Rose's Cantina

It's been two weeks since my mammogram and I thought I was in the clear. No news is good news, right? Apparently not. It seems the doc wants another look at my left boob. The nice lady at the Riverside called to say that that boob is very dense and he couldn't see all the way through, so they have to take a few more shots, then do an ultrasound. The lady went out of her way to re-assure me that this is normal. Guess she didn't want me to jump off a bridge over the long weekend. I'm not like that. I'm cool with this. I've had nothing but trouble with my left breast for years. It's about an eighth bigger than the other one and, as a result of this, the dog keeps stepping on it. Yowza. I used to get a lot of pain in it as well. That was until I realized I needed to buy bigger bras. Besides being dense, it's absolutely huge. Sometimes I think there are families of mice or other rodents living in it. Maybe a few spiders. Am I nervous? Nah. What...

I thought that I was finished writing about Senator Joyce Fairbairn today, but I'm not. In fact, I would say I haven't even gotten started. What began as a small tropical storm this weekend has turned into a full blown Ottawa hurricane. A lot of people on Twitter and Facebook have taken to their computers to write unbelievably unkind things about a person they do not know. What they presume to know is everything. I heard someone muttering today that all the legislation passed when Joyce was sitting in her Senate seat, stricken by Alzheimer's, should be held void. People presume Joyce had no say in the matter. Do they know that for sure? Could it be that instead of taking that diagnosis and feeling sorry for herself -- in the minutes or hours when she found lucidity -- she decided to fight the disease instead of rolling over for dead? She kept on trucking, voting, showing up at meetings, touring her riding. I worked with Alzheimer's patients in another life, and...

Joyce Fairbairn was a legend in the Parliamentary Press Gallery even before she went to work for Pierre Trudeau. She was one of the few women who inhabited the storied hot room in the 60s, a feisty reporter from the Mad Men era who was admired more for her "great legs" than her native intelligence. Joyce always reminded me of Shirley Maclaine, with the short no nonsense blonde hair cut, the twinkling eyes, the sharp sense of humor. Joyce would have had no trouble hanging with Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack -- she would have eaten them for breakfast and they would have served her caviar and champagne. Frank was the musical hero of her husband, the late Mike Gillan, who had befriended me in the early 80s when I left my fledgling journalism career for the comfort of a Hill job. I met Mike through Jerry Yanover and the two of them had charmed me into thinking I would be welcomed into the fold. The Liberals were like that back in the 80s. Unlike the other partie...

Would we feel differently about Jack Layton if he had not died so tragically a year ago today? I've been thinking about this all week. Yesterday, I saw him compared to John Lennon. Come on, I thought. But then I paused. Yeah, you know there are similarities. Both had their time on Earth cut short. Both inspired us with their words. Love is better than anger Hope is better than fear Optimism is better than despair Those words touched the hearts of every Canadian upon Jack's passing. We remember them. We hold them close. You may say I'm a dreamer but I'm not the only one I hope some day you'll join us And the world will be as one. Words of poetry spoken at a time when people were searching for answers, inspirational words that were so simple they took our breath away. They made us want to believe again. It took an illness to turn Jack Layton into Saint Jack, our newest unofficial poet laureate. Before that, he was just a bicycle-riding pol...

Wonderful news out of Georgia. The storied Augusta National Golf Club has finally deigned to offer memberships to two golfers with vaginas: Darla somebody-or-other and Condoleeza Rice. I guess Hillary Clinton and Roseanne Barr were too busy. Or too Democratic. I can hear the grumbling on the 19th hole already. The club is renowned for being snooty and having questionable fashion taste. Kermit would fit right in; Tim Gunn, not so much. Not sure about their policy on gays, though they might have invited Anderson Cooper, him being with CNN and all. Probably didn't hear about his fight the other day with his boyfriend. Remember all the brow-knitting at Augusta when Tiger Woods first poked his nose into the club? Had to let him in, right? The greatest golfer in the world, who just happens to golf while black. With Condie, they get a two-fer. She should get a golf gap with that emblazoned on it! I mean if they're going to let ladies play with their balls, they mi...

Looking down at the extra large slab of meat, I couldn't help but think of Costco's famous turkey breasts. So large, you could feed sandwiches to your family for a week. There it was, squished between two glass plates all white and pink. Ready for the roaster. It was so big, the technician had to take an extra set of x-rays because it wouldn't all fit on the screen. Couldn't quite get the bottom and the nipple in. I'm wasn't embarrassed in any way. I felt like a dispassionate observer. The pair of them didn't look like something that should be attached to a person, exactly. A gobbler, maybe. All in all, my mammogram at the Riverside Hospital's breast screening program was a snap, though I had to prepare myself. Before I went for my appointment, I methodically used by gigantic massager and dug it into the tissue under my shoulder blade. Then I swallowed a couple of Motrin and had a hot shower. By the time I reached radiology, I could have par...

Today is a day of mixed emotions. I'm still basking in the glow of becoming mother of the bride. Marissa and Jeff came over yesterday and we served them a little bottle of champagne and a mess of ribs, chicken, corn and roast potatoes. Not exactly on my meal plan, but what the hoo? A person's daughter doesn't get engaged everyday. Today will not be as glamorous. Today, I am going for a mammogram and I am not looking forward to it. It's not that I'm scared. Mammograms are pretty harmless as a procedure. No one is poking up your ass or down your throat. Nobody is making you quaff chalk-like drinks that give you a flaming asshole afterwards. It's usually just you and a nice, efficient French lady with the radiologist hiding in the back like a director on a porn flick. It's just that this is bound to be painful. I have roughly ten pounds of boob weight which will be squished between cold slabs for about a half an hour. The boob work isn't that ...

On a beautiful late summer evening, Jeff took Marissa up to Nepean Point, a picturesque peace of heaven in Ottawa and pulled out a letter. I'm not sure what is said, but it was poignant enough to make her burst into tears. And then he got down on bended knee, pulled out a ring and asked her the fateful question. "Will you marry me?" The promise was a year in the making. We were never sure when Jeff would pop the question. In fact, we've had several close calls. They went to Cuba, nothing. They went to Montreal, nothing. Truth be told, I've had a bottle of champagne chilling in the fridge for months now. Last week, Jeff texted me that he was executing the plan. "What if she says no?" Nick asked when I gave him the news. Please. I figure Marissa has had the wedding planned out for some time. She knows what shoes she'll wear, probably where the best deal for a dress will be, and who will be in the wedding party. You see my daught...

I've been pre-occupied of late with my favorite subject -- my breasts. Often I make fun of them because they are absolutely huge. For the past year, I've been living up the alphabet in the H section, though through hard work, I think I've brought them down to a more sensible DDD. Still. I never minded being big breasted. It got me jobs. It got me dates. But huge breasted is nothing if not disgusting. You cannot buy clothes that fit properly. If you wear something loose, you look like you're a fattie. If you wear something tight, you look like a floosie. Add to that a middle aged face, well, then you look like Ma Kettle. (Though looking at Ma now, I realize she was actually smaller than I am. Sheesh.) I've become pre-occupied with how much I hate my breasts. They embarrass me. They make me feel ugly. Scott took a beautiful picture of me a few weeks back and I had to ask him to crop it. Here's what it looks like without the crop. Because of their s...

My friend Doris called me on Monday. She was in tears because her eighty-six-year-old dad was going into the hospital for emergency surgery to repair an aneurysm in his heart. The doctor told him his chances of survival were about twenty-five percent. Twenty-five percent. Wow, I thought, those are some pretty terrible odds. Those odds didn't include the possibility he would wake up with brain damage or paralysis or something equally awful. I wondered what was the point? When you're eighty-six, is it worth getting the procedure at all? Then I thought, snap out of it you selfish little elder-bigot . Just because a person is old doesn't mean they can't be as resilient as the rest of us. Of course, Ted's going through with it. He's as strong as men half his age. Or at least he was until recently. As it stands now, he can barely do anything without become completely fatigued. If this doesn't work, well, I guess from his standpoint, he thinks h...

When was the last time that your face broke out in a wide grin at 6:30 in the morning? When did you actually laugh out loud before breakfast? This happens to us every morning when we take our Finnigan to the running of the hounds at Conroy Pit dog park. Here, we experience every emotion, sometimes all at once. We are joyful, sometimes fearful, sometimes angry watching our dog get beaten up. It's like no other experience, and it is the one part of the day when I feel I'm living in the moment. Today, we met Hunter, who is some kind of African dog, a rescue from a notorious puppy mill in West Quebec. His owner calls him his "Porsche" since he figures he's spent $38,000 on medication and vet bills. Hunter had giardia, an infection of the small intestine when his owner claimed him. Since then, he needs medication for his gastro-tract, among other things. Amazing, that someone would dedicate a good part of his paycheque to keeping this wonderful dog alive...

A few years back, the Globe and Mail jumped on the mental health bandwagon, along with a number of other corporations, looking for a new and trendy cause that would raise its visibility among its rapidly shrinking clientele. Usually, companies look for causes that won't cost too much. Because the Globe and its mothership BellMedia have all kinds of free air time and space to fill, they usually look for a cause that allows them to spew hyperbole and good feelin's, causes that make them seem like they care. These causes allow the corporate sector to rub elbows and knees with politicians who also look for similar causes to raise their profiles. Before mental health and mental illness, there was literacy. It made perfect sense for newspapers to align with literacy. People who don't read don't buy newspapers. Dah. But alas, Southam got to literacy before the Globe. Literacy was a good cause because it wasn't as messy as mental illness; people who are illi...

August is my diet cheat month. It's not at all like Christmas, or Thanksgiving or Easter when a person eats an unbundance of trans-fat laden, high fat confections. My guilty pleasure is corn on the cob and peaches picked fresh from Niagara and put on a truck at 3 a.m. delivered to the Ottawa Farmer's Market. I could, and do, eat fresh corn nearly every day during August. We bake it or barbecue it in parchment already slathered in butter and salt. Last night we served it with chicken breasts, sausages and salad. Dessert was a platter of Red Haven, cling-free, peaches with some local chedder. Normally, we don't eat dessert, unless it's an occasional indulgence in ice cream. But peaches in August make the perfect and essential ending to any feast involving produce from here and away. And corn as a main is absolutely delish. I swear, if I had the chance to be reincarnated, I would come back as a dairy cow -- not too keen on being a slaughter animal -- who is fed ...

On a wintery morning last November, I opened up my laptop and read the following post from the writer Jon Katz on his blog, Bedlam Farm: Rose died on Friday evening, euthanized after a long and severe wasting disease that left her in pain and without spirit. She died in ease and comfort...her head resting on my arm. I let out an unexpected and mournful sob which brought Scott running into my little office off the kitchen. Oh, no, I thought, not beautiful Rose, the nearly mythical Border Collie who inhabited many of Jon Katz' books. Not Rose of Washington County, defender of hearth and home, manager of sheep, donkeys and even geese. I thought Rose would live forever. She was a dog in a book. But, alas, Rose was not a fictional dog; she was Jon's very real companion, who was always by his side as he struggled to find himself in middle age, in the midst of personal crisis, as he tried to morph from city slicker to gentleman farmer. She died alright, just...

As I rode the elliptical machine today, I had to admit to myself that I was suffering from Olympics fatigue. It's quite obvious from the coverage that Canadians are snow bunnies -- we medal but only really in bronze and some silver -- so most of the coverage surrounds athletes from other nations. I'm finding it hard to get up the energy to root for the Italians or the Chinese in sports that I don't care about. We have to suffer through hours and hours of coverage of non-Canadians in bikinis or tight tanks, girls with big bulgy muscles and mannish hands, dudes in cute and sparkly little outfits of blue and silver. Unlike the Winter Olympics, there is much gender confusion during the summer games -- a lot of the men and women are kind of interchangeable and you'd have a hard time figuring out their gender if they had their street clothes on. I'm also wondering if I'm the only person alive who thinks a lot of the sports played in the summer games are just p...

Finnigan, or my bladder, woke me up at 4 a.m. and I couldn't get back to sleep. My mind began to race, as I tried to find a solution to our short term cash flow issue. Nick is still looking for work, after being overlooked by Starbucks yet again, and our boarder will not have first and last rent until September 1st. That leaves us with approximately eighty bucks to live on, after the bills have been paid, until Scott gets paid next week. We're not food bank material, not yet. Last week, we stocked the fridge and pantry, bought lots of red and black rice, a pork tenderloin the size of Texas and a slab of salmon. Not going anywhere, but we will eat well. We also have a fairly full tank of gas. So it's just a matter of hunkering down and waiting it out. I don't get paid until mid-September from my magazine job, and Scott's on commission. Car sales are down this summer, and Scott's decision to change jobs last month isn't helping, not one bit. The goo...

My faith in humanity has been restored. I found my Kindle buried deep in the Lazy Boy recliner. Instinctively, this morning, I knew it was there. Or at least in the house. I could not believe that someone would have come into the side garden and purloined it off the table. Even in a sketchy neighborhood like this one, it would be hard to believe someone would do that. (Though someone did steal a couple beers from the cooler outside last year. But that was beer.) I've missed my Kindle, in particular, because I've been waiting for a special e-book from my writing hero, Jon Katz, who has just published his first ever e-book. So the first thing I did was re-enter my credit card information and download The Story of Rose, A Man and His Dog , which is available for the unbelieveable price of $3.50. It's what I love about Kindle; books delivered to my e-reader in seconds at a very reasonable price. I make no apologies. I am on a book budget these days. The next book I w...

One of my favorite authors, Jon Katz, released his first e-book last night called The Story of Rose: A Man and his Dog. I will not be buying this book today, even though I'm always first in line to read everything that Jon writes. His stories of his struggles with depression and self-doubt, his books on dogs and farm life, have resonated with me in many ways. His take on love, grief, spirituality and redemption have uplifted me in very dark times. So it is with a heavy and impatient heart that I give this book a pass, at least in the short term. Some idiot must have been watching me in my side garden with my eyes glued to the Kindle this summer; he or she must have noticed that I'd left it on my patio table. It is gone, baby gone, and I am upset. A Kindle is not an iPad. It has very little monetary value. It's only value is to the person who builds a cherished collection of favorite stories on it. I'm betting my thief was probably not a reader, and, upon insp...

I went into a wild panic yesterday when I couldn't find my Kindle. It's got all my summer reading on it, as well as my newspaper subscription. I couldn't find it anywhere. So I decided to clean the house today from top to bottom. This is a big deal for me. I'm tidy, but I'm not a cleaner. I have a bad back, seriously, and I cannot vaccuum or bend over for any length of time lest I experience excruciating pain in my upper and middle back. Blame the boobs. Scott does most of the heavy cleaning and scrubbing. I do the picking up. But when I do go on a cleaning jag, I am unstoppable. You see, men don't see the gritty little corners. They don't get down on hands and knees and see all the puppy destruction and grime. It's sort of the same way men cook. They can stand for hours over a hot barbecue with a beer in one hand and a fork in the other, then scrub it clean in 6.5 seconds. But the greasy pans can sit in the sink for hours, sometimes days. Wo...

If you were looking for my blog this morning, you would have been disappointed. I was in a crabby mood because, for the last few months, Finnigan has been getting me up at 6 a.m. and I'm exhausted. It's not the letting him out part that gets to me. Within six minutes, I have to let him out to pee, give him two food balls, feed Gordie, then let him and Gordie out again. I swear the little bastard has a stop watch. Then he barks in my face for 60 minutes straight until Scott wakes up to take him for his walk. I like to relax, have some tea, make the breakfast smoothie, read my Kindle -- which has mysteriously disappeared and I'm suspecting Finn buried it in the backyard -- and then get ready to go to the gym. But Finn has recently raised his own expectations. We've started taking him for long jogs at the Conroy Pit dog park. We don't do it everyday because Scott works and I'm afraid to ride in the car with him alone. But he now thinks he deserves the dog...