After days of working hard at home renovating the sunroom and the bay window, I was looking forward to getting up to the cottage for some rest and relaxation. This is my favourite place to be and since we missed the May long weekend I could hardly wait to get here. So far I'm thinking I should have stayed home.
We had to come in two vehicles because my better half needed to see a job he is doing up here this week so I made the trip up alone with Mom fighting off a vicious migraine the whole trip.
On arrival I found that the wood shed that my offspring build a number of years ago had collapsed. It only got worse from there; when we turned on the water we found burst pipes. Fortunately for us our city plumber is the same person my better half is working for this week so he was able to come over and repair the pipes. Next problem, the hot water tank wont give us hot water, when we drain the kitchen sink the crud backs up into the shower and the pressure tanks has sprung a leak. Of course that happened after the plumber went back to the city. So tomorrow I start looking for a local plumber to solve these issues, meanwhile no shower tonight.
And that's just for the cottage, I haven't even checked my pottery studio yet to see if all is well there. It is my plan to start potting again this week to see if I still can. Too bad I can't post photo's from here, I'm on dial up and it would be painfully slow.
Maybe it's time to give this place up, as my better half says "were getting too old for this shit", he means the problems.

Funny, I never really thought of myself as old but thought that was only me. After reading the Globe and Dope today I'm told that most "Boomers" think like me. In fact a recent survey by the Strategic Council shows that 25% percent of us think were between 30 and 39 and 43% of us think were between 40 and 49 when most of us are closer to 60. Pretty amazing isn't it.
In a Globe and Mail survey boomers describe themselves as "darn near perfect".
We think we have plenty sex, we drink a lot and eat out a lot and think were in great shape, better than our parents. Yet statistically that's not true. Hip replacements have increased by 140% in just seven years and knee replacements up 39% in the same time period. I know people who have had both hips replaced. There is more heart disease, diabetes, stroke and obesity than in the previous generation, and of course arthritis is rampant with almost 30 percent of the population suffering from some form of it.
So there it is. We are the generation that thought we could have it all on our terms, imaging having to come to terms with old age.
I was born near the beginning of the boom generation and funnily enough my "offspring" was born the last official year of that generation. Funny, no wonder we always get along, were both boomers.

Were still on a cell phone rant here, too bad Rogers, you pissed me off. I gave up after 45 minutes because I had other stuff to do and tried again in the afternoon. This time I didn't give up and laid down on the sofa beside the speaker phone listening to their dumb message over and over. It actually put me to sleep and I almost missed the real voice. I should have for all the good it did me, since I had been waiting all this time for the wrong person, stupid me I should have been talking to tracking all this time. Unfortunately the person I spoke with on Monday didn't bother telling me that. She just said, "phone on Wednesday and give us the tracking number and we will verify that we have received the phone and arrange to send you a new one".
Maybe it was a new empoyee and not yet indoctrinated in the ways of making the consumer suffer, in any case there will be no new phone for the forseeable future. Why you ask? Well, it will take Rogers 7-10 days to open the box and verify that the returned phone is actually in the box and then we start all over from the beginning. I think Rogers needs to start thinking outside the box, will I be looking for a new cellular carrier, absof....nglutely, as Mr. Big would have said. As soon as I can take my numbers with me, I'm history.

As I sit here and listen to the speaker phone repeat "all of our operators are currently busy, please stay on the line", I would like to jump thru the line and throttle them. This is the largest wireless provider in Canada and they can't even answer the blinking phone. This is not a one off, this the fifth time in the last 10 days I have been trying to get thru to them. Today, I have been on hold over half an hour.
It all started ten days ago when better half's phone started to hiccup more than it normally does. I spent 40 minutes only to be told I needed to talk to "Corporate" and spent another half hour waiting. At that point I gave up and continued the odysee the next day. Again after half hour wait, I asked for a direct number and proceeded to wait another half hour also giving up. Next day I finally got thru after half hour wait and arranged for a new phone to be delivered.
This was about the only good thing so far, the phone arrived less than 24 hours later at my front door. Problem was, I couldn't activate it via internet and spent another 40 minutes on hold for tech support. After trying for 30 minutes to activate it, it was decided that the phone itself was probably a defective. I promptly called Rogers to tell me it was on it's way and here I am two days later on hold again to arrange for a new phone.
I dont know if other wireless providers are any better or worse but because we cant take our number with us were stuck with them for now.
Oh Ya, it's now 45 minutes and counting.

I'm one of the luckier wives in the sense that when my better half doesn't have a project for other people (he's a contractor) he tends to concentrate on home. So why am I complaining? Because when he gets in these moods it always means work for me. Most of my friends are envious but there is a downside. He can never not work so he's always looking for stuff to do.
This past week he decided to tackle our sun room/smoking room/pantry. It needed a new floor, plastering and a new paint job. Sounds easy right, I mean these are his jobs not mine. But getting the room ready for him to work in means I have to clean out all the STUFF. It is a room where all the overflow from the kitchen ends up mostly because I dont have enough cabinets so the first order of business is deciding what gets thrown out and buying a proper pantry. The latter seems to be the most difficult of the two, just about every pantry I want from IKEA is out of stock. Is there a building boom or something?
So far things are just about finished except for said pantry and who knows how long I have to wait for that.
This week the new bay window in the living room gets installed and then it's off to the cottage for a week of relaxation.
And you know all that STUFF that left the sunroom? It's heading up to the cottage to join the rest of the STUFF. One of these days I'm really going to have to throw out STUFF.

Seems that the Caledonia protestors have "just about exhausted our good will and our patience" according to the Toronto Star.
What the heck took him so long and where is the army to bring peace back to that comunity? Seems that the police finally laid some charges against 7 protestors but said protestors after speaking to their "clan mother" were somehow spirited off the reserve to parts unknown. I guess the "clan mothers" are the law now.
From what I gather of this story there has never been an official land claim filed against this property and it seems that when the houses were just about finished the natives decided it was theirs and took posession via roadblocks.
Does that mean whenever they fancy a piece of land they can just take it. I acknowledge that when the white man came and took their land it was a huge injustice. But around 200 years have passed and it's time to end this for good. All levels of government must get involved to solve these issues once and for all.
And the "clan mothers" must turn over the 7 alleged criminals to the police; there can only be one law of the land for all.

I have been watching the Caledonia standoff with Native Demonstrators for some time now with mixed feelings but what I saw on the news a couple of days ago really angered me. An elderly couple where trying to drive on the highway when their car was stopped and surrounded. When they tried to drive to the Canadian Tire parking lot the "Native Demonstrators" followed and jumped on the car resulting in the elderly man having a heart attack. A news crew from a local station were filming this and where then also attacked and had their equipment and tape stolen. What puzzles me so much is that the OPP officers who where standing within a few feet refused to get involved even when the news crew asked for assistance. In fact they completely ignored what was happening. The camera operator needed three stitches to close a head wound.
It wasn't until American border officials who where there to observe were pulled out of their vehicle by said demonstrators, who then stole the vehicle and tried to run them over, that the OPP actually decided to do something.
What exactly did they do? Well more than 24 hours later they decided to charge 7 of the Native demonstrators with assault, attempted murder, forcible confinement, theft of a motor vehicle, robbery, intimidation and assault. Well guess what? The perpetrators are gone, as in they can't be found. There somewhere on the Reserve and of course hidden and or protected by their status. Of course the OPP cant possible go in there and get them because there are two laws in this country. One for us and one for them. If the Police and or wont deal with this maybe it's time to call in the army? What about it Mr. McGuinty? Do your job.

This is a subject that is near and dear to my heart since that day nearly two years ago that we moved my Mom into our house. My Father had died almost 5 years previous and I knew that my Mom couldn't stay in her apartment any longer. The choices were limited, she was adamant about moving to a senior apartment.
Fortunately, I have a husband who understood that it was my responsibility as an only child to take care of Mom.
So we did the only thing we could, we build an addition to our house and made a lovely main floor bedroom for her. She is quite happy there since it is pretty much self contained (except for a kitchen) and life is mostly good.
That does not mean there are not problems the biggest one being her health. In January we went thru a prolonged period of dealing with Acute Heart Failure and Moms refusal to go to hospital. That meant almost 24 hour day nursing for me and aministering drugs to a woman who really didn't want to take them. Every pill time was a prolonged argument as to why and how come she needed so many. To admit to feeling rage sounds almost petty, but I'm human and I admit I was pretty enraged at times mostly because of her non-compliance and my own lack of sleep.
There is a new book out by Jacqueline Marcell
that deals with this issue. The book is titled "Elder Rage -or- Take My Father... Please! How to Survive Caring For Aging Parents".
Fortunately for me I had a good family doctor and some great support from East York Community Care that was able to give me some assistance. With some good luck we nursed Mom back to reasonable good health.
The secondary problem of course is the lack of freedom to go or do whenever the mood strikes. Everything needs to be planned exactly and there is now a lack of spontaneity in our lives. Travelling anywhere now requires a live in caregiver for nights which adds substantially to the cost of a vacation. But the truth of it is, that no matter how difficult I could not live with myself if I didn't do this for my Mom.

Soccer was my Father's favourite sport. When he was a young man in Germany he would go to most soccer matches in our home city of Wiesbaden. I'm told that he most often took me along although I dont remember, I was very young. My Dad also watched the World Cup games after we came to Canada and always cheered for Germany. My Dad is not around to watch the games anymore having died more than 5 years ago, but Mom and me are continuing the tradition by watching even though it's not really our sport. Give me a good hockey game anytime. Even my better half who is Greek is obliged to cheer for Germany or suffer the consequences since he lives with two German women. He's pretty good about it seeing as how Greece doesn't have a team. Deep down I know that Germany doesn't have a hope in hell of getting the World Cup but I'll cheer as long as they are there. I wish I was there to cheer in person, not for me but for my Dad.

It was just a small story on the 11 o'clock news the other night but it caught my attention. It appears that a 73 year old, non English speaking woman and Alzheimer patient was lost by Wheel-Trans. It appears that she got off the bus at a wrong stop. She was found this morning in relatively good health but I wouldn't want to comment on her mental distress.
The reason this story bothers me so much is that last year Wheel-Trans lost my mother once and stranded her numerous times for her trip home from physiotherapy. I got quite aggravated about it and had numerous discussions with Wheel-Trans about the situation. Since that time the service has improved tremendously, for Mom at least. They only send the big bus for her now instead of private taxis and the driver always walks her to the back door unless I am there to do that. These drivers have a list with the persons destination and I cant for the live of me understand how someone was allowed to get off at the wrong place. Every time my Mom leaves here I have moments of panic. She doesn't have Alzheimer's and carries a cell phone but because she is frail and has congestive heart failure, I worry.
Even though we haven't had an "event" in over six months I must say that after hearing about this poor woman who was lost I don't quite trust Wheel-Trans yet. They are charged with taking our most vulnerable citizens to where they need to go and they must do a better job of it.

I had not intended to comment further on this subject because I think we are all sufficiently updated via various media outlets, but I simply couldn't resist when I saw this cartoon. Thank you Andy Donato from the Toronto Sun.
It speaks to the criticism that was directed against the various police forces for having forced their way into homes to make arrests. I actually think that this is what our tax dollars pays them to do. Arrest suspected CRIMINALS.

I am probably going to be accused of being a racist by some but I strongly believe that the head to toe covering of women should be banned in a secular society. I have felt this way for a long time and it has nothing to do with yesterday's arrest of 17 suspected terrorists.
Whether these men are in fact terrorists or just perpetrated an intricate fraud in order to be able to sue law enforcement for racial profiling remains to be seen. I always have this niggling suspicion in these instances. Hopefully it will all come out in the end, but I find it difficult to swallow when relatives see the collected evidence and yet swear their family members are "innocent".
There is one other issue I have with the Canadian government, and that is this; there seemed to be no problem revoking citizenship of elderly Ukrainian men who were forced to work the Nazi's in benign capacities such as translators yet we seem unwilling to do the same for Muslims with proven terrorist connections. An here I think specifically of the Khadr family. Remember them? One son is in Guantanamo, another her in Toronto jail awaiting extradition to the US, another is/was in a wheelchair injured fighting in Afghanistan against the Coalition forces, and don't forget the Mother and Sister who are on record as saying they wanted their sons to die in jihad. Isn't that treasonous? Why cant we just take away their Canadian citizenship and send them back? Oh yeh, I forgot, were Canada, land of the wimps.

Your Brain's Pattern

You have a tempered, reasonable way of thinking. You tend to take every new idea in, and meld it with your world view. For you, everything is always changing. Each moment is different. Your thinking process tends to be very natural - with no beginnings or endings.

What Pattern Is Your Brain?

Isn't this cool. This is the pattern I picked and couldn't resist but to share it.

Try it for yourself and see what your brains says about you.