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, ...

The coming of the cold winds of April is a bittersweet time for me. Two years ago in April, we welcomed our second granddaughter, a little nugget who has changed my life for the better. But it is also the month, two years ago, when my cousin Ashley Simpson went missing from her home in Salmon Arm, B.C. I didn't know Ashley before she disappeared, most people didn't. But now she is famous with her image on t-shirts and posters, as the subject of many stories on television and in print. We all want our 15 minutes of fame. Being murdered and missing will get you that. It would be terrible enough if Ashley's disappearance was just a solo event. Unfortunately, she has become the member of a club no one ever wanted to join. She is among several women who have disappeared from her area. Only one has been located, and she wound up dead, found in a field near Silver Creek, B.C. What happened to Ashley, Caitlin Potts, Deanna Wertz, and Nicole Bell? Maybe we'll never ...

For lazy dog owners in Canada, spring signals the backyard cleanup season, that time when people everywhere spend a few hours scooping up the leftovers from their pets. When you have a big dog, this job is particularly nasty. Our Finnigan was a championship pooper. Oh well, at least he pooped in the same spot. I looked out at his territory this morning and felt a little sad. This is all we have left of the Big Woof -- a yard full of leavings -- they remind us that he's been gone nearly a month now. Finnigan left this world kicking and screaming -- literally. In December, he began to have grand mal seizures, not a lot of them, only once in a while. But it was a sight to behold, terrifying to watch a beloved pet grinding on the floor, foaming at the mouth, only to be awakened snarling, with an otherworldly look on his face. The vet told us that there really wasn't a lot we could do for him, aside from putting him on meds which might or might not work. She did warn us...

I will be celebrating my mother's 93rd birthday today, outside in the back garden, watching the weirdos walk down St. Laurent Boulevard. We're having a barbeque in her honour, steak with all the fixins, washed down by a couple glasses of French wine. If she were alive today, she'd be out there with us in the freezing cold, smoking Rothmans, and drinking some sort of Labatt product. She loved to smoke. She loved to drink. She loved to laugh. I miss her, and always will. She left this Earth in September of 1992, and she was only 68 -- six years older than I am now. Man, she seemed like a dinosaur back then, and now that I look at myself, I wonder: is that what the young ones see when they look at me? Really, I don't care anymore. I am who I am. If you don't like me, or my wrinkles, or my cheap dye job, get stuffed. That's what she would say. She lived a tough life, raising three kids on her own, as I did, living on fumes, as I did for...

Cindy and John Simpson celebrated their wedding anniversary this weekend, even though they were both down with the flu. They played some cards, ate some cake, and remembered the good times, and the very bad times. Like most couples who've been married nearly three decades, they count the raising of their children into adulthood as their greatest success. Cindy and John have lots of them in their blended family, including a gaggle of grandkids. Most recently they welcomed their first grandchildren, the imp Cyris, who is killing everybody daily with his cuteness. The kids keep John and Cindy going through the tough times. And their times have been tougher than most. For the second Family Day in a row, the Simpsons will be missing a bit piece of their hearts. Their daughter Ashley still has not been found and John is hoping to take one more trip out to Salmon Arm to find her with the help of people in the local community who refuse to give up looking for Ashley and a num...

Every story has an ending, and we've come to it. The beautiful and bountiful sprays of flowers are now wilted, and will be going into the recycle today. The letters have all been written, and the cheques have all be cashed. Her carbon footprint, once larger than the woman herself, is now reduced to a small, cream coloured box filled with receipts, just in time for tax season. On Thursday, Jennette Katherine Lovie was interred in a brief ceremony involving putty and blowtorches, the plot salesman, Squishy, Scott and me.  Now it's time to say goodbye. She and Roger can now rest together under the watchful eyes of John and Sadie Smuck, featured in the photo above. It always seemed great that they would have a couple of Smucks with whom they could spend eternity. For me, it's time to move on.  This morning, I died my hair red because I could. This afternoon, we'll spend time with my eldest granddaughter, Skylar, eating bad food at Mickey D's. I...

Over the years when I looked after Jennette, there were times I wanted to walk out of her life. It was hard watching her self-destruct, difficult to walk into an apartment that was full of paper and ashes and soot. Her friend Lu couldn't believe it when I told her about the hoarding years, the decades Jennette made neat pathways to the bathroom and the bedroom in-between the untouched moving boxes, and the couches overflowing with her dead mother's clothes. "The Jan I knew had an apartment that was neat as a pin," Lu told me. "I just can't believe she lived that way." I knew Jennette for 25 years, and every place she rented looked the same. They were always full of clutter, neat in places, especially the bathroom. The rest of her apartment looked like a bombed out place in Aleppo. The first time it was a problem was when the paramedics came to get Roger who had collapsed on the bed. It took them nearly an hour to get him out of the apartme...