I do not want people to die for stupid reasons.

  Well, I do not want them to die at all. Let them live, all of them - clever and stupid, nice and no very, beautiful and ugly. Let them live and enjoy life. I know, I know, it's utterly impossible, we all have to die one way or another. You are blessed if you live in a country that has civilized laws and no war or hunger. Since I came to Canada I forgot what real hunger is. What happens when you come to a store and they do not sell any food there because there is no food on this given day. It never happens here. You can walk the streets at night and feel safe in most areas of a big city, and it's great too!
You can live here till very old age and be happy.
   But people still die young.http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/08/09/2-charged-in-canada-cyberbullying-case-that-ended-in-teen-girl-suicide/ They kill themselves young because they are very unhappy and don't know what to do.
   How does this happen that having food and nice clothes and good spacious comfortable home is not enough any more? Even being good looking and healthy is not enough. Why do we so pissed off with everybody and ourselves that nothing satisfies us and we are looking for some unrealistic perfection in everything and everybody and if we cannot find it we rather kill ourselves than live our ordinary "plain" lives? I am talking about all those 12-14-17 year-olds who are killing themselves just because somehow somewhere somebody insulted them too deeply, too unbearable for them to live. It's not supposed to happen. It is plainly wrong. Or is it just boredom? Or is it just that kids are too vulnerable and we grown ups keep forgetting about that?
   We are too busy with our jobs, businesses, our own problems, our health, stress, keeping up with society we live in. We need cars, houses, furniture, more furniture, clothes, more cars, our gadgets, aphones, bphones, cphones and so on...
   I remember times when apple was just a fruit and I did not need $500 to buy it. I always thought that having a car is a luxury and in the country I live in ( I am not talking about other countries I know nothing about) it is a necessity and status like university diploma sort of. Who cares if it puts you in total debt and in 5 years it will be total junk especially if you bought an old one, you still must have one. And if you have a brand new, it means you have a loan because who can buy a brand new car for cash?
  I waste lots of time just waiting for a bus every day and in bad weather it's not a joke. I am thinking every day: should I buy a car or should I move or change a job may be? Well we always have
problems in life - big and small, important, serious and trivial, easy to solve.
  There is no easy life for anybody. Why do we always try to be perfect and consciously or subconsciously demand it from our kids too? Or is it just our stress, we want so much and there is not enough time and look at him he's again left dirty dishes, or got poor report at school or did not call or... May be we should all have less, and stop being so perfect so much, and mainly stop demanding that perfection from others.
   May be we can have those slack days and those extra inches on our belly and not work 2-3 jobs and just spend some time with people we love, not in front of our gadgets  speaking to people who abuse us and our time so profoundly? Whom we don't even know? But who have authority, permission given by us to abuse and insult us and our children and to drive those innocent souls to suicide while those evil people are laughing and enjoying deadly effects they created? May be we all should find the way to be happy with less?
  From the advertisement: Black Gucci purse retails for 2000$
Yours for 1000$
Beige Gucci Abbey retail 800
Yours for 400
Burberry purse retail 800
Yours for 400                        A purse for $400? And it is a discount?Who cares what label you have on it as long as it is convenient to use and looks nice?  We should stop, we should stop, it's not too late.We don't need that much stuff and that expensive.http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2012/12/28/ask-the-readers-why-will-you-teach-your-children-frugality/ Go and talk to your child, spend more time with him/her, show him who you are and how nice you can do things together. I am sure he needs that more than iphone even if he thinks differently now.

Drama: my unwanted pet.

Who needs me?

Yes, my dearest reader, I come to the point that my pet is unwanted, very unwanted as a matter of fact. How did it happen? Gradually, little by little my circumstances, my life has changed drastically from what it was, and now I have to make a very hard decision - to get rid of my pet or not. He became a source of my frustration, anger and god knows what else. Bad for me, bad for him and not good for the rest of my family.
  We adopted our cat from some shelter in a small town we were living at that time. He was a fully grown up cat. I did not know his background, his way of life before shelter and how long he stayed there but I am sure it was not cream and honey at all. By the way if you ever decide that you need a cat, please adopt one from shelter because it's a bad place for a cat. He needs freedom, ability to roam around and explore, not to sit in a cage. He is not a lizard or tarantula, he needs a lot of space to explore and to feel comfortable in it.
  Just, please, do not adopt a grown up pet, unless you are very gentle, patient with pets and people and other members in your family are the same - gentle and patient, because you'll need a lot of patience and love to give to an adopted animal. In my family it was not the case.
  We adopted our Homer(we gave him that name) to keep company to our another she-pet and from the very beginning she could not stand poor Homer. She hissed at him like a snake and tried to hit him and made sure he never came closer than a foot to her. She prevented him from eating his food whenever she could. She made him feel very unwelcome. It was just the beginning for poor Homer.
 He was outdoorsy type of a cat. At that time we were living in a big house in a small town where he could freely go outside and roam around our house and explore our big backyard. He was not stupid, he learned pretty fast his territory(our territory) and where his bread and butter was hidden(so to speak). He was not a quiet type of a cat, he was very vocal, but in a big house it was not a problem, and he was outside a lot, never mind weather (same as my children by the way).
  In ten years my children grew up, my husband lost his health and regretfully we lost our big old house and free roaming territory. We had to move to a big city to survive, with everybody crammed in a small apartment where you cannot go outside where and when you want to (at least if you are a cat).
 Since then Homer's companion (other cat) died from old age, people who paid attention to Homer moved. People who do not want to pay attention or do not have time for him are still there but... Who needs that 10 year old cat who meows all the time, who is bored to death sitting on the third floor of a small apartment without any escape to outside world?
  I understand, I pity him, but I do not have time for him and he understands that too, he is not stupid. He is extremely sensitive, and he cries, and cries, and cries... And he does not trust anybody, even me who feeds him. And I shout at him because I am tired and frustrated, because I work 7 days a week, because I leave house at 8am and come home at 8pm and I need rest. My poor unwanted unloved pet...

Where should I go?

 What can I do ? Shelter is not an option, they will keep him for a couple of days may be and then they will put him to sleep, because no one is going to adopt him. There are lots of cute little kittens without problems there. No one likes him at home. He is just an ordinary cat, black and white half-domestic scared cat  who annoys everybody. He just does not deserve to die and I feel responsible for him - he has been my pet for 10 years and  I cannot stand him most of the time. Such a drama....

Witch-hunt on your table.

Yes, nobody wants to be fat and ugly, right? Right! I agree completely, hundred %! And I am so happy that authorities finally are paying attention. That processed cr*p we are having in our fast food places, all that frozen packaged produce we are buying at supermarkets quickly loses it's taste. Literally. They put less and less salt in it. How wonderful, how smart!
  They told us that salt is bad for us, very bad. Now we can buy the same old processed  food substitute (sorry, cannot call it food) with same amount of different FDA approved legal poisons in it but LESS SALT.
  Finally we found another enemy we can safely chase with vengeance. Never mind all that chemical poisons, all that preservatives, unpronounced  synthetic vitamins, natural flavors(??????), sugars in everything we eat, yes, in everything, even in salt, even in cat food added for happiness of our poor domesticated four legged prisoners (but that is a different story).
  Now I am talking about human food. Food most of us have to buy, because we live in cities and towns with no means to grow it. Most of us urban citizens don't even know how.
We work, earn money, go to the store. Lot's of stores around. They decide what we eat and how much we pay for it. Well, I do not mind eating less salt, I am sure it's good for your health. What I do mind, really, that before cutting that natural thing that we've been eating for centuries, before trimming all possible fat from everything, before discarding butter (a very tasty product) from our table, why don't we throw away all that artificial legally approved stuff first? We only recently (like couple of centuries) learned how to add it to our food to make it bad for us and our children.
  We do not need artificial preservatives added to our food. There are some natural products that preserve well. Sugar should not be near our spices, meat, fish, milk products, etc. Some products should be salted more, some can be marinated or dried.
  You need some natural fat in your diet - you will eat less and get some fat-soluble vitamins in it. When my mother was young  America used to chase communists. Now witch-hunt is on American table.
  Here in Canada it happens too. We are alert! No passaran! They shall not pass! We'll be eating all that cr*p we are eating but without fat and salt. Hurray!!! Keep going America, keep going Canada. We do not need fat in our food, we have enough on our bodies already and it's growing. One more thing we need - to declare officially that fat ladies are beautiful, fat gentleman - manly and strong.  Your fat butt and boobs falling out of your skimpy Chinese clothing -  that's  proper and fashionable; and sugary drinks - national past time. Long live fat Canadian citizens (if you can, of course), just don't tell me it's in your genes because everything is in your genes, you have to chose what you need.
Tell me what you eat and mainly what you don't because somebody decided for you what you should eat and how. Witch-hunt is in full swing... Time to go grocery shopping.

May be we should stop this 'made in China' madness.

May be we should stop this madness. Think about it. Today everything you wear, use, look at (at least in my home) is made in China. And there is no end of it. China is big. B -i-i-i-g! They can and do produce EVERYTHING cheaply. So you can buy it, (can afford it, again, because it's cheap) and if you do not like it or it falls apart, you just throw it away and go and buy something else. Again, cheaply in most cases. And it's okay, really. As long as I can afford it I can buy something new all the time, use it a little bit, then buy more, more, more...
 It's just sometimes happens that you house full of junk and there is nothing you can really like or relay on because things, clothes, everything is so unreliable so... crappy, you just do not have trust in your stuff. Even furniture that should last for long time (in my assumption at least) falls apart in a year or two and you feel like somebody cheated on you big time.  Nothing really to keep, everything is just junk...
  Still as I said if you can afford to buy new things all the time it's okay, but...
  What I really-really do not like is that so many areas in Canada and others basically unemployed because there is no manufacturing, nobody produces anything. How much customer services do you need around in a small town? Not much. Not everybody can drive to a bigger town to get a job.
   I see so many people live in poverty or close to it in smaller towns in Canada and it makes me sad. May be we should close the borders to that junk  and say - that's enough. We can make plates and gadgets, dresses and furniture, pots and pans and everything else  in Canada. We do not need bring all that cr*p from China all the time. Let's produce it here, at home.
 What do you think?

You cannot eat anything you want!

When we (my family) came to Canada we did not know what you were supposed to eat here. In my old country with lots of shortages, deprivations and restrictions, with failing roubles and the whole system you were lucky if you actually had food on your table. Any food.
 With all fairness if you had food it was usually good, natural, wholesome. I am not sure about now, things change quickly.
 I had no idea that it might be any different though, that food might be composed from unnatural ingredients with natural so little in it and altered so much that food is actually bad for you. Food that makes you sick. Actually not just sick. If you eat it on a regular basis you'll become ill, very ill, sometimes terminally ill and then you have to go to the doctors for treatment but that is another story.
 For now we are talking about food only. Mainly about what I call 'unfood'. You can buy 'unfood' in any big or small store, market, anywhere where they sell food. It's hard to recognize because it may look exactly like food, smell like food even taste like food. Your taste buds might not know that it's not food and let you eat it and even enjoy the process of eating but not the rest of the process. Here, in Toronto we have shelves full of that nicely packaged 'unfood'.
Sometimes it might be very addictive, and after a couple of times you might crave it more and more, and when you are eating it, you'll consume more of it than if you were eating regular wholesome food and feel hungry very soon again because your stomach is full but you body obtains nothing in terms of nutrition and very often has to deplete the existent resources of minerals and vitamins in your body in order to get rid of 'unfood', somehow digest it.
Think about most common food we eat - bread. Historically it was a meal in itself. A piece of bread you could carry around in your pocket. It might become dry but it's still edible. With a glass of wine and a piece of cheese, with a bowl of hot soup if you've got lucky, your bread goes a long way and saves you from hunger on a long trip anywhere. When I hear now and then that you should not eat bread if you want to lose weight, I can only smile but it's a sad one, because it's true. Bread, that wonderful tasty nourishing product made from all kinds of grains and so good and tasty right from the oven, the way it is made now is no good for us any more.
 Now our clever food industry turned it into 'unfood' (together with potatoes, milk, juice, and, sadly, many other products). And if you eat 'unfood' you have to gain weight, because your body has to collect all water possible to protect your organs from harmful ingredients in 'unfood'. Don't staple your stomach, just stop putting bad stuff in it. You bleach old towels and napkins, you should not bleach flour! If you put preservatives into flour, then into bread, then into a bread package, then into margarine you add to that bread, then to artificial flavor you added to that bread, what do you expect? Well, the shelf life of this bread might be very long, but is your life going to be long and healthy after eating that product that looks like bread, smells like bread, tastes like bread(sort of), but...
I can tell you something. If you look in the mirror and see a doughnut with arms and legs instead of a human body, you body is desperately trying to tell you something, you just don't listen to it. And that means only one thing - most of your meal is 'unfood' and the sooner you get rid of it  - the better.
 Go on Internet,  lots of information there. About cola, French fries, how they are made, what ingredients are in there, how juice is made, how long you can keep it on a shelf, everything.
Think, use your brains.
Do you see all those bottles of juices are kept openly on shelves for months without refrigeration, and  there is a note that says that juice have 25% of juice in it!? What do you think is the rest of it? Just water? Not so fast! You have to think about shelf life and profits. We cannot afford to spoil products, big industry needs big profits. Don't worry, everything is FDA approved, all that crap they feed you... Particularly funny when I read 'this product is made without sugar'. Wonderful! Now instead sugar they put some chemical, FDA approved substitute that might(should) be even worse than sugar and more addictive.
I could continue forever but I won't, because I want you to stop and look into your own plate and ask yourself,  'what the hell am I eating?' And remember you cannot eat anything you want, because like it or not, you already are conditioned by big industry to eat wrong things and your are addicted to them!

I am a half-person.

   Sometimes I think about myself like I am not a full person but just a half one - half-person. Like I left half of my personality in my old country. Most of my old habits, customs, experiences, way of life, hobbies, education and occupations are to be forgotten or of no use here. The way we dressed, talked, socialized, spend money and dreamed there and then - it's all different now and here.
Sometimes I think if you are after forty you should not come to live to a different country - chances of psychological adoption of new ways of life are too slim. And life will be too stressful for you. As somebody said, 'if you cannot live better in your new place, what's the point of uprooting and coming there?'
 I know for sure that if I stayed in my old country and put as much effort to achieving something over there as I put in here just to survive, I would definitely could be living a better life, more satisfying, more accomplished. I am not sure, but may be even less stressful. My parents died there, in my old country, and I managed to attend only my mom's funeral. I never visited them when they were sick and lonely and needed me most. I never had time nor money. Stupid thing money, it's so hard to be working poor. You are always in denial of everything. This I cannot afford, that is too expensive, I can live without this or that.  But life passes by so fast, and older you get - faster it slips away. Less and less energy, more often you just want to rest, but you have to get up and go - day after day, after day... groundhog day if you know what I mean.
In my old country it was easy to be poor, because everybody had the same life style as you. Here it's different. People have nice houses,  drive new cars (even if they are in debt up to their ears). They don't want (or cannot afford) to look unsuccessful or poor. You are supposed to have a car if you are professional, and a cellphone, and no one asks you if you can afford this or not. After so many years living in Canada with thousands in debts behind my back, I refuse to have a car now and my cell is just for emergencies with minimal pay as you go plan. I do not want to use a credit card with 20% interest on it and do not understand why our society wants me to live over my limits. One simply cannot live on a min payment job and have a car without debts. And public transportation is more or less adequate only in big cities like Toronto. As I said - more or less. After 7 pm good luck to wait for a bus.
 And by the way, why do I have to pay bank money every time I use my own money?  They should pay me for that, not me. Well, never mind banks, but to have such inadequate public transportation is just not fair. If you live in a small town and you don't have a job, you must go somewhere else to look for work, and if there is no bus or train to take you there, what you are supposed to do? Steal a car? Or just give up and sit on welfare all your life, complaining or getting sick from cheap/bad nutrition and drugs and eventually getting disability for life ( a little more in terms of money).
 In Canada without a car you are stuck in a big city, you feel like an invalid, like a half-person, as if something wrong with you. I have only two choices. I can live in central places, in big city apartments that are close to main bus routes, apartments that are noisy at night because you hear that constant clicking, clanking and tooting of a big city that never really sleeps. Or I can move to suburbia where there is no or very little buses, where you can walk nowhere because everything is too far for walking. Again, basement is the only thing you can rent there if you can afford it of course. And then what? You'll be so isolated from everything and everybody there that you definitely have to have a car!
 Right now I have a choice. I can either close my window at night to cut out that constant background humming of traffic and sleep in a hot stuffy bedroom or I can leave my window opened but then I have to listen to that disturbing big city music. When I am lucky to be so tired that I do not care anymore then I do just that - I leave my window open. One day I will be able to abandon this big city for good but not now, not yet. I have to support myself, help my kids and big city is the only option for me. So many ways to make you feel like a half-person, so many ways...

I wonder when...

I've been in Canada for so long that I cannot imagine living in any other country. I don't know if it is good or bad - that feeling. My old native country looks so distant, so different.
My distant relative sent me a website address so I could get some information I asked her about. I read it but I could not understand a single word, I completely forgot Latvian language. So sad.
 I was thinking about applying for Latvian citizenship, but without proper language it seems pointless. And another thing - in order to get Latvian citizenship I have to damp my Canadian one, smart, eh? I don't think so. In Canada I feel more protected anyways -  from all elements, even natural.
Today natural elements in Toronto are particularly wet and nasty. I managed to get to work on time but wet and quite ruffled. Well, it's summer, so rain and wind will go away soon and we will have hot and humid dusty boring days to tolerate instead - as usual. I feel like I am losing some drive. I've been running for too long, running for survival. For 20 years in Canada I've never had a chance just to sit and think what exactly is my goal, what I am running for or against? What's up, doc? What do you want, little girl? Not so little by the way. I wonder when I finally stop and look at everything calmly and truthfully. It looks like there is no more reason to run so hard. I helped everybody who needed my help, I cannot do more, truly I can't. I need some rest, I need some time for myself, I need to sit and think, I wonder when...
Since I wrote this weather has changed. Today it is nice and sunny, not humid, not hot - perfect weather for a nice summer day. I wish I had a day off. May be I should pretend I am sick, but I am not so good at pretending. back to work then. So long!