Rose's Cantina

Today, Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson pleaded with residents to stay home because tomorrow we're going to get a whopping 40 centimetres of snow. This news has already struck fear into the icy hearts of OC Transpo managers who are asking LRT operators to practise breaking in snow (news! The winter started months ago!). I will stay home, watching my puppies playing in the snow, because I am still unemployed after 10 months. This week, I applied for jobs as a communications adviser, a writer/editor, and a sales clerk at the grocery store. If I'm lucky I'll be packing fish on ice within a week. If I haven't heard from the grocery store by next week, I'm pulling out all the stops and applying at Costco and Home Depot. They pay an extra dollar an hour, or so I hear. It's been a very disturbing winter. I'm turning 64 in July, and I currently earn $400 from CPP. I will have to wait until next July so I can top up my earnings with the Old Age Pension rounding o...

View image | gettyimages.com My husband and I are both turning 60 next year, that magical age when all things are supposed to come together. You have great sex because Mom has gone through menopause and Dad is taking Viagra. You can finally take that trip you've put off because the dogs are all dead, and the kids are on their own. And your life becomes a series of bridge and golf games, endless parties, and trips to the gym. It's like Dick Van Dyke meets the Biggest Loser meets the speciality channels. I am lucky because I am 59 and I am not on any medication whatsoever. The doctor tried to put me on high blood pressure pills until I outsmarted him by purchasing a blood pressure cuff. I actually have low blood pressure! I go to the gym regularly, and I eat properly and still manage to get in a few glasses of red with no ill effects (cross your legs, fingers and toes). And I have perfect 20-20 long distance vision thanks to Dr. Myles and his five second cataract cur...

It's hard at my advancing age to resist nostalgia for the good old days. Especially when you're on Facebook with your former high school and university classmates, coworkers from dead newspapers and old drinking buddies from the press club. I used to laugh at oldsters who put up plaques with old sayings all over their cottages and trailers along with little "kits" like the one with this label: Open in Case of Emergency. Inside was a candle with the instructions to light when someone farts. On the candle was another wrap around slogan: Silent but deadly. Lately, I have been bombarded with Facebook messages and posters that read "remember when?" that are pictures of old toasters, eight tracks, washing machines with rollers and other crappy gizmos invented long ago by snake oil salesmen. None of those devices were good. The toaster burned your fingers -- and the toast -- and the roller-style washing machines caused multiple amputations in weary housew...