Spare my ego

Recently I've lost about five pounds (although I think I've refound it). Not much, but enough that people at work who I don't know well were coming up to me and asking, "Have you lost weight?" I guess I toned or something. Anyhow, yay me and all and the important part is that I feel more toned and healthy. I feel like I'm on the way to getting my body back after ten years of a distinct lack of exercise and over-eating. In fact, I was feeling all conceited about my shrinking body.

On the tv channel that shows whats on (as in, the tv guide channel), they often have a commercial for a weight loss product playing in the background. I've included the exact commercial courtesy of youtube, but if you are inclined to view the moronic commercial, it shows a woman talking about her great legs, waist and hips, but not to be jealous of her because she tells us, " 'this' [and then they cut to a pic of her in a bikini] is what I looked like before".

And there on the screen is a pretty good approximation of what I considered to be my smokin' hot new and improved body. Here I am thinking I'm all god's gift to the world and it turns out that I'm a BEFORE picture. Crap.

I think the woman looked good both before and now [a bit thin now for my taste, but she has a nicely toned body]. It still bugs me though.

Why do the fates hate me so?

Couldn't my boyfriend have stayed with me until after this torturous hell of moving apartments and having so many boxes to lift?

Yes, I'm one of *those* people

In fairness to me, my daily order is a doppio espresso, but my specialty drink at Starbucks is a tall, non-fat, no-whip, two-pump mocha, extra hot.

The public say

Yesterday the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on a case where a man was suing Culligan water systems because he found a fly in his unopened water bottle. He had suffered such psychological distress from the incident that he had been unable to shower and lost all sex drive. An initial trial court awarded him $300,000, but that was unanimously overturned by the Ontario Supreme Court, and then the Supreme Court of Canada also unanimously dismissed the man's claims, and in fact ordered him to pay Culligan's legal fees.

The full story can be found on the CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] website.

It was a ridiculous lawsuit, but justice prevailed.

I like to read or listen to my news via CBC. It is a bit left-leaning for my liking, but I find CBC to be articulate at least. I also enjoy reading the comment section that goes with each story. Of course you get idiots posting from time to time - all hail democracy - but that's just the way it goes. What bothered me about the comments to this story though was the amount of racism that so readily crops up.

In amongst the many commenters lamenting this type of lawsuit, there were cries of "Go back to your own country" or "I'm sure he comes from a country that has tons of flies" or there was one stupid comment about a camel. Excuse me? No where in the article did it mention that the man was an immigrant. And even if he is, he's entitled to rights in Canada. Including sueing. This man was described as having a hair salon in Windsor, Ontario. So good! He's working. He's a business owner. Whether he recently came to Canada or is second or third generation, it's irrelevant. This is his country. This is his home. Also in the article he said at the end that although he didn't agree with the judgment, he respected the Supreme Court of Canada as having the final say. He wasn't saying something like he didn't acknowledge the Canadian justice system or anything that would warrant commenters saying he doesn't belong in Canada.

Criticize the guy for his lawsuit, but I don't see what it has to do with his heritage. And really, Canada's 'home grown citizens' don't launch frivolous lawsuits? Don't try to get a buck? ha. ha. ha.

I so hate this nonsense. Canadians like to pretend that they aren't racist but they so are. Maybe these ignorant comments hit home for me as I'm an immigrant myself. I'm not first-generation. I'm off the boat. However, because my name is Susan as opposed to Mustapha, I don't have to deal in general with as many stupid comments.

She gives / She takes

It was a slow friendship but soon I became best friends with my Hitachi Magic Wand. To the point I threw my back out.

And then she reverted to being the advertised "massager".

Five

Tagged by Hotdudi!

5 things in my bag

Wallet
Keys
Metropass
Workplace ID
Lipstick


5 favourite things in my room:

Snowboard
Bed [my duvet and sheets are so comfortable, and I have a million pillows]
Hitachi magic wand
Whatever cat is sleeping on my bed
My teak bookshelves


5 things I have always wanted to do:
I can't think what I've always wanted to do... it changes all the time. Things that were huge goals I've pretty much done, so for this year...

Go snowboarding in Ushuaia
Volunteer for an AIDS service organization
Develop some muscle tone!
Network more in my profession
Get back to cooking


5 things I'm currently into:

This month is all about me. SO self-centred, but there are many little tasks I need to get done in my life. I will get back to passions and pursuits once I move.

5 people to tag

Brice
IDV
Perplexio
Obama
Hillary

Lost in time

I love going to the nearby Internet cafe on my lunch. It's completely dark in here and I have a complete sense of disorientation. It could be midnight. It could be midday. All around me Korean guys in their early 20s are gaming. It's raucous and I have no clue what they are saying. Sometimes I have to get the attendant to switch the keyboard over to English for me. I love it here. It's my escape.

Yesterday Fur Snake had her first kill of the season. A mouse had wandered into my apartment. I had first been alerted to that fact by seeing the two cats pacing the same bit of floor together - my cats are not friends so seeing them in the same area was odd. The I saw a dark shadow dart under the couch.

Fur was the one stalking the mouse. I grabbed a tupperware container and started stalking the mouse too. My intent was to save it, Fur's was to kill. I don't know if any of you have seen a cat hunt, but it suffices to say that my awkward attempts at cornering the mouse were no match for Fur's skill as a hunter. In less than a minute she dared under the couch and came back out with the mouse in her mouth, the tail dangling down.

I half-heartedly tried to get her to release the mouse, but I was running late to meet a friend and didn't want a mouse in my apartment. As such I scooped up Fur Snake, mouthful of mouse and all, and tossed her out the kitchen window onto the roof. Tasha jumped out the window after in the crazed blood lust of them having fresh kill. I slammed the window shut on my cats and their cruel games.

By the time I returned home I had two cats sitting on the roof wanting back in, and no sign of the mouse.

It takes a village to raise a child

I agree with this saying. Up to a point.

I agree with it in that I believe in publicly funded education, recreation centres, and I would love to see a national daycare plan. As in, our 'village' should be child friendly. I don't like to see 'adults only' complexes. I think when we cut ourselves off from kids even if we don't have them ourselves, that it is a loss to all of us. I also feel this way about our society shoving the elderly out of site.

I'll even go so far as to tolerate temper tantrums when they can't be avoided. I do think parents are entitled to a life beyond Chuck E Cheese and children need to learn how to behave in social settings.

For my mother's birthday one year, we all went to the restaurant in the Park Hyatt [high-end Toronto hotel] for lunch. We chose that locale because my two and a half year-old niece was coming and we figured that hotels are used to families, lunch is less stressful, and in a hotel when a kid gets restless, one of the adults can get up and walk around the lobby with the kid, unlike a stand-alone restaurant where you and every other diner are trapped. Even then, at one point my niece started banging her plate with her cutlery and her mum leaned over and quietly said, "Stop that right now or we'll leave". My niece stopped. She pouted for a minute, but she didn't go back to banging her plate.

I know some people will think that we shouldn't have brought a child to a high-end hotel at all. Also, we knew that we wouldn't have our own leisurely lunch. From time to time each of us got up from the table and walked with my niece up and down the hotel corridor to the lobby, but at least we made sure that no one else in that restaurant had their meal disturbed. The other people in the restaurant were able to enjoy the leisurely lunches they had planned.

So back to the saying, "It takes a village to raise a child". To me that although I would like to see a more child tolerant society, it doesn't mean that strangers should have to raise your child for you. [Radmila had a blog post on this topic that discussed a recent newspaper article about just the kind of parent who I think gives parents a bad name]. These parents don't seem to understand that the saying 'it takes a village to raise a child' doesn't mean that the parent doesn't have to supervise their own kid. Furthermore, that saying only works when the whole village has the same idea about child rules.

One of my pet peeves is when people think it's fine to let a child run amok in a restaurant. This is why I gave the story of my niece and why I blogged about a year ago about an incident where parents made their son go up and apologize to me for having screamed 'boo' at me while I was eating. [I was so impressed with them. I mean, stuff happens, kids are unpredictable... but they took appropriate action]

One standard that I think our society -yes! our VILLAGE! - agrees on is that wait staff should not have to watch out for uncontrolled toddlers as they carry food to customers.

So if you are a parent who feels that it's fine to allow your child to roam freely through a restaurant, please understand that if your child comes near my table, that as part of your village I will feel perfectly justified in telling your child that a restaurant is not a playground and returning them to your table. Ditto when your child is kicking my seat in a movie theatre and you are doing nothing I will also turn around and tell them that that is unacceptable. I've done it to adults.

Suddenly this whole village thing is becoming appealing to me.

Signs of spring [and summer]

Tasha on the neighbour's fence. She likes to run on the roof of the factory pictured behind her.

Fur hanging out right outside my kitchen. She sits on the window ledge when she wants to come back in.

I open the kitchen window and my cats go in and out all day. They jump off the roof onto the fence and then run off to destinations unknown. Touch wood - they always come back.

File this under "non news"

This was the news story all over Toronto yesterday where a woman was fired for giving a timbit [little ball of doughnut] to a baby. I hated it because all the stories emphasized that the employee was 'a single mother' [what? like it doesn't matter if the rest of us have jobs?] and that the food she gave away was 'for a baby'. How is her job loss NATIONAL news? I do think that the manager was probably over zealous in firing her but maybe the employee was generally a crap employee and the manager had been waiting for an excuse to get rid of her. Also, I don't respect the fact that the employee went to the media.

I'm sure all of us have in some way cheated our employer - printing personal documents from work, or finding a pen at home - and I don't think they are firing offences. But this is a restaurant. I loathe Tims, but to me if I saw an employee handing out free food I would worry they were doing it all the time. I just think there's probably more to the story than this little media sob story.

Tim Hortons rehires fired woman

Globe and Mail Update with Canadian Press

May 8, 2008 at 12:02 PM EDT

LONDON, Ont. — A Tim Hortons employee fired Wednesday for giving a free Timbit to the child of a regular customer has been rehired.

Nicole Lilliman, 27, a single mother of four in London, Ont., was reinstated Thursday after intervention by the chain's head office.

In a terse press release, the company blamed an overzealous manager for the firing, which threatened to become a public relations nightmare as the story gained traction in the media Thursday.

"Unfortunately the action of the manager of this location was not appropriate nor grounds for dismissal. With an apology from management, Ms. Lilliman has been rehired by the franchisee," it states.

Pride comes before a fall - literally

I am so stressed and behind on household activities that I took the morning off today. I got up early and did laundry, and then I went to a clothing sale downtown. On my way to the sale, I cut through a parking lot. One second I was walking between two cars, and the next second I was face down on the ground. I had tripped over a low concrete barrier and hit the dirt with hardly even bracing myself. My left knee and shin took most of the impact. I wasn't bleeding, but I was in shock and bruised and scraped.

I started crying and the parking lot attendant [bless him] came over and lifted me to my feet and checked to see if I was okay. I was hobbling along looking down at my torn stockings and assuring him that I would be fine in a few minutes. And then it hit me.

Forget the stupid knee, forget the scraped shin, I was wearing THE SHOES.

I didn't want to look down, but I did. The left shoe is scuffed up on the toe with some of the leather torn off, the right shoe had a split in the leather near the top of the shoe. It's not repairable. I might be able to camouflage the worst of the damage though.

I can't believe that I have dreamed of owning Fluevogs for twenty years and they lasted all of a week.

But what a sweet week it was.

For CoffeeDog and Laverne

Today I entered the elevator and a woman [who I don't know] said, "I LOVE your shoes. They look like they should be part of a movie"

(and not a horror movie, okay you shoe doubters? She was admiring them...)

Of course I was beaming.

Quitting

Like quitting smoking, I think one of the hardest things after a sudden break-up is stopping thinking about the person. I don't mean thinking in the way of, "Oh god, how will I ever survive?" or "what a fucking asshole" or "finally I'm free" or in my recent case, "Okay, what happened here?", but more in the way of hearing a news story or seeing something and catching yourself thinking that you should be telling your partner about it. And then realizing that that connection is suddenly gone. The other day I was talking with a group of people I had met through a friend and one guy was telling this hilarious story about gaming as a kid. I thought, "Oh R. would get a kick out of this story". And then I stopped myself.

It's strange but I found it easier watching the sex tape. It's not hard to imagine that I can have great sex with someone else. But I do find it always a jolt to lose that mundane daily connection with someone. That to me is what makes a relationship. I can't wait for the next.

Next week's agenda

1. Find new apartment
2. Discard of more and more clutter from current apartment
3. Mani/pedi. Hair cut. Bikini wax. Eyelashes dyed. Eyebrows threaded. Upper lip threaded.
   
4. Treat myself to a massage/body scrub/steam room
   
5. Hire a cleaning woman
6. Buy jeans

This week is all about the external. Next week I'll get back to the healthy living part.

What are others up to in preparation for summer?