Rose's Cantina

#136300003 / gettyimages.com This afternoon, we will clear out my antique accountant's desk from under the front window, vacuum up all the dog hair that's been hiding under it, and put up our fake Christmas tree, the one we rescued from a neighbor's lawn, the one that had a sign on it that said "free to a good home". We got that Christmas tree three years ago when we were so broke we couldn't afford to buy one. We were at our lowest point. Nobody in the house was working much, a baby was one the way and I was about to become a Grandmother. The planning for Christmas had become more of a nuisance than a joy. Still, there no reason to feel sorry for ourselves. It's not like we had small children and a lot of mouths to feed and expectations to meet at Christmas. We were simply wallowing in middle age as a dually-divorced couple, people who got together with nothing in hopes of building something. And we had. Together, we built a lovi...

#122021048 / gettyimages.com Once, in desperation and fear of poverty, I nearly took a job as a communications director for Peter Goldring, the renegade Member of Parliament who is now advocating that male MPs wear Go-Pro cameras to guard against harassment charges by women on the Hill. I interviewed for the job. I liked Peter Goldring, mainly because he was interested in affordable housing even though he was a member of Stephen Harper's caucus. (He was later hoisted for being moist and garrulous, which made me like him even more.) I didn't realize he was a nut. He seemed genuinely sincere, and I accepted the position. Then I walked out of his office and met his chief of staff who looked very much like a cross-between John Waters and Harvey Pekar. Brrrrr. As I was leaving the office, the secretary motioned me over, and gave me a warning about the chief  of staff. He's weird, she said. Minutes later, I texted Mr. Goldring and said: "thanks but n...

It doesn't look like much, does it? Kind of looks like a heating pad. But my husband Scott Troyer and I are hoping this little gizmo will change a few lives. It's a portable looping system that can be used in cars, boardrooms and living rooms. The pad fits under or on the seat of your chair and microphones are placed strategically so that a person who has hearing loss can actually understand what is going on around them -- instead of taking their hearing aids off because they are frustrated by all the noise around them. So the driving snowbird can actually hear his partner on the long drive to Florida. Or a child with a cochlear implant sitting in the backseat can talk to her mom on the way to hockey practice. It's not perfect and not for everybody but isn't it nice to know that those hearing aids you paid a few thousand bucks for will actually do you some good while driving around town, or watching the Superbowl on the big screen with your family cheering al...

By January 1, 2015, businesses and not-for-profit organizations with more than 20 employees will be required by the Ontario government to provide accessible customer service and train their staff on how to serve people with disabilities. That means that a dance studio must be able to provide information materials in an accessible format like a website, not just on paper, so that clients who have vision loss can read them with screen readers. It also means that a clothing store must either provide fitting rooms to accommodate wheelchairs, or provide an exemption to a no return policy if their wheelchair bound customers cannot try the clothes on beforehand. It makes sense that, finally, in this modern age, businesses will be required to find better ways to serve the more than 1 in 7 persons with a disability in this province. It also makes sense from a business standpoint considering that ageing Ontarians and people with disabilities represent 40% of total income in Ontario. Th...

#86146337 / gettyimages.com Dear Bell Canada: Thanks for following me on Twitter. You must be greatly interested on why I cancelled your home phone service today, so let me illuminate. Two years ago, we got Bell Fibe. We were one of the first customers in our area happy to get rid of Rogers once and for all. Unfortunately, we hated the Fibe service. It kept cutting out. The highlight was when it cut out at the end of the Canada hockey game during the Olympics. It was also constantly cutting out during the good bits in the movies. So we cancelled, and I wrote about how Bell Fibe sucks in my blog. Six thousand people have read that blog. A lot of them agree with me. But not wanting to put all my huevos in one basket, we decided  to keep the home phone. After all, Bell is the granddaddy of phones. I've had a Bell phone since I was a kid, when dialup meant you actually had to dial up your granny. Because we have smartphones we only use the home phone for bill co...

Rosie Tits. That was my nickname at my first job as a reporter . One of the photographers gave me that nickname nearly 40 years ago, about a month after I started writing for my hometown paper. I was 19 years old.  When he called me that, he did so in front of the newsroom. Everybody had a good chuckle over that one. He also gave my colleague a nickname. He called her Darlene Happy Crack. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't go to the principal's office, or go up to a teacher. There were other women in the newsroom, but I didn't know them, and I didn't feel comfortable discussing the dilemma with the managing editor who was an old man. So I did what all good girls do: I smiled and laughed along with the boys. I did a lot of laughing over the next few years. I was very naïve back then and didn't know how to handle this kind of degradation. I'm sure my face was red, I can't remember. Rosie Tits, just kept echoing in my ears. It was the...

On Sunday, Scott went to the dog park with the pug Sophie and the lab Finnigan in tow. He was going to take some photos of the hounds against the backdrop of the wonderful burnt orange leaves and brilliant red Sumacs. After an hour of hard running, Finnigan was happy to climb in the backseat. Sophie wasn't ready to go it seemed. She ripped free of her harness and tore off into the parking lot. After several minutes of skirting cars and milling hounds, Scott managed to grab her and get her back into the car. In the meantime, he had forgotten he'd left his $1,000 camera on the roof. Scott was halfway home when he remembered his camera, which represented more than a hobby for him. It was both his livelihood and his passion. That camera has documented the birth of our granddaughter, the marriage of my daughter Marissa, the ages and stages of the kids growing up. It had also made him money from time to time. Just this past week, he'd gotten a contract to take picture...

#78905016 / gettyimages.com Pardon me for being crabby, but I'm on my last nerve, and that nerve is on the outside of my ass. For days, I've been hold up, here, on a Lazy Boy chair with only two pugs book-ending me. You see, my body is failing me. My left knee has become a mess of angry cartilage, threatening to explode every time I get up to take a piss. As if in retaliation -- in the case of my gallbladder, it's always 'what about me?' -- I am nursing a sickening pain in my right side, making laying down not an option. Being immobilized means that all the food just settles despite a parade of little helpers: antacids, green tea, and Aleve, so I'm feeling really bloated and belchy, unable to bear the fencing in of various rolls of flesh. Bras and control top underwear, once my go-to friends, have become the enemy. Here I splay. Being a shut-in, chained as I am to the Lazy Boy, is no picnic. I am a reactive mess forced to entertain myse...