I must have been in a bad mood this day

(I just found this in my Draft folder, boy oh boy I'm slowly turning into "that" old lady...)

I was in the library today and on the new book bookshelf  I saw a copy of "50 Shades of Gray".
I knew from the getgo that I would hate this book and that is precisely why I've avoided it.

I didn't even want to pick it up. Anything that's is cutely called "mommy porn" pretty much makes my skin crawl. The whole "50 Shades phenomena" and all resulting jokes and cartoons just bug me, bug me to pieces!

And then, I wondered why so many things bug me. Things like Starbucks and their baristas (pfffft.....baristas,  even just saying that bugs me) Things like people who follow trends and think they are "walking to the beat of their own drummer" and also people who use that expression, they bug me too. And people who always agree with you, faaaak, that really bugs me. I mean, agree with me if you actually agree with me, but don't pretend. You think it isn't obvious?

Oh, lets see, what else? Those mothers you see downtown who have a misbehaving kid and they say, in that syrupy voice: "Now Cossette, we don't do that...we use our (insert latest fad-word) "inside voice" "gentle hands" "no touch eyes" whatever the word du jour is. Really moms? Why don't you just tell your kid "no" Even "No, that's not ours, don't touch" or "Shhhhh....don't yell inside."  The kid never listens anyhow.

There is nothing wrong with simply saying "no". You know damn well you say it at home. So stop being so smug in public. Dare I say it? Just discipline your kid and be done with it.

I stood there, in the library, thinking of things that bug me.

The SPCA commercials bug the living shit out of me, and then ruin the rest of my day.

Men that aren't wearing a jacket but have a scarf artfully tossed around their neck. Oh just stop it. Do you to know how stupid you look? You look as bad as those idiot kids with their jeans hanging down to their knees, none of you are "marching to your drummer", you're lemmings. Douchy lemmings I might add.

People that park crooked, you know, the ones who pull into a spot on an angle and take up two spots so that you won't door-ding their vehicle? I seriously want to ram into their vehicle. Or at least kick it on my way by.

Little kids that won't say hello when you see them on the street. That bugs me, but in a sad way.

Politicians.  My blood is boiling before I even finish typing that word.

So by now I've worked myself into quite a rage, and the sight of the "50 Shades" book is making me want to have a tantrum. so I leave the library with a crappy James Patterson book, which bugs me, although at least it wasn't Danielle Steele.

I probably should have found myself a Dr. Phil self help book because there is obviously something wrong with me.

The best souviner

So, you know how you sometimes look in a mirror and see a few new lines, a new wrinkle here, an extra crowsfoot there, a crease that wasn't a part of your face the last time you looked?  That's always a bit discouraging even though you firmly believe that a few new wrinkles are a part of who you are, and every wrinkle has a story. I do believe that, and you know what they say; something like "the alternative to getting wrinkles is being dead."  That's true, unless you start with the plastic surgery and that's just scary. Not for me! No one is ever going to put a scalpel to my face, or inject poison into my forehead. Or put ass fat into my lips...eeek!

I've lost my train of thought now. Wait.....ummmmm, oh yeah, when I look in the mirror and see my face getting older, I sometimes miss the "dewy glow of youth", but I also look into my own eyes (that's not as creepy as it sounds) and I see my mothers eyes. It sometimes rather shocks me, our eyes are the exact same colour, which, when you look closely is a green/hazel/gold sort of colour.  They used to be really vivid, and yeah, I'll say it, pretty striking too. I used to get lots of compliments on my eyes.Now that I'm older they look tired and, well, older. That's how I remember my mothers eyes. It kind of makes me sad.

However, I spend very little time looking in the mirror these days, so I don't see my eyes that often. Honestly, sometimes I don't look in the mirror for an entire day after my teeth are brushed. To expand on that statement, I brush my teeth as soon as I get up, and I always look in the mirror and think of my dad, who used to love Crest toothpaste (which is all I use) because he said it made him "foam like a mad dog." My mum was always telling him: "Oh for Gods sakes Brian, would you go wash your mouth off" as he growled down the hallway, foaming like....you got it, a mad dog.

But, I digress.  I don't look in the mirror often, but I do see my hands a thousand times a day. My hands look old. I don't wear mitts or gloves much, and thus my hands have a kind of  weathered look, I think they look older than they are. They are not nice looking hands, I don't have a fancy manicure and they are pretty "crinkly" as my little neighbour once told me. But I love my hands. I just love them!  They are my mothers hands and my grandmothers hands. I look at them and imagine the people they have touched, the tears they have dried, the foreheads they have smoothed and the shoulders they have hugged. The beloved dogs they have patted and scratched, as well as the ants and grasshoppers and worms they have gingerly cleaned from little boys pockets, not to mention all the disgusting things, you know, things like diapers and flu ridden kids, housetraining puppies and the like.
I am very tactile, I love to touch things and I've been reprimanded in museums more than once, so  there is also all of the ancient statues and paintings that these hands have reached out to put a finger on, quickly before the guards could see. The sands, and beaches and oceans they have dipped into. The unusual and foreign foods they have carried to my mouth...mmmmmm. The clear plexiglass window they placed a palm on, not able to feel the palm on the other side. The phone they clutched, as if the voice coming through could be absorbed into their sensitive finger tips and stored away inside.

Talk about a souvenir....who needs fridge magnets and T-shirts? These hands have touched the places where emperors slept, and touched the places where my babies slept.  Touched the rough, red soil in a small African village and patted the deep brown earth around the petunias in my front yard.

Touched my mothers face the last time I said goodby to her, and held my fathers hand the last time I said goodby to him.  So why on earth would I look at my hands and be sad at the shape they are in? These hands are who I am, I look at them daily and marvel at the places they have been, and the stories they could tell. They say that the your fingertips are the most sensitive part of your body, I wonder if they retain memories too? Wouldn't that be something? If they could talk? Hmmm..maybe just as well that they can't. I think my hands are the ultimate secret keeper.

Can you imagine being able to travel anywhere you want, on a whim? Any time? Any place?

That’s something I dream of, that’s actually how I fall asleep….planning holidays and travel adventures…..so much better than counting sheep.

During the day I gaze at the jet streams that criss cross the skies above my house, and I try to imagine someone up there looking down at my little area of the world as I look up at them. I wonder where they are going, what they are thinking, are they excited? Having fun? Nervous? Scared?Although, I think most people on a plane are busy trying to get their share of the armrest, get comfy in that little area that you call your own...sort of your own mini-home away from home...you try to organize your spot, set your things up...your book, your  bottle of water, your pillow and blanket,  making room for whatever kind of dinner you may be lucky enough (or not)  to receive. 

And even though I have been lucky enough to have travelled at lot, and I am in the midst of planning a trip to Peru (T minus 107 days!) I still get travel envy when someone else is going somewhere. 

Science or nature?

Yesterday as we were leaving the house to go walking, a gentle gust of wind blew little snow flakes at me, little silvery looking flakes. I figured they had blown off the roof, or maybe off the trees in the yard.

But as we continued to walk, I noticed that these little flakes were falling from the sky, even though the sky was clear and blue...not a cloud in sight. It was most unusual, especially when I noticed that they were so small and so fine that when they landed on my coat they were nearly invisible. They were smooth and flat, they actually reminded me of minuscule shards of glass.When we walked towards the sun it was like walking into a cloud of silver glitter. Glitter! I love glitter and shimmery, shiny, sparkly things. Silver glitter makes me shiver with delight.

When we turned around, with our back to the sun, you couldn't see a single flake. Turn and look at the sun...clouds of glitter! Glitter! I walked up the street getting dizzy, turning from sun to no sun, sun to no sun, glitter, no glitter, glitter, no glitter. It was very dreamlike. Although that was probably from the dizziness of spinning. It felt like this:

I doubt it looked like that, but that was exactly how it felt!
And then we saw an old man walking towards us, he caught my eye and grinned, so I knew he has been enjoying the sparkles as well. I made a feeble sort of gesture towards the sun and he  pointed up and said: "It's just like walking through diamonds isn't it?"

Our walk took longer than our usual hour, basically because I was so busy looking and spinning and turning, but it was just spectacular. When we got home, I went straight to Google to find out what this phenomena was all about....I Googled: "glitter falling from the sky" and there were lots of hits (is that the term?..."hits"?) but they were mostly about actual glitter that you buy and then throw in the air at parties and what not. And other things like magical jewels falling from the sky in India, sillyness.

I then Googled "snow crystals" and all those hits were educational and scientific, websites that end in ".edu". Well, that's just boring and no fun at all. I don't even want to know those explanations. Pffft...science is depressing.

So I just decided that every now and then someone wants to surprise us. It could be Odin or Zeus or Jupiter...all gods of the sky. Maybe Tane-rore, he is the Maori god of the shimmering air! The Greeks had the god Chaos, he was the god of "nothingness from which all else sprang" There was certainly nothing there, these sparkles came from nowhere. Also, Chaos is the god of the lower atmosphere. I think it was him. Unless it was Theia, goddess of the "clear, blue sky".  Hey, what about Horagalles, god of the weather?

Maybe it was a combination, a party of the Gods. A competition, so to speak. And I got to watch. Lucky, lucky me.

Two Sides

One of my Dads favorite things to say to me, when I was young and full of myself, was "There are two sides to every story". Sometimes he'd change it up a bit, depending on what my opinionated rant was, to things like: "It takes two to tango" and "the truth is never pure and rarely simple" and of course the ever popular "whats good for the goose is good for the gander"

So I learned at a young age that there are indeed two sides to every story, but the older I get, the harder it is to decide what side is the right side. Or even if there is  a right side. And often there isn't.

I read an article the other day about a married couple, senior citizens, who went South for the winter and prior to going they applied for (and were accepted) for travel health insurance. As fate would have it, they both ended up in the hospital in the US and were flown home, and submitted their claims to their insurance company.

Long story short, they were denied. Even longer story short, it was considered fraud since they they had both answered a question wrong on their insurance application. His was "Do you suffer any bowel conditions" and he answered no. Apparently, however, in the 1960's, he was diagnosed with IBS and had not had a flare up in 50 years (50 years!) even though he does take a daily pill to prevent flare ups. He assumed (oh yeah....another of my dads platitudes...we all know the one about "assume") he had assumed that since he hadn't had a problem in 50 years that he did not suffer from a bowel condition. And besides, he ended up in the hospital from a heart problem.

Her error was "Have you been treated for a heart condition in the last 12  months". She assumed (here we go again...) that they meant in the 12 months from when she was going to be in the States, not 12 months prior to the day she was filling this out. She had been treated 10 months earlier for a heart problem, but she ended up in the hospital for a kidney problem.

So they were denied, and they now face bills of over $100,000 each.

The two sides are tough. One side says "It was a honest mistake, and it"s not like they were treated for the conditions they said they didn't have...if they had answered "yes" to those questions, they might have paid more for their premium, but they still would have ended up in the hospital, but with coverage"

The other side says "Oh come on....when your"re diagnosed with a condition and you take a pill a day for 50 years to prevent flare ups of that condition, how can you possibly say you don't have that condition?" And for her. "What part of "the prior 12 months" makes you think that they don't actually mean 12 months??"

I'm just so glad I don't have to make that choice. But it makes me doubt the sincerity of the insurance company, how long did it take them to delve back 50 years?

I think about that kind of thing a lot, but luckily it's only theoretical to me,  the type of thing that I can discuss with friends, and listen to other opinions and maybe get a fresh outlook on. Doesnt affect me personally (knock wood, that is.)



I'm just in the process of filling out forms for our health insurance, and reading this article has made me think I had better fill them out very carefully indeed. Now that Steven has officially retired, we need to fill out different forms, one came in the mail today. We need to register with a different part of Pacific Blue Cross, and they sent a form. However, the form says "this does not register you, please register first" with a phone number. I phoned them, of course there is a robot on the other end, and the first thing they want is your registration number.

I've been down this telephone game road before, and I think there is only one side to this story, and it probably isn't mine.

night shots

Just a little experiment with night shots with the new camera.

There are so many reasons why these years are better than years in the past.....major things,  like better medicine, better safety features in vehicles, better working conditions and so on.

There are worse things too, also major, you know, things like pollution, crime and whatnot.

But its the little,small things that make me smile and make me happy that someone thought of them.

Things like the screw-off cap on the large cartons of juice...no more of the bendy/foldy spout. Man...how I hated that..especially when sometimes it wouldn't fold in and out properly and you'd then have to try and slide a knife in the seal, and it would always cut the carton in the wrong spot so that that juice would come in in four streams, two of which would invariably go on the floor.

And the plastic push-in spout on the smaller juice cartons...whoa....so much better than trying to pull up the corner of the carton and cut that heavy, waxy cardboard into a proper sized spout. And you know how that always worked....you'd have a firm grip on the carton, and the minute you cut the cardboard corner, the air would escape, your hand would squeeze the box and no matter how hard you tried, again, juice all over the place. No wonder my kids hardly ever had juice. It was far too stressful

 Christmas treats include the edible; homemade chips and homemade salsa, as well as the wearable...holiday socks from my friend, she buys me a pair every year.

Another year.....I don't make resolutions, but I did sort of make a decision. I decided to write something in my blog every single day. I sat down with my new and beloved ipad and wrote a short, but wildly entertaining missive for today, January 1st.

And it would not "publish".  There were odd error messages, and then the "publish" button just vanished. I was pretty annoyed because you know how it is when you write something and then lose it....it's like the fish that got away...you know, it just gets more and more brilliant as you try to recreate it. *sigh*

So,I decided that once a week would be plenty. Surely I can find something to share with you once a week, and surely I can find the time to turn on the desktop computer and have a blog that works.

But I decided to try the ipad one more time, so far I can still see the "publish" button, so here we go....