The History of Me: in lists

Alright... this idea stolen from some author's web site.

LIKED AS A CHILD, STILL LIKE AS AN ADULT
- dancing & singing
- reading
- humour
- barbies
- cats
- drawing
- stuffed animals
- watching Solid Gold (I would
if it was on!)
- writing stories
- Meatloaf, Abba and ELO
- boys (as friends)
- girl friends
- star wars
- wonder woman
- playing at being a teacher


LIKED AS A CHILD, DON'T LIKE AS AN ADULT
- candy (life savers, fake
cigarettes)
- pretending to smoke
- Love Boat & Fantasy Island
- meat & dairy (well, don’t like
morally)
- being a star (it’s not a goal,
anyway)


DIDN'T LIKE AS A CHILD, LIKE AS AN ADULT
- boys (romantically)
- reading mysteries, sci fi,
fantasy, romance, or
anything trashy (kids
version)
- London (didn’t dislike,
but didn’t lurv as I do
now)
- Tomato sandwiches
- Math
- Bananas
- Artichokes, avocadoes &
other slimey veggies
- Country music

DIDN'T LIKE AS A CHILD, STILL DON'T LIKE AS AN ADULT
- being mean to people
- being bullied
- horror movies
- lying (I was bad at it)
- pretending to like things I
didn’t like so people
would like me
- the cold
- sports
- cleaning my room
- games of any kind
- pineapple

A kitty-cuddle is a pretty nice way to start the day.

Wintering Up

I think I also lost two hats and my favourite super-nuclear mittens last winter. I almost never lose such items, so clearly it was a rough last year of school! ...Better add those to the list.

Luckily I'm ok for boots. I have one ugly pair which is high, warm, grippy, weatherproof (and was cheap.) And another lower pair which needs re-sealing, but is otherwise in good condition.

...Could use rainboots though. I've been discovering a lack in my footwear when it's too wet for shoes, but too warm for winter boots!

Oh Canada... we don't have giant, gross, flying bugs like hot countries do, but we Pay for that honour.

coatless moi

I've always loved being tall, but it sucks when it comes to finding a winter coat. My arms are too long for me to shop in the regular women's department--everything is too short. And you can't have too short winter arms--the cold will get in!! Length is all-important.

Which means I can't wear a Cute Winter Coat.

Well okay, I could order something from the Tall Girl store (though I'm pretty out for clothes shopping on the net) but there's another reason I can't wear a Cute Winter Coat, which is: Once you go hood, you can't go back. I tried last winter, when I bought a new coat sans hood. (It wasn't even cute. It was just the least worst of the men's coats at Zellers.) I walked into work, and Billiam had his big North Face coat with the faux fur trimmed hood, and he said: "But your last coat had a hood! How could you ever go back!" I shook my head: "I know, I know. This coat is shit."

It's not only the hoodlessness that makes it shit. It's just plain coooooold. The torso's ok, but the arms are COLD. Which makes NO sense. If you're gonna skimp, skimp on the torso where all my organs are! I don't know what I'm going to do with it. Make it into curtains or something.

Now you see this Tall Girl coat. Cute, but warm? HA! Please. It wouldn't take me beyond -10.


So I'm checking out North Face. Forget cute. But I wonder if I could at least find funky? Maybe geeky? I already have a nice tuque that says: Don't make me think, it hurts my head.


Maybe something like this. You see, if I get a coat in pea green, then it has some geeksappeal. Geeks in cool geek movies movies always wear army jackets or parkas. And then there's the retro 80s appeal, that Adam Baldwin's been rocking for (apparently) his whole career.


But such parkas are in the $300 range. Ouch! I'll have to head down to a store and check this stuff out in person.

Here are the girly coats from North Face, which won't have long enough sleeves.

Glomby

Yesterday I only ate homemade baking powder biscuits and carob cookies, with unsugared herbal tea, all day. It sounds like some weird fad diet.

I had made the biscuits and cookies the night before. When I woke up... well what could be more wonderful for breakfast than bp biscuits? If I were a drug addict I'd mainline them.

But then it came time to grab a lunch to bring to work with me, and I hadn't made anything else--and I'm avoiding spending money eating out, since I'm on my new budget. So I bagged more biscuits and cookies.

The managers were all at a meeting and I was working a mid shift to help out the senior who opened the store, and the visiting manager who was closing. So I was Mabel Manager for a day--wow it's been awhile. Getting pages all the time, running around... fun for a day, but.... When I got home I didn't feel like cooking. Just flopped down in front of my compy... with more biscuits and cookies!

Very interesting. I'd even used white flour cause I don't have a lot of whole wheat left, so I'm sure my intestines--which are used to a steady influx of roughage--were in a state of confusion. "What is this pasty glue glombing its way towards us? Ew! I demand a carrot!"

...I'd better work myself up to making a bean salad this afternoon.

Musings on Death and Muted Metal

A few years ago two of my friends' fathers had strokes. (Stroke or heart attack in one case? I don't remember the details.) And now I know three women my age who have a parent undergoing treatment for cancer.

Well... you get to a point in your life where it seems like everyone is marrying or shacking up. Then the babies start. Then the divorces begin. And then the parents get cancer? This seems to be the next Life Phase.

I also just read that girl babies who are big are more likely to get breast cancer. Well, looks like I'm doomed because I was a big sucker. And both my grandmothers had/have cancer, though apparently hereditary cancer is relatively rare. It's being born a big baby that'll get ya in the end!

In other and more trivial news, the upstairs neighbour is playing heavy metal, which is annoying. I like heavy metal, but it has to be listened to loud--not through the ceiling, from someone else's stereo. Oh well, I'll sit here reading the news and listening to muted metal.

Vote, ladies, vote! (and boys too)

I live in a riding where there is always a Liberal win, so In Theory it doesn't matter whether I vote. BUT I have three reasons why I push my lazy bottom out to the local high school:

(1) I have to imagine--what if everyone voting Liberal thought like me and stayed home? I have to take responsibility for my part.

(2) I can't overlook how hard women worked, generations ago, to win the right to vote. Imagine if you chained yourself to fences and spent time in jail and were force fed, and then found out your great-granddaughters didn't care! Ouch. (In Quebec that right only came in 1940, so we're not talking ancient history here.)

And it's not just about those who protested, but about the way women were ridiculed for the centuries leading up to this right--how they were treated like children and told they didn't have the brain capacity to decide how the country should be run. Grrr!

(3) Finally, I think about all the people in the world who still can't vote. Just as we take our clean streets, garbage disposal, constant electricity, taxes, democratic process, freedom of speech, newspapers, paid for schooling, and a million other little things for granted, we take voting for granted. It seems disrespectful, to me, to pass up the opportunity.

:-) If you want to know if you're on the electoral list, or where to vote, or when, or ID needed, or anything else... go here.

Or you can vote by mail!


*

CBC video about Nellie McClung's "mock parliament" speech where she reversed the roles and talked about the horrors of men voting. (Or watch the Historica Minute recreation.)

BBC "In Pictures" slideshow.
And another.



*
Nellie McClung as *Prime Minister*:

"If men were as intelligent and as good as Mr Skinner and his worthy though misguided followers we might consider this matter [of the vote], but they are not. 7/8 of the police court offenders are men, and only 1/3 of of the church membership. You ask me to enfranchise all these. ...

Men were made to support families. ...Shall I call man away from the useful plow and harrow to talk loud on street corners about things which do not concern him! Politics unsettle men, and unsettled men means unsettled bills!"



*
From a recent article about young women and voting:

According to a 2006 paper by University of Calgary researchers Melanee Thomas [whom Miss Mabel attended school with, and who is a supa-smarty] and Lisa Young, young women are among the least-engaged groups in formal politics.

"The best-educated generation of women in Canadian history – those who are currently under the age of 27 – are in fact less interested in the formal political arena, less knowledgeable about it, feel less political efficacy, and are less involved in the formal political process than their male peers or previous generations of women," they wrote.

They found that in the past 20 years, young women with university educations consistently had lower rates of voter turnout than their male counterparts.