Rose's Cantina

At four in the morning, the alarm goes off and I hear the announcer on CBC Radio drone on as usual,  something about the orange clown south of the border.  I slap the radio like it's some sort of pesky mosquito, in hopes of getting a few more seconds of peace.  My little Aussie Shepherd jumps to attention.  Pearl is four months old, and she's good at it. She reminds me of Anna waking up her sister in the opening scene of Frozen .  The sun is awake. And I'm awake. It's time to play! It's Saturday, and I have to drive my husband to work in downtown Ottawa. Later, I have a date with my son and my granddaughter to celebrate Father's Day one day early. Time is a wastin'.  I jump out of bed before Pearl pees on my shoes, then sit outside with my tea while Scott gets showered. Four in the morning is a fascinating time on my street which is almost always busy. It's a major artery during the day, brimming with buses, firetrucks, ...

We've got lots of people coming over for Canada Day today. No matter. Nothing can beat this. Happy Canada Day to all my peeps.

This photograph was taken by my cousin Pat on a Polaroid camera when I was 23. I was home for Christmas with the swagger of a girl with her first -- and only as it turns out -- newspaper job. I had many stories to tell back then, about life on Parliament Hill, drinks with celebrity journalists, reporting on the issues of the day. Just a year out of journalism school, I had managed to get a ticket to the Big Show, but my relatives didn't care. They didn't want to hear about it. Sometimes I felt like an alien who had landed in Pleasantville where everything had stayed the same and people lived their lives in black-and-white while I was being colorized. My mom and my Aunt Alwyn were always listening, though, fascinated by the stories of a time and a place that they could only imagine. And how I loved to talk about my new life, for hours into the morning. Sometimes, we would stay up til 3 a.m. talking. At Christmas, especially, I miss those talks. Like man...

She may not have reached the magic age,  but my granddaughter is already in the terrible twos. I remember the phase well. It's the "do the opposite" phase. No sooner does grandma tells her to keep her sticky hands off the remote than she's grabbing it, sliming it and running with it. Tell her to stay away from the barbeque and she's got her head in it. Ask her not to play with her food and she mangles it, smears it on her face and then drops it. She won't let me comb her hair. She sticks her tongue out to push out the broccoli so it lands on the floor and she pulls Gordie's tail. And just, just when Grandma is getting ready to send her off into the corner, she does a little jig and all is forgiven. All I can say is "could be worse". Her father was a real piece of work at this age. We had to put an alarm on his door because he would get up in the middle of the night, go to the pantry and eat Kool Aid by the handful. Put him to bed and h...

We had ourselves a serious generational fight over Facebook this weekend. The old guard won the battle and hopefully the younger generation will get the message. It is NOT okay to put inappropriate photos of a young child on Facebook. To the other side -- who were not the parents -- it seemed normal, to show images of them partying with my granddaughter in tow. After all, they've been posting these kind of pictures for years. You know the ones: mouths gaping, fingers splayed defiantly, the look of waste in their rheumy eyes. Every kid who hasn't been laced straight has posted these kind of images -- even kids I would have thought knew better. It seems they haven't yet got the message that what you post on Facebook stays on Facebook, and also stays on your permanent record. Images like these keep people from getting good jobs once they've outgrown the party phase. If the kids are celebrities -- or serial killers -- the photos would be splashed all over televisi...

I woke up this morning feeling pukey and out of sorts. It felt like morning sickness. Ah ha, but we know that can't happen. Yesterday, I started a new regime and I'm paying for it dearly today. I finally succumbed to the siren call of the blood pressure medication that Dr. Ben was holding in his hand. I fought him tooth and nail on taking medication. Like a Lincoln lawyer, I made my case. I work out an hour a day. I've scaled back on the alcohol. I'm eating better than Dr. Oz. But numbers don't lie. For the past week I've been testing my blood pressure and it's high -- 155 over 100 high. Dangerous high. "Well, heart and stroke runs in the family," I conceded as I watched Dr. Ben's eyes twinkle. "But I don't smoke!" He shrugged and gave me a blister pack full of tiny pills which I'm finding even harder to swallow than the horse pills they call multivitamins. I didn't feel too bad yesterday, but toda...