A rant and determined cheerfulness.

OK this has been a frustrating day. No. Irritating. It started out badly when none of the tons of damp laundry we had hanging all over our house was dry, and I was forced to wear the thong underwear that I bought back in the fall. Well, here's the bottom line. Pun intended. Butt floss makes me cranky.

Here's something else. I hate Carrefoure. I hope I never have to go back again. I hate them. Why do they have to put the entrance to the store in the middle of the miles long width, but the only place you can actually go in is at one far end. Then the only way to get up and down between the two floors is at only one end. Why can't they put the freaking escalators in the middle of the store so you don't have to walk seven million miles with your freaking butt floss abrading you? Then I apparently could not understand Catalan or speak it in any way. Mostly because, despite the fact that we are in Catalonia, apparently every single freaking employee at Carrefore cannot speak the damn language. Finally....returning the cart...you would think this would be an obvious and easy thing, BUT NO! the only place to return it is in the parking lot, two floors down, you guessed it, the escalator is at the OTHER FREAKING END OF THE MALL...well, I don't have a car and neither do many of the people there. The other solution is to take it back into the store. But BUT BUUUUUUTTTTTTTTTTTTT, you cannot take your purchases back in. WTF?????!!!!!!!!

So I have to leave all my stuff with the security guard, because I didn't bring my posse with me to guard it....return the cart...this is also at the other end of the freaking miles long mall...oh, and I cannot get a big bag at the checkout, I have to go down to the Castillian only speaking customer service counter. Can you picture a customer service rep in Quebec who spoke only ENGLISH?????

Then I missed my bus, by one block....that's how far away I was when it drove by me. 45 min till the next one. Did I mention that it was raining? AGAIN.

Got home, and had to deal again with the airline tickets. I was dealing with the travel agent we used in TO, as we had to adjust one of the tickets that we already had, and she was always so incredibly helpful I thought we would make our lives easy and go right ahead with her again. But NO this year...I know not why, she is being quite difficult. Everything...EVERYTHING is a problem. I'm sorry but if I am dropping three GRAND with your company...don't be ANYTHING but cheery and helpful...OK?

So I booked the tickets myself. Only the dog isn't booked yet. What fun.

OK, and while I am on a role here....here's some charming info about our food in N. America. There's shit in it. That is the real reason they irradiate it. If you want to be fairly sure that there isn't...buy fast food. You may not want to know what else IS in it there, but there probably won't be shit in it. Here's why, courtesy of "Fast Food Nation". The slaughter houses run at such high 'efficiencies' that it is not possible for the workers to do it neatly without regularly spraying the contents of the animals insides (read hot steaming shit)around. The agri-business solution? Do they slow down the production as any person engaging one or two brain cells might? NO. They irradiate our food. Only the fast food industry has sufficient buying power, and a complete horror of an e-coli break out, that they can leverage it so that the slaughtering is done in a HYGENIC manner, which also probably makes it somewhat more humane as the workers are not going so fast they have screw ups and have to shoot the animal 3 or 4 times sometimes before it dies.

OK, here's another delight....Pigs. This is courtesy of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" Well. They are raised in feedlots...which is basically a big warehouse with a grid floor and a septic tank of pig crap and urine under it. Ever smelled that stuff???? The animals are packed in so tightly, are weaned so early, are stressed so badly and are depressed, that these animals, that are at least as smart as your dog, are driven to relieve their tension by sucking on the tail of the animal in front. The animal in front is also so depressed that they don't even care, even if their tail is getting damaged, leading to infection, in which case, "because treating sick pigs is not economically efficient, these underperforming production units are typically clubbed to death on the spot.

"Tail docking is the USDA's recommended solution to the porcine "vice" of tail chewing. Using a pair of pliers and no anaesthetic, most - but not quite all - of the tail is snipped off. Why leave the little stump? because the whole point of the exercise is not to remove the object of tail biting so much as to render it even more sensitive. Now a bite to the tail is so painful that even the most demoralised pig will struggle to resist it. " This, my friends, is industrial efficiency as recommended by the US government.

Oh. My. God.

Sorry, that is quite cuts a bit close to the bone, but not nearly so close as for the pig. Think about what is going on with these animals...it is also, as far as I know, the truth.


NOW

In a determined effort to move on to something brighter, because there are usually good things going on as well, the wisteria are blooming here and look stunning....all over the place.

A friend Terrie, who is a fellow cruiser from Florida started a blog with pictures of their beautiful boat....you can see it here. They are lovely helpful generous people who did a great deal for us while we were in Florida, including inviting us to Thanksgiving dinner last year, which was amazing...in many ways...it was just so nice, and Terrie is a chef, so it was unbelievable good, and we got to eat swamp cabbage, which is a local treat...ask her on her blog...maybe she'll tell you about it. They are wonderful, and they're writing is pretty funny too.

This is a picture of the necklace I got from my friend who is also a fellow cruiser...I just keep showing it off:


Beautiful, eh?

Truely...life can be pretty good. The younger child did a ballet for me with a tutu wearing long-legged toy frog named Isabel who was doing a very impressive performance to Rachmaninoff!

Now if I can just get the dog on that plane.....