my bed with my son at one point but managed not to. Instead I lay awake all night, and when I got up this morning, I burst into tears again looking at the Toulouse Lautrec poster hanging prominently in my living room that we bought together to commemorate our time there.

In short, I had a 24-hour breakdown that surprised even me with its intensity given I am nearing the one-year mark. But as my friend Carol said today: You can't rush grief. You can't bury it away and pretend you don't feel it and throw yourself into something or someone else and not acknowledge it, because if you do, you're destined to continue being haunted by it. You are grief-stricken. The guy you knew, for all intents and purposes, died and has been replaced by someone else who looks the same but bears no resemblance to the man you were married to. It could take years to fully get past the grief and to understand that he's gone, and perhaps he never really existed at all -- he was just an illusion. I guess she's right, but man, did this one catch me by surprise.

And now I hate Toulouse Lautrec, that pint-sized motherf***er. I have taken the poster down and I don't know what to do with it. Would anyone like it?

Annoying Co-Workers

2007-11-18T11:17:00.000-05:00

My friend Fritzi's recent post about taking an instant dislike to a co-worker got me thinking about my own annoying co-worker. Let's call her Flo.

Flo works with me and about six other people in a fairly open office space. We all have our own little cubicles, but the dividers are only chest-height, so you simply have to stand up if you want to talk to people face to face.

Flo is an aggressive Hello-er with a loud sing-songy voice containing a subtle hint of menace. She starts two hours later than me and when she comes in, she sings "Hello Jacy!" and then proceeds to go down the other five names. Why she just can't say: "Hi, everyone," none of us understand. What's worse, if you don't say hello back immediately -- let's say you are distracted by something at the time or engrossed in your work -- she will sing the "HELLO JACY!!!!" loudly and aggressively until you say hello back. This makes me want to leap over my cubicle wall, put Flo in a headlock and smash her head into the nearest filing cabinet until the sing and the song disappear.

And to make matters even worse, even after you have the big morning hello-fest, she will still say hello to you every time you walk past her that day. If I get up to go the bathroom and she catches my eye, she'll say "Hello!" again! If I walk past her in the hall on the way to another floor, again with the goddamned "Hello!!!"

This has made me want to erupt in a scathing rant that would go along these lines: "Flo! We said hello at 11 o'clock this morning. And when I get up to leave at 5 p.m., we will say good-bye. One hello per day, and one good-bye, you got it??!??!?? And if I AM CLEARLY DEALING WITH A WORK MATTER when you come in and say hello every morning and don't answer you immediately, just live with it, OK, Flo?!??!!"

It's not like I don't talk to the woman. I include her in some of the chatty small talk that typically goes on in any office setting every day. And I don't snap at her the way I want to when she imposes herself into one-on-one conversations I might be having with other people within her earshot. Believe it or not, of the six of us in our space, I am actually the most tolerant of her. But one day soon, someone's really going to blow at Flo.

Topless photos boost ratings

2007-11-16T16:00:00.000-05:00

While Jacy's been publishing the bottomless photos here, I have been showcasing topless males with wiener dogs at my new blog, the Daily Dachshund and Dog News, and completely naked women with scotties at the Scottish Terrier and Dog News.

Don't let anyone tell you that naughty photos don't do wonders for blog traffic. Now, who can we feature next?

Tearfree vs. weather woman

2007-11-16T15:53:00.000-05:00

Okay, I am going to have to do a bit of an embarrassing climbdown here, but since my diatribe against the weather woman Monday not only did she get the forecast for the week right, but she changed her style and even started mentioning diagreements among meteorologists.

If she keeps this up next week, it will be time for an official RTK retraction.

"Serenity Now, Serenity Now, Serenity Now"

2007-11-15T11:29:00.000-05:00

So I ran into someone the other night who told me things about the final year of my marriage that I didn't know and didn't want to know -- just further deceptions, lies I was told, etc. Of course my initial reaction was to go home and weep. Then to get mad at the person for telling me what he did because there was a definite "pot kettle black" element to our brief discussion -- this guy was no marital angel himself, and none of us are. But then the other kind of anger set in as I lay there all night and absorbed what I was told and put the remaining pieces in the painful puzzle that was the final year of my marriage.

And in swept my friend Funnypants, who proceeded to give me some of the best and funniest advice ever about dealing with anger.

He says much of this advice is borrowed heavily from Buddha, but with his own unique spin. And there truly are lessons to all of us here if we still find ourselves angry about terrible times from the past.

Here are some snippets from the dear Funnypants:

"Do not dwell on, or try to understand, the evil sh*t. The bad stuff that's been done to you, and the anger you feel about it, is a red hot coal. You want to pick up that f***er and hurl it smack into the gob of the arsepig who's done you harm. But what's the first thing you do? You burn your own goddamn hand!"

And another, again, with thanks to Buddha:

"Imagine all the terrible things that have happened as a teaspoon of salt. Put a teaspoon of salt in a glass of water and it's going to taste pretty nasty, right? You can't change the nature of the salt because, well, it's motherf***ing salty isn't it? So if the salt is the bad sh*t that's gone down, the trick is to make more water. Stop obsessing about the nature of the salt and fill up your life with good things. A teaspoon of salt in a bathtub, a pool, a lake - sure, it's still there, but as you add more water it becomes increasingly imperceptible."

Good advice to all of us who find ourselves staring down the rage beast every now and again.

Further to That Whole Sexual Harassment Thing

2007-11-13T23:19:00.000-05:00

So today I went for a massage because my neck has been killing me. I decided to splurge on a 90-minute deal because it had been so long since I'd been for a massage and because I am spinning and running regularly, I thought I could use the whole full body job, not just my neck and shoulders.

Now you tell me if this was inappropriate.

I had a male masseuse, looks like the less attractive older brother of Ryan Gosling. He is NOT eastern European, as is my usual practice, because I went to the secondary place, not my usual spa. He was a bit of a mouth-breather but seemed pleasant enough.

So while he's working my legs and glutes (just at the side, not a full-buttock massage), he asks: "Do you work out?" I say yes and tell him what my weekly routine is. To which he replies: "I can tell, because you've got an incredibly hard butt. It's really impressive."

I think I stopped breathing for a moment or two, I was so taken aback, and then was quite uncomfortable since he was vigorously kneading my naked hips and my upper thighs at the time. But he never said another thing that was unprofessional. And eventually I relaxed and enjoyed the rest of the massage, even though I was suddenly acutely aware that I wasn't wearing any underwear under the blanket.

So was it unprofessional? Was that sexual harassment? Or was it just the talk of the trade?

I honestly don't know.

p.s. That photo above? I wish!

Weather woman drives me nuts

2007-11-12T20:31:00.001-05:00

Almost every evening while I am preparing dinner I listen to CBC radio and the local weather woman, Getta Nadkarni, who sends me round the bend. The basic problem is that she believes her own weather forecasts and it's all the worse because she's not actually a meterologist, but rather just a telegenic new ager with four days of training at the CBC's Toronto weather headquarters.

Every Monday. Geeta will tell you what's in store for the coming weekend as if she's not just playing the odds at the roulette table. And then with supreme confidence, she will lay out what's going to happen every day of the week until then. She never expresses any doubt at all that what she says will happen will actually happen.

And the hosts of the show never take her to task for being repeatedly wrong about either the weather forecast or whatever quack homeopathic remedy she might also be touting.

So today in the interests of hard-hitting investigative research, I noted Geeta's forecast for the week, which I will fact check for accuracy everyday.

Tuesday Sun and cloud mixed. No showers. She assured us -- promised in fact -- that they will end overnight. And it's supposed to be chilly tomorrow morning.

Wednesay and Thursday Rainy. Highs of 12 to 15.

Friday Sun and cloud mixed. No rain.

Weekend Missed her tea leaf reading as I was running the food processor.

Scroll down to if you want to see Geeta with her pink umbrella.

Dinner With Pals

2007-11-11T20:29:00.001-05:00

Last night I had the lovely Gifted Typist and Tanya Espanya over for dinner, accompanied of course by their handsome trophy spouses and one very sweet, content and adorable baby.

I have decided getting to know people through their writing might be the very best way to get to know people. I feel as though I have known GT and Tanya for years, because I actually did get to know them for months, through their entertaining and candid blogs, before we actually met in person.

Tanya and I have lots in common: the youngest in our families, we have siblings who think they're our parents, which at times drives us both nuts. Tanya has a "smother mother" in one sister; my own sister used to be that way and it took me years to get her out of it. We both have eccentric but ultimately loveable brothers.

GT? She and I both had mothers who were ... shall we say ... difficult when we grew up and that difficulty continues to be a problem every now and again.

Mostly, though, all three of us pretty much share the same world view on almost every topic, and the same sense of humour. There was a lot of laughing last night and a lot of unspoken understanding on various subjects. The husbands were awfully tolerant of our behaviour, and very funny themselves.

So all of you out there who have made friends in the blogosphere? Take a chance and hook up in person. Chances are that if you like someone's blog and someone's take on life, you'll be inviting a great new friend into your life.

Next on our target list, by the way, is Beth and MDG. And Dale, of course, for GT and me. Tanya has already been blessed (cursed?) to make his acquaintance.

R.I.P. Horny, Drooling, Vomitous Cat

2007-11-10T17:02:00.000-05:00

Yes, Stevie Wonder has gone to a happier place.

For the past month, he was vomiting all the time. Morning, noon, middle of the night. I have now cleaned up more cat vomit than children's vomit and I have been a mother for 17 years. I tried experimenting with his diet, etc., and was in touch with the vet. But nothing stopped the barfing.

After a particularly vomity night, I took Stevie Wonder to the vet this morning and he felt a mass in the cat's abdomen and said he had some kind of cancer so what did I want to do? Spend weeks pumping him full of drugs or euthanize him? I chose to have him put to sleep right then and there.

Even though that cat annoyed the hell out of me, I bawled as they put him to sleep, because he was a sweet, gentle cat despite the dry-humping, the drooling and other weirdnesses. And it was heartbreaking because as soon as I put him in his box to take him to the vet's, it was as though he knew. He knew he was sick, he knew I was cursing him every time he barfed, and he probably knew he wouldn't be coming back home. And so I cried for a half hour, but not like I have cried with other pets who got sick and died. One dog, two cats -- total number of heavy-duty sobbing days? Probably on average, five days for each pet. For Steve Wonder? A half hour. He was an odd kitty when I took him in as a stray two years ago and he just kept getting odder.

When I got back home from the vet's and started doing my weekend housecleaning, what do you suppose I stumbled upon? Yet another huge vomit patch in my son's bedroom that I hadn't noticed earlier in the day. Last weekend I discovered he'd yakked in one of my old, abandoned purses in my bedroom closet.

That cat was ready to go. I hope he is frolicking with other kitties wherever he is and is able to eat as much as he wants without spewing it right back up.

The Single/Heartbroken Woman's Diet

2007-11-10T00:17:00.000-05:00

I always thought I was a woman who loved to cook. In fact, I really only like cooking and take great joy in eating when I'm happy. And since I haven't been terribly happy this past year, I have reverted to a college student's eat-to-live diet.

Yes, I cook for my kids, but I usually don't eat what they're eating. I'll sit with them while they nosh, and occasionally nibble, something that annoys my son, who says to me too frequently these days: "Why don't you eat?" or "Is that all you're eating?" I feel bad but I just can't help it -- I am just not hungry. I eat a fairly big lunch at work, and then I don't really want anything til 8 p.m. or so. And it is usually one of the following few meals:

1. Raisin bran.
2. Ace Bakery crisps with some cheese, some olives and an apple.
3. Some dried apricots and almonds.
4. A peanut butter sandwich.
5. A salmon salad sandwich.

The salmon salad jag is an interesting one. My late father was nuts about salmon salad sandwiches. He ate them all the time. And lately, I have been dreaming about him constantly. Disturbingly, he is always beckoning me to come to where he is, usually on a beach or a rocky island in Georgian Bay, and telling me how much nicer it is where he is than where I am. In my dreams, I sort of tell him to piss off and of course I can't and won't come where he is right now. Sometimes, he is eating a salmon salad sandwich. And I wake up craving them and now I'm eating them regularly when I really hadn't noshed on them since my childhood.

Anyway, I suppose when I eventually get happy again I will want to cook delicious meals for myself like the ones I used to cook when I was married. Roast beef, roast chicken, grilled steaks, chicken pot pie, beef stew with Guinness, etc. -- stuff I still make for the kids but just seemed to have lost my appetite for. I guess this is why I was much more zaftig when I was married than I am now.

In any event, I am having dear friends Gifted Typist and Tanya Espanya and their trophy spouses over for dinner tomorrow night and I am going to attempt to eat my cooking for a change. I can't very well sneak a bowl of Raisin Bran onto the table while they're enjoying my pasta.

And on Sunday, I am going to cook a delicious Maple Chicken and Ribs recipe from the new Nigella Lawson cookbook. Maybe that will get my culinary interests piqued again.

I hate Facebook but...

2007-11-09T11:13:00.001-05:00

...do have to admit this is kind of cute. Alas, my dog's friends requests are both more numerous and far more exotic than mine:

Our previous "I hate Facebook" coverage can be found here.

'Perv' at park saga continues

2007-11-08T15:47:00.000-05:00

Further to my blogging last week and Jacy's most recent post, I have a new instalment in the "perv" at the park saga.

Today as we were all standing around bracing against the cold winds whipping down from the Mountain from which Montreal takes its name, our elderly hero suddenly bolted, exclaiming that he must take his leave and heading in the opposite direction to his home.

Minutes letter he re-emerged, this time homeward bound and in the company of the auburn tressed maiden who he had evidently sought out like a heat-seeking missile.

As I surveyed the scene, I shook my head in dismay.

The young woman wears an IPod so she can listen to music while walking to work. The chances that she wants a half-deaf guy trotting along beside her mumbling banalities are next to nil no matter how polite a front she might put up.

The dog walker who originally raised this whole perv issue with me said, "Now she's going to have to change her route."

"Well," I said. "She can tell him she prefers to walk alone and listen to music."

"Girls find that so hard to do," she said.

And that to me is the crux of the problem. Girls have to be able to get out of these situations without changing their route. And we shouldn't assume they are incapable of accomplishing this and that we have to treat them as frail flowers.

Sexual Weirdness in the Workplace

2007-11-07T21:31:00.000-05:00

Ever since my beloved co-blogger, Tearfree, posted about the Potential Park Perv, I have been thinking about the nature of workplace sexual harassment. Mostly how if it's a playful hot guy with abs saying suggestive things at the office, most women will flirt right back or instant message their closest office friend to breathlessly report that the hot guy just complimented her clavicle. Remember Daniel Cleaver in "Bridget Jones Diary?" What woman among us didn't "schwing" at that scene when the elevator doors opened and there was his bad ass, the man who devilishly messaged Bridget a few scenes later: "Your tits look great in that top." Had Daniel Cleaver looked and behaved like Mr. Titspervert, or a similarly greasy-haired guy with Coke-bottle glasses and his pants pulled up to his nipples at any workplace? Immediate sexual harassment complaint.

There is a dear man at my office, a big, husky bear of a guy, who has always made the most politically incorrect jokes and offered neck rubs routinely to the women in the office. I have known him since we were both in our 20s, when such office humour was commonplace. He is a work friend -- we usually try to go out for lunch once a month or so and I gratefully accept the neck rubs since I suffer from chronic concrete-neck. When I was a real mess earlier this year, he found me sobbing a few times in stairwells or outside the office in the back alley, and he gave me big, comforting hugs as I literally sobbed on his shoulder. He was kind, gentle and smart, and sweetly assured me I was going to be OK eventually.

The younger women in the office, however, think he's a perv due to the ribald jokes and the offers of neck rubs.

This hurts me. Because I know what a kind heart he has. He means absolutely no harm and has never once, in all the years I've known him, hit on me. Yes, he has told me I have great legs, commented on my outfits and declared I have perfect feet in the summer when he can see my toes. I guess I am complicit, because I am a sucker for a compliment and always thanked him for his comments instead of saying: "It is highly inappropriate for you to comment on my pedicure and I am going to complain to Human Resources immediately."

I guess it is a whole different world now, when people are sometimes unable to see the grey areas and only see the black and white. I fear for my friend and what might happen to him, and I fully intend to go to bat for him if he finds himself in any serious trouble. But I find it all very sad, and I know he very likely wouldn't be in this position if he looked like Enrique Iglesias.

Attempting to Survive Teenaged-Girl Crazy Years Through Music

2007-11-05T21:28:00.000-05:00

I won't deny that my daughter has been tougher to raise than my son. My friend Jennifer, a mother of one of each, like me, once pointed out to me that "boys are like dogs and girls are like cats." In my case, that has generally been true. My son has always been affable and easy-going and as a toddler, I could trick or distract him out of having a tantrum quite easily. My daughter? No such luck. The girl could keep a tantrum going for hours, a bad mood going for days and a general malaise/utter contempt for her parents for weeks or months.

She's been pretty up and down, I'd say, since she was about 12 or 13. Sadly, I thought she was coming out of it a bit right when my marriage broke up. But the breakup has set her back a year or so and she is in an extreme angry phase -- angry at me, most of all, for having failed at marriage and consequently for failing her. There are others she's mad at, don't get me wrong. But I am bearing the brunt and have spent a lot of nights this past year sobbing quietly in my pillow about it, along with everything else.

It is trying at times but, thankfully, one place where we always find common ground is music. I am so proud of her musical knowledge and smarts -- at 17, she knows more than me about pop music, and my knowledge runs pretty deep. She can tell me what hip hop bands started in what city and when, who they influenced, who they spawned. Hip hop represents a large void in my musical mental database. I knew House of Pain and Grandmaster Flash and some of the other huge acts, but too many acts I did not know very well at all.

Which is why I am so delighted to have discovered, retroactively, and thanks to my angry daughter, A Tribe Called Quest. I have had it playing non-stop for weeks in my house and on my iPod. It is fantastic "chill" hip hop/jazz music, very intelligent, very sexy, melodic, rhythmic with lots of cool samples. My daughter calls it "hook-up" music, and she's right -- when you listen to it, you want to dance for three hours and then have sex for three more.

If you aren't familiar with A Tribe Called Quest, download some of it. I am sure Fritzi and Beth know all about it. I feel embarrassed to be discovering them almost 20 YEARS after they first arrived on the scene and went on to influence hundreds of hip hop acts. I knew some Quest songs and liked them, but never had any of their albums or any of their tunes on my iPod and now I am kicking myself.

And in that vein, here is a mix of one of their best-known songs, "Can I Kick It?" I like the version on the album better, but it's still sweet. Love the Lou Reed sample:

Trains and Other Updates; Bad Product Alert

2007-11-03T23:56:00.000-04:00

1. I have further investigated the train situation. Apparently they have upped the number of freight trains they allow to use those rails. It's the big hulking slow-moving freight trains, apparently, that are making most of the noise, particularly in the middle of the night. And yes, neighbours living right next to the tracks report that they often signal to one another when they see the other coming from the other direction, at all hours of the day and night. Very considerate of them. What, is there a raging, blinding blizzard? Has one of them derailed? Have a herd of moose stumbled out of the various strip mall parking lots and the hulking freight trains cannot possibly stop in time to avoid hitting them? Sheeeesh.

2. Colombian mispronounciation of the week: "I am a gick." I thought "gick" was some Spanish word for something I couldn't fathom, perhaps even a slur of some sort. He meant geek. And he really takes it so well when I burst out laughing at his verbal missteps. He starts laughing as hard as I do.

3. Bad product of the week: the Colgate whitening toothpaste that has two separate chambers of toothpaste: one the blue whiteing gel, the other the thick fluoride paste. They are supposed to meld together in equal measures every squeeze. But of course they do not. The less viscous blue gel comes out easier and a much faster pace and in greater quantities than the paste. The paste gums up and solidifies, no matter how diligently you cap the tube. Which means you only get the gel, and the tube gets all messed up -- it's just a terrible hassle twice a day. Avoid this product!!!

"Help! I'm suffering Facebook envy"

2007-11-02T12:47:00.000-04:00

Add this great article to the "I Hate Facebook" files. (via Jeff Jarvis)

The Trains!!! All Day and All Night, The Trains!!!

2007-10-31T21:56:00.000-04:00

I have always loved the sound of a train whistle. It's so Canadian. I remember lying in bed at my aunt's farm as a girl and hearing the lonely sound of a train whistle a couple of miles away as I lay warm and cozy under my blankets on a cold winter's night. It's a lovely, forlorn, poetic sound.

Now I live about three blocks away from the railway tracks that all the Via and GO Trains travel on to go in and out of Toronto. In the six years since I've lived in this house, the odd sound of the train whistle has never bothered me; in fact, I quite liked it. But in the past year or so, it seems those driving the trains have gone whistle-crazy.

They whistle loudly and constantly now all day and night long, and it's not a level crossing they're whizzing by -- it's an overpass, so no cars are in danger of being mowed down. Sometimes the train people just sit on the horn loudly for almost a minute at 2 or 3 in the morning, as though they are actually trying to wake up the neighbourhood. Other times it's like there are two trains stopped on the tracks, and they do this Morse code sort of back-and-forth thing for a half-hour or more. Other times they start pounding again and again on the whistle so loudly and violently that you wonder if someone is in front of the tracks.

I don't know if it's just that I don't sleep as peacefully as I used to, snuggled up against my husband, and now I'm just hearing the whistles more often because I sleep fitfully, or if in fact the drivers of the trains are trying to mess with my neighbourhood.

I have discussed this weirdness with Rico Suave (no, he has never slept here) and asked him if he'll scale the fence with me one night and sit by the tracks and try to figure out what all the racket is about. He reluctantly agreed, fearful of scuffing his Diesel jeans and Gucci loafers, or whatever the hell they are. But I need to know -- is there a family of raccoons or feral cats living near the tracks that necessitates all the whistling? A band of homeless people or young boozing teens? What is going on? When I find out, I will immediately report back.

I sign off now as the whistle blows in short little loud spurts, over and over again. Toot-toot-toot. It never ends. I dream of trains a lot lately. And not in any sexual way. More like: "Here I am, swimming with dolphins in Lake Ontario with my late father. What is that I hear? Is it a violently tooting train? Well yes it is, coming right at us and Flipper!" That sort of thing. All night long.

Perv or misunderstood old gent? Part III

2007-10-31T15:49:00.000-04:00

So today I popped the question and asked the old geezer if he knew the red-haired girl (or woman) from outside the dog park.

He seemed a little taken aback, but nevertheless answered that he didn't. He had just taken to talking to her because they cross paths almost every morning and he had found her hair "significant."

Now it must be said that the red-haired girl is one of those people you notice. She is a wholesome beauty along the lines of Felicity (Keri Russell) and she just seems to radiate friendliness.

This morning when she passed by, she waved at the old guy so she may very well think he's a sweet old worldly grandfather type (which, of course he may be.)

He, on the other hand, said he doesn't know her name but knows where she works, possibly because it's near his house and he's seen her coming and going, or possibly because she told him. That I didn't care to ask even in the interests of blog research.

One of the commenters said you've got to trust your gut on stuff like this, but the thing is I don't really have a gut feeling in this particular case, which is why, much to Hot Lemon's consternation, I brought it up in the first place.

My final conclusion is that whatever this guy is, he's clueless. To be blithely roaming the park approaching young women is certainly not something that elderly gentlemen should be doing in 2007 and you would think he would know that.

Isn't age supposed to confer wisdom or is that just a myth?

Perv or misunderstood old gent? Part II

2007-10-30T15:47:00.000-04:00

Many good points raised in yesterday's comments for Part I of this tale.

It made me realize that while I don't completely trust my dog-walking friend's judgments due to her sometimes extreme reactions, there is definitely some of that proverbial smoke found where proverbial fires rage.

Today, for example, the old geezer approached an attractive young red haired woman who often walks past the dog play area on her way to work and smiles beatifically at the dogs. I didn't catch what he was saying, and it's possible he knows her from elsewhere, but I don't think so.

Maybe tomorrow, I will flat out ask him how he knows her and see if we can get some closure for this round of posts.

Meanwhile it's all got me thinking about at what stage you tell someone where to get off. I've never had a big problem with perv harrassment because I tend to just say no or ignore the overtures. I would, for example, never have given this guy my phone number in the first place.

Perv or misunderstood old gent?

2007-10-29T09:54:00.000-04:00

Among the regular morning dog walkers at the park is an older gentleman with a heavy German accent and a Schnauzer. He is a personal space invader and deaf enough that you have to yell at him if you want to be heard so usually after a a brief polite interchange, I will turn my conversational attentions elsewhere. I feel vaguely guilty about this as everyone else pretty much does the same and I see it as a form of age discrimination.

The other day, however, another dog walker confessed to me she couldn't stand the guy and felt he was both a perv and an ex-Nazi.

"Hmm," I said. "He told me he was a Czech Jew."

But I also remembered how, about a year ago, I'd seen the guy telling a young dog walker that he'd been trying to call her and she had replied with a transparently lame excuse about her cellphone and appeared obviously uncomfortable.

"Yes," said my dog walking friend. "He's always harrassing younger women."

On the other hand, the old guy does have a mentally retarded son who he looks afer dutifully -- and it is possible he's just misunderstood and trying to be nice.

What do you all think?

Murphy's Law: Your Toilet Will Clog Every Time You Can Least Afford It

2007-10-27T23:24:00.001-04:00

As I type this I am heavy-hearted. Because my toilet has clogged -- again -- in its biannual major clog. This is despite the fact that more than a year ago, we installed one of those fancy Toto toilets which we were assured would mean no more regular clogging, because the Toto can suck the chrome off a trailer hitch.

Yes, it can.

But it can't do anything about the old stretch of raggedy pipe that is catching debris and causing the clogs every few months. Replacing that pipe would cost me $10,000 because it would involve tearing out my kitchen wall, some of the cabinets and part of the ceiling to replace it.

So instead, I shell out about $300-$400 every six months, depending on the severity of the clog and whether it happens on a weekday or a weekend. And, of course, it ALWAYS happens on a weekend, and usually the day guests are expected. Sure enough, guests are coming for dinner tomorrow to celebrate my daughter's birthday, which means I have to get the toilet declogged at the weekend rate.

And, as always, it always happens right when I am the most broke.

Isn't it always that way? Is it just me, or do essential things fall apart in your houses at the precise moment when you absolutely cannot afford to fix them?

I May Have Finally Found an Invisible Deodorant That Actually Works

2007-10-26T23:12:00.000-04:00

Loyal readers to RTK know that I have long railed against so-called invisible deodorants. I even started a consumer revolt against Ban invisible deodorant here on RTK and for my troubles received a $5 gift certicate for any Jergens product. Now that's successful consumer activism, kids!! Five dollars!!!

I had come to the sad conclusion that the only under-arm product that truly did leave you dry and fresh without leaving nasty chalky white marks on your clothing was the over-the-counter Drysol. But Drysol makes me nervous. If the suggestions that breast cancer and aluminum chloride are linked turn out to be true, well, you might as well just be inviting breast cancer to hop aboard since Drysol is pretty much 100 per cent aluminum chloride. I decided I valued my health over my need for dry, non-chalky pits.

But recently a commenter visited RTK and reported breathlessly that Mitchum had recently come out on top in a recent consumer survey about invisible deodorants. I was intrigued and immediately raced to the drug store to buy the product. And three weeks later, I can report that it's true!! It actually DOES go on clear, and leaves no chalky residue, even when you immediately put on dark clothing! Praise be!! A cosmetics company that actually told the truth about their product! As for dryness and freshness? Mitchum does very nicely. Nothing but Drysol leaves me bone-dry, but Mitchum does well enough. And I smell fresh as a daisy 24/7!

Fonzie moves out

2007-10-26T09:45:00.000-04:00

In a you-can't-fire-me-I-quit move, Fonzie has moved out of our house and in with the crazy cat lady a few doors down the street.

The turning point came around a month ago. Fonzie was bullying Bridget the Scottish Terrier as was par for the course, but instead of just letting him swat her and cowering, the dog decided she had had enough and unleashed her giant-jawed terrier fury on the cat. Since then, he's been home for around five nights in total.

He won't come inside even when I try to persuade him.

I broached the subject with the cat lady when I first noticed his long absences and she said, "Yes, he feels rejected."

Since then I've been avoiding her because I know she disapproves of my letting my cat move into her crazy cat house.

While it's a relief to be rid of Fonzie, I am a little worried about what the other neighbours are saying. Something along the lines of, "And she let her cat move in with the crazy cat lady.Tsk, tsk, tsk!"

Language Barrier Hilarities; Lots of 'Splaining To Do

2007-10-25T13:56:00.000-04:00

So I go out one evening a week with the Colombian, also known as Rico Suave. And at least once there is a moment of utter and complete misunderstanding that we end up howling about.

The other night he was driving me home and kept asking me where "Quinn Street" was. I said I didn't know, I had never heard of "Quinn Street." He replies: "Yes, Jacy-ie, you know where Quinn Street is!" And I say: "No, Rico, I have lived here all my life, and I don't know where Quinn Street is." And he says: "It's the street right above Adelaide! Quinn Street!" Of course, he meant Queen Street, and we had to stop the car because we were laughing so hard. Now he calls me "Quinn Jacy" as a joke.

Last night we were texting and he told me he would confirm something for me manana. I thought manana = some cute little pet name, like "mamasita rica" or "chicatita" or one of his usual endearments. I said: "What does manana mean?" He said coyly: "Ask your Spanish girlfriends." (Tanya Espanya and my friend Rommy, in NYC). I said no, tell me! He replied: Tomorrow. I said: "I am not waiting til tomorrow!! Tell me now what manana means, you (@&#(@!" And of course I Googled it to find that manana literally means tomorrow. Oh what laughter ensued. He called and was almost weeping from laughter.

It's like Ricky and Lucy Ricardo, each of us howling at the other's misunderstandings.