Coucoumellisms

I found out from Maryssa's catechism teacher last night that the parishes are no longer allowed to send announcements for catechism through the school system anymore.  So, parents who want their children to go to catechism will no longer be informed of the availability of classes, nor the inscription times.  The parish will have to rely on ads in newspapers from now on.  (If that doesn't get banned too in future) Now if no one were allowed to put publicity through schools, that would be one thing, but I happen to have sent publicity through my kids' school myself, in hopes of recruiting new players for my daughter's soccer team.  I have also received all kinds of publicity from summer camps and other places through the school. So it's quite obvious that we are only banning one group here. Wouldn't you call that discrimination? I sure do. What about my right to information?  Why is it that a minority "élite" can decide for me what kind of info

Dr. Warren Veale, Interim Pres. U of Calgary Dear Sir; The fact is that Albertans are overwhelmingly in favour of protection under law of unborn children from any form of violence against them, whether attacked by knife-wielding boyfriend of the mother, or the forceps and cutting devices of an abortionist. Lack of protection for the child in Canadian law, however, should not deter a discussion of law, with life or death implications, especially at institutions of higher learning. Surveys favouring protection of unborn children range from 75% to over 90% in Alberta, depending how the question was asked. Albertans understand that the unborn children have a high probability of suffering death from lack of law in Canada and they want the situation changed. As a former unborn child, if the present state of lawlessness was present when your mother carried you in her womb, perhaps you'd have been the victim. Instead, you can thank her on Mothers Day. I urge you, on behalf of Alberta

Just wanted to write this out, in story form, so I can use it later, if I ever need to write a scene in which someone gets hurt. Don't get me wrong.  I don't set out purposely to hurt myself, but hey, there is no point in not taking advantage of it when it does happen. Later, the scene would unfold in J's head, without her being quite able to pinpoint exactly how close she had been to the ball.  She had been running towards it, but couldn't remember being very close to it.  She must have been close enough though, because suddenly, out of nowhere, the goalie from the other team threw himself on it, right in front of her. One minute she was running, the next her belly was sliding over his back.  Her hands stretched in front of her, she intended to simply tuck her head in and roll. Her left hand struck the ground just before the right.  She must have been going too fast, because her elbow turned just slightly to the left.  She heard a crack.  Then it turned just

Maryssa turned 10 on March 30.  She wanted a hot air balloon pinata for her birthday this year, so I started on that.  Then I thought it would be nice to do pinatas for her soccer team as well. Maryssa wanted to do one of them, so I let her do pretty much everything.  She did all the layers of paper maché herself, without making a mess.  I help put the string on and reclose the hole we made to put the candy and stuff in, but she did all the rest by herself.  She also painted it herself.  I did the hot-gluing of the ribbons, but those she chose, as well as where to put them. We decided to make Easter eggs, as Easter was coming up.  We brought the finished pinatas to Maryssa's soccer practice on the Thursday before Easter, three days after her birthday. We had Maryssa's birthday party on Easter Monday.  The kids painted ceramic plates and cups with my friend Tania from Gazouillis .  The kids loved it, and the dishes are microwavable, dish-washer safe and can be ea

One of my pet peeves is hearing the typical atheist/agnostic come up with the war between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland as an example of how religion spurs war. Let's review this shall we?  Englishmen crossed the waters to Ireland and conquered it.  Most of Ireland managed to boot the English out eventually and become their own country again.  Unfortunately, a small parcel was not so lucky.  The English stayed. A hundred years pass.  Two hundred years pass... The descendants of the original Irish are still Irish.  The problem is, the descendants of the English can no longer be considered English.  For generations, they have not lived in England.  Therefore, they too are Irish. However, all is not well in the state of Northern Ireland.  The conquerors (aka the descendants of the English) are still nagging the conquered (aka the descendants of the original Irish) and this is creating a little unrest. Now, we could have called the two groups conquered and conqu

From Juana la Cubana 's desert isle: This is the last post I will be posting here. I have moved to my own blog: http://juanitacubanita.blogspot.com/ This should make Coucoumellisms a lot simpler to navigate, and make it easier to express myself without the confusion of there being two personalities.

So, it turns out that I have been walking around with a broken elbow for a week and a half after all. I went to see a doctor at a clinic Wednesday, because I needed one to fill in insurance papers so I could have physiotherapy if I needed it, and because the doctor at emergency said to consult if it was still hurting in a week.  (It was.) Given the bruising and tenderness, this doctor wanted me to get more x-rays done to make sure I did not have a fracture, because sometimes you can miss it.  So I did that Wednesday afternoon.  Thursday, she called to say that the radiologist could see no fracture but thought that there was one anyway because of all the liquid she could see in the articulation.  So I got an appointment in orthopedics this morning, where the doctor there confirmed that it was indeed a fracture, so no physiotherapy for another two weeks at least. No cast either.  I kind of feel cheated of all the sympathy a cast would have garnered for me, as the obvious symbol o