Rose's Cantina

My husband and I were having a nice time last evening, watching a Diane Keaton movie in which she plays a bitch. Diane was definitely playing against type as the snarky wife of the dispicable Kevin Kline. I didn't like her character. I also didn't much like her hair. Suddenly, I realized that I didn't like her character because she was playing me. Lately, I've been sniping at Scott, saying really nasty things. This is unlike me. I love my husband. I usually treat him gently. But the harsh economic times have done a number on my psyche. It hasn't helped that he quit his crappy job just before Christmas. I decided to make amends. "I want to apologize," I said. "I realized watching this movie that I have become a first-class bitch. You don't deserve that. That said, I think I'm mad at you for quitting your job." Feeling I hit a nerve, I continued, fueled by copious amounts of Merlot. "I realize that you hated that jo...

I've been noticing something weird lately. Lots of people say that time goes really, really fast when you start to get old. My experience is the opposite. That's because I work at home. When I worked in an office, the weeks flew by. You couldn't get to your holidays fast enough and they were over in the blink of an eye. When you work at home, time creeps along in its petty pace, as Bill Shakespeare used to say. He must have been a home office worker. Each day begins exactly the same. I let the dogs out, then I feed them, then I get go to the gym or take the dogs for a walk. Then I get down to work for a couple of hours. Then it's lunch time. I put on the noon news on CTV Ottawa which always has some lame business that it's trying to promote. But I watch it. Every single day. Then it's afternoon naptime. Then it's suppertime. Then it's wine time. Then it's bed. See? It never changes. But the weird part is that despite time rolling a...

Dear Lord: That's right, I'm talking to you. I tried talking to your son last year, but I guess he decided to spend New Year's Eve with Ryan Seacrest. I've been thinking about my resolutions, those pesky things that none of us can ever keep. But being an optimist, I resolve to keep them this year. To wit, I resolve: To stop breaking things. In 2012, I broke my really expensive coffee maker, my Ekornes leather chair which came all the way from Denmark, my tooth, my car, my foot, my heart. And I think, maybe, I might have broke my liver. To stop drinking red wine after dinner. Yeah, right. Let's just say, I'll do the best I can. To get off the damned blood pressure medication which, as far as I can determine, just makes me feel anxious about my blood pressure. To get a full time job that will allow me to enter the bank and have them not laugh at me when I present my meagre paycheques. To stop using MoneyMart. See previous resolutions. To collect ...

Aside from nearly losing my two front teeth during a dog walking accident, it's been a ridiculously wonderful Christmas for me. It began with the acquisition of the Christmas pug, Sophie Tucker, who, as we speak, is engaged in a heroic battle to the death with the gynormous Finnigan. Sophie weighs less than four pounds and most of it is teeth. She spent the last four days sweeping the kitchen floor while attached to my suede slipper. The last two pugs on my watch, Gordie and Ming (he of the preent, she of the past) were kind, sweet, woo-wooing little dogs. Sophie is evil. Aside from tormenting the deserving-of-torture 90 pound Finnigan, she has already caused a major rug calamity after diving through the air, like some kind of Wallenda, from Scott's chair to the table and toppling a rather large glass of Merlot onto the beige carpet. She considers herself an indoor girl and, while she grudgingly squats for a pee outside, she also has managed to find crannies about ...

I woke up on this crisp Christmas morning thinking about Chief Theresa Spencer and her hunger strike. She's not looking for the new Wii or PS3 under a fake Christmas tree. All she wants on this day is a meeting with Stephen Harper to discuss the plight of Canada's indigenous people. Not too much to ask, I say. This kind of real dialogue should have happened a long time ago. But our Prime Minister won't meet with her to talk. He's probably saying in that George Bush way he has that he doesn't negotiate with terrorists...or mothers on a hunger strike. Really what he's thinking about is Canada's dirty little secret, the metaphorical abused child locked in the basement of our posh custom made house. To open that door would expose our country to the world and leave us open to charges of neglect and abuse, passive aggressiveness in times when action is needed. This morning on reserves and in cities across Canada, men, women and children will be freez...

Nobody told me that dog walking was a contact sport. I had just put the puppy Sophie down this morning at the dog park when Finnigan the retriever throttled toward me smashing his big stupid black head into my mouth. I suppose it could have been worse. If his blow had landed a couple of inches higher, he would have broken my nose. For now, I have a sore tooth and an upper lip that looks like hamburger. Also a split lower lip. I won't be needing stitches but I may have to eat my turkey dinner through a straw. Merry Christmas Eve, ho, ho, ho. This isn't my first time at the Christmas injury rodeo. Nope. Last year, I sprained my ankle falling over the late Hannah and spent New Year's day and the better part of a month with an ankle the size and consistency of a juicy pork hock. And one year, I spent New Year's Eve in the emergency after Fred Chartrand accidentally cut my eye with ticker tape at the Canadian Press New Year's Party. That injury lasted for fiv...

A story carried today by the National Post . MONTREAL — Before 2012, Luka Rocco Magnotta was a little-known, 4-a.m regular at a Montreal diner, where he munched on poutine and guzzled water to rehydrate after performing at a nearby strip joint. He ends the year as a notorious international figure — an accused killer charged with stomach-turning crimes that set off a global manhunt and horrified people around the world. Driven by his headline-grabbing spring, Magnotta has been voted Canada’s 2012 Newsmaker of the Year in the annual poll of the country’s newsrooms by The Canadian Press. The National Post is not a member of The Canadian Press organization and was not involved in the poll. It is shameful enough that the Canadian Press made this announcement just days after the mass killing in Littletown, Connecticut. Every forensic psychiatrist quoted on television has noted that most mass killers are not mentally ill, rather, they are in it for the notoriety.  I...

The Ikea monkey's mom should have considered a pug. The little pug currently having a gnaw on Finnigan the retriever has a monkey face and would look fabulous in a shearling coat. I might suggest re-homing the coat as we would be tickled to have it on Sophie for her walks at the dog park. As all of my Facebook friends know by now, I got Sophie as an early Christmas present. She was a rescue from an Octomom in Buckingham. The lady got Sophie three weeks ago -- allegedly paid a grand for her -- and then discovered she was preggers again, knocked up by the handyman in the slippers, at least that's what I reckon. A part of me thinks this whole thing was a scam. The woman claimed Sophie was a purebred, five months old, and I've had enough purebreds to know that the breeders will take them back rather than see their prized canines handed off to someone who might make money breeding puggles or some such. Also, Sophie had no papers. We didn't ask for them, frankly, as I ...

I watched Barbara Walters' interview with Hilary Clinton last week. The burning question: what's with the hair? WTF? The woman is Secretary of State, responsible for ending wars and preventing atrocities and all Babs can ask her is about her hair? Well, she does have a point. I've been obsessing about Hil's hair for quite some time now. I'm obsessing about her hair because I've been obsessing about my own. At 56, my hair was too long. I looked like a sad folk singer still trapped in the 60s with a greying mop of unruly strands flying everywhere. I did get it cut last year but the whole experience left me traumatized. I kept insisting that the woman shorten it up, she kept insisting I looked brilliant with long tresses cut at all angles. She lied. The long layers made me look even more ridiculous. Like Hillary Clinton. An old sad bag with a satchel full of elastics and scrunchies. And my wallet was 50 bucks lighter. So I've stayed away from hai...

Twenty years ago, no one would have imagined an airplane, a train or a bar without cigarette smoke. Today, good luck finding a place to light up. Society got fed up with cigarettes killing people. Non-smokers took back their workplaces, their juke joints and their airspace. Twenty years go, it wasn't unusual for people to drink and drive over Christmas time, after just "having a few". People got arrested and thrown behind bars if they killed somebody, but mostly drinkers got away with their bad behavior. Today, the drunk driver is villified. The lines are clogged at Operation Red Nose with people begging for a ride home. Cops are stopping people at 11 a.m. to make sure they aren't still drunk from the night before. People still drink and smoke. But they have been made to see that when their past times intersect with the rest of society, they will lose. It's called a paradigm shift. So when I hear that the National Rifle Association is too powerful, that...

A lot has been made about mistakes reported by journalists at the scene of the Newtown child massacre, much of it blamed on today's 24-hour news cycle and the need to get the news out first -- right or not. If you think this is a new phenomenon, you might read this account by Phillip Chalk of Dan Rather's coverage of the JFK assassination. It's long, but worth the read. Also note that Rather himself admitted that he announced the death of JFK before he had actually died. WHEN CBS ANNOUNCED THAT IT will smile through the pain of Dan Rather's dying credibility with an hour-long retirement tribute in early March, the network released an image of a young Rather posing in front of the Texas School Book Depository, looking gravely into the distance. While a little nostalgia was understandable--what, no photo of Rather huddled over a fax machine last October?--CBS still managed to remind those who knew the anchor during his salad days in Texas how tendentious an...

On this cold and crisp December day, we took our dog for his walk, grateful for the peace, grateful for the silence. It's hard seeing the paper today with the front page photo of children, eyes wide shut, being tugged along on a rope to the nearby firehall. There is no peace in Connecticut today, just tears and questions. The children who died are not much older than my infant granddaughter; they were just a bunch of kindergarteners making lists for a Santa Claus visit that would never come. Some of the parents of Newtown went home last night with their little ones in tow. They were the lucky ones. The others went home alone with no child to tuck under the covers. So sad and senseless that the bogeyman pays a visit to the decent people of these small towns with hopeful names, Littleton, Newtown. How does the bogeyman choose which town, which school, which victims? Random. It's just random. Tragedy played over and over again on CNN yesterday, with reporters a...

Every day, we put on our parkas and lace up our boots for a trek through Conroy Pit, our local off-leash dog park. We saw this today. It's a Christmas tree looking quite out of place in the middle of the forest. On further inspection, we see a card. The card is in memory of Shaylee, a beautiful Shepherd still mourned by its owners who planted the tree many years ago. They still come by to decorate it every year. Merry Christmas, Shaylee. May the fields be golden and the treats be plentiful. May you meet my Ming and Hannah in dog heaven.  

First union busting. Now this. One of the richest men in Canada got that way by ripping off his employees and small suppliers like this woman. Time for a Loblaws boycott. Who's coming with?

Every year, we attempt to take a wonderful photo of one of our hounds. This year, we failed miserably. Anyway, I sending all my bleaders the best for the holidays from the corner of St. Laurent Boulevard and Connery Street in Ottawa!

Watching the news last night, I was stunned to see one of my former female colleagues holding a press conference. She is now the CEO of a major consortium, apparently. A Master of the Universe in silk stockings. The last time I saw this woman, the police were at her door after my buddies and I launched fireworks off her balcony in the late 1970s in retribution for her having stolen my boyfriend. I was pissed. I really liked that boyfriend. Of course, she dumped him soon after – he was only attractive to her because he was my boyfriend -- and she probably moved on to another girl’s boyfriend, or so I like to believe. I hope I’m not the only girl who has been chronically left with a face like a slapped Nancy. She was the first of many women who have stolen my boyfriends and husbands, all women characterized by uniforms consisting of black pencil skirts and white lace push-ups under cream silk blouses. This woman is now a Harvard MBA and a CEO. A millionaire, I’m s...

Hello. I’m finally back. It’s been a hard few weeks. It began with a sinus infection which left me feeling like Nick Nolte in Afflicted , the scene where he pulls out his back teeth. Even having nose sex with a Nettie pot did not help. Like an oozing sore, the nasal passages just had to drain themselves. And then I got a cold -- one of the really bad ones with a throat burning like some kind of forest fire. And then came the heartburn which burnt the esophagus from the other side. I’m on deadline for a couple of projects so there was no slowing down. Just drugs. Finally, I decided to treat myself to an afternoon of Nintendo DS, Final Fantasy Four , which was awesome until the next day when I ended up with what I believe was a pinched nerve on the side of my wrist. I turned into Lobster Girl. I could not do anything. I could not write, fuck no. I could not cook. Yowza. Worst of all, I could not wipe my ass. You don’t actually realize until you no longer have...