Reblogged from In My Opinion…:

Day 37 Question 37: What is relationship advice you would give to women? I was looking up different writing topics to see which ones jumped out at me today.  This was one that made me kind of giggle that I thought would be quite amusing to write about…considering I am a 33 year old single woman that has never been married and has no children….oh yea and I have only had 2 “serious” relationships.  I thought it would be fun to answer because although I have not (at least I don’t believe I have) …

This is so awesome, just had to share this wise woman’s post!

Here are The Rules.

1. You must post the rules (if you wish to, lol).
2. Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post and then create eleven new questions to ask the people you’ve tagged (or recycle the questions of others if you are so inclined as I was with Lafemmeroars.)
3. Tag eleven people (or more if you wish) and link to them on your post.
4. Let them know you’ve tagged them (but if you don’t get time, you won’t have to go to your room for three weeks or anything like that, lol!)

Lafemmeroar’s Questions:

1. If your privates itched in public, would you scratch or suffer? Suffer because I have seen how ugly it is when people stand there scratching their front or back cracks in public. Just the repulsive thought would make my itching stop, lol.

Who can complain of anything living five minutes from this beautiful setting. Not I. At least not today, lol

Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday I spent the day with a friend who is anything but an Iron Lady and we had a marvelous time walking, talking, lunching, walking some more, right into dinner and a movie. The movie was the Iron Lady.

My wise and wonderful friend who is very well read tells me that Lady Thatcher’s family is upset about the movie. I can see why.

While the screen was rife with news clip after news clip of old news we are already well aware of, there was very little for us to ponder in terms of the woman, herself, other than a sad decline into dementia that is common among the aged everywhere.

Thatcher’s ego seemed to be the focus and the scene where she fairly shouts at her husband, “I am the Prime Minister” was not pretty.

Myself, I was disappointed. And so was my friend. We both expected to see a “fleshing out” of Thatcher’s personality, more insight into her character and this led me to questioning just how much of the film was actually factual (other than the obvious). After all, who was the insider who witnessed her descent into dementia, the only element of the movie that was really new to us.

Too one-dimensional, I can see why this portrayal would upset her family. As one who is working on the story of her own mother’s challenging life, let me always present it fairly in a balanced way that leaves my mother a wise, wonderful and human being who did her best under the circumstances she was faced with. A woman, I believe, not unlike Lady Thatcher.

Not a political aficionado, I am coming at this purely from a human and humane aspect of witnessing a work I feel fell far short of what it could have been.  I can appreciate that a lot of people disagree with her and that is putting it mildly. But I can’t help wondering about the woman underneath the veneer. The human heart pounding blood through her veins like the rest of us. The position she held, the decisions she made that, were she not a woman, would have been just fine, even lauded.  But that is a whole other avenue that needs another post so I’ll give this a wrap for now.

Meryl Streep was wonderful, of course, but then, when isn’t she. The content of the film, however, was not. For my movie dollar, I feel we bought disappointment. My friend said she could have lived without all of the newsreels she already knew about, too. My friend actually dozed off  which speaks volumes from a Master’s educated woman who once ran hospitals and reads the Globe and Mail daily.

So there you have it. One movie, two opinions and if you want to know more, Wikipedia pretty much tells the entire story of the movie. For free.

However, I do have a new understanding of dementia in the elderly and feel I’d like to learn more about that. Perhaps this new-found knowledge of the frustrations and heart ache of losing those we love while they are still alive will help me understand the aging friends and family in my life a little better, if only to be a gentle presence for them when they need me.

(c) 20Feb2012

Image via Wikipedia

Okay, now who cares? Really? If I write favorite or favourite, if I write behaviour or behavior? Surely, you see what I mean? Okay, well maybe Shirley can’t but the rest of you can. Can’t you? Not every published writer in the world even knew how to spell properly or even finished school for that matter. But the gift of story shone through regardless of the mispellings in the manuscript(s).

In Canada, I was schooled to spell with the “our” suffix many words. Including Saviour. Maybe I’ll be one of those who rescues our own language from auto correct of word processors made in the U.S. Nothing against that but as one for choice, shouldn’t we have the choice?

Would an editor or publisher really toss our work into file G (Garbage) if we didn’t spell “their way?” I’ve heard it can happen but I hope I was mis-informed.

Admittedly, I often acquiesce, in haste, as usual, to the auto-correct because I haven’t time to sit and fix it all so I just do yes to all but maybe I’ll stop that because I feel I owe my language and my country something. Honour.

We don’t have any more prayer in school, we are not allowed to sing God Save the Queen and we can pretty much wear lingerie to class so by God let us at least be known for our perfectly Canadian spelling!

Oh. Dear. Now I have a bit of a problem because I also adore “Olde English” spelling so who knows, you may see some of that on my pages along with variations of Saviour and fervor, lol.

In the meantime… (why is it called “mean” time? Anybody? Shouldn’t we change that to “kind”time, yay, I vote, lol. So, in the kindtime:

Yeah, Canada, you rock and I love living here. Spelled: C A N A D A  :)

(c) JAM 18Feb2012

~

MCM

We read in the paper and hear on the air

Of killing and stealing and crime everywhere

We sigh and we say, as we notice the trend

This young generation, where will it end?

But can you be sure it’s their fault alone

That maybe a part of it isn’t our own?

Are we less guilty, and place in their way

Too many things to lead them astray.

Too much money, too much idle time

Too many movies of passion and crime

Too many books not fit to be read

Too much evil in what they said

Too many children encouraged to roam

Too many parents who won’t stay at home.

Kids don’t make the movies, they don’t write the books

That paint the picture of gangsters and crooks

They don’t make the liquor, they don’t run the bars

They don’t make the laws and they don’t buy the cars

They don’t peddle drugs that addle the brain

That’s all done by older folk greedy for gain.

Delinquent teenagers, oh, how we condemn

The sins of the nation and blame it on them

But the laws of the blameless the Saviour made known

Who is there among us to cast the first stone

For in many cases, it is sad but it’s true

The title “delinquent” fits older folks, too.

~~~

~

youthful dreams pedal forward swiftly

naive legs master crumbling cinder block patterns

no riding past wheel stops

~

JAM 16Feb2012

9 1/2. (lol)  http://fiftyfourandahalf.com/ This woman is screaming funny, real as real gets and so good to know and read, Thanks Elyse

This is not a complete list of everyone who deserves recognition, just the tip of the berg, as it were. If I were to list every one of you who has left me speechless, laughing or carrying warmth in my heart all day, I would run out of space. Thank you all for being part of my community here

Bonus time! Ten things about me I never knew, lol.

~ I never knew I would grow to love the blogging community so much after resisting writing one at all until just 11 months ago. Thanks everyone

Happy Wednesday, everyone, may yours be warm and wonderful.

It was just an old farmhouse but seemed like  a palace when I was small and spent days at my Gramma’s. As far back as I can remember, Granny was a very tall, straight person with snow-white hair and always wore long skirts and a cover all apron. Under these aprons with my head on her lap, I shed my frustrated tears and told my secrets which no one else ever heard.

One summer when I was six or seven years old, a cousin stayed at Granny’s too and while playing with a bottle cap, he accidentally swallowed it and it stuck in his throat. While his mom ran to the farmhouse - Granny took him on her knees nd put her finger down his throat and got the top out. When the doctor arrived he said the boy was lucky he had a Granny with a crooked fingers as a straight finger would only have pushed it further and the bend on the end of her finger hooked on it and pulled it out.

While staying at Granny’s I had jobs to do as everyone else on a farm. One job was going for the cows, in the early evening, to bring them home to the farm to be milked. The times I enjoyed most doing this was in the fall when the mushrooms grew abundantly in the pasture and I’d always pick enough for breakfast the next morning. Our breakfast would be a nice thick slice of homemade bread with the homemade butter and jams and jellies on and the scrambled eggs with mushrooms. After breakfast we ould clean out the hen house if it was the time of year, we would dig potatoes, pull the carrots and turnips to be put in bins – which were square wooden boxes made of scrap boards in the cellar.

The cellar was made of stones on the wall that had been gathered from the field. In here I dreamed many childhood dreams that never came true but were real to me at the time. The Butter was kept down there in a crack as well as the buttermilk – which always tasted so good with molasses cookies. Besides the vegetables and the butter there was apples and jars in rows of pickles and jam and a barrel of salt meat and one of pork. There was no lights down there was there was no electricity in the house and one day Granny sent me down there to get a jar of jam and a strange man was laying on the mud floor and watering at the mouth.

I ran for Granny who immediately lite a lantern and picked up a stick of stovewood. We went back to the cellar and Granny knew right away the man was choking, she opened his mouth while I held the lantern so she could see and a big piece of pickle came flying out of his mouth after she had hooked her finger behind it. She proceeded to berate him for being in her cellar and stealing. Then she asked him to come and sit on the verandah and she made him a meal and tea and told him it was better for the soul to forget pride and ask for food than it was to steal it. And that it was much better to ask to do a job for the food than to take it for nothing. He thanked her and left.

Three summers later, a  strange car drove up the lane to the house and a well dressed man came to the door and asked Granny for a cup of tea. She asked him to sit on the verandah and she’d make the tea. While I was at the woodshed gathering chips to start a quick fire in the old range, the man deposited a big box on the verandah and sat down to wait. When Granny Brought his tea out, with me watching form a step, he told her the box was hers.

It turned out it was a small oil stove, something we had never seen before, you could boil a dinner or pots of water on it. The man turned out to be the stranger we had found choking in the cellar. He took Granny’s advice to heart and got a job and had not forgotten Granny’s good deed with her crooked finger.

~~~

Written By: My Mother with love and remembrance, isnt’ that what Valentines are all about? Much love everyone this day of loves remembered, loves lost and dear loves cherished ever more.

My mother dubbed Valentines Day “Love Day” and sent me a valentines card nearly every single year of my life. This Valentines Day is a strange one, the second without her and I was leafing through cards she’s given me (I have every single greeting card I ever received from anyone who mattered to me since  I was a teenager). Mom and I had our differences, as many mothers and daughters naturally do, but one thing was constant: we loved each other fastly and we each knew it. Amid the cards with her beautiful penmanship today I found a collection of writings by mom that I put  together as a gift for everyone in our family in 1992.  Her hand written inscription on the inside cover of my copy is my 2012 Valentine from beyond:

“To my darling daughter, Janice, who had to grow up sooner than she should have.

I love you,

Mom.”