Pedalling Uphill

My mother is 87 and has a steel trap mind.  She’s 100% all there in mind….body, not so good and that’s important to know because of what I’m going to tell you.  She has macular degeneration and only has about 10% of vision left in one eye.  Several months ago she mentioned that she was seeing piles of sticks and strange faces with big red lips (you know, the kind we used to get made out of wax) and she had even seen a ’short movie clip’ of a 1940’s car driving through the snow at night, with snow falling and heading towards a small town.  She said it was a beautiful scene. 

The first thing I thought was that somebody in their communal kitchen was spiking the food with an illicit drug giving her hallucinations.  But before I made any accusations, I made an appointment for her with the eye doctor and told her to tell him about these visions.

Here’s the amazing part!  The doctor told her that some few people who have macular do see these visions and that it would not be wise to discuss it with people that didn’t know her well as they might tend to think she was slipping a little off her rocker.   Since that time, she has seen many other realistic ‘visions’ - sometimes a lifesize woman dressed in clothing from the 1800’s holding the hand of a small boy is standing next to her bed when she wakes up.  Sometimes two young boys also garbed from the 1800’s are there.   And others that I won’t go into here - not one of them is anyone she knows or has ever known.  But it can make you wonder if these visions, seen by credible people throughout the centuries,  before macular was ever known about, were not the origins of ghosts.  From everything she describes to me they certainly fit the description.

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He said something pretty profound last week on some talk show….they were talking about rape, which because it’s mentioned so often these days, has seemed to lose it’s terribleness - but he really put it in perspective for me.  He said “When we catch Osama Bin Laden, we’re going to kill him, not rape him”.  Think about it. Â

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Is there any company that makes BROWN potato chips instead of those insipid pale things?  I’m not even a real chip lover, but if there is a brown one, I want that one and so does everyone else!  Don’t you think some chip company might pick up on that and start making  ‘over cooked’ potato chips?

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Can’t help but wonder if those signs outside skanky bars that usually read “Nude Girls” would instead read “Nude Boys” or “Nude Daughters dancing for your pleasure” or “Nude Mothers and Sisters” - Wonder how long they would be tolerated?  Would the patrons be looked at any differently?

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Lately we’ve been having bad experiences with rebates.  Most recently, we bought something that came with a $50.00 rebate and after waiting a considerable amount of time, no $50.00 was forthcoming so Abe contacted the rebate company.  They said he was listed and they would be sending it shortly.  Shortly meaning ’short changed’.  We received a check for $5.00. 

More time passed.  Abe called back and apparently his name that was previously listed has disappeared and so has the employee that he had spoken to.  So as is becoming more common these days, we are left to mop up the mess and track down the store where we made the purchase, find someone to deal with and spend a considerable amount of our already stretched to the limit time to try and rectify what will probably be defined as a ‘mistake’.  But why does it seem so much like a scam? 

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Here it is January 5, 2007 and the temperature in Montreal at this moment is 48 degrees F. and raining - when in fact it should be somewhere around 28 degrees with snow banks.  Our driveway plowing contractor is making out like a bandit!!   Truthfully, I’m enjoying it immensely, but as with everything, I can’t help but think we’re going to pay a big price somewhere along the line.  Time to get over ouselves and put some pressure on our governements to stop beating each other over the heads and get down to some constructive decision making.

One thing is for certain, the world will survive fine without us.  Humanity is but an irritating itch on the surface of Mother Earth…eventually she’ll find a cure for what itches her and that will put an end to our foolishness.  Unfortunately, superior beings that we think we are, we just aren’t bright enough as a species to come together and appreciate all the wonderous beauty and generosity this wonderful earth has to offer.  It’s called ‘biting the hand that feeds you’.

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