Water…

It has been raining constantly lately. I must be really tired of it. It is obviously getting to me because yesterday I wrote this very ‘serious’ poem about water. Ahem!

Water is an essential element

They say I’m 60% water
I thought it was more, still
Water is an essential element.

PERHAPS I WOULD HAVE DROWNED

If there were no water
I’d never have learned to swim
Perhaps I would have drowned.

MAYBE WE’D ALL DRINK WHISKEY

What would we drink without water?
Maybe we’d all drink whiskey
with breakfast, lunch and dinner.

WE’D FALL INTO THE FLOWING RIVER

We’d all be so drunk we’d fall
into the flowing river
On the way home.

WE WOULDN’T HAVE UMBRELLAS.

Without water there would be no rain
We wouldn’t have umbrellas
And would get soaked through and through.

P.S. I’ve been writing this blog for a long time. You may enjoy this old post, ‘Favorite Sayings’, dated June 8, 2012. Just go to the upper right where the eyeglass is and type in the name.

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It is really hot!!!

I don’t do heat graciously.

It IS hot!!! I don’t do heat graciously. We’re breaking records daily. How anyone can doubt the warming of our planet is beyond me. Meanwhile our current weather is more than I can deal with.

I had good intentions and was planning to write about something else, but I can’t concentrate. I think my brain is fried — so instead, I’ll tell you what happened on my walk this morning.

I think my brain is fried.

It was early and already too hot. My clothes were sticking to my body. I was miserable. I meandered into a local AIR CONDITIONED drugstore to cool off. As I slowly walked up and down each blessedly cool aisle, I spotted the blood pressure machine.

I’d been fine and my doctor hasn’t seen me since before the pandemic started. My blood pressure hasn’t been tested. Brilliant! I’ll sit down and check it and be COOL while I’m at it. Ahhhhh…

I did just that. Sat down and placed my left arm into the cuff. Turned the machine on and waited patiently as it told me the test was in progress.

When it was over, the results printed for the world to see were: 0 0 0. Does that mean I’m dead????

Does that mean I’m dead???

Idiomatic idioms..

Having taught some poor souls struggling with the complexities of the English language, I know what a son-of-a-bitch idioms can be. They don’t say what they mean and even kids born into English speaking families are sometimes confused by them.

My own son, at three, opened those

Little Rafi with big sister Susan

big eyes of his in terror when my friend told him she was picking him up from nursery school because his dad was ‘tied up’. She quickly noticed Rafi’s distress and explained his dad was just too busy to come. Whew!

A son of Polish immigrants painfully related what happened long ago in his 7th grade woodworking class. Dissatisfied with his sanding job, the instructor told him to use more ‘elbow grease’. Having no idea what that meant, he told his teacher he didn’t have any. I hope teachers today would be kinder, but he was sent to ask another teacher to ask for  some. He’s never forgotten how embarrassed he was when that teacher and his whole class burst into laughter.

It’s raining cats and dogs

When I taught an adult night class, I had one student who loved idioms. He’d regularly watch English TV and bring in the idioms he didn’t understand and ask me to explain them. He brought in many, including ‘The buck stops here; The Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree; and Don’t upset the apple cart’.

 

We live in a rain forest

We live in a rain forest. It happened to pour the evening I told him we’d say: ‘It’s raining cats and dogs’. I then asked what they’d say in Chinese. He seemed uncomfortable and said he couldn’t tell me. I didn’t push it. The next week, he came into class. came up to me and said ‘I can tell you now. We say ‘It’s raining dog excrement.’

I didn’t laugh. But I found the whole incident hilarious and have never forgotten it! Well, we’ve had a whole lot of rain lately and it’s been raining dog excrement for weeks for sure! Enough already….

Enough already!

 

 

 

Thank you for reading my blog. I love that you do. Enjoy whatever you are celebrating — and may 2020 be kind to us all.

 

What really matters — a rant.

Watching the news these days is painful. For a while, we in Canada could feel a little smug, what with the political goings-on in the U.S., but we’re in the midst of a federal election right now and I’m in despair.

                       Justin Trudeau, present Prime Minister, Liberal Party

Andrew Scheer, Conservative Party

 

The ‘debates’ (a term used loosely) held on TV with the leaders of the various parties vying for power were so discouraging, I turned my TV off with frustration as I cried: ‘A pox on all your houses!’

 

I hope no one living anywhere else bothered to watch. It was too embarrassing and nothing like what I was taught when I participated on debating teams at school.

Jagmeet Singh, New Democratic Party

 

It wasn’t only my poor hearing that made it impossible to understand what they were saying, they talked over each other, interrupting and arguing and wasted time referring to errors made years ago instead of discussing the very important issues now facing our country and the world and their plans to improve things.

Elizabeth May, Green Party

What kind of example did they set for our younger citizens? Is such rudeness acceptable???

 

Where were their heads anyway? I don’t care about what someone thought years ago. We all make mistakes and learn from them and hopefully grow. I’ve certainly changed my own ideas and if I hadn’t, I’d be stuck in the thinking of the 1950s. I imagine and hope they have grown too.

Yves-Francois Blanchet, Bloc Quebecois

 

C’mon. Let’s stick to the issues. I wanna know what you’re planning to change. I worry about the future: the climate and environment; much needed childcare; making education more accessible for the young; the homeless in our streets; the orcas in our waters, etc., etc. etc.

Let’s concentrate on what really matters.

Maxime Bernier, People’s Party

I am grateful to be living in Canada — it IS a wonderful democracy.  I want it to stay this way long after I am gone.

P.S. To be fair, I’ve tried to make all these photos the same size. I’m not too good at it….

Stretching a dollar can save the environment

photo by Chandra

My first mother-in-law liked to say she could stretch a dollar — and she could. After all, her generation lived through the Depression. Besides, before she left her native Poland as a young woman, her father was unable to meet his debts and officials came, locked up all their possessions, and hauled everything away. They were left destitute — she never forgot that.

 

I could easily please her by buying apples or tomatoes for her on sale — and telling her so. I was young. I was stupid. I thought she went too far.

 

 

She could work wonders with her sewing machine

An experienced seamstress, she worked wonders

A tablecloth with burns in it became kitchen curtains

with her sewing machine. When her adult sons burned holes in her cloth tablecloth, she cut them down to make kitchen curtains. When the sun faded areas of the curtains, she cut them further and made handkerchiefs.

 

I was in charge of finding clothes for her to be buried in when she died. I was embarrassed when I had to tell the funeral home I couldn’t find any underwear without patches. They were clean. They were neatly repaired, but they were patched. Well, I already told you I was young and stupid. What difference could it possibly have made?

I don’t have her skills

Lately, I find myself rethinking that period of my life. I sometimes think I’ve become my late mother-in-law, but for very different reasons. I can’t match her sewing skills, but these days, like her, I find myself wanting to really use things up — for the sake of the environment. She may not have considered that, but little was wasted or thrown out in her well-organized, thrifty household! She was an accidental environmentalist!

She was an accidental environmentalist

I wonder if my kids think I’ve lost it? I take my own plastic containers along in case I’ll be taking restaurant food home. I carry used plastic bags when shopping for veggies or fruit. I use towels until they’re threadbare and then cut them down for cleaning rags. We need to create less garbage for our cities’ dumps. I reuse paper gift bags….

 

I use less paper to save our forests

I make my own ecologically gentle cleaning fluid (Vinegar, Baking Soda, Water) and use it for most surfaces in my household. The backs of printed pages are fine for when I print stuff which isn’t going elsewhere — we need to save trees and forests. I also want our seas to be healthier for the creatures living in them and I want the air to be better to breathe.

Remy, taller than me and proud of it!

 

Yes, I want a lot. I have children and grandchildren I love more than anything. I want there to be a beautiful world for those who are younger to enjoy in the future. I want it for you too…..

Complaining again???

photo by Chandra

I heard on CBC Radio a group of young people is suing the US government regarding destruction of the environment. The warnings are ominous — if we don’t act right now, the future looks bleak. Scientists warn hundreds of thousands will die of thirst and lack of food due to climate warming.

I live in what is supposedly a forward-thinking country, so what’s wrong with our politicians. Our young prime minister has young children of his own. Is he not concerned about their future? He insists the Trans Mountain pipeline will/must be built. He’s already committed my tax dollars to it.

 

Trans Mountain Pipeline

If the federal government succeeds, this pipeline will carry diluted bitumen all the way from Edmonton, Alberta, right across our ‘Naturally Beautiful’ British Columbia to Burnaby. From there the bitumen will travel by tanker across the water to wherever they want to process our dirty oil.

Trans Mountain Pipeline, not pretty

Where there are pipes there ARE leaks, and the risk of oil spills along the route are likely. What the increased tanker traffic will do to our already stressed and endangered orcas and other marine life can only be imagined. I’m heartbroken…

tanker to carry bitumen on our waters

The governing party in my province needed the small Green Party to form a coalition in order to give them a majority. I counted on the Greens to keep them from doing too much harm to our environment.

Still, our province has approved a huge Liquid Natural Gas project In Kitimat, the Northern part of B. C. There is nothing ‘natural’ about the process used to extract the gas.Would you want something  looking like this in your back yard?

LNG Project.

Besides, we’re told this ‘massive’ project will require a 670 kilometre ‘Coastal GasLink’ pipeline to the LNG plant. Another pipeline….and more tankers in our waters.
There are dozens of LNG projects around the world. Just check Mr. Google.

Recently, I read about a housewife located close to one LNG project who complained you could light the water coming out of her kitchen faucets with a match. Would you want to drink that? The officials claimed the LNG fracking had nothing to do with it.

LNG Tanker — what will it do to marine life?

Years ago, when California announced tight restrictions on environmentally damaging cars or projects, opponents believed businesses would flee en-masse or collapse. It never happened. Instead California became a leader in safer, cleaner and lucrative industries. (Check it out.)

You may disagree

What would I prefer? Thinking about creating healthier, less environmentally damaging projects for the financial well-being of our children in the future. You need not agree with me. These are just my thoughts…. You are welcome to try to convince me I’m wrong.

Who took my sunshine away?

photo by my Susan

I’ve been betrayed. People I’d grown to believe in let me down. Is this really true? Does this mean I can’t depend on them anymore? I was promised sunshine, not only for yesterday, but for the whole weekend too. It didn’t happen!

It used to be I never took weather predictions seriously. They were so often wrong, it was easy to think some beautiful young woman from Romania had convinced the powers that be she could tell the weather by placing her finger on her forehead while facing north. She was usually wrong, but so was everyone else in those days.

Besides, the girl had chutzpah and sex appeal, so they continued to employ her. Why not. no one actually counted on the accuracy of those predictions. We were smarter than that.

She had chutzpah and sex appeal

meteorologist with fancy degree

These days, professional ‘meteorologists’ with fancy degrees tell us what is going to happen and show computerized ‘proof’ of why and when and what we will get weather-wise for days to come. It looks real enough, and it’s on television. Doesn’t that mean it’s true? I’ve grown to depend on it. I dress accordingly before venturing out each morning. Well, this week they’ve let me down big time.

The other day my legs practically froze on my morning walk. The next day, I wore leggings under my jeans, layered my clothing, covered my head in a wool cap, wore my gloves and wrapped my scarf carefully round my neck. I was prepared. The sun shone so brilliantly and it was so warm, you could have fried eggs on the sidewalk. (Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but I had to take my gloves off, unzip my jacket, and tear off my hat —  totally ruining my high class hairdo.)

I shivered with cold

I don’t give up on people just like that folks. Promised more sunshine for the rest of the week, yesterday I left my warm clothes at home and set out feeling noble because after lunch, I’d be going to my exercise class. It rained. It poured! The wind blew mercilessly. I shook with cold. Rain drops gathered on my glasses. I could have used windshield-wipers for them. My bare hands were so cold my fingers felt like icicles and I could hear those experts howling with laughter at my distress. It’s a conspiracy I tell you!

Do you mean I can’t depend on those meteorologists who sound as if

computerized weather chart

they really know what they’re talking about? They display their knowledge of scientific charts dealing with the atmosphere as if they really know. They wave their hands right across the country with such assurance. Is it possible they really don’t know????

Might as well place your finger on the center of your forehead, face North, and predict the weather yourself.