Rose's Cantina

The glass is usually half full in my life. I'm just that sort of person. Life has hit me with a few body slams. Of course, it has. You don't get to be 55 without losses and disappointments, and I try to take them in stride. But I have to say, being on Facebook makes me even more grateful for a relatively stable and uneventful life. Two years ago, one of the my university friends lost her mother and brother within days of each other. Mom died suddenly of a heart attack and brother died in a car crash. Last year, my friend lost her father. While many of us were opening presents and toasting the baby Jesus, Rose spent Christmas eve rattling around the old homestead, by herself, talking to ghosts. Another Facebook friend had to take her dog in for emergency surgery just before New Year's and had to cancel a planned and deserved holiday. Yet another Facebook friend had to put down her ailing retriever on New Year's Day. She was absolutely devastated. There is sad ne...

With a pug as my witness, I resolve... ...To be more patriotic. ...To bow to the Queen when I enter the post office. ...To salute our glorious leader. With a gun to my head! Let's face it. Resolutions are a crock. I was reading in the New York Times today which reported that one-fifth of all Americans who sign up for gyms at New Year's fail to darken their doors after the first week. A third of them stop going by the March break. And the average member, typically, visits the gym only 54 times after joining. Less than once a week. Yet they all keep paying. What a bunch of maroons. That's why business loves resolvers. "Our collective failure to keep our resolutions represents an annuity of sorts for health clubs, weight loss centers and other enterprises that make up what you might call the self-improvement industry," says Nastasha Singer, the author of the Times article. "It's an industry that thrives on our failure to change: rec...

I was eating my high fibre toast, just now, when it took a slice out of my palate. Yowzah. Damned cracked wheat. You can never trust it. I'm always getting wounded by food. Coffee scalds my mouth. Soup goes up my nose. A piece of wayward chicken misses the esophagus and ends up in my windpipe. And then I sneeze for twenty minutes straight. And, I am a bad swallower. I would never have made a skilled porn star. So I'm rolling my tongue over the afflicted area, tasting a bit of blood and a little skin flap that may be with me until 2013. It makes me realize the importance of being in the moment, of paying attention to your life. I've spent most of my life in total distraction. Drank too much. Slept too much. Watched too much television. I was a pioneer in the art of living in the unconscious state. Couch surfing? I invented it. Time wasting? Got the t-shirt and DVD rights. For most of my life, I figured, I had it made. I never had to go to work. ...

Loblaws stopped carrying the Ace Bakery whole grain and cranberry bagels I've come to love. That was one of the big disappointments for me in 2011. I don't expect much from life, but a 200 calorie, high fibre, bagel that doesn't taste like sawdust is one thing I've come to count on. It keeps me satisfied and it keeps me regular, therefore it keeps me happy. When you get to be this old, tilting toward the end of the side rule of life, not that many things can get you down. You're rarely disappointed in people because you just don't expect much of them anymore. If you're not rich by now, you're never going to be, so why worry? As long as you have a safe, dry and warm place to live, people who love and care about you, and a pack of dogs sitting at your feet, you're pretty lucky, I'd say. I don't have much to gripe about, but there are some things that have pissed me off in 2011. The year was another bust, economically. Some month...