Favourite Quotes

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” ~ Nelson Mandela "I've heard of denial ... but I don't think it exists." ~ Unknown "With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." – Steven Weinberg “Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.” ~ Aristotle "When tampons are considered more dangerous than loaded firearms, I think it's safe to say Texas Republicans have gone completely off the deep end." ~ Rachel Maddow "It was nice of you to let him (GWB) have a go, because, in England, he wouldn't be trusted with a pair of scissors." ~ Russell Brand "There is little in this world that can't be fixed with a yoga mat and a bottle of Baileys!" ~ Rob Morris "You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life." ~ Winston Churchill "I think the fact that I’m standing here receiving this award actually says more about Canada than it does about me." ~ k.d. lang "Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't." ~ Margaret Thatcher "Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet." ~ Napoleon Bonaparte "Your mind knows only some things. Your inner voice, your instinct, knows everything. If you listen to what you know instinctively, it will always lead you down the right path." ~ Henry Winkler "A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation." ~ Mayor of Bogota "What the mind doesn't understand, it worships or fears."~ Alice Walker "Bad grammar puts me in a comma." ~ Unknown "For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law -- for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well." ~ President Obama, January 21, 2013 "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." ~ MLK "Candy Crush is just JAM vs. jelly." ~ Montyjam "When carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense is understood NOT as a failure of civil society, to be mourned, but as an act of citizenship, to be vaunted, there is little civilian life left." ~ Jill Lepore "I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done." ~ Lucille Ball "We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society." ~ Hillary Clinton "You can choose your friends but you sho' can't choose your family ..." ~ Harper Lee "If Canada is to survive, it can only survive in mutual respect and in love for one another." ~ Pierre Eliiott Trudeau “A healthy person has 1,000 wishes - An ill person has but one.” ~ Unknown "Nothing is impossible to a determined woman." ~ Louisa May Alcott "Maybe it's like it says in the Bible - I felt bad because I had no shoes, but then I met someone who had really bad shoes." ~ Karen Walker "When I say religion is a mental illness, this is what I mean: it corrodes your mental faculties to the point where you can believe in tiny ninja warriors who hide in vaginas and lie in wait for bad people's sperm." ~ Bill Maher "Good girls go to heaven. Bad girls go everywhere." ~ Helen Gurley Brown “Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.” ~ Kurt Vonnegut "Man cannot live on chocolate alone; but woman sure can." ~ Author Unknown "Wear something cute and don't take any crap." ~ Clinton Kelly “For me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.” ~ Barack Obama “The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn’t mean God doesn’t love heterosexuals, it’s just that they need more supervision.” ~ Lynn Lavner "You cannot live to be 60 years old, using, manipulating and hurting people without expecting a return on your investment one day." ~ Cheryl Periman "When men get pregnant, they can decide." ~ Pam Alexander "Living well is the best revenge." ~ George Herbert “My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.” ~ Jack Layton "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way in which its animals are treated." ~ Mahatma Gandhi ‎"Never confuse fashion and style. Fashion relies on unattainable looks on women with unrealistic bodies. Style is about utilizing the best aspects of you". ~ Stacy London Prince Harry to Prince William ~ "Wait until you see her!" "Living in two countries is not for weenies." ~ Mary Sue Morris "Well-behaved women seldom make history." ~ Laurel Thatcher Ulrich "Fool! Don't you see now that I could have poisoned you a hundred times had I been able to live without you!" ~ Cleopatra VII "For me there are only two types of women: goddesses and doormats." ~ Pablo Picasso

You Are DRIVING Me Crazy!

I am so tired of explaining to people how I can be a strong, independent woman WITHOUT a driver's license. I am also tired of being discriminated against by the government, banks, etc. because I don't have a driver's license to use as ID. I had to go and wait for hours to get a provincial ID because I was so tired of shit-kicking I got everywhere without a driver's license. But it is the comments about not being "strong" or "independent" because I don't drive. What the FUCK does that have to do with my personality? Makes me spitting mad!!! Living in mid-town Toronto, we do use public transit whenever we can. Thankfully, my husband is also a city boy. What I should have said was "When is the last time you went to Istanbul? I didn't need a driver's license to get there!" LOL

Unbelievable ...

This is a letter I wrote to my house-sitter which I did not send. It was simply an exercise designed to help lower my blood pressure, which is already down a couple points this morning! I decided not to send it to her but still want it out there, in cyber space, so Karma can get a whiff of it and make her own decision on how she wants to handle it. I leave it up to her ...

*NOTICE* ~ This is not a nice letter but I needed to say it and I feel better now. :)

I still can’t believe what you did. Every time I turn around here, I find something else missing, broken or soiled. We entrusted you with our HOME and yet you found it necessary to treat us like this? I guess I will never understand people like you. I thought we were friends and relied on you to be an honest, caring and competent person. I still can’t believe that (1) I misjudged you so completely (2) you think you did nothing wrong.

Your attitude throughout this entire ordeal (and believe me, it was an ordeal for us being thousands of miles away, wondering what the hell was going on here) has been condescending and evasive. Frankly, when you cancelled the housekeeper the first time, I had the fleeting instant of fear that you were hiding something. It seems I was right. We paid over $2,000 for the piece of furniture that you broke.

If you had been honest with us when it happened, we would have told you to call the manufacturer (their showroom is a mere two blocks away) and arrange for them to come in to look at it at our expense. If it needs to be taken away for repair, wouldn’t it have made more sense to do it while we were still away? As it is now, I will probably have to live with clothing all over my beautiful bedroom due to your artifice.

Thank you so much for your note. It was such a wonderful surprise to read it upon our return close to midnight after a long arduous day of travel. I was up until 3AM, trying to put my house back together. Frankly, it was smart of you to leave before we got here. I would not have hesitated to put you out on the street for what you did to our home.

Oh and thank you for totally RAPING the fridge before your departure. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite sure how to make a breakfast the next morning using only mustard and capers. Was it really necessary to take almost everything and not even have the common decency to leave us a crust of bread? Please don’t try to tell me that you went through an entire 1 kg jar of garlic in 12 weeks. Open your fridge. See it there? Jesus Christ.

Given the way you run your life, it really should not be such a surprise to me that you did all this but I still can’t believe it. And since you obviously go to great lengths to avoid confrontations of any kind -- refusing my phone calls, not answering my emails and removing me as a friend on Facebook (what are we, in high school for fuck’s sake?) -- I advise you VERY strongly to avoid me at all costs for the foreseeable future.

Need to Blog

I don't know why but I feel the need to blog again. Not that anything exciting is happening in my life at the moment other than tornado warnings. Fortunately, the storm has passed and the sun is setting beautifully judging from the view from my window in JAMland. Something is taking photos with a flash from the tall apartment building on J Avenue (two blocks north of us) and I keep seeing it out of the corner of my eye, thinking that the lightning has returned. We were worried somewhat about the large maple tree in our neighbours' front yard. It's big, old and gnarly, with large branches reaching out over top of our house. But it has survived another storm and we are extremely thankful for that.

I'm hot and I'm full of spaghetti with homemade meat sauce so I'm going to hit the shower to rinse off. Keep watching this space for more updates, coming soon. I don't know what I'll write about but I'm sure I'll find something. Life in Toronto has a way of pissing you off or delighting you -- it all depends on the day!

The Wisdom of Pooh

Recession? Bah Humbug!

I am so sick of hearing about "the recession". Frankly, my life hasn't changed one iota in the last three months. It is actually cheaper to buy gas and the stuff in stores is marked down before the end of the year instead of after. Another good thing that has happened is all the obnoxious Xmas ads have been somewhat diminished so I am not as annoyed as I usually am at this time of year. So YAY for that!

The media is blowing this all out of proportion and it's becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. People are going into full panic mode and I just don't understand it. Sure the automotive industry for American-made cars is in trouble but they needed self-correction after innundating the roads with below-standard products for years. Don't punish the employees. They were just following orders and doing their job. MAKE A BETTER PRODUCT!!!

I suppose the people who are carrying a heavy debt load must be suffering but really, if you live beyond your means, you have to expect the bottom to fall out sometime. Today is the day. If you bought a big expensive house that you couldn't really afford, you deserve to go down with everyone else who runs their life like a business always in the red.

There are a lot of people out there who have no debt, live within their means, save 20% or more of their income every year. We are all doing just fine, thank you very much. We are not living a champagne lifestyle on a beer budget. We don't drive our cars to work every day and we don't eat out in fancy restaurants every night. And we use the crockpot every once in a while ...

Tis The Season To Kill Trees

We saw several stores advertising “live” trees for sale over this past weekend and when I saw them cut, bound and ready to be transported to someone’s Christmas tree stand for a short stint of celebrity covered in energy-sucking lights and tinsel that would clog landfills for years to come, I felt a little sick. Once the blade hits the trunk of any tree, it is d.e.a.d. :(

How do we get the balls to keep doing this, year after year? I have a great respect for trees and the positive contribution they make to this pollution-filled world we live in. What part of “An Inconvenient Truth” didn’t y’all understand? *sigh*

Anyway, at the very least, couldn’t they call them “real” trees? (Although even that would be stretching the truth in my opinion.). LEAVE THE TREES IN THE GROUND PLEASE! That is where they do the best work of their long, productive lives.

Is Beige the New Black?

I saw three people wearing beige today and I can tell you, I was not impressed.

What is with these overweight businessmen who hang on to their ratty, beige trench coats for years? And they tie the belt around their waists instead of securing it property. Rob ties his belt but then, he's got a 32" waist so it looks OK. Fat men who do this look like a sausage, cut in half.

Then I saw one of our neighbours, enjoying his morning coffee at a local cafe. He was wearing a beige "mock" turtleneck sweater under a chocolate brown sports jacket. I will admit that this man is also rather large but he is tall and carries his weight well. He has white hair and is rather distinguished looking. However the beige sweater simply negated all those good attributes. And why is it called a "mock" turtleneck? Is it a turtleneck wannbe???

Finally, I saw a young, blonde woman on her way to work wearing a beige down-filled, knee-length winter coat with running shoes. *sigh* There was so much wrong with her outfit, I don't know where to start. Frankly, blondes should never wear beige. It wipes them out colour-wise. The bare legs and the running shoes are also a big no-no. And while we're on the topic, wearing running shoes anywhere except the gym is just stupid.

I have yet to meet anyone who looks good in beige. I don't even like the sound of the word: b.e.i.g.e. It sounds icky and it looks icky. I think it should be outlawed in the fashion world and kept strictly for use in hospital morgues.