Learning parenting the hard way - by having children

Lil'T

I was talking to my daughter Ky on Skype the other night and we got talking about her younger sister LynnieC.  I had a picture of her cousin's "Lil'T" as my desktop wallpaper.  Lil'T is 4 years old and full of mischief.  In this picture her eyes just sparked with sheer impishness.  I'm glad she is my niece's kid, just as I was glad my sister's daughter, whom I dubbed "Calvin" after the comic strip, went home with her at night.  I just love kids like that and encourage it as much as possible - in other people's children.

We had enough mischief on our hands as it was. Now Ky was no angel.  As a toddler she sang Happy Birthday to the furnace and blew out the pilot light.  The repair man from the gas company thought we must have had a sudden and severe downdraft.  You could call it that. Ky also dialed 911 "cause nothin' 'citing ever happens round here".  Something did. But compared to LynnieC, she was pretty easy to keep tabs on.

LynnieC  was bright.  At less than age 3, she doctored her own headache with two baby aspirins, (the standard treatment from her mom).  We were horrified.  "How did you get the lid open?" "I readed the directions".  She was fast.  At not much over a year, her mother had JUST finished wallpapering the kitchen, gone to answer the front door and returned to see LynnieC with a ballpoint pen, up on a chair, adding decoration to the wallpaper.  The decoration was still there when we sold the house 5 years later.

LynnieC at 1 yr

The episode that became legendary occurred when she was still a toddler.  Her older sister and brother had been instructed to watch her and still she had done something, I forget what.  We were mad! We spanked them, (something I no longer recommend, by the way, having learned better but too late for our kids) and then sat the two at the kitchen table and lectured them about responsibility and about looking after their sister.  When we adjourned the meeting we found...that LynnieC had hauled flour from the pantry and water from the bathroom and made paste on the shag carpet on the stairs.  Under our noses.  While we were sitting there...

We apologized profusely to our children for being very wrong on all counts. 

And LynnieC is still pretty full of mischief though age and adulthood have slowed her down a bit.

Of course, conservatives don't have ethics. If they did, they wouldn't be Conservatives

Ralph Goodale is the Liberal MP from my old riding in Regina.  He is one of the good guys as far as I am concerned and has been highly rated in Canadian polls (Macleans Magazine) for his integrity and hard work.  I still get stuff from his office including his weekly comments email. 

The background to this weeks comments is that Foreign Aid Minister Bev Oda* decided to kill government funding to an NGO called KAIROS run by moderate church organizations. Harper's people would hate them for being moderate instead of fundamentalist and for speaking out against human rights abuses regardless of who commits them. No names mentioned but it starts with an "I".

Oda's bureaucrats defended the agency very strongly in a written document to her. She doctored the document to say the opposite and presented it to the House as reason for her decision to unfund KAIROs.  She was called on it and denied doctoring the report.  She was called on that and finally admitted it.  Harper refuses to fire her, nor should he as she was, like everyone else in his government, acting on HIS orders.  He is the one we need to get rid of.

So here is this week's update.  At least our justice system can operate independently of politics when it needs to. Now if the Liberals could just find a living breathing LEADER.

Stephen Harper must think Canadians don’t care all that much about ethics and integrity.  Nothing else explains his blanket defence of foreign aid minister, Bev Oda.

Under universal criticism for attacking a church organization like KAIROS, misrepresenting the assessment of that organization done by government officials, tampering with documents, and not telling the truth to Parliament – Ms. Oda’s credibility is gone.

But such behavior is not an isolated incident in this government.  They’ve been ethically-challenged from the start.  Remember the swirl of unsavory stuff that tarnished their coming into office in the first place back in 2006.

That Conservative campaign was founded upon two fundamental falsehoods.

First they promised to fix Canada’s Equalization Formula in such a way that Saskatchewan would gain $850 million every year in extra payments from the federal government.  But that promise quickly turned into a lie.

Their only explanation afterward was to say it was obviously such a ridiculous promise that no one should have believed it.  Strike One against Conservative integrity!

Secondly, they promised never to tax Income Trusts.  That, too, turned into a lie.  Tax them they did, obliterating $25 billion from the savings accounts of two million Canadians.  Strike Two!

And now, there’s news about dubious Conservative election financing in 2006. 

The Party has been under investigation for four years in connection with a system to divert some of their national campaign spending down to certain local ridings, thus circumventing national spending limits and cashing in on local election rebates.

Over a year ago, the RCMP and Elections-Canada raided Conservative Party Headquarters to seize evidence related to this scheme.  It’s been in court ever since.

Last week, new charges were laid in this matter against the Conservative Party and four senior Party officials – including two current Conservative Senators.

The sorry saga continues!

*cool name for a Foreign Aid Minister.  The acronym for Official Development Agency is ODA. Likely the only qualification she had?

OK, Baseball Fans, What is the Score?

5 to 4, bottom of the 5th, one out, nobody on.

The Joy of Living

When you spend as much time as I do reading the news on-line, and current events articles and the blogs of writers who care about the economy of their country and humanity in general and the environment that hasn't been mined or drilled yet, it is easy to get depressed.  One could conclude the world is a terrible place and going to Hell in a handbasket, which in one sense, I suppose it is.

On the other hand it is a very beautiful place and brings joy and happiness to a great many living creatures, including humans, in spite of it all.

I love watching the dogs explode out of their area when I open the gate.  They barely touch the ground as they make a hard right and race some 500 meters as fast as they can, just because they can.  They make a 180 and race back, past the house in the opposite direction, almost to the end of the street.  Then they come back and hang around the yard, hoping the cat will come out to play so they can chase him up a tree.

The other day we were waiting in the line up at a bank machine.  Three students from the Economic University came along and got in line.  They were obviously quite upbeat about things and were engaged in animated conversation while they stood there.  But one girl, in particular, could not be still.  She literally was dancing* the whole time and pretty fancy footwork too. Ukraine may not be the best country in the world to live in, but for that girl, that day, life couldn't seem to hold more happiness. 


* and it wasn't the "it is cold and I have to pee" dance.  I know the steps to that one.

Out of the Frying Pan

BG-6621

We bought a new frying pan.  I wanted so badly to claim it was my Valentine's gift to Tanya. She bought me a coffee pot.  But since I am in some trouble already with a couple of my relatives, it is far safer to admit I dropped the lid on the old one and a new lid was half price of a new frying pan.

This pan is totally non-stick so little oil is needed.  It says do NOT cook on high heat and cooks on low heat very rapidly.  Veggies come out crisp and green.  I don't have to add oil to cook ground beef any more.  Our beef gives a whole new meaning to LEAN ground.  Best $50 we spent in a long time.

The brand is Bergner and you can find it here.  They should really pay me for this, don't you think?

And Tanya's Valentine's gift is a dressing table (is that the right name?) for our bedroom, which she has wanted for a long time.

Why People still Prefer Religion

“There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.” Stephen Hawking

The following Career Choice flow chart was stolen from DC Power.  He is an electrical engineer with a long and distinguished career with Saskatchewan Power Corporation which will be coming to an end in 93 days, 9 1/2 hours as I write.  

If you compare it with the flow chart on Religion a couple of blog posts below, you can see why many people still prefer religion to science in spite of Stephen Hawking.  Religion is far simpler and has all the answers.  It also seems to involve a lot of food.

Click to enlarge

It's Winter

I love Tanya.

When I wake up at night sometimes and find her snuggled up against me and her arm over me, hugging me, I feel so loved.  I am thankful every day (and a little puzzled) that she loves me as much as she does.

Because I delight in catching her off guard and doing or saying something totally stupid.  A non-sequitur that puts her in kinks. Some days it doesn't take much if she is in a giddy mood.

When a man gets old, his hair starts falling out but growing back in his nose and ears.  Jeff Foxworthy says if you pull on an old man's nose hair, you can watch his hairline recede. We were driving into town yesterday when she reminded me that it had been (quite) a while since I trimmed my nosehair.  I said "It's winter".

She lost it.  I guess the visual was too much for her.