In Memory and with Respect

This will remain at the top as long as we have troops being injured and killed in Afghanistan.

GAB

Quote of the day

As seen in the comments section on the CBC website for this article on the new 3D airport scanner that has been installed in the Kelowna Airport.

Matthewst wrote:Posted 2008/06/20 at 5:20 PM ET:

All I get out of this article, is that some dude in a back room is going to have a 5 second viewing of my weener, as a matter of national security.

What is this fine of which you speak and how can I get me some

It has been a very long time since I last posted. Life gets in the way sometimes. Please forgive any spelling and grammar errors you may encounter. What you are about to read is one big stream of consciousness. Trigger warning

I am one of those people who has spent my entire life convincing myself and the world around me that I am ok. I don't know what ok is. Not really. My life consists of varying degrees of unbearable. I deserve a fucking oscar most days.

My story starts from as far back as I can remember. My dad was an abusive alcoholic. While he never touched me, I can remember seeing him go after my mother and I remember living in a house where everyone was scared. My first sexual assault was when I was really little - before I went to Kindergarden. It was my eldest brother who is 7 years my senior. He had me suck on his penis. He told me it tasted like candy. I didn't like it.

My mother left my father when I was about 5 and for a while it was just the two of us as my brothers chose to stay with our father.

My mother found a new man. I didn't like him right from the start. My second abuser was his son. He is 6 years older than I. It all started with "roller coaster" rides when I was about 6. It progressed to him forcing me to masterbate him, suck his penis, wear babies rubber pants, he would lay me across his lap bottomless facing upwards and smack my front with a wooden spoon making me recite "I'm sorry _____, I really am.". This would happen whenever there was nobody home. Before school because he and I were the only ones home and every Wednesday night because my mother and his father went out for piano lessons. My step sister lived with us, but because she was 10 years older than me, she wasn't home all that much. I used to beg everyone not to leave me every Wednesday night and they always did.

There was one time when I ended up going and hanging out with my step sister at her friend's house because I begged her to take me with her. It was the most boring afternoon I ever spent and I didn't care because I wasn't alone with him.

I think he raped me, but I can't be sure. I remember him coming to my bed and giving me the choice of sucking his penis or him putting it inside me. I knew I hated sucking his penis, so I chose the option about which I knew nothing. I don't remember anything else about that time.

I can remember him telling me one morning that I had better run and hide really well because if he found me, he was going to cut off both my ears.

My third abuser was my other biological brother. He is also 6 years older than I. He came to live with us when I was about 8 or 9. He didn't threaten. Of course he didn't have to. My step brother had terrorised me enough to convince me to do anything I was told.

How is it, after all these years (more than 30), I write this, my smart head knows none of this is my fault, yet I still feel like I am to blame.

My fourth abuser was my step father. I don't remember when it all started with him, but I remember how. He told me that he figured I couldn't find his tickle spot. Funny how that spot kept right on moving until it reached his crotch. Then he came up with this business of having to "get 'round" him in order to get anything I asked for, a cookie, watch tv and the like. This involved rubbing him. I can remember falling asleep on his lap with my head on his shoulder and waking up to my hand inside his trousers. He used to give me piggy backs where he would always manage to have a finger or two on my vagina. It would look so innocent to onlookers. I am hyper-sensitive to males giving little girls piggy backs. He had plently of other tricks up his sleeve. Just the thought of him makes me sick.

He was caught molesting my niece. My mother came to me in disbelief. My first disclosure to anyone was to tell my mother that her husband of 20 years was indeed a child molester. It turns out that there have been a number of children who were victims of this selfish prick. Little wonder that I refer to him only as the step monster. Of course, by rights, his son is also deserving of the title. My mother and my husband at the time, took the step monster to the police. He confessed. I made a statement. My niece made a statement. He was sentenced to 1 year in jail in a sex offender programme and 3 years probation. He served 8 months.

I sued the bastard and hit it where it counted - his bank account. Of course, I didn't really appreciate the phone call from my mother asking me not to sue him for too much because she would get less when he dies. I should point out that while she did the right thing and dropped him like a hot brick, she did come out of the whole thing with fully two thirds of their assets. She didn't seem to absorb the fact that he could change his will anytime he wanted and could leave her nothing of his share of the marital assets.

Safe to say, that didn't do much for my relationship with my mother. I realise now, that on some level, my mother had to have known and chose ignore it. Her main focus has always been financial stability. I know that she knew about the son. She brought the subject up once when I was about 14. Apparently my eldest brother (who I had told at some point) told my mother. From what she had said, my brother told her years before she brought the subject up with me. Her only real concern seemed to be whether he had "gone all the way" with me. Of course I told her no.

My fifth abuser was my first husband. If he wanted sex he got it regardless of whether I wanted it. It didn't help when I mentioned it to his mother and she told me that while as wives, we don't always want it, we should do it because our husbands do. I don't know how many times I was raped, but it only took being hit by him twice for me to get the hell out of Dodge.

My second marriage was a casualty of the abuse visited upon me by my step monster. When I said I hadn't told anyone prior to my mother coming to me about my niece, that meant my husband as well. He knew of some of the abuse I had suffered at the hands of the son, but that was it. It took an additional 5 years for our marriage to completely fall apart.

Now I am a single parent of 3 teenage boys and a young daughter (who spends her week with her dad and her weekends with me). I work hard to make sure my kids feel valued and loved. I may not be able to keep them from having fucked up childhoods, but at least they know that my bank balance doesn't come ahead of their happiness and well being.

I did the therapy thing for years. I did so much therapy that CCRA kept auditing my medical expenses. There is nothing a therapist can tell me that I haven't already heard. Repeating it often enough isn't going to change the way I feel inside.

What is ok? People ask daily, "how are you?" How do I answer that with anything but ok or fine? Can you imagine if I responded with the truth? There's a show stopper.

Ok for me is when I get those rare fleeting moments when I don't feel like downing a bottle of pills, driving my car head on into a brick wall or slitting my wrists. Everything else is just a lie.

Every once in a while something triggers, the facade cracks, reality sneaks in, I lose my motivation, I fall out of character and there goes my fucking Oscar.

Drive Through Boycott Challenge

Vancouver has a bylaw that limits idling one's car to no more than 3 minutes.

How many tickets could bylaw enforcement issue if they just stood at drive-through windows?

How much more CO2 do we release into the air every time we use the drive-through window instead of parking the vehicle and going inside to purchase our fast food and drink?

Is it really faster to use the drive-through?

How would the environment benefit if all drive-through usage ceased?

I will never use another drive-through. I challenge all who read this to make the same commitment.

Our environment deserves it.

Great Aunty Bertha

Mom my Ride

These guys sure could have saved me a lot of work!

GAB

Ferry Freedom

I did the math.

I spend 12 hours per week travelling to pick up and drop off the little one via ferry.

I spend $60 on ferry fare

I spend $18 on parking (I could spend less, but I am so tired, I don't want to take any longer to get home than absolutely necesssary)

I spend about $30 on gas (2 return trips from the north end of Vancouver to Tsawwassen)

That is close enough to $110 per week on travel not including the cost of food.

By working 12 hours bookkeeping no top of my day job, I can cover the total cost of flying the little one over (the cost of which is about $100/week more than I spend using the ferries).

This gives me about 5-6 more hours per week with her at home as she can arrive earlier on Fridays and leave later on Sundays.

I look forward to sending David Hahn his pink slip.

GAB

Why they lost my donation dollars

I just read this

The dancers raised $3000 for the Breast Cancer Society of Canada last year through an annual fundraising event.

But this year the society has turned down their donation, saying some major donors don't want to be associated with exotic dancing.

I am turning down the Breast Cancer Society of Canada as a recipient of my donation dollars because I don't want to be associated with a charity that will turn down perfectly good money just because the donor doesn't measure up on some other donor's morality meter.

From now on, everytime someone asks me to sponsor them for Breast Cancer Society (which happens a lot), I will instead, make an additional donation to one of the remaining charities on my list.

By the way, I did send them an email to let them know that they can no longer rely on my financial support and why.

GAB