When did I get so old?

One day I was 23 and the next I am over 40! When did that happen? I feel old today, I guess that is why I am thinking about it. Most of the time I don't. Partly because I am so tired, I am exhausted if I am honest, but yet I can't sleep at night. I go to bed and can't get to sleep, then when I do fall asleep I wake up a few short hours later. Then I lie awake for about an hour or sometimes more, until I doze off again. But I don't seem to sleep for the 7 or 8 hours that I need. Unbroken sleep. So I am tired. I am also feeling physically tired, probably because I am not doing anything, just sitting here in front of the computer playing bejeweled, checking email and surfing the net. I don't get much if any exercise, other then running up and down the basement stairs to do laundry. But I can't afford the gym, and it is too cold to get exercise outside. But why do I wake up feeling exhausted? And why do I go to bed feeling like I have been run down by a truck every night? You know that, all-over-body tired feeling? I suppose I will get fit again once I can get to the gym, and for now will just have to get used to being too tired to be bothered to do anything. Until I get to go to work again, which fingers crossed will be soon.

Poor Belinda

Last night we were watching Belinda the bunny eat the food that we had put out for her, when we saw that she was having trouble maintaining her balance. I wondered if she had damaged her back legs, as she seemed to have trouble moving and appeared to be rolling over as she moved around. Then we wondered if she had broken her back, because she was having trouble even staying sitting to eat the food we had put out. When she was finished eating she wasn't even able to get up over the edge of the snow around the tree where she was eating, and eventually sort of slid and rolled her way down under the deck. Poor Belinda, we were decidedly worried. But of course, wild rabbits don't live long and she has been around for about 2 years now, making her elderly in the wild rabbit world. The other night K had startled her when putting out the food and Belinda had sort of jumped sideways landing on her side in the snow and then stayed there while K put out the food, and we wondered if she had twisted something, or perhaps dislocated her knee or something like that. But then today we saw her bounding off along the fence down the side of the garden, so we know that she is ok. She certainly looks in better condition than she did last night, which is a relief. I am thinking that she might have hurt herself, but is bgetting better now, and K thinks that she might have trapped one of her front legs when she tried to jump over the Frost fencing into the next door yard the other day when she was startled by one of us leaving the house. So poor old Belinda is in a bit of a bad way, but hopefully will get better soon. And yes we know that we are making her dependent on us for food, but that is ok, we will always feed her until she is with us no longer.

Libary Books

Why is it that when I find a book I want to read, the library near here doesn't have it on the shelf? I have to request it be brought in from another library. What is also interesting to me is that all the "intellectual" books are at the St. Boniface library, which is in the French Quarter. I am not saying I am surprised that the French quarter has the good books, more that other areas of town don't have academic books. There are several university campuses in town, and St. Boniface is only one of those, not even the largest! Then again I expect that the Universities all have their own libraries, and the books that intellectuals want to read are kept there. So I guess the French Quarter has the highest proportion of academics living there.

So I will request the book I Want to read, and then wait for it to come in. In the meantime I Will walk up to the library here and pick up the other three books that I recently requested. Which will at least mean we will have something to do on Sunday, other than read the back of the cornflakes packet.

Feeling useless

There isn't a more ueseless feeling than knowing that the one that you love is in deep deep pain and there is nothing you can do about it. In this instance there really is nothing that I can do, because I don't understand. I don't know what it is like to have kids, and so I don't know what it feels like when you feel that you are unable to help that child when they need help. So I just have to feel useless. It is not a new feeling for me, but it is one that I really don't enjoy. I hate confrontation, I hate the fear of an argument yet to be had, I fear the torment of uncertainty of security. I can blame that on my parents, because they treated me badly during my childhood. They argued, yelling and screaming at each other in the middle of the night, and then behaving as if nothing had happened the next day. I recall vividly the terror of waking up in the middle of the night hearing the yelling, and not knowing what had caused it. The yelling soon spilled over into the daytime too, and my father would yell and scream about something at the drop of a hat. It was so unpredictable, that even if you tried to predict the screaming, you would live in fear of it happening. To the extent that it eventually became easier to precipitate the anger outburst just to get it over with. So now I have a fear of confrontation, of being yelled at by someone, of having to deal with someone who is so upset that they can't even express themselves properly. Even if that upset is not anger but hurt, and emotional distress. I guess I am just selfish in that I can't cope with the emotional turmoil of the effects that a disturbed childhood have had on a young adult. Someone who doesn't accept that they have a problem and so won't get the professional help they so desperately need, but instead take it out on a defenceless parent. Someone who will suffer the pain three times as much because guilt for causing the distress in another is carried alongside the pain of not being able to help a child, as well as the pain of their own suffering during an abusive relationship. So what does a person sitting on the outside of this do? Give space, obviously wanted by the person who shut themselves in the bedroom without speaking, give time, and give love. But it is not easy.

Just another day

It is just another day in the long, seemingly interminable wait for immigration to do their job. It seems that we may have to wait another 6 months for the paperwork to come through, and I am wondering if I will be able to secure a proper job at the end of it. I mean how long will an employer wait? If only there was some way of knowing where we were in the queue. Like, we just issued a card to number 56789 and you are number 67890. Then at least we would know that we were getting closer. As it is we can only sit and wait watching the snow and feeding the bunny and squirrel.

Talking of which, Belinda, yes the bunny finally got a name, has finally cottoned on to the fact that we are leaving food out for her. We bought some pellets, so that Samantha wouldn't keep stealing her food, and last night she sat munching her way through them happily. Of course we haven't seen Samantha in days, but it has been snowing. I think for 3 days now we have had snow. Not continuously, but just sort of gently. I guess we should be grateful that it is only -15 out there today (celcius), over the weekend it was in the mid to late 30's below, with a windchill that made it impossible to go out. So -15 is positively balmy LOL! Oh well. But I am still enjoying the snow, contrary to popular opinion. Many of my friends thought that I would have cabin fever by now, but I still love to look out of the back window and enjoy the view.

I was reminded of how priviledged we are to live here. An elderly woman was talking about how the state should not dictate to us what we can and can't eat, and for some reason I was filled with the joy of living in Winnipeg. I love the place, I love our house and of course I love my lady. So we will continue to wait for immigration, because in the long run the wait will be worth it.

Almost a waste of life

A friend just emailed me to say that she was finally taking a vacation. I have known her for about 4 years now, and this will be the first time that she has taken a vacation away from DC where she lives, in all that time. She will be out of town for the inauguration. Which is something that most people I know who live in DC will be doing. I will just digress for a moment here to tell you what she said. Apparently they will be closing down DC for half a day before, the whole day of, and half a day after the inauguration itself. They will be maintaining massive security throughout that time, and anyone coming in to the District for the ceremony will be comprehensively searched. All at the expense of the District, which is apparently so poor that it can't currently even keep its own hospital open. I have no doubt that the people who live in DC will not get to hear about the protests that occur during that time, about the near riots, and riots that occur, and the extent of the objection of the populace to the inauguration of Dubbya once again. I know this because I lived in the District for the last inauguration, and we heard nothing of the riots, public dissent and protests that occurred in the town that day. I didn't know about it until K told me what she had seen on TV down in Florida. But then we didn't hear of the opressive tactics of the State Troopers as the prevented the African American population of Florida from voting. Anyway, back to my friend.

She asked me to be proud of her for finally taking a vacation. In my heart I can't help but be worried for her. She is older than me, still owes on her student loans, still lives in fear of her parents' disapproval, and still wonders when her knight in shining armour will come and save her from her dreary life. She sits alone in her life, thinking about what could be, not realising that her life is passing her by. That the longer she sits thinking about doing something, the less likely it is that she will ever get to do it. She and her sister have already planned their old age, they will live in a duplex together, close enough for regular contact without living together. In a woman in her early 40's who is intelligent, beautiful (when she lets herself be) and good fun to be around (when she lets herself be) I find this upsetting. That someone with her level of intelligence can let their life just pass them by in this way is distressing, and of great concern to me. Why don't I do something to help her? I tried. I was a close friend, physically and emotionally, for 3 years, in which time I tried to get her to come out of her self imposed isolation. It worked as long as I pushed her, but if I didn't push her she didn't bother to experience her life as she lived it.

I would love for her to be brave and just pick up and move away somewhere without any plans. To perhaps go to San Francisco for a couple of months, to experience how life can be lived when it is enjoyed by the person living it. But I know she never will. As long as I have known her she has been talking about getting a new job, and yet she is still there, in the same job, with unbelievable pressure and stress, and I know now that she will never leave it until she is forced to. In the meantime I will tell her that I am pleased that she has finally used the air ticket that she bought last summer, and will take time off work. That I hope that she has a good time, that she rests, recuperates, and that she goes back to the District with a renewed approach to life. But I know that she won't, that within days of being back at work she will be just as stressed and just as reclusive as she was before she went away.

I would say that hers is almost a wasted life, except that she has two wonderful nieces, whom she loves dearly and whom love her to death. For them her life is not a waste. But sadly for her it is.

Brad and Jen

I have to say that I was really quite upset that Brad and Jen had split. Not because I know them personally, but because I had thought that they made a lovely couple, and he seemed to love her and she him. But of course, when it is presented on a platter there isn't a man in the world who will try a sample. If the rumours are true then Brad did more than sample, and I find that very disappointing. Why would a man feel the need to sleep with a slut like Angelina when he has a wife like Jennifer waiting for him to come home?

If anyone can explain to me why men have to cheat on their wives like this I would love to know. It seems that no matter how devoted the man is to a woman, and no matter how devoted she is to him, he still feels the need to have sex with someone else when it is offered for the taking.

I have heard about that book "He's just not in to you", I haven't read it, but I have read that some men feel that it unfairly paints them all with the same brush. I was wondering if that was true. Until I heard about Brad and Jen! And now I am afraid I have to assume that all men are the same. My step-daughter is struggling to understand men, she is 20 and trying to find a man with whom she can have a caring relationship, but all they want is sex. When she says no it is too soon, they ignore her and treat her like cat shit on their shoe. Yes she is intelligent, beautiful, and well cultured. What is wrong with men?

Isn't it time we changed society to make unfaithful men a thing of the past? How can we do this? By changing the way that men who screw around are treated. Change society's thinking so that men who screw around are as reviled as women who screw around. See how they deal with being called a slut, a whore, and banished to the sidelines of society because of their sexual urges. Hmm, a bit like they way that society treats homosexuals!

But of course the men would still think it was great for some stud to have spread his seed around 1000 women, so even if slutty men were banished to an island, someone would still think they were gods. In the meantime women have to put up with second best. Not even second best really, they have to put up with men the way they are.

There is of course an alternative explanation for Brad and Jen, that he wanted kids and she didn't. Well here is an idea Brad, how about *you* quit working and stay home to look after the kids while Jen goes on with her movie career? How about you adopt? There must be a million kids needing to be adopted, so adopt one, let Jen carry on working the way men do, and perhaps you can resolve the issues that have wrecked your life together. Either way I side with Jen on this one.

Asking Questions

At some point you have to ask a question. No matter what you are doing, where you are going, or who you are, you have to ask a question. It is the way that you ask the question that matters. Take the other day for example. I was asked the question "what do you know about that?". Well the way it was asked was "that the hell do *you* know about that?". So of course my hackles went straight up, and I replied in a very hostile way. The questioner looked surprised, and then backed down saying "do you need any help?". What he had meant was "do you need me to answer any questions?". But that isn't what he said, and so he lost me, lost my sale, and probably lost me to the store, until such time as I forget that it was that store that I was insulted in, and go back there again. Retrospectively I feel a little sorry for the guy, he was only doing what he was told to do. That being to engage me in conversation about the product, in this case digital cameras, that I was interested in. Had he asked me if I needed help I would have told him that I already own a digicam and was only browsing while I waited for my partner to finish looking at whatever it was that she was looking at. So here is my question for the day. Who thought that an aggressively worded question was the way to open the discussion witha customer over a product that they are interested in? The answer will never be known, but I am willing to be that it was probably an American, someone who had never actually sold anything, let alone worked on a shop floor, let alone dealt with customers. Probably a young, late 20's early 30's, man who had gone straight from college to a lower management position without needing to work his way there by being good at his job. I might be biased, ok I admit that I am biased. I am where I am because I worked damned hard to get here, yet there are children working in positions of influence in society, who got the jobs that they are in simply by passing a few exams. But I digress. Back to my original point. Everyday you have to ask questions. So next time you are about to open your mouth and exercise your vocal cords, think a little bit about how you phrase the question, and then the tone or voice, and intimation that you put into the words, before you vocalise them. Then think about where I am. Passed so many exams that I know hold the highest educational award that is possible on this planet. Yet I am still waiting to hear whether or not I can live in this country, with my partner of 6 years. While I wait I am wasting time surfing the net looking for news articles to interest me, I build furniture, and I watch the squirrel eating the peanuts that I put out for her every morning. Now, ask yourself these questions. Is this a waste of education? Is there something else that I can be doing? Is there something else that I can do to make things move along a little faster? Are there questions that I *should* have asked?

I want to get a dog, it isn't fair that I can't have a dog. But we can't afford one. I would really like to have a little friendly dog running around the house, cuddling up on the sofa, barking at the neighbours. But we will have to wait. We have to wait for everything and it is getting very tedious. Recently I bought a pill box, one of those weekly things with a slot for every day, because I had been forgetting to take my meds. It is very good, I never forget, but it is like a reminder of passing time! It is like that bottle of marbles that did the rounds. Where some idiot worked out that if he lived to be 84 he had about 1000 more Saturdays left, so he bought 1000 marbles and put them in a jar, then every Saturday he took one out, to remind him of how little time he had left! Talk about depressing! I mean sure, when there are still 998 marbles in the jar, but what about when it is less than half full? It would depress the hell out of me, and the stress of wondering when I was going to die would probably do me in! Well sure enough the guy lives longer than 84 and when his jar of marbles ran out he started putting them back in again, and the jar was filling up nicely, in the story I heard anyway. But honestly, what a dumb thing to do eh? But here I am, with my little pill box, ticking off the days in much the same way. Today is Wednesday, so the box is half empty again, another reminder of another empty week. Still waiting to hear from Immigration, still waiting to know whether K and I will be able to continue living together in our nice little home, in this beautiful city. Or if we will have to relocate to the YUK, live in a one room bedsit hell hole, working in a pub to put food on the table and hating every minute while we wait for our appeal to be heard in Canada. We wouldn't be able to have a dog there for sure! Mind you if we did have a dog we would get welfare for it in the YUK, that would be one thing, hmmmm now there's an idea!

New books and old TV.

Here we are, in the New Year. Well nothing feels different to me, nothing *is* different! Even the TV is reruns! I have never seen such a load of old socks scheduled for a Saturday night since my teenage years in the UK, when the most exciting thing on was Seaside Special with Little and Large! So I read a book. It was by an author who is new to me, Kathy Reichs. I have to say that I really enjoyed the book. She is a very intelligent author, she creates wonderful imagery with her well constructed sentences. I would love to be able to write as well as she does. The books are about a forensic anthropologist who divides her time between Charlotte in South Carolina, and Montreal in Quebec. This was the second in her series of books, Death du Jour. Very good. If you like Particia Cornwell you will love Kathy Reichs. Infact if you haven't finished reading the PC series, you shouldn't read KR, because you will not want to go back to PC afterwards. Her main character, Temperance Brennan, makes Kay Scarpetta look like a self indulgent spoiled princess!

I really enjoyed the Scarpetta books, up until Point of Origin. I think that was the book when I started to think 'oh for god's sake'. The stories were getting more ridiculous, and the criminals were getting really silly. Mind you I have read them all, I am waiting for Trace to become available at the library as I will no longer spend the money on the books, but I will still read it. K hasn't read a PC book since Black Notice. I get the feeling that PC wants to kill off KS in the same way that Agatha Christie wanted to kill off Poirot. I also get the impression that PC wants the Scarpetta character to go off in a different direction, but that the publishers won't let her. But I do hate the way that PC has stereotyped her characters to the point of stupidity. In the last book, Blow Fly, she had Lucy the lesbian lusting after every single woman she clapped eyes on! It was crazy, and PC should know better. Mind you that book was totally ridiculous, to bring back a character that was killed off for the good of the world in an earlier book, for no apparent reason, was absolutely the most ridiculous thing ever, and to think that her readers would believe that Pete was able to keep a secret from Kay for 6 years was even more ludicrous! I also got the feeling that the book either hadn't been written by PC, or that she had written it as part of the Judy Hammer series, and then had to change it into a Scarpetta book because her publisher told her to. The style was so very different from her former Scarpetta books. I have heard that PC is now so full of her own self importance that she might not even care what her readers think. That would be a great tragedy. An author should never assume that her readers are less intelligent than s/he is. It is a great insult. PC has been making that mistake for a few books now, getting more and more obvious since PoO. Of course all this is just my opinion, and if you have read PC and like her stuff, and disagree with what I have to say, then I would love to hear from you! No one will write to me, I realise that.

But go out and get a Kathy Reichs, read it with a good cup of tea and a big bag of chips, and you will have a great evening! Better than watching reruns of Sue Thomas FBEye.