Rose's Cantina

  Maybe it's because I lost my dad as a little kid. Maybe it's because I lost nearly my entire family by the time I was 16. Maybe it's because I was little Orphan Black before I was middle-aged. In any event, for most of my life, I've been obsessed with the rituals of death and dying. I've never been able to make sense of it. I feared it. I wondered how people survive under the ground without a coat in the winter. The worms go in/The worms go out/ The worms play pinochle on your snout. In any event, I've struggled determining how best to play out the end game. Particularly, I've wondered, why do people spend so much damned money on funerals? When my beloved mother died, she had saved $15,000, most of which went to put her withered butt in the ground after an excruciating and exhausting illness. She never got to spend that money on a Caribbean cruise or a nice wardrobe. The money got pocketed by the nice folks at Butler's Funeral Home wh...

I'm a cranky little old lady, sitting here in my chair, buffeted by pugs, anticipating another few days of having a crazy battle with the old gallbladder. Easter, what can I say? Writhing in pain, waiting the results of my ultrasound which was performed by an evil-scientist looking Russian named Yuri (sorry for the racial profiling, but he could have played the villain in the upcoming 24 series), I have taken to the Lazy Boy and I'm dividing my time channel surfing and playing Candy Crush Saga. Yesterday, I was treated to a seminar on the virtues of Bell Fibe television, as part of an infomercial on the CTV Ottawa newscast. I have Bell Fibe. I loathe it, but I'm stuck with it. So why not learn its many features? I was excited to discover that I can use my Smartphone as a remote in case Sophie the Pug runs off with the channel changer in her mouth. How cool is that? So after the infomercial, er, newscast, I got the Bell Fibe app from the Playstore for my...

A lot of namby-pamby sorts were hand-wringing today because an 18-year-old girl was found passed out on the weekend in the driveway of 24 Sussex Drive. Apparently, Ben Harper and his pals were celebrating his 18th  birthday party in Gatineau and something went sideways. The girl in question was found passed out, apparently wasted. A few folks were saying that this "was a private matter," a medical emergency. That's what the RCMP said, anyway, passing the buck as always. This stuff has happened at 24 Sussex for ages. Remember Maggie T smoking pot and dancing around the rosebushes before she forgot her pants at Studio 54? I myself have been a little wasted there on numerous occasions, right under the noses of the less-than-interested RCMP detail. We used to smoke pot at 24 when the Liberals were in power. Not saying which Liberals, but you can guess. We drank, we drank, we smoked the ganga whilst an occasional PM strolled by, none the wiser. It happens. On...

Being a freelance writer is a bit like being trapped in an iron lung. You may still be hot to trot on the inside, but you are constantly in a state of inertia. That's because you're always broke. In the freelance game, it's always feast or famine. Well, these days, mostly it's famine. As my friend, the musician Mose Scarlet once said about his own business, "you can make a lot of money playing music; too bad you can't make it everyday". It's easy to say "hey there are lots of free things to do". Sure, you can walk around your neighborhood or take the dog for a run. But everything else costs money. If you want to ratch it up a notch, you can take the dog to the dog park, but that requires gas. If you want to get the best exercise of your life, eventually, you'll need new shoes. And sunscreen. Even sitting in the house costs money. Like that $700 Hydro bill, or the Internet or the phone. Even a hot shower is costing me a King...

If you live in Ontario, by now, you will have seen a commercial warning parents to lock up their kids because the government is loosening the monopoly held by The Beer Store on the sale of ales and lagers. Should this go forward, the commercial warns, kids will surely turn into angry mobs, all liquored up. In a dramatization, the commercial shows a shifty-eyed fat fucktard behind the counter chortling as youngsters, obviously too young to purchase hooch, slam down a two-fer and a big bottle of liquor, in anticipation of a night of mayhem, hurling and date rape. The clerk sells to the kids anyway. No I.D. is checked. It's a scene straight out of Superbad. I live next to a convenience store and near a park. I should be afraid for my life and my windows as these hooligans, according to the commercial, will roam the neighborhood, like slobbering zombies, drunk out of their blasted mines. We don't see that now, right? Nope, mostly all we see, to be fair to The ...

I wonder if I'm the only person in Canada who is creeped out by all the fuss over the unfortunate demise of Jim Flaherty. I cried a few tears when I heard he had passed, as I would for anyone who had been struck down so suddenly. Poor guy, I thought. Poor wife. Poor kids. For most people, that would be it, a funeral, a wake, some hugs and nice rembrances. But the outpouring of grief is simply over the top for me. He was a politician, by all accounts, a nice guy, a person who liked to kiss the blarney stone more than his doctor might have allowed. Jim Flaherty was a guy with a bad ticker who worked too hard, drank too much and didn't watch his cholesterol. Yet somehow our country has been hurled into a weird ritual of national mourning that is bound to go on for weeks. Most of us didn't know Jim Flaherty and only saw him on budget day when he brought in a mixed bag of programs that a lot of us didn't agree with. There was more money for prisons under Flahert...

Dear Gallbladder: I've been thinking a lot about you over the last week whilst you were relentlessly stabbing me in the back. I'm disappointed in you. We've been through so much together; now is not the time to break up. Of course, we might not have any choice. The doctor may issue a restraining order meaning that you and I will inevitably part ways. I will be alone and you will be in a glass jar someplace mothering all those baby crystals for time in memorial. If this is the case, and we will know soon, I will accept my part in all of this. The drinking, the 2 a.m. smoked meat at Nate's, the T-bones on the barbecue. We've had some good times, haven't we? I was the life of the party and you, well, you were the organ beneath my ribs. I see now how selfish I've been. Putting my face in that pile of ribs was awesome, but I understand now what a sacrifice you made. Mixing up bile, spewing out stones, and I never even knew. You suffered in silenc...

Great news! I lost eight pounds in two weeks thanks to a combination of the Dr. Oz Two Week Rapid Weight Loss Program and a violent attack of gallstones caused by it. Truth be told, I abandoned the diet after a week and two trips to the ER and I'm now subsisting on instant oatmeal, dry toast, soup, tuna fish and avocado. The searing back pain has gone, thank God. Now it only hurts when I walk, breath or laugh. Oh yes, and my poop is now resembling the sludge from the Exxon Valdez. But I'm still here. In pain, but still here. And I'm vowing to blow the lid off the ill effects of The DOTWRW and other diets that can nearly kill you without at least the following disclaimer: Can result in the following: unexpected weight loss, pain that equals that of child birth, and alien life forms spewing out your butt hole. The good news is that I feel like I've come out the other side. But: what to do to make sure this never happens again? Well, it seems Sherlock H...

I've been laid up all week with these damned gallstones and I've been watching more than my fair share of commercial television. Like most journos, I'm a news buff, so I always watch the afternoon news on CTV Ottawa . It's been bad enough of late, having to put up with the commercials for Bell Fibe which run once a segment. I have Bell Fibe and I hate it. Hate it As I've written in this space before, it cuts out leaving me staring at a blue screen saying the channel is not available. It does this all the time, especially when you're watching a gripping drama and come to the end. Then, all of a sudden, nothing. If not for On Demand, I couldn't have told you how Dexter ended. I've been tempted to ram the remote through the screen. Anyway, I was absolutely shocked today to see that CTV will be running a segment promoting Bell Fibe for the next four Thursdays. In essence, without what should contain a "advertisement" crawler, it i...

My mother spent over a year in the Toronto Hospital wasting away from a bowel blockage the doctors found only when they opened her up as a last resort. She died two weeks later of an infection. She was 67. I wish I had been in Toronto to be her health advocate. but I was here, in Ottawa, busy rearing three small children and living my entitled lifestyle. I wasn't even there at the end -- I couldn't bear to be the one to pull the plug. Afterwards, my solid brother Gary, who cared for her in final days in London, Ontario, told me a story. After her operation, she was left with a colostomy bag which she had to empty. It was a difficult miserable existence for Vera who by then was only 85 pounds. She soldiered on, of course; it's how women in our family are built. She got out of bed one night and walked into the hospital bathroom to empty her bag and it broke. There was shit everywhere. An orderly came in, cleaned her up, looked at her chart and said: "Boy, you...

After my gut-wrenching experience at the ER Sunday night, with the determination my condition was not a heart attack, I returned home emboldened by the fact I simply had the flu. I wasn't going to die horrifically on the wrong end of a pair of paddles, I was just destined to languish with a supply of Peptol Bismol, green tea and soup. But the pain got worse, like a knife in the back, made worse by lying for any length of time. So sleep came two hours at a time followed a level of pain which was excruciating. By 3 a.m. the day after the first ER visit, on Monday morning, it was time to go back, to call the doctor on his diagnosis. Gut pain is the worst because it can come from anywhere. It's always hard to nail down, so I wouldn't have blamed the original doctor except for the fact he didn't even palpitate my abdomen during my visit and only focused on the symptom of chest pain. Before my visit, I scoured my usual Internet favorites: WebMD, the Mayo Clinic, some...

As usual, I spent part of the morning pouring over the online want ads looking for a job. Once in a great while, one jumps out for which I might actually be qualified.  It's not often, given my lack of bilingualism and absence of a nuclear level security clearance. But I'm not giving up. I need to buy dog food. One caught my eye this morning. Canada Post was looking for a writer for its correspondence division. Ah, I thought. I can do that. I spent some time working in the Prime Minister's Office answering correspondence back during the short term tenure of John Turner's government. I'd been working as a writer in Pierre Trudeau's PMO, so the correspondence gig was a bit of a demotion. Instead of writing lofty briefing notes for MPs, I would be lending my ear to the gripes of a nation thoroughly pissed off at the Liberals, particularly Westerners who hated The National Energy Program and Trudeau's distain for the common people. But in politics, so...