I am a clown

I have a few reservations about posting pictures of children on the internet.  For one, I do not agree that just because children are pretty they should be “on display”.  There is too much objectification and romanticism of children already.  I think children benefit more from being recognized for who they are, future adults who we are responsible for now.

It might make it difficult to show what I do however…  hmmmmm.  I will think on this!  In the mean time here is a pic of me and Steven, a big kid!  It was a late night event.  I was interviewed by a local cable t.v. station.  I even had an entourage!  Fun times!

I am a clown

I am a clown

T.T.C. is the better way and you better agree with the bus driver!

I was not going to run.  The great thing about depression is you conserve energy well.  Then the light changed and caused the bus to  stop, I crossed over, still, in T.O. there is a cat and mouse game with buses, often, not all the time, but often, if you run after them they will leave you.  It was a long red light, what can I say?

I got on the bus.  As per usual on my bus there was a driver hanging around the one driving the bus. He says to me, once he moves so I can put my money in, “You know if you wave the driver will wait for you.”  I heard a few snickers in the peanut gallery. 

Another thing about being depressed, you can keep a straight face pretty easily.  

He is blocking my way to the seats.  He is going on about what a great guy he is and how great his buddy is. 

Now I could be wrong but I felt like he was involving me in a much longer argument, like one that started years ago.  I’m imagining pre dawn era, the Brontosaurus bus to Big Rock, swings its big tail and splashes mud on all the caveman commuters running for the stop and the driver shrugs and points at his watch, “Sorry, schedule, ha ha ha.”

Another thing about being sad, while resigned to the inevitable proof that life sucks, there’s only one thing that can really switch it to anger and that is the old, “Hey, Cheer up!  This is your lucky day! I am wonderful and to prove it I am going to make you agree!”

Finally I say to him, “If I had waved and jumped up and down and then ran you still might have driven this bus away as I reached the stop and maybe splashed me with mud and I would have been put in an even worse mood than I am in now!”

Not wanting to assault a T.T.C. employee, (it happens every 4 1/2 minutes, go figure) I manage to get by him and I hear him say something about the great women drivers on the T.T.C.  (Wow, how radical, they let women drive buses now!)  He is talking down the bus at me.  I wonder if everyone on the bus thinks he’s my ex or something.

I said “shut up” not loudly, just in a sort of conversational tone. I doubt he could hear me.  I got to the back and hung on to a pole, a bit shaken up. (I am afterall a rather smallish woman.)  He had resumed hanging on to the ticket box talking to his buddy driving the bus.  No doubt they had assured themselves that out of all the drivers they are the “good guys” and I was just another example of a “grumpy woman”, probably a lesbian, definitely menopausal.

p.s. There is nothing FUNNY about assault.  Assault is wrong.  Seriously.

I hate lists!

I hate lists and I am really good at ignoring them. 

 

The way I was raised, a list was something you got when you had already screwed up so badly you needed to be publicly humiliated, public meaning my sister and only up until she moved away.  (When she was in university the list would have had to be read to her over the phone.  I was a child pre-internet.)

Adding to my aversion to lists I suspect  in past lives I lived in occupied countries that had lists posted in public squares with rules like: 

• Citizens must wear funny hats on Wednesdays and Fridays. 
• Citizen’s will eat fish on Fridays but  not the good kind, and only the heads
• Citizen’s will eat their hats on Tuesdays and Thursdays
• Mondays are “buy a new funny hat” days

I have a pair of jeans with several scraps of paper in the pockets that have, MILK, BAGELS, CHEESE written on them. I always have to buy the same things it seems.  All a list seems to do for me is confirm when I forget to buy something.  When I am confronted by the obvious lack of something  on returning from shopping I take out the list and say, “Yup, there it is.  I forgot it.” and then I throw the list in the garbage.  The times I get everything on the list the list stays in my pocket.: MILK, BAGELS, CHEESE.

 When I was a young mother there was a book called “The Mother’s Almanac” and from this I got the great advice to only make a list at the end of the day for all the things I had done and never at the beginning of all the things I HAD TO DO.  It saved my life.  At the end of the day I was exhausted and never got around to making the list but I fell into my solid sleep with the thought of all the things I had managed to complete against great odds.

My email provider has a great little calendar with it and if I actually had a lot of work to do it would come in handy I am sure but for making up lists of things to do it is even more useless than scraps of paper in my back pocket.  

These days my lists are short.  I am out of work.   All the things I do out of habit, waking up for example, I do not need a list for.