Rosamae Babble

Toh... woof! Ron... woof! Toh... woof! Toronto? I'm pretty sure they mean San Francisco. Why do they keep calling it Toronto? That word sounds weird. It sure felt like San Francisco to me. There was four million people all in my way, just like in the city. We took that thing that Mom calls the subway, but in San Francisco it was the Muni. I don't understand It was even scorching hot on my poor paws in Toronto, just like in San Francisco. They even had those street car things.

I stayed in a hotel. It was wonderful. I haven't slept on my school fleece in forever, but somehow, my school fleece was at the hotel. I wonder why Mommy brought the school fleece there but usually she throws it in the closet? I lways slept on it when we lived in Ottawa, but when we moved to Kingston, I stopped liking it. Sometimes, I will sneak out of my bed and sleep on the floor beside Mommy's bed so I can be right by her. I love it when she lets me cuddle with her on the bed, but I never stay. I just make sure she's good and asleep, and then I sneak away.

She got me a new toy last week. Now I have two of those squeaky kong things, you know the ones with the big puller things that squeak and have the funny fabric on them? Those ones. I love that every time I bite it, it squeeeeeeeeeeeeeks! I like to bark with it in my mouth, and I can sneeze and still hold it in there. Isn't that cool? I tried to bark with food in my mouth and I spat it all over the place.

Ever tasted a that greece that comes off the barbeque when the humans cook? It's delicious. Sometimes, when no one is looking, I will sneak over and stick my head in there. That is until someone put a huge bucket under the Barbeque and now I can't get my head in there. They should have kept the tray. It was so delicious, the stuff I could find in there.

I hate things that go buzz and fly at my nose. It's annoying and I bite them. Mom always tells me to not snap at the bumble bees. I wonder which ones those are. Mom's afraid of them. Not me. They are just stupid and buzz around my nose, so they're fair game. Sometimes, I eat flies. Don't really like them, just eat them cuz they bug me.
Mom had a friend in Ottawa last year that I really miss. Her name was Jenna, and Mom says she has a new dog named Wendye. Jenna was so nice to me. I hope she will still be nice to me even though she has Wendye now. Maybe someday me and Wendye can meet and I will play with her. I have to pee now.

Parolympic debate

Man… I really come from quite the family of people. We’ve got Laurie Graham, who was an Olympic skier and one of the top in the world. We’ve got Clarke Flynn, an Olympic bob sledder who’s pretty fabulous, and the latest addition is a pretty well-known Canadian astronaut named Julie Payette. Anyone who knows me knows what I think of her. That’s not important to this story. What is important is what she said to me while we were having a discussion. As most people know, the Paralympics are never broadcast and covered on national television. This has always bothered me. I feel that Paralympics athletes deserve the same credit as the Olympic ones, since they work as hard if not harder to reach that goal of making it and being the best in the world. So we were talking about this, and I told her what I thought. She responded and said that that would be just stupid to have disabled people having their own set of Olympics covered. That would be like saying that people with red hair should have their own Olympics, or people with blue eyes, or people with no mothers. She thought that having a disability was just another category of people. I thought this was a load of crap and argued that the Paralympics athletes would be at a huge disadvantage if they were to compete against the Olympic athletes because of their disabilities, whatever those might be. But she wouldn’t listen to me, and then went on to say that she believed the Paralympics were just a way for handicap people to get attention. Is it just me? Or was this a really stupid thing for someone who is supposed to be representing Canada on the 09 Space mission to have said to her blind niece?

She always makes it a point to talk about my blindness. She wants me to find out a way to open my eyes all the time. This time it was that I should go see a phisio therapist and they could help me learn to open them. One other time I should have gotten an operation as a child. Like seriously, what the fuck is the problem with my eyes being closed? What is having them opened going to prove? Someone help me out here.

An unplugged... plug?

OK, so I can't think of a better title. Hey, by the way. Member me? I'm that person who goes for a month or two at a time without updating this thing. I promise you I've got a bunch to post in the next day or two, but today before I forget, I need to give a shameless plug to a very old, very special friend of mine. Her name is Anna Sudac That link there will take you to her myspace page, where you can listen to some of her recordings. She doesn't have a cd out yet, but one's on the way.

The first time I saw Anna was when I was 11 years old ant an open house for the French emersion school I would attend the following year. This school was small, only grade 7 and 8, but they had an amazing school music program, including a jazz ocxtet. I remember Anna sang a solo on Manhatton Transfer's Boy from New York City. From then on, I was amazed. I don't know what was so special about her voice that I loved so much, but there was definitely something. Over the years I watched her play leading rolls in school musicals such as Annie get your Gun and the Sound of Music. She was always one of those really talented popular girls that I totally envied and wanted to be just like. Finally, in grade 11, I actually met her face to face for the first time at a party we were both attending. I was in Theatre Complete, a focus program for students interested in drama at the time, and Anna had been in the program a few years previous. So we were at a TC party, and she came up to me and said that we really should sing together sometime, and thus a beautiful, amazing friendship was born. We sang together at several school events, even a few charity oction thingies. Then in 03 I left to enter the world of W Ross and I never saw her since. We emailed ocasionally, but it was tricky to stay in touch.

Then, when I came home and joined Shout Sister, her cousin gave me her new email address and we started communicating again. Not a lot, but definitely more than we had been. When I heard she was coming home to KTown for the summer, we decided we'd have to hook up. She was playing a gig tonight at a place called the Bru Pub, and she encouraged me to come see her. Yeah, like I'd miss that. I brought along my aunt, my brother, his girlfriend and her brother, and it was pretty amazing. I got some recordings that I'm going to go through tomorrow when I'm not half asleep and see how they turned out. I totally didn't realize how much I loved and miss Anna until I heard that amazing voice again this evening. We're hanging out and having apicnic on Friday, busting out guitars and probably singing in the park. Why the hell not! I can't wait to get some time to myself with this woman of such fame around these parts. So to the four people who actually read this thing, please please please go check out her myspace, and if you like it spread the word, thereby making me her best friend, and possibly helping her to not be a starving artist in Toronto for much longer. I promise I will update this thing again very soon.