TGIF

Thank God It's Friday.  Thank you God for this morning. Thank you for dreams that though scary weren't the nightmares that wake me from sleep.  It was just the being lost bad dreams, driving in the snow through the foreign port town.  I lost the dog.  He was playing with a lab. I was so worried he'd be hit by a car. I was looking street to street afraid to call and have him run to me.  I couldn't have been 12 when my dog died running to me across the street with the racing sunday driver.  There again was the scenario.  Then I remembered it was my dream and called and my dog was there safe.  I woke to dog and cat. Thank you God for the health and love of pets.

This day is not too long.  I've been tired sickness, criticism and callous unconcern of the ruling class.  To hold another election for their sale of yard signs.  It's like the marketting folk without the money to pay their mortgages on their Toronto, Montreal and West Vancouver penthouses for girlfriends and boyfriends said to the government, we need an election, just to sell more signs with your faces on them. The arrogance of politicals loving pictures and bilboards with their faces on them.  We need to stimulate the economy with bridges and fast trains and more subways but instead we get second class F35  fighter jets mass produced and election signs. They're be obsolete before the next parliament, both of them.  I want to believe that someone knowing more than me in Defence has figured this is the best plane but I know enough about politics to know this election isn't the best election. Internal squabbles so silly it's hard to hold onto them. Otto and no.  Chretien's hundreds of millions kickbacks makes anything this government has done seem child's play.  But then I've little faith.  The media has poisoned my 'true north strong and free'.  I've got to cling to a shred of hope they're not the idiots they're made out to be.  But what would I look like through the media lense. Worse.  No one looks good in sound bites and snaps shots except maybe Angelie Jolie.  I don't think I look good in any of these competitive slices of reality.  American idol style.  It all seems superficial.  I wake and fear going into a reality where my age no longer matters.  I'm counted by $ signs.  I'm judged politically. All that matters is the bottom line.  I feel like an outsider in my own country.  I feel like a life of work and service count for naught.  I feel depressed when I consider work and the city and the administrations so far removed from whatever I heard and see in my office.  I feel like a peasant farmer among feudal lords and ladies. I walk down the street and start to consider myself as inferior because I know all these others can buy better lawyers and better food and better housing.  I've got a poverty mentality by Friday.

Then Friday's usually perk me up.  With sickness I tire by the end of the week. Sleeplessness and the expectation of perfection and constant grind and constant demands upon demands and everyone so angry. They're so angry at me because they've been promised so much more and no one wants to sit with them any more.  The administration is so top heavy.  So many demands.  I'm asked to keep records upon records upon records, in triplicate. There's a deluge of emails, phone calls, and people walk in off the street threatening and demanding and saying they can't wait. I've been threatened dozens of times.  Everyone watches Donald Trump.  They do Donald Trump imitations in the office.  Fresh out of high school and thinking Donald Trump impersonations are the way to get ahead.  Better than the normal cheech and chong I see. Kids.  I was one and I knew nothing and thought with all my idealism I could make a difference.  There's just too much money in euthanasia and abortion and war.  Killing trumps healing.  Prisons get more than hospitals and schools. How silly I've been.

TGIF. I'm so tired on Friday.  The darkness. The rain.  But then it's the weekend. I love weekends like I love ice cream. I love Fridays.  I love the cherry blossoms and the promise of spring. I wish I had room for a garden. I miss gardening.  I loved gardening.  Helping the little things grow.  Protecting the shoots.  I miss raising chickens too.  Loved all that growing and building.  Now I just bundle my clothing against the cold winds and endless rain.

I'll get my motorcycle out for a long ride. If they have the clutch fixed. The fellow who ran into the back of my truck creating a 12 hour obstacle was too young to appreciate that breaking things for people like me means fixing things. I've been fixing things all my life. Most weekends.  Building fixing improving.  Working on cars, boats, motorcycles, houses.  The dog's sickness had me up alot. Laura shared that load. The gir's have been caring for him. Takes a village to care for a dog. Children don't count here any more.  I avoid children. Have for years.  in Canada all men are pedophiles in the eyes of the law. All men are rapists to the feminists.  The men by the hundreds have told me how afraid they are in Canada.  "I wouldn't think to sit on the park bench by the school yard anymore an old man told me. A woman complained and the police arrested me.  My wife and children had to come to the station to take me home.  It's harder with my arthritis and knees to walk further but I don't walk near the school."  He was a banker with no record. The woman had watched too much tv.  Who knows with bankers. Maybe he was learing.  That was years ago.

We're all afraid in Canada.  All the men anyway. The girls are afraid of serial rapists which fill the tv and occur at an incidence of 1 in 100,000. More likely they'd catch aids off the toilet seat especially the 50 year olds and older.  I don't worry about rape at my age.  Just theft.  Everyone is stealing in Vancouver.  It's a town of theft.  Blue Collar and White Collar theft.  I wonder if the prairies are as dangerous. Some people leaving this week, one for the country and another for Alberta, afraid of the gangs.  North Vancouver doesn't have the gangs .  But everyone's connected in the city.  If you don't have a brother with the Tong then your cousin is with the H&A or worse your sister is married to a lawyer.  That's the way the talk goes.  The city has the buzz though.

 

TGIF.  Help me recuperate this weekend and again appreicate all your blessings.  The city is growing and it's got so much good to offer. Help me to focus on the rays of sunshine, few as they may be and not see the other side. Help me see the clean streets more than the dirty alleys. Help me see the smile rather than the angry person with a crack pipe.  Help me celebrate life Lord. TGIF.  Thank you for work in these tough times for so many.  Thanks for all the good people and the good things that happen every day. Thanks for Lyle, Thanks for Al. Thanks for the guys in the Dug Out who were there yesterday with Sharon and all the others who smile when I would find it easy to frown.

TGIF. I 'll somehow get out of the city and smell the country and feel the clean air on my face and see for miles. The mountains hem one in with the constant rain. Thanks for yesterday's sun.  Thanks for the seeing of friends at the funeral. I miss him.  I miss the ones who have gone.  I know they go ahead.  Thank you for Friday.  Help those I would help and be with us now all the time. Let us know your presence and goodness. Let me see the good in all.  TGIF