Election Why

The complaints from my Conservative buddies at the return of a Trudeau to 24 Sussex Drive are pretty loud, ranging from 'we're screwed' to 'whhhhhyyyyyy??'
I understand their concerns, but I am baffled at how they didn't see Monday Night coming.

Maybe they're confused because their party was endorsed by a majority of the mainstream media outlets that do such things, (National Post, Toronto Sun, Globe and Mail) and they still lost, and lost big.

Even though Stephen Harper did the stuff conservatives feel should be done like cutting taxes and trade deals, they were sent packing this week in spectacular fashion and it's for the very same reason the PCs in Ontario were shut out in their last effort: you can be right, but most of us think you shouldn't be mean about it. You especially shouldn't be a mean, rude, racist bully (several other words deleted here) about it.

Americans think of themselves as exceptional and Brits think of themselves as self-effacing, but Canadians are known around the world for being polite; we say sorry to each other when we accidentally collide, for heavenssakes! Most of us not only like to think of ourselves as nice, we relish thinking that the rest of the world shares that view.

Former Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak was probably correct to say that the provincial public service could use about a hundred thousand fewer workers. But he came off like a jerk when he said it, and so now, a nice lady is paying ransom to teachers to stay on the job.

Looking back, you can see the mean streak from the beginning of Stephen Harper's tenure as PM with the early unleashing of those attack ads, but we all know it didn't stop there. It ended with his desperate move on the niqab, which is when finally, the nice people of Canada had had it with the meanness. We figure the ladies who wear niqabs have enough trouble on their plates and don't need any opprobrium.

At the end of the day, most of us want our leaders to reflect our values and I don't think most of us want to look in the mirror and see a big blue meanie.

That said, we don't want to see a moron, either. So, for now, unless and until he proves himself to be something else, we've picked a tall, slim, long-lashed fella with cut abs, some retro baggage, and a groovy wife.

About Betty

Today is a very big day for many of us: not just election day, not just a must-win game for our beloved Toronto Blue Jays, for about five hundred people in our area, it's the start of the curling season. The Collingwood Curling Club opens its season tonight.

Personally, I'm going to be playing four days a week and teaching on Sundays for the next 20 weeks, hoping to win back the women's championship.

The season will be different because one of my fellow skips will be missing from the club.

I was really looking forward to seeing Betty Rinaldo tonight. She has been one of the skips in the women's competitive league right from its first year. I've won against her and I've certainly lost to her, and every one of those games was a fun time, thanks to Betty's fun ways.

Betty is one of those people who you just can't NOT look forward to seeing again. She is one of those tiny women who get a lot done but who always look great doing it and seem to have an inner strength that propels them forward into the world with positivity and grace. I liked and admired her.

I found out yesterday that Betty died earlier this month.

I knew her well enough to ask her to be on my Friday night date-night curling team, but not enough to know that she was not well.
August 30th, she said yes to being on the team with Sweetie and me. September 9th, Betty sent me an email saying she wouldn't be able to be on Sweetie's and my team after all. She didn't supply a reason, and I didn't ask. I wrote back, "Rats, that's too bad, but we'll figure something out." I did not ask if everything was all right; it simply didn't dawn on me that there could be anything wrong with someone so vital and so alive. I just figured she had gotten a better offer, perhaps from a better team.

I should not have 'just figured'.

October 7th, Betty died at the Campbell House hospice. I was shocked yesterday when I found out she had been 79 - she seemed so much younger. I knew her well enough to know I wanted to spend my Friday nights with her all winter at the curling club, but somehow not well enough to know that she was sick.

I regret not saying goodbye to her; I would have told her how much I admired her fierce enthusiasm for life. She was fun and funny. She had awesome draw weight. She had a terrific laugh. She was what some people call "a pistol".

I will miss her. I already do.

Something this way comes - but what?

Something is afoot at the polling stations.

Beyond the story of who wins the federal election on Monday, the story of this campaign could well be the turnaround in the number of people bothering to exercise their franchise.

For years, democracy-watchers have bemoaned Canada's ever-lowering voter turnout.

In 2011, a mere 61 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots in the federal election.
Since 36 percent of those people voted Conservative, the Conservatives have had a majority of seats in the House of Commons the last four years.

This year, voter so far turnout is up. Way up.

Across the country, there was an increase of about 71 percent at the advance polls. The increase was 16 percent in Simcoe Grey, 54 percent in Bruce Grey Owen Sound, more than 30 percent in Simcoe North. Those are huge swings.

If the trend holds on October 19th, we could see turnout higher than 70 percent. It hasn't hit the 80s since the 1960s.

Generally, a big turnout is not great news for incumbent governments.
Not not always, but usually, increased turnout is actually pretty terrible news for an incumbent government. That said, the Harper Government is nothing like any other government Canada has ever seen. It might be that their base is so very, very motivated, they voted early so they could spend voting day making sure the rest of the base manages to get to the polls.

Or it might be that a long list of perceived infractions will bring a much reduced Conservative presence to the House, although no one is willing to bet on the caucus being as small as Kim Campbell's who suffered from the country's loathing of Brian Mulroney.

Strap on your surfboards, kids. There's a wave of some sort coming your way Monday night, and the evening will be a long and wild one.

Poking holes in a Paper Bag

It's not a dog whistle, it's an air horn, calling to the worst instincts we have.

Boy, I really hope this niqab thing is not going to be what makes or breaks this election, because if it is, I might have to start wearing a face covering of my own, out of sheer embarrassment for our country, like Leafs fans in the stands did late last year.

In Canada, you and I are guaranteed the right to believe any damn fool thing we want about our religion.

Head coverings, homeschooling, the golden rule, vaccinations: it's not up to me to decide what you believe about your religion, even if I'm not comfortable with it.

Our judges have said so, not once, not twice, three times now, and I'm hoping the Supreme Court of Canada will not even deign to hear this stupid argument about citizenship ceremonies - everyone identifies themselves beforehand-- there's no concern about identity at these things.

There are plenty of reasons to choose or dismiss any and all of the parties on offer in this election, but please, please don't let the niqab have anything to do with it. And don't be fooled by any politician who says they're concerned the face covering is against women; if they're so concerned about women, they might have done something to find out where thousands of female Canadian citizens have disappeared to, snatched from the streets while various parties were in power all these years.

Banning some offensive religious practices may seem sensible when it comes to the niqab, because the niqab is odious and awful. But this is the thin edge of an ugly wedge. Are the curls and hats of Orthodox Jews next to be banned? Maybe Catholics' trans-substantiated communion wafers make them cannibals?

Be careful what you wish for because it might be your faith that falls out of favour next time.

Adventures on the lawn

You know those days when you go past angry, take a right turn at crazy and force yourself to land on laughter so that no one gets murdered?

That was my yesterday, mowing my mother's massive lawn, or more accurately, trying to mow the lawn. I go there on Thursdays in the summer, so the lawn's done for the weekend. The last few weeks, my Moppets have been visiting; nieces and nephew tearing around the farm on a tiny tractor. A camera just can't capture the delight on their faces at the wheel.

Have you ever had that feeling when you're closing the door of your car and you suddenly realize, deep in your bowels, that your keys are inside? That's the frisson I had as I sat on the seat of the lawn tractor and put my hand on the key, the key that was NOT in the off position.

Yes, some little twerp, or possibly my mother, had left the key on, the life draining from the battery since it was parked.

"No problem," I thought to myself, "I'll just roll the tractor backwards, out of the shed, use my trusty jumper cables to boost the battery, and we'll be in business!"

Not so much.

Now, I'm generally a fan of safety features; my car doesn't move without the seatbelts being done up, I wear a helmet to ride my bike. But I'm not sure a safety feature that means a lawn tractor can't be rolled either forwards or backwards when the battery is dead makes much sense. There was a lot of grunting and groaning as I tried to depress the clutch/brake with one hand and push the tractor backwards out of the shed. Yes, I fell down. Twice.

So, a dead battery, the tractor deep in the shed, facing away from the door and no way to move it out. Into the shed I bring my car, open the hood and... where is the battery? I got a new car a year ago and have yet to need to boost it or use it for boosting.

There is no battery visible under the hood of my car. There's a fan-type thing, a place to put the washer fluid, many other things I don't understand and lots of heat, but no battery. It's a European car, same as my neighbour's, so I decide to look in the trunk, where his was when we boosted him a few weeks ago.

To get to the boot, I remove grocery bags, emergency equipment, a jack, washer fluid, mittens a blanket and snow brush, (see? Safety first...) only to discover the blessed battery is not in there, either!

The owner's manual is not of much assistance, but I finally figure out the battery is tucked inside a case behind a doored panel just below the windshield, on the passenger side, a lucky break because my jumper cables are not very long. I maneuver the car into the shed, as close as possible to the stupid tractor, hook up the cables, and voila, the tractor starts! It's like magic!

I figure I can leave the machine running while I remove the car, and get on with the job at hand, but safety got in the way again. There's a switch of some sort in the seat of the lawn tractor, which shuts down the engine if there's not enough weight on it. It's quite frustrating for my niece, who's not quite heavy enough yet to keep the motor running.

Two large chunks of wood wrestled from a far corner of the shed were not enough to do the trick, sadly, so I sat on that seat, bored silly, for as long as I thought it might take for the engine to restart once it was turned off. I even gave it a try after removing the jumper cables and before moving the car out of the shed, and it worked.

Once the car moved out, the stupid tractor wouldn't start, though, giving a little tiny and pathetic grinding noise before lapsing back into a sulky silence.

At this point, I'm thinking long grass might not be such a bad thing, and since I've been mowing all these years, surely Mom can deal with a scraggly lawn for a few days. She can just call the company that services the blessed vehicle.

Instead, I persevere, bring the car back in, re-hook up the cables, smash my thigh into a random piece of farm equipment nearby, curse like a sailor and sit bored and in pain for an interminable amount of time in the hope that this time, it will be enough to re-start the ding-dang lawnmower.

It worked, finally; I got out there to mow, and the tractor ran for nearly 10 minutes before it sputtered to a halt, out of gas.

sigh.
Of course.

I trudge to the garage, where my mother keeps not one, but two large portable containers of gasoline for this express purpose. Both of which are, as you might have predicted, empty, without gas, useless and as they say, 'drier than a popcorn fart.'

And that's when the zen kicked in. Up to this juncture, I had been alternately determined, annoyed, bemused and angry, but I found myself, with a bruised leg, broken fingernail and an hour behind schedule, bursting into laughter. What else is there to do, really, but load the Jerrycans into the car and fill 'em up? For fifty dollars, I might add, at the nearby farm supply store where the gas is never cheap, of course.

I managed to finish the lawn and it goes without saying that when I looked in the fridge, there was not even one single solitary cold beer waiting for me as a reward.

Burn, babes, burn

I plan to have a good laugh or two this weekend, at my own expense.

Each summer, I spend a weekend with a group of my best girlie buddies at a cottage in Muskoka, solving the world's problems and discussing earthy matters. Oh, who am I kidding, we drink and dance and swim and suntan and read garbage entertainment magazines on the dock.

A few years ago, one of my friends brought with her the diaries she kept as a teenager. We had a few belly laughs as she read out some of the sillier passages before putting the books into the fire.

This year, there will also be reading, and it will be much sillier. I have challenged my girlyfriends to bring along any old love notes, letters and assorted detritus from their youthful romances. We will read them aloud before depositing them into the flames.

I will bring shoeboxes, the ones stuffed with the letters (yes, on paper, with stamps and everything) from the admittedly very few sweethearts of my past.

I now know why I've kept these things all these years: it's for the comedy!

I'm not exactly sure of the contents of all the letters, but I know there's a poem about my beautiful "blue eyes that sparkle in darkness". Dude, my eyes are green. No wonder we broke up. Another guy's letters tended toward the porny, the 1990s version of sexting, I guess.

I also know somewhere in there is a long lovely tome from a biker dude I went out with twice, but upon whom I clearly made an impression. All I can think of when I think of that guy is my poor, poor father who was so very worried when a scary looking man showed up at the farm to take away his beloved 20 year old daughter, to who knows where. Looking back, I imagine my dad must have been so torn, wanting to give me wings but hoping I did not return with tattoos and a nose ring and who knows what kind of carnal knowledge.

I will not, of course, get rid of the letters written by my high school sweetheart, who is now my husband. Those stay forever. Not just for the comedy. They're for blackmail. Sweetie turns 50 later this year, and there may be another public reading to come.
Insert evil laugh here.

On Tidying Up

If you see me barefoot on the streets or in a yellow pair of overalls in the next little while, blame it on a Japanese lady whose ideas about homekeeping are taking over the first world.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up has sold more than two million copies even though it's still in hardcover. It's been on the New York Times bestseller list for about two years now.

The theory Marie Kondo posits in her slim book is not about how to make the stuff you have fit more nicely into well-arranged boxes and bags. It's about owning only things that make you happy.

I have taken to heart some of the more practical advice, but I'm having a lot of trouble with the big gesture she recommends. What she says about how best to fold and store clothing in armoires and dressers is indeed life-altering. (why did I never think of this? It's SO perfect!), but I have so far only slightly embraced her ethos of, "gather everything up and throw it all out - except the things that 'spark joy' in you".

That's what she saying: throw out EVERYTHING except those things which make you happy. And: don't buy new stuff unless it thrills you. Kondo suggests gathering up each and every item of clothing from every single closet and cranny, and then choosing what to keep. There's no limit on what to keep except whether the item sparks joy when you touch it. Items to go receive audible thanks for what they brought to your life, and then are shoved into bags and ushered out of your world.

Earlier this year, I did get rid of bags and bags of my 'fat clothes'. More recently, I started getting rid of clothes I no longer like, or which don't make me feel happy. However, as I purge I'm keeping clothes that don't make me unhappy.

The white jeans I loved but which fit well for about five minutes before stretching out to give me what my sweetie calls 'satchel ass': gone. A pink linen suit my mother so lovingly made at my request but which looks exactly like the year it was sewed: 1998: gone. Ill-fitting but expensive suits given by a former friend's mother when I had a 'corporate' job: gone, gone, gone.

The problem is this: my closets are tidier now but they're nearly empty. Seriously, there's just about nothing left. I am keeping three pairs of jeans, three skirts from FIG, two blouses, (also from FIG) one shirt and four dresses (two from FIG - sensing a theme here?) along with my running gear because I know for sure those items make me happy. Nearly everything else I own is on probation. If I continue along this vein, I will have to put my wedding dress into regular rotation, worn with an aging pair of Blundstones, because they are among the very few items which 'spark joy' in me.

The wedding dress and boots are a pretty good look. Just not very practical for mowing the lawn.