Pit bulls

There has been talk of banning Pit bull dogs here in Ontario which just seems damned silly to me. If you own a dog ANY DOG that attacks a person then you are responsible for that. It seems to me that too many people want to blame a breed of dog and not the irresponsible owners. It would get very very complicated in a breed specific ban, I mean how do you decide what the dog's breed is and WHO makes that decision? The owner, a vet, the humane society or the police? Pit bulls are terriers so do you ban all terriers? I heard one newscaster actually say that terriers are "ticking timebombs". Please. Toto is a terrier cross with gawd knows what and she is knee high - does that make her a ticking timebomb? YORKIES are terriers, are they dangerous too? The most irritating part of this is that there are no actual numbers on dog bites/attacks in Ontario. One study done in Toronto involving 6 hospitals reported 1040 (approx.) dog bites that required stitches in 2004 - of those only 12 were bites by pitbulls. Everyone seems to KNOW that they are vicious well because it's on the news, what they don't seem to realize is that right now pitbulls are the "sexy" breed to shine the spotlight on. When I was a kid dobermans were the dog to be feared, then rottwielers when I was a teenager - my mother tells me it was german shepherds (or alsatians as she calls them). There is this knee-jerk reaction to every report of a pitbull bite whereas golden retreivers just don't get the press and they bite people far more often (if the dog trainer I just saw on tv is right). One city here in Ontario (Kitchener/Waterloo) created a pitbull ban last year - to them it meant absolutely no pitbulls within the city limits and surprise surprise their number of pitbull bites went down. Well, duh, if there are no pitbulls within city limits it's hardly surprising that they didn't bite anyone within city limits. Funnily enough, K/W doesn't have any numbers on the number of dog bites within the city after the ban and which breeds caused those bites. I don't think that a breed ban is the answer, I think making people responsible for their dogs IS. I'm a dog owner and I like to think I'm a responsible owner. I don't own a pit bull - not because I'm afraid it's a "ticking timebomb" but because I know that it's too much dog for me - I know that a small dog is just right for my level of dog savvy. My brother on the other hand owns an English Bull Mastiff and Rosie is a huuuuggggggeeeeee dog (a la the AC/DC song). Scott is the right person for that kind of dog, he KNOWS his dog and has control of her at all times but there are so many people out there getting these huge dogs and then find they can't control them.
Then I found this . Poor cat there was obviously seriously wrong and all they had to do was throw a blanket over it and take it to a vet. I suppose they'll be trying to ban orange tabbies next

A phone call

Jamie called last night. Not to say "sorry i'm an idiot" or "hi I'm in jail". He just called to ask if he missed a court date yesterday. He's been staying at yet another shelter so at least he's not sleeping the street.

All's quiet

Still no Jamie news but we did have a Jamie spotting today. I saw him rambling around the neighbourhood. It was snowing like hell and of course he didn't have a winter jacket on. I did hear from his lawyer though and Jamie did show up for court and its been put off AGAIN this time until March. At least he went - thank gawd for small mercies.

The incredibly pink room

 

This is a picture of me when I was about 14 in my incredibly pink room. As you can tell the walls had pink flowers and although you can't tell my carpet was a lovely shade of deep purple. Note the record player LOL

Life goes on

Boring as my life is, it goes on. The weather here has been schizophenic to say the least - raining, snowing, raining, snowing. Yuck. Life is quiet around here again with no Jamie - although all those calls I had been making for him (Special Olympics etc) have all been calling me back trying to set up appointments etc. The guys who beat up Jamie have been arrested (according to the nice police officer that called me looking for Jamie) whether or not that means anything remains to be seen. I still don't know where he is or what he's doing and that's affecting my sleep with worrying about him. Ah well, he's made his own bed, I just wish I knew he was ok.

 
This is a picture of katie at age 6. Wasn't she a cutie? I spent hours the night before this picture was taken ironing that dress just so and starching the ribbon belt so it made a perfct bow. Seems silly in retrospect lol.

 

This is the first picture of Jamie and Katie together. Katie wasn't even 24 hours old and Jamie was so excited to finally get to hold the baby that had been in my tummy. Jamie wasn't quite 3 yet and he wanted to help with his new sister soooo bad. Can you tell his father dressed him? LOL

Knocked down again.

So after what is it three/four weeks, Jamie has taken off again. I JUST got him back in school, arranged for him to join the special olympics, applied for all kinds of shit on his behalf and he buggered off AGAIN. Seems like he's fine being here until I tell him to do something. He didn't come home from school on Thursday until 10pm so I told him he was grounded for the weekend. I don't think that was THAT tough a punishment. Now I come off looking like an idiot to all the people I've been in contact with over the past couple of weeks. *sigh* He has court too on Wednesday and if he doesn't show up for THAT he's definately in trouble. Nothing much I can do about it I guess. I was soooooo hoping that he had learned his lesson but I guess not. Ohhhhh Jamie told Katie that his ex-girlfriend Tonya is PREGNANT!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAA I can only pray that he told me the truth when he said no she isn't. God knows I'll be hearing from her mother if she is.

Family

 

This is a picture of my mom, me and my brother Scott. We are not quite two years apart in age so we were pretty close as children - if there was no one else to play with we always had each other. My mother loves to tell the story about when he came home from the hospital - he was about oh three weeks old and I wasn't quite two, My mother woke up in the middle of the night wondering why he wasn't crying to be fed and who I was talking to. My mother came into the room and there I was in the crib with him and he was stark naked with his diaper pins stuck there in the mattress. Seems I had heard him cry and scaled the crib and decided to change him myself. Don't know why my mom was so freaked out LOL. When Scott started talking he was completely unintelligible to anyone but me. I talked for him until he started kindergarden. We went camping with my parents every summer and Scott had an obsession about catching frogs - so much that the people in the campground called him "The Frogman". Scott was really really shy and wouldn't talk to strangers but the folks at the campground figured it out and if they wanted him to talk they would ask him about his frogs LOL. When we were little, I had Scott convinced that if you pulled on toes hard enough they would fall off so I used THAT threat for years LOL. Although it doesn't look it in this picture, we look very much alike today - spitting images of our dad. We didn't always get along - gawd knows we both bear enough scars today of our squabbles lol. He's gigantic now with arms like thighs and he towers over me but he's my little brother and I love the big dope - who btw has a terrible memory and can't remember half of the things that happened when we were kids (lucky for me mwahahaha).

The family 

Again

 

Yet another picture of me and my mom with rattle trap car in the background. There is a story to go with the lady in the picture. I don't know her name but gawd knows I've heard about her for years lol.

As I said before my parents lived in the middle of nowhere land when I was born. The tiny tiny place that they lived in had no hospital or grocery store etc but as they lived right next to an Indian reserve there was a Trading Post. This lady and her husband owned the trading post and were friendly with my parents. Really nice people who loved kids but couldn't have any of their own. According to my parents, these really nice people offered my parents $50k for me - which was a hell of a lot of money in 196mmmmm ...well way back then when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Obviously my parents didn't sell me but my dad reminisies fondly sometimes saying "it was alot of money, we should have sold you" LOL usually this happens after I've done something particularly stupid lol.

Sorry

I've been sick sick sick. I think it's a sinus infection to tell the truth but I'm back now sorry y'all.

Mom and Me

 

This is a picture of my mom and I sitting on my parents little rattle trap car. My parents lived in northern Manitoba after they were married. They lived in a teeny tiny town about 450 miles north of Winnipeg in a trailer while my dad was working building turbines for a power generating station.

I arrived three weeks late which meant my mother had to stay in Winnipeg with friends over Christmas waiting for me to be born and she was in the hospital for New Years whilst my dad was out celebrating my birth lol.

They tell the story of taking me home from the hospital. Manitoba gets cold oh so cold in the winter and one of the ways to keep your engine warm in those days was a kind of engine blanket that zipped up over the hood of the car. In the days before car seats, my parents had me in a car bed on the floor in the front seat of the car wrapped up and right in front of the heater lol. The only problem with their car and the engine blanket was that if you drove for long enough, your car would start to overheat so you would need to stop the car, get out, unzip the blanket and drive for a while until it was so cold that the engine started to sputter and you would need to get out and zip up the engine blanket again. My parents tell me that I was the only one that was warm on that long long drive home in -45F.