Being able to read the words isn’t much help either.  For example, on one page I just wrote ungulates. That’s it.  I have no idea if there was an idea because I cunningly wrote nothing else.  Now, on any given day the word ungulates just by itself is pretty funny.  But put it in a sentence…

Doctor, these ungulates are really bothering me.”

“Well change to cotton underwear.”

Yeh, it makes absolutely no sense, but those ungulates are hilarious, am I right?

Here’s a joke I did manage to decipher: I saw a Smart Car going through a carwash and I thought, why don’t they save the money and just put it in the dishwasher?

That’s a small car joke.  Or maybe a small joke about a car.

But as I was flipping through these pages filled with my nonsense, it suddenly occurred to me that it was Bob’s birthday.  September 19^th.  If you’ve read my previous blogs, you know that Bob is my late husband.  It’s been about six and a half years since he crossed over the Rainbow Bridge and I thought perhaps I needed to pause and think about how this all has progressed since he escaped my clutches.  I guess I would say for the most part, this process has unfolded the way it does for most people.  For the first few years it was like the absolute worst ride at Disneyland, the only difference being at the happiest place on earth, you can get off the ride, and they give you a barf bag.  It’s not as intense as that now, but there are moments.  Let’s review the stats for, say, the last 6 months- 4 Bob dreams.  1 crying spell in yoga.  Countless streamer binges. 137 large bags of Boom Chicka Pop.  I’d call that progress.

Here’s where I think I am a bit stuck; I’m still struggling with getting rid of some of his things.  Of course, everybody has to deal with this in their own time and when they feel comfortable.  I did a lot of clearing out of his clothes maybe by the end of the first year.  But what I’ve had trouble with are the things that really defined him.  We all have those things.  With my Mother, it’s her handbag.  I think in all of her life, she was never more than 3 feet away from her bag.  Years ago, when she came to stay with us for a few days, she moved around that house with her handbag stuck to her, as if Bob and I were ex-cons, terrified we might grab it one day and finally rob her of all her Kleenex and Ricola cough drops.  So, almost five years later, I still have her handbag in my closet.

But with Bob? Well okay, I still have a few Hawaii shirts, because he loved them and Hawaii. And I have a few ball caps that he liked to wear.  But what’s the thing that absolutely one hundred percent defines him?  Ointment.  That’s right.  Ointment.  Not one particular ointment.  ALL of them.  And not just ointments.  Creams too, if it didn’t come in an ointment.  Or if the cream was absorbed better than the ointment.  I still have cupboards filled with these various and sundry tubes and I can’t bring myself to dump them because I feel like I’m throwing Bob away.  But also, I might cut myself or burn my hand on the stove, and then I’ll really need an ointment and I won’t have any.

Bob was always prepared and so the other item that I still can’t part with is his travel kit, or toiletry bag.  This thing probably weighs ten pounds, or in metric a thousand kilos!  Do I need to tell you that it is filled with ointments of every kind, but also just about everything else you might need while travelling; a manicure set, bandages, oral wound cleaner, glasses repair kit, sewing kit, can opener. Of course, this wasn’t a bad thing.  He and I travelled a lot and as you can imagine, my toiletry kit consisted entirely of make-up and Smarties.  So, I relied on him a lot.  Headache? He’s got Advil. I can’t get this bag of Oreos open?  He’s got a Swiss Army Knife.  I mean, he could quite literally have performed open-heart surgery if necessary, and I guarantee there would have been NO infection, thanks to his array of ointments!  That’s how well equipped that kit was.  And I just can’t let it go…yet.

Happy Birthday Bob.  I hope wherever you are, you have ointment to your heart’s content. xx

In his favourite of all places. Ointments may have been applied.

Me preparing to write

But the whiteness of the page makes me think there’s no time like the present to get some laundry done, I mean you can’t let that stuff slide because, well I’m not sure why it may have something to do with national security, anyway while I’m sorting unmentionables, I remember I haven’t exfoliated since who knows when, so definitely have to do that.  I always feel I can think better once I’ve scraped off the last six months of skin from my face.  And then with complexion glowing, I sit back down at the computer, finally ready to accept the muse and…hold that thought, I should check Facebook in case somebody I don’t know has recently eaten an excellent carrot so I enter the Bottomless Scrolling Hole and that’s when the blindsiding assault occurred Your Honour.

As I’m creeping through friends’ pages for provocative produce pics, out of nowhere I see the words Vaginal Flatulence! Wait the… what the… how the… ???  Listen, I like to think of myself as being fairly well informed, but this I have never caught ‘wind’ of.  I watch CBC News Network a lot and at not once have I seen Breaking News coverage of a rampant Vaginal Flatulence outbreak anywhere!

Of course, I’m familiar with the vagina, having been connected to one my entire life, and I’m also familiar with flatulence, although as far as you and the rest of the world is concerned, I have never actually passed any gaseous vapors.  I know! It’s a biological miracle!  But at no time have I ever seen these two words that, quite frankly, should never be joined together, joined together.  So, I’m sure it will come as no surprise to you when I say that my first thought after seeing this and regaining consciousness was What Fresh Hell is THIS??!!

You might think that’s a little dramatic, but let me just give you some personal historical context.  There’s no question that, just like the lady sings in The Flower Drum Song, I Enjoy Being a Girl…mostly.  Because if I’m honest, any of the paraphernalia connected to my very own vagina has been a giant pain in my entire lower lady region… literally.  I’m one of those women who had severe, horrible, excruciating, abdomen searing, Why Me cramps.  I have never given birth, and I’m not saying the cramps ever reached baby extracting intensity, but I’m pretty sure that some days it came close.  The best way I could describe it back then was ‘I think my ovaries are trying to exit my body through my feet!’

A cute cat photo just because.

And it was like that for years until a medical saviour invented a drug that, most days, eliminated the pain.  Why this individual hasn’t been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize is beyond me.  When I was doubled over in agony for three, four, sometimes five days, if anybody even looked at me, I’d want to rip their throats out, if I could actually move.  Think of the throats that have not been ripped out because of those little miracle pills.  So, until they came along, as far as I was concerned the whole reproductive rigamarole was BS and since menopause, I can say I’m really glad that I haven’t had to think much about that area…until Facebook felt I needed to know about Vaginal Flatulence!

So I Googled once and scanned the info quickly, but I think I was still traumatized and not all of it sank in, and I don’t want to keep searching because then those algorithm geniuses will start showing me thousands of ads for the Bowflex Vaginal Flatulence Crusher!… or Tums Tunnel of Love Toot-Tamer!  Anyway, from my brief moment of research it seems there can be several causes, which I won’t go into here, you can take your own chances with Google and Bowflex, but of course one is menopause, or let’s just say it, aging.  What a wrinkled piñata full of surprises that can be.

Obviously, everything on the outside of my body is starting to slide to the ground.  But everything on the inside is collapsing too.  It’s like I’m becoming my own personal sinkhole!  And I figure this has to be a big culprit.  By the way, it’s also called Queefing, which is sort of cute?  So dainty, so almost royal sounding.  And maybe I have this already, I don’t know.  Sometimes I’ll sit down, and I hear a sound, but I think it’s just someone talking to me and I have to be honest, it’s nice to have a bit of company.

But here’s the one thing we have to make sure of; Boys must never find out about this, because then they’ll all want vaginas.  Can you imagine men having MULTIPLE orifices to fart out of?  Picture a world where you’re all cozy in bed, floating through dreamland and he decides to fire off a Double Dutch Oven!!  This is not a world I want to live in. And I guarantee I am 100% committed to taking to the ramparts right now to prevent that from happeni… oh wait a second… look at my SKIN!  I need to exfoliate again!

Bob in Heaven

So, it’s taken me an awfully long time to get to the point where I think I might be even slightly interested in dipping my toe into the murky, pest-infested waters of the dating pool.  And when I say, dip my toe, I mean my toe will barely feel the water, it might even just be my toenail that skims the surface, but then my toenail would need clipping because if it hits the water first, it’s too long, I have a thing about toenails, I’m getting turned off this whole idea just talking about toenails, why are we talking about toenails, who brought up toenails, for God’s sake stop talking about toenails!  This was a bad idea, forget I ever mentioned anything about men!

You see?  I can freak myself out so easily because doing this now, after spending 30 years with someone is a lot different than back when I was, say, 19 and had just burst out of my cocoon.  All the parts were shiny and new and nothing needed greasing or priming or re-wiring.  It was all so fresh and thrilling, like the best ride at the fair.  I’m 64 now and I can tell you that the Tunnel of Love ride has a sign over the entrance that says Closed for Winter.  And not a regular winter, more like a Game of Thrones winter.  I think to get it open again and in good working order I’m gonna need a Ferrari Grand Prix pit crew.

The thing is, I thought that if I was ever going to meet someone new, I wanted it to happen organically.  That’s right, I would like the man to be grass fed, raised without anti-biotics and have access to an outside pasture.  But obviously many years have passed and nothing organic has materialized.  And I’m so reluctant to get back on the proverbial dating horse because I feel it will be filled with mortifying awkwardness and embarrassment.  I worry it could be a lot like this:

Last year I was babysitting the stupidly adorable grand-puppy Roxie and we were at the little dog park not far from me.  There was a man there who had a newly rescued dog who was quite timid, but she was awfully sweet, and she and Roxie started to race around playing dog games.  As I was standing talking to him, I thought to myself, gosh, if I keep looking at you, I think I might become attracted.  A few minutes later I was throwing the ball for Roxie, which means that after the second throw, I’m the one who fetches the ball because she’s already found an attractive new butt to sniff.  So I went to pick up the ball by a tree, and wound up to throw it again and it’s possible I may have been trying to impress my new dog friend with my fantastic form and power, which means I might have swung a little too hard and tilted off balance a bit so that when I moved my left foot to try to steady myself, it was jammed up against a big root of the tree and that was it, I was going down.  It happened so fast all I had time to think was ‘Thanks for everything hips, it’s been good to know ya.’  And then I landed hard on my left butt cheek.  I mean I landed so hard that for the first time in my life, it knocked a little bit of pee out of me!  After a few seconds I could hear some commotion from the other group of people, I weakly yelled ‘I’m okay, I’m okay’ but I just couldn’t move.  When I finally opened my eyes and looked up, standing there with his hand outstretched was the kind man that I found attractive.  Now I’m thinking I could really REALLY like you!  But I’ve peed my PANTS, so I just wanted to hightail it out of there as fast as I could harness the stupidly adorable dog and get my massively bruised butt up and moving!  I also worried that he might think he was just helping a doddering old lady who had fallen and couldn’t get up!  It is possible he was way too young for me but I figured if Tina Turner could do it…however, Tina Turner may not have peed her pants when she first met her current handsome much younger husband…and let’s face it, I’m no Tina Turner.  So, I thanked the helpful man, and then I hobbled home with Roxie, changed my underwear, and never saw him again.  And that’s what I sense dating might be for me; insecurity and fear, punctuated by embarrassing pratfalls and uncontrollable urine.

The aforementioned stupidly adorable dog

Here’s the other issue that I’ve been chewing over for a while now- What kind of man am I looking for?  I never thought of that before because I didn’t have to.  I was much younger when Bob appeared and lucky for me he was the exact type I was looking for.  But now, more than 35 years later, I feel maybe I should figure out what’s important to me.  So, let’s start with the obvious…

MUST BE FUNNY! This might be a deal breaker.  My now departed husband was a spectacularly funny human.  There were times I was in awe of how fast and clever and hilarious his brain was.  But from my experience, there doesn’t seem to be a huge supply of this type of specimen.

Pleasing to look at.  You might say, ‘Well that’s shallow!’  Maybe, but unfortunately, my shallowness runs deep.  Look, I’m not a supermodel…I’m not even an aging supermodel…but remember, I was called Hot Grandma by a young drunk in Manchester last summer, so that must count for something.

And I think it goes without saying, that he must be kind, and loves to listen to long rambling stories with no discernable point, because, as my friends will claim, that’s the only kind of story I tell.

But I have recently realized, that due to my age, this man needs to be a combination of many other things. For example, he should be, or have been a doctor, preferably a GP, so if I have a heart attack he can start CPR, but I’d like him to also have a side hustle of plastic surgery, I mean, I wouldn’t turn down a little nip and tuck here or there, but also he definitely needs to be a psychiatrist, because, you know, he’s got to live with me, plus maybe have all the trades including mechanic for obvious reasons and finally he should be gay but confused, so there’s not too much pressure on my Tunnel of Love.

There we go!  There’s my perfect match. I am apparently looking for Super ComboMan!  Shouldn’t be a problem.  I’m sure Bumble has that one perfect guy who’s funny, attractive, kind, a GP, plastic surgeon, psychiatrist, plumber, electrician, mechanic and gay.  I think I have a better chance of finding Colin Firth in the produce section squeezing cantelopes.

I wonder if he knows about plumbing?

Photo credit:
Colin Firth by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Here’s the scoop; Lisa LaFlamme had the audacity, the nerve, the unmitigated gall to let her hair go GRAY! That’s right. During Covid she did what many women did, as they sing in Frozen, she let it go. And it seems her natural colour did not pass the Loving Care shade test for a senior exec who, in the presence of actual other human beings with ears, actually allowed this sentence to actually slither out of his mouth, “Who approved the decision to let Lisa’s hair go gray?” Ladies I’ll just give you a few moments to stop choking the male closest to you. It’s okay, you can remove your hands from his neck. Yes I know he’s a man, but I’m sure he’s not this particular man, unless he is that particular man, and then hey, never leave a job unfinished.

But seriously, I don’t want to say there’s so much to unpack here, because it’s an overused expression, and also ‘unpacking’ makes it seem like it’s just a suitcase sized, possibly a small carry-on bag of issues that needs to be emptied, when I think it’s more like a container ship of grievances that has pulled in to port.

First and foremost, it goes without saying, but let me say it anyway…The ONLY person who is allowed to approve Lisa LaFlamme’s, or any woman’s hair, is the woman who has the hair!

Next (this is the loaded container ship) women are furious about this because they are tired of being told by men how they should look, behave, or sound. And it starts early. When I was about seven years old, after I tried out some early, albeit unpolished, comedy material while guests were visiting, my Father told me that little girls should be seen and not heard. He also convinced me to have my ears pinned back when I was eight because they stuck out a bit, like his, and he told me that I’d never be able to put my hair up, or go out on a windy day because of my Dumbo ears! He didn’t call them Dumbo ears, that’s me, but the inference was there. It was made clear to me early on, that just being myself was less than desirable. Making things even worse, in my early 20s I had a relationship with a man I now affectionately call Damien 666. He was in a miserable mood one day, and blamed that on me for getting my hair cut really short! This was a guy who was always carrying extra weight, and yet didn’t hesitate to tell me that I was packing on the pounds. And that’s the tip of the iceberg. I know I’m not alone, and there are worse stories than mine.

Now add the entertainment industry to that. Okay, we’re talking news here and I am definitely not a journalist so can’t really comment except that I think we all know it’s been flirting with the entertainment side for a long time. I can tell you women in the business have billions of infuriating stories. I have a few of my own, perhaps for another day. What women are reacting to with this incident is that this woman, who has performed her job in an exemplary way for years, was treated differently than the men who came before her, because of her appearance. Well, let’s compare.

LaFlamme took over the anchor chair when venerable and dehydrating Lloyd Robertson retired, of his own free will, at the age of 77! I’m sure Lloyd’s a decent sort, but he remained in the captain’s seat long after he started dying his hair some strange sort of colour concoction that might have been called Medical Test Urine. Also, I think he was doing some kind of Trump-like spray tan thing, leaving that telltale white mystery ring around the eyes. But most annoying, he was allowed to deliver the nightly news long after he started to sound like he’d had six shots of tequila before each newscast. He had slurry old guy mouth. He couldn’t really get through any story without at least one sentence sliding all together to the point of, in my opinion, hilarious incomprehension. As a matter of fact, my late husband did an impression of just that on our long-ago TV show.

Compare that to Ms. LaFlamme, twenty years younger, extremely attractive, and most importantly, like Lloyd, has all the journalistic cred to fill that position. So, was she treated differently because she was a woman…with gray hair? Well, if it walks like a TV executive and it quacks like a TV executive, then I say yes, she was screwed by a ducking TV executive.

Well let’s take a look at just how offensive this woman’s hair is…

I mean, what the heckity heck?! She looks incredible! And she definitely does not sound like she’s had multiple tequila shots, although she sure deserves to throw a few back right now.

And can we remind ourselves about some other incredible women who’ve gone au natural…

I don’t need to explain anything about these ladies. All fabulous.

And then there’s this goofball…

…Yes, I’m eating, and after writing this blog, I am actually eating my emotions. Obviously, I am also in the Silver club, and have been for a long long time, way before the young kids made gray hip. I found my first gray hair on my 19^th birthday! I’ve had plenty of time to get used to it. I did leave it alone for a long time, and then I started to cover it, but in the end it just seemed to be a losing battle, and I had a great hairdresser who started to work with the silver and the dark, but make no mistake, most of my hair is silver. Ultimately it works so much better with my face. And I’m not bragging, but everywhere I go, people tell me how much they love it. Women my age, young women, young men, and believe me, at 63 that is a tingly thrill. And so, from my strictly anecdotal evidence, I’m guessing that most everybody loved Lisa’s hair. And if ratings were down, it wasn’t because of her hair. Management, everyone’s looking at you. So let’s get Lisa back in the anchor seat, if not at CTV, then someplace where they treat everyone decently.

And I say if you want to let your hair go with nature, do it. Enjoy it! And definitely don’t let anyone, especially a man, suggest it diminishes you as a vital human being. As I’m sure many people have told the unfortunate CTV exec, it’s what’s going on underneath the coiffure that counts.

Now that I’ve got that off my chest, I have to finish my donut and go back to sleep.

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Photo credits:

Lisa LaFlamme – Creative Commons via YouTube
Judi Dench – Caroline Bonarde Ucci, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Emmylou Harris – Eric Frommer, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Helen Mirren – Harald Krichel, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Jane Fonda – Siebbi, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Linda Cullen by Jessica Timmins Venturi

I hope your last two years haven’t been too painful. Like so many people, I took a trip this summer that was originally booked for 2020. I was in the UK for quite a few weeks and it was lovely getting to spend time with family. And of course, I did an insane amount of sightseeing. On one of my adventures, I took myself to Chester. 2000 plus years ago it was a walled Roman town. But the Romans left by 400 AD because they couldn’t get a decent espresso and they were too impatient to wait for Starbucks.

Me & Chester. I look perturbed. I had just walked the wall and my feet felt like they were 2,000 years old.

I’ve been to Chester numerous times over the years, starting as a kid visiting. I’ve always loved it because of the genuine Tudor buildings. So after I had a boat ride on the River Dee, and walked the wall, I decided to head to the old shopping area called The Cross and The Rows. This place seems to be struggling a bit, like so many cities everywhere. Thanks to the pandemic, a number of places have gone. But I was content to just saunter, and then I did some moseying, and for a while I sashayed but got some suspicious looks so I reverted to the reliable mosey.

The Cross & The Rows. Historic Tudor buildings where strange characters hang out.

As I strolled past some shops, I passed a man who smiled at me, so I did what I usually do, crazy as it sounds, I smiled back. When I retraced my steps, he was still there, but this time as I passed him he said to me “Are you living a beautiful life?” Now let me just say, even though I’m a bit sceptical of the whole “mystical otherworldly” thing, I like to keep my mind open to the possibility. And if some stranger has got a message for me from beyond, I figure the least I can do is listen. I have the same philosophy with aluminum window salesmen. Years ago a man stopped me on a street in Vancouver by first telling me that the pair of bright purple Wellies matched my eyes. Maybe that was a compliment or perhaps I had a case of pink eye I wasn’t aware of. Whatever. I said thank you. Then he proceeded to instruct me on the proper method of breathing. Actually putting his hand on my midriff area…suspicious? Creepy? All of the above. But I just decided to go with it. I felt like I was about to be on the receiving end of a vital piece of life-changing intel. And sure enough, after the laying on of hands he said that there were three rules to live by. YES! Here we go! The Universe is finally coughing up the secrets that will clarify the reason for existence! I am all ears! The man took a breath and began:

RULE #1- Walk Don’t Run. Alright, not what I’d call transformative. But it’ll save my knees. Thanks universe.

RULE #2- and I was getting excited because I figured we can only go up from number one…he pauses and then says…Eat Stewed Rhubarb! What? The Universe wants me to know this? Stewed rhubarb. Rhubarb…stewed. Okay, well, maybe rhubarb will expand my consciousness? I know for sure with all the sugar you have to throw in it’ll definitely expand my waistline, so I will need to do all that walking.

And there was a third, but honestly I can’t remember, it was about as illuminating as the first two. Maybe it was Always Flush The Toilet, or Tip Your Waiter.

A small part of a 7,000 seat amphitheatre that’s been excavated. More than 2,000 years old, which means the Romans went there to see the opening of CATS!

But this guy in Chester STARTED with the ‘beautiful life’ question. Right out of the gate it felt otherworldly-ish. Universe? Is that you? I’m listening! Here’s how it went:

Man: Are you having a beautiful life?

Me: Yes.

Man: You know it’s only going to get better.

Me: (Thinking this is good stuff Universe!) Thank you!

Man: You’re going to be rich too.

Me: Can you give me a timeframe? (I don’t like to be pushy with the Universe, but it doesn’t hurt to plan)

Man: Maybe Christmas.

Me: Thank you! I’ll let you know!

On the wall. Of course the original Roman construction has been built upon, but you get the idea.

I walked away from him genuinely feeling like I’d had contact from another dimension. I felt fantastic, tingly. The Universe, or something, was telling me everything is going to be OK. I know money is not the most important thing, but maybe the ‘Whoever/Whatever’ just wanted to take a little pressure off in these uncertain times. And let me just add, I’d do a whole lot of donating. I continued my stroll through this ancient city a little lighter, feeling like something/someone was watching over me. I felt special…magically special. And then there he is again…does he have more communications from beyond?…

Me: Well hello again.

Man: What is that, American?

Me: Canadian.

Man: You’re the second Canadian I’ve talked to today.

Me: Oh. Are they going to be rich too?

Man: Well, everyone’s going to be rich.

Me: But I’ve got the edge, right? (What’s this everyone thing?)

Man: Do you want to know what it’s about?

Me: Okay? (I don’t really need the Universe to draw me a map, but, whatever.)

Man: It’s called The Reset.

Me: The what? Never heard of it. (And why is the Universe naming things?)

Man: Well the President, not the one now, the one before…

Me: (Oh for the love of…!)

Man: He’s going to make everyone rich.

Me: Okay, well, if that’s where it’s coming from, then I’ll pass.

Man: No, it’s going to be beautiful.

Me: You and I have different definitions of beauty.

I walked away.

I was perturbed, with a capital TURBED! For a number of reasons. First because that magic bubble I was in for no more than a few minutes had been stripped from me, chopped up like strips of tripe, and then shoved into the garburator and liquified. I was mad at myself for getting sucked in to the ‘Universe is Communicating with ME’ thing again. I mean how does the Universe have time? There’s an awful lot going on, just on this planet, never mind the entire ball of Singularity wax. And why would I be so special? There are billions who need aid from the Universe a helluva lot more than me. So I did need to be slapped back to reality. I just wish it had been before I’d eaten truckloads of stewed rhubarb.

But I was also mad that this spray-on tan lunacy has spread so far and wide. I was mad at everything that made that possible. I was mad at the Internet. I was mad at Al Gore for, according to him, inventing the Internet. I was mad at SAND, which is used for making computer chips. And I was mad at sand just in general because it gets in every crack! And have we not had enough chain-letter experience by now to understand that when some hustler promises wealth for all, by ALL, they mean ME. And by ME, they mean them, definitely not you.

And then I was mad at myself again, because it hit me like the smell of a sun-baked PortaPotty that I really wasn’t so different from this guy. For a few minutes I was ready to buy in to the fantasy that some ‘all-powerful’ being was going to solve all of my problems by showering me with riches from out of the blue, without me lifting a finger. And that’s the Kool-Aid this guy was drinking too. The orange chain-letter troll was going to magically turn everyone who, I assume, hooks their wagon to his clown car parade, into fabulously wealthy clowns. POOF!

So, in the end, I was glad I’d had this encounter in this ancient city. It got my feet back down onto the ancient cobbled terra firma. No more fantastical thinking. If some kind of monetary enrichment appears, it’ll be because I worked hard and made it happen, not because I signed on to a pyramid scheme, or threw a coin into the fish pond, sorry fish, I know that’s verboten. So I will get to work. I will rely on me to make things happen. I will make my life beautiful…just as soon as I go buy this week’s lottery ticket. The jackpot is HUGE!

The beautiful River Dee. On days like this I’m sure the Romans loved this place. On the remaining 350 days of rain they probably wanted to run head on into a gladiator’s sword.

But while my case is being prepared by my legal Guardians of the Alternate Universe, I have a bit of free time, so I thought this might be another good opportunity to record some more of my pointless pontificating.

Let me start my rambling with this; having a birthday anywhere near the Christmas season is kind of pointless, and it’s obvious to me I should have chosen a date much more anything-but-December-like.  It’s the worst time of year to try to get people to come to a party because everyone is so wrapped up with finding the perfect gifts that have to be all wrapped up.  And yes, they had the exact same problem at the original Christmas birthday.  I have it on good authority that Joseph and Mary sent out hundreds of invites, but look who showed up, three guys, a donkey and a cow, and I think the cow already lived there.  I hear they had awesome goody bags too.  But that’s how it goes.

Of course, in this current festive season of plague, there are so many reasons for zero party.

#1- Totally against the rules

#2- Everybody’s too busy sanitizing themselves or too busy fighting crowds at the grocery store for the last packet of yeast or too busy trying to think up believable excuses to get out of all the family Zoom chats.

My parents made me aware at a very young age just how tough it was to get anyone to commit to a party, but I didn’t believe them.  Here’s a photo of me trying to call people myself to invite them to my shindig.  I can tell you there are no photos of a party from that year, so pretty sure my attempt was futile.

A few years later, after I threatened to lodge a human rights complaint because of an absence of Birthday Party effort, Mom & Dad scrambled to find at least a few who were available to help me blow out candles…

Let me just say one thing about this… I had a LOT more dolls than that.  Yes.  Christmas birthdays are tough.

Speaking of our common pandemic predicament, I’ve discovered, over these past 9 months, that I have a disturbingly infinite capacity for sitting, immobile on the couch.  I look back at this vast stretch of time and I think ‘What the Sam Elliott have I accomplished?’  Absolutely nothing!  Well, okay, not nothing.  I did use part of the time wisely, and exercised my brain, as has been recommended by doctors, and so I learned which Property Brother was Jonathon and which was Drew.  But that only took me…well, to be honest, that literally took me all of the 9 months, but I did it and now I know the difference, as long as they don’t change their hair.

I’ve also become aware of how much more you worry during this time.  You worry about touching things.  You worry about breathing in.  You worry about breathing out.  You worry about being too close to strangers, and too far away from loved ones.  You worry about wearing a mask that doesn’t match your shoes.  And then one day, when I actually managed to get up from the couch, to go sit at the computer, I was mindlessly clicking on stuff, and I stumbled upon something I’d never heard of before, rhabdomyolysis.  A condition where if you exercise too much, your muscles liquify and you pee them out!!  That’s right!  Something worse than Covid, peeing your muscles out!  So now I was terrified of that!  What if it happened suddenly, like I’m in a grocery story, and boom, my muscles just gush out, and now I can’t drive home, because I have no MUSCLES!  And then I just gave myself a slap, and realized this was not something I would have to worry about, because I will never, ever, exercise too much.  And then I lay down on the couch again.

In my view, there is only one solution to all this; get that vaccine in us.  And the moment I’m allowed to have it, I will get it stuck in wherever they want to stick it.  And I don’t care if Bill Gates has put a chip in it to track me.  Put 10 chips in.  Please, track me going to buy broccoli.  Or toilet paper.  Track me while I have a mammogram.  Track me while I’m getting my teeth cleaned.  Track me while I’m plucking out those menopause chin hairs.  ‘Cause yeh, that’s how fascinating my life is.  Put anything you want in that vaccine Bill. In fact if you need a place to store your golf clubs, put them in the vaccine and stick it in me.  I will happily walk around clanging like The Tin Man filled with hybrid wedges, if it means I can walk around freely and get together with people I miss so much.  This is what I want for my birthday.  And that’s what I wish for everybody’s Christmas and upcoming birthday present, because then, maybe by next Christmas we’ll be able to get back to doing all those normal things that we miss so much, like gathering together, hugging and kissing, and licking the salsa off the tray at the food court… or is that just me?

Anyway, it’s time for me to stop yammering, because I see my legal eagle Rudy has been over in the corner tucking his shirt in for the last 20 minutes, so I’m hoping that’s a sign I’ve won my case.

If you have a birthday this month, I hope it was or is as happy as possible.  And as far as this Corona Christmas is concerned, well, I’m just going to do what I’ve always done; put on some chic PJs, a smart dressing gown, grab my most stylish handbag and portable bathroom and just make the best of it.

Stay safe my friend.

Photo Credit:
Rudy Giuliani by Marc Nozell from Merrimack, New Hampshire, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

And suddenly it’s the end of October!  October is significant because it’s Breast Cancer Awareness month.  I wrote about that last year, and it’s here on my Blog page if you’re interested.  I think this particular October is also significant simply because we’ve made it through another month of pandemic, and because the land to the south is about to vote.  I wish there was some kind of vaccine we could get to make both of these crises go away, but being 2020, even if there was such a thing, I have a pretty good idea where it would be administered.

Right now, I really feel the need for distraction from all things that could make me sob (begging the question Why did you let me watch My Octopus Teacher???) therefore, I thought I would write about cats, as we’ve just passed National Cat Day. (Yeh, I pretty much miss every significant day, so sorry about not sending the anniversary present.)

At the moment, I am what would technically be called a ‘recovering cat person’.  I’m actually on the Patch to manage my cat cravings.  I have been sans feline for about 4½ years and have been trying to hold off for an even longer time, if not permanently, and I’ll tell you why momentarily.  But I loved all of the cats that I adopted as an adult and also the ones I had when I was a kid, although it was a different time, and we didn’t look after them in the same way.  So, I thought I’d let you see the Rogue’s Gallery of misfits and ne’er do wells that I and then also my husband shared our lives with.

CLEO-1985?-2000

Bob, no matter how long you stare adoringly at my head, I will not look at you!

I believe Cleo was a stray, so she could have been 5 when I adopted her in 1990, or older.  She was loveable and cuddly with me; she had some kind of problem with Bob.  Perhaps it was political, or maybe she just didn’t like the cut of his jib. (Full disclosure; I had been cutting his jib, but I was definitely not a professional jib cutter) It’s too bad because he was also a true-blue Cat Guy.  But whenever he picked her up for a snuggle, she’d turn away from him, like a silent movie actress getting pulled in for a kiss by the creepy bad guy.  She’d had her front claws removed, something I would never do, but I thought it was a happy coincidence, because I had just recently purchased fairly pricey pearly pink leather loveseats, so win-WIN!  And then I learned how much damage her rear claws could do to that pricey pearly pink leather, so in reality, lose-lose.

I think Cleo was left alone too long with the creepy ventriloquist dummy.

Right out of the gate, Cleo suffered from some gastro problem, which led to her barfing on pretty much everything I owned.  In the 10 years that I and then Bob and I had her, I believe we laid out roughly the Gross National Product of Lichtenstein to veterinarians trying to find the cause.  But it remained a mystery to the end.

A happy cuddly moment between barfs. And the universally recognized leather sofa protector; a duvet cover. Still didn’t work.

And here’s something you don’t know when you adopt a stray; as mild-mannered as she was on her own, whenever she was in the presence of another cat, let’s say my parents’ cat Mitzie, when they took her to cat-sit the first time we had to travel for work, she would attack that cat with the same ferocity and viciousness of a couple of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills fighting over the last pair of sale priced Jimmy Choo’s, only with slightly less screaming.  Maybe it was all sound no fury, but I believe she truly wanted to rip their heads off and cursed the lack of front claws in those moments.

NELSON- 1999-2015

Bob and Nelson liked to have breakfast and then get down to reading the paper.

We got Nelson immediately after Cleo went to the great Cosmic Scratching Post.  He was two months old, and an adorable maniac.  I remember fondly that day when I was standing at the sink in the kitchen and all of a sudden, felt this searing pain in my right butt cheek, as if I had been shot with 10 poisonous darts.  After quickly checking that I wasn’t dying from some jungle toxin, I carefully pried Nelson from my backside. I think I still walk with a slight limp from that attack.

Sooo tiny. And he did enjoy office work.

Nelson grew from a wacky, entertaining puffball, into a handsome, serious, sensitive creature.  Bob enjoyed the occasional afternoon nap, and whenever he plunked down on the couch, Nelson was sprawled out on top of him within 30 seconds.  I can’t remember exactly when it started, but he had a habit of pooping just outside the litter box.  I don’t know how many times I told him, ‘Nelson!  It’s THINK outside the box!’  Made no difference.  It was as if he didn’t understand English.

Toulouse Lautrec obviously had a black cat.

It has always amazed me that even though he was an indoor cat, and fed the best possible food, we had numerous medical emergencies; the sliced tendon, the blocked penis(OUCH!) plus an ongoing stomach issue that started 4 or 5 years in, which ultimately led to pretty severe disease.  With Bob holding him, I syringe fed him for his last 8 months, thinking that we could turn our baby around.  But in the end, he finally had to make it clear to me that he’d had enough.

Oh man! Life! Am I right??

Handsome boy.

After micro-surgery for the sliced tendon.  I mean, what the…??? Poor wee thing.

MITZIE – 1989?-2003

Pretty girl. Possibly moments before she eviscerated our handyman. And handymen are hard to come by.

This cutie was originally my Mom and Dad’s cat…well, my Dad’s.  A few months after he died in 2000, we added Mitzie to our home because my Mother was not really the biggest animal lover and we knew that Mitzie and Nelson got along like a house on fire.  They chased each other around the house like cartoon cats and when Mitzie caught Nelson they’d wrestle each other and nobody ever got mad and claws never came out.  And she would cuddle with Nelson which was the best possible outcome.  She was a loveable girl who was obsessed with rubbing her head on anything she could grab on to, often Bob.

A mutually beneficial arrangement.

She was just the sweetest, most sociable little thing…until you picked her up.  And then she unleashed 18 Ginsu knives that could slice and dice one moderately sized human into bite sized pieces with just four lightning swipes.

Whenever we had to get her into a carrier for a vet visit, it was like running a highly dangerous secret ops mission:

Happy together…and also that was a heated floor.

“All right troops, without Target’s knowledge, secure the crate and place in hidden position, lure Target to the designated spot with promise of treat, while Target eats treat, rear team grabs Target and pivots NO MORE than two inches to crate opening, insert Target in crate, and CLOSE DOOR as fast as humanly possible!  Good luck team, and let’s everybody come back alive!”

I think somewhere around a year after we got her, she started showing signs of illness, which meant that she barfed on just about everything we owned that hadn’t already been barfed on by Cleo.  Heavy sigh.

BELLA  2003?

The only photo I could find of Bella, before she became ill.

I can’t remember the exact year we had her.  She was a tiny shivering stray that we found practically on our front doorstep coming home on a cold rainy night.  As soon as she saw us she started crying.  Of course, we took her in.  We thought she was 4 or 5 months old.  She was just the most loveable thing.  She liked adults, kids, other cats, although Mitzie was not thrilled with her.  Whenever Bella walked past her, Mitzie would give her a whack.  Perhaps Mitzie had become a grumpy grandma.  But after a few months, it turned out she was severely ill.  I think that might have been why she was so small, because the vet thought she was older than she looked.  And I also think that might have been why she was dumped on the street.  And so, heavy sigh, we let her go to the Great Scratching Post.

WINSTON  2001-2016

Looong before Elf On The Shelf, Bonehead in the Bookcase.

I read something written by a cat expert, probably a vet, a few years ago, and they said that if you’re thinking about getting another cat as a ‘friend’ or playmate for a cat you already have, you probably shouldn’t bother.  They’re not pack creatures.  They’re cats, and they are pretty content on their own.  They’re the Greta Garbo of the Animal Kingdom.  I read that roughly fourteen years too late.  Don’t get me wrong, we loved Winston.  He was adorable and hilarious.  About a month and a half after Mitzie was called to the Big Litterbox, I thought Nelson sounded lonely.  He would walk up to us letting out these sad, pathetic meows.  I later realized that was just him.  He was a bit of a whiner.  But I said let’s go get him a friend!  So, we did.  And we made a point of picking someone who seemed as playful as Mitzie was. What could go wrong?  And on that score, we were successful.  Winston was very playful, almost too much sometimes, so that Nelson would get mad, a fight would ensue and then they’d bring out the automatic weapons and police would be called.  Good times!  It was clear pretty early on the difference in their personalities.  Winston was such a clown, so we called him The Comedian.  Nelson, on the other hand, was serious, sensitive, so he became known as The Critic.

His dirty little secret…he loved to roll around in the armpits of Bob’s shirts.  Musk anyone?

I used to wonder why Winston ended up at the shelter, seeing as he was such a loveable bonehead.  It took me many years to figure it out.  As a matter of fact, I really wasn’t absolutely sure until after Nelson was gone: Winston was a pee monster.  He peed on EVERYTHING.  Everything that hadn’t been barfed on by Mitzie and Cleo, plus everything that HAD!  Leave a plastic bag on the floor too long?  Pee.  Buy an attractive basket to hold newspapers?  Pee.  Stack your sweaters in your closet on a shelf?  True story; we’re getting ready to go dancing at a club one night, and I realized when I put on the ONE sweater I wanted to wear, it had that familiar odor! WTFFFFF!??  But maybe nobody but me will get a whiff.  Did I mention I’m delusional?  We started dancing.  Body heated up.  I notice the floor starts to clear around me leaving me boogying solo in my urine soaked cloud!!

The one and only time they snuggled this close.  I think they were drunk.

Nelson contributed a little bit to this bladder anarchy, but I believe he started peeing just to maintain his self-respect in the face of that jerk!  I tried everything; litter boxes in every room.  Pheromones!  I sprayed pheromones all over our homes, even spritzed a bit behind my ears!  It did nothing for the cats, and even less for Bob.  The end result was that I spent thirteen years washing, scrubbing, laundering, baking soda-ing EVERYTHING to make sure our home didn’t smell like we had 200 cats instead of 2!  I hope I was successful.  After Nelson died, I realized that I had blamed him for a lot of the indiscriminate liquid dispersal, and regretted that.  Once he was gone, it became clear why Winston had been given up.  And yet, I loved that little house wrecker.

Can you guess which one is always up for a game?

So perhaps you’ve picked up on clues to answer the question Why Doesn’t Linda Get Another Cat During Covid So At Least She Has Some Company And Then She’ll Stop Bothering Us?

I get it.  You’re tired of me showing up at your place when I’m not in your Safe 6, or Double Bubble, or even know you.

The answer is that for those 26 years that I deeply loved those soft, warm, adorable house wreckers, it was nothing but barf, pee and poo, vets, vet bills.  And I’m just not ready to do that again.

Winston LOVED to lick…but these adorable moments usually ended up with someone(Nelson) storming off.

I’ve heard about people who adopt cats and never have a day of health problems, and then after a long life, the cat pops her clogs when she goes to sleep one night.  I’ve heard tell in stories told ‘round a campfire, of people who put unrelated felines together and they all cozy up like long lost Frat brothers.  I’ve heard these stories, but I think they’re just legends, urban myths.

Portrait of a young cat as a goofball

Some have suggested I might be cursed in that department and it’s hard to argue that point. I did have TWO black cats, after all.  Who knows what spells they may have spun on me.  I just don’t want to test the theory.

So for now I take pleasure in other people’s non-universal-peeing pets.  I’ve got the cravings under control…eeee, look at these pretty things…

…I’m booking a doctor’s appointment…I think I need a fresh patch.

One of my favourite shots of us, a publicity photo many years ago for our TV show.

There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned pandemic for drawing one’s attention to the vast deep hole created by a departed loved one. My husband has been gone now for just a smidge over three and a half years and if I thought I was making progress and learning to live without him in at least an accepting and contented way pre-lockdown, the arrival of our Viral invader was like the punchline to that old joke; ‘Not so fast Ferguson!’

Almost immediately after Bob died, I became intensely aware of just how much I relied on him for what feels like everything! And not the least of which, anything technological, which means I now have computers with problems that I really can’t even begin to fathom what to do with, that I’m essentially just piling up so when they reach the perfect height, will become an art installation that I’ll call What Killed Linda. Yes yes, I know there are places to take them but I’m always nervous about explaining the issues. I’m usually terrified of having to call the cable provider about trouble because the only question I can confidently answer is What is your name?… and on some days I’m a bit hazy on that too.

I think when he was alive, I didn’t want to admit just how much I looked to him for guidance, answers, thoughts. But when the lockdown hit, it all became crystal clear. Bob had a lot of thoughts about a lot of things, and if you knew him, you probably heard most of them. He was a good human who had spent many many hours thinking about the bigger questions of life and when I met him, for the most part I loved the way he viewed the world. He reassured me so much and crucially, made me feel safe.

Therefore, at this strange moment on the planet, I would have relied on him to make some kind of sense of it all, which I think he would have been able to do, at least a little bit, I mean, really, who can make full sense of this. It’s a bit like watching a Charlie Kaufman movie; What the hell is happening and when will this end??? But he was a Big Picture guy, and I believe that helped him to avoid getting tangled up in unimportant details. A phrase he liked, I can’t remember where he got it from, was Expect the Unexpected, and I know that would have been the basis of most of his thought right now. He was also fond of Everything’s gonna be OK. I liked that one too.

And we would have talked and talked and talked. We would have told everyone that spending 24/7 together had made absolutely no difference to our lives, because we’d been doing that for years.

That’s what I miss in this moment; his steady hand on the tiller, his amazing company, and of course his humour. I can’t begin to imagine the jokes he probably would have written during this time. Or he might’ve started writing another book, he didn’t like to be idle, until it got to 4 o’clock cocktail hour, and then he was perfectly happy to down tools.

So, in this time of plague, I have thought about him so much, and missed him, every day. And especially today, his birthday. He would have been 75. I promised him at the beginning of 2017 that when he was through his health crisis, we would go to Hawaii, which we both loved. And so that’s where I like to think he is, on this day. He wasn’t an organized religion kind of guy, but he believed in the Mystery, so I hope that sometime soon he’ll find a way to communicate with me, and fill me in on the Big Picture…and also what to do with the computers.

Hawaii, his most favourite place, where I think he is now

To all those who feel a similar absence, may I offer a well sanitized, virtual hug. Everything’s gonna be OK.

This is pre 3-hole/match styling. Made driving very difficult.

Not with the virus du jour, but with another insidious bug that, like Corona Virus, managed to get into my brain and immediately started chewing away at the only part of my Thinking Thing that’s of any use to me, the area where my sense of humour is generated, known as the Post Frontal Temperamental CereDumDum. The symptoms started to show almost immediately; no motivation, inability to think of anything funny and the somewhat disturbing development of a kind of tic, that manifested in such a way that whenever I was chatting with other humans, digitally or in full flesh, I would start to make these moaning sounds, kind of like a sick elk, and then I’d drone on with “I’m just not sure what the POINT is anymore? Who cares about my nonsense?…Hello? Are you listening? You look like you’ve fallen asleep behind your mask.” And I repeated this so much that when people asked me to socially distance, they would request not two metres, but roughly three provinces. And I understood, because I may not have been a full-on Debbie Downer, but I definitely felt like I was becoming a Linda Loser? Linda Lumpy? Linda Landfill? (sadly there’s no satisfying alliterative alternative that begins with an L)

I wondered how I could possibly have contracted this? Had I finally licked all the books in my neighbourhood Tiny Library one too many times?

I thought maybe I should get myself tested, but who would I go to for this affliction, and what if there’s a line-up? And, most importantly, would there be cookies after? I was also pretty certain that if there was a threateningly long swab involved, with my luck, it wasn’t going to be shoved up my nose.

Here’s a shot of a goofy cat, because I don’t think anyone needs to see me with a swab stuck who knows where?

So, I decided to ride it out on the couch. At those moments when I took a brief pause from chowing down on donated Covid Banana Bread, if I had the strength, I’d pick up the phone and scroll through Facebook for what I was sure was just a few minutes, but was actually three hundred HOURS!

And here was one of the sources of my ongoing malady. I would look at the many many MANY things that folks were putting up on social media, a lot of them incredibly inventive, funny creations, some not so much. But I would think “I’m not sure I can compete in this universe anymore.” And yes, I know Oprah would say, “It’s not a competition, just be yourself and do what you love and makes you happy Giiirrrrlll!” Good advice Oprah, and thanks for dropping into my blog free of charge. But I’m not gonna lie, I still felt a bit competitive.

And it got to the point where I started to consider packing it in for good. If this nasty little bug had wiped out all of my ability to be funny, or at the very least for ME to think I’m funny, even if nobody else did, then maybe it was time to hang up my rubber chicken. Maybe I was too old, and my humour genes were shriveled up.

Maybe this bug I’d picked up was permanent and it really was time to start looking at the days of entertaining as being well and truly over. My partner in life and comedy was gone, perhaps it was time for me to let go of who I thought I was, call it a career and start knitting dishcloths. I would say this was the nastiest part of this infection, the fevered thoughts in my head, spinning around constantly, even though I was otherwise motionless. I was starting to get a little desperate to find some way out of this, and even though I know Donald Trump is a 4-Star Michelin Moron, I thought OK, perhaps I should be more open minded. I feel almost certain a bleach colonic is probably not a great idea, but maybe if I tried swallowing a night-light or one of those Bell & Howell Bionic Spotlights, maybe that’ll kill this fun-devouring mind-numbing microbe. Things were getting pretty dark.

And then something strange happened. Right out of the blue I started getting up early. Now let me just tell you, I have been a challenged sleeper for probably 25 years or more, therefore I am not a morning person. I usually drag myself out of bed around 8:30, groggy and angry, because I was awake at least twice through the night. But about a month ago, I started getting up on average between 6:30 and 7:30 every morning. One morning I got up at 6:10!! Voluntarily!!! I think the last time I did that was probably December 25, 1963 because, thanks to my expert sleuthing, I knew I was getting a Tressy Doll that year. I did not know who I WAS anymore. I felt like I’d been possessed by the ghost of a farmer. I’d be up at 6:30 and then wander through my building looking for cows to milk. I was making quite a few dog walkers very nervous. Was this caused by my strange condition? Or had I crossed over into that senior phase of life where it’s impossible to sleep past that first sparrow toot, so you get up and go sit on the front stoop and yell at kids all day long.

But after a few weeks of this, I could feel my strange sickness starting to ebb. Something began to percolate in my brain again. Words were floating around, bumping into each other until they would stick together, like microbes do, forming sentences. Sentences I found somewhat amusing. And my motivation to plant myself in front of a computer returned, even though that motivation always comes slathered in heavy dollops of fear and self-doubt. But I started to feel the What’s the Point-ness fading. I can’t tell you what the magic therapy was. Perhaps there’s something to be said for sitting on your butt on the couch for months on end. Or maybe it was binging on Justified, my all-time favourite series…until The Great came along. Who knows?

I’m crossing my fingers that I’ve gained some immunity to prevent a relapse, because as I’m sure everyone now understands, Corona Virus is like your third cousin five times removed who’s been staying in your basement for eight months; uninvited and really hard to get rid of.

The good news for me is I’m going to get these blogs done for my own enjoyment and stop worrying about whether there’s any point because who am I kidding, there’s rarely a point to what I write anyway. If I’m lucky my blathering is good news for you too. But it’s OK if it’s not. There are millions and millions out there in the ether to choose from.

So, I hope you’ve managed to dodge this nastiness and also that you remain healthy. Definitely take my advice and don’t lick the libraries. And if you’re in desperate need of some coiffure correction, I’ve got a box of matches and that 3-hole punch ready to go…I’ll bring a fire extinguisher too.

And here’s a beautiful garden, which is pretty much the only place we’re allowed to go these days.