When someone was an AZ.OL to U and U want to vent about, this is the place. You can do it. Just breath deep and start typing!
As a matter of fact, you DON’T own the road
What is with people who think they own the strip of city property in front of their homes? I can appreciate that they would rather it be used for their own purposes (parking cars), but the street is public space and anyone can park there – and I don’t care where you live.
The first place my husband and I rented was a basement suite. The only parking was in front of the house where our suite was, but not every time we arrived home was there a spot in front of our specific residence to park our car. Sometimes you need to park across the street or up the road a bit. We once parked in front of the adjacent house on the street, and were promptly informed that the guy that owned the house we parked in front of is known to puncture tires of cars that park there. What an asshole! Who in hell does this guy think he is? Admittedly this is the worst example we’ve encountered regarding street parking, but there are many more stories like this.
Case and point, my next door neighbour left us a nasty note a while back because a friend of ours parked his car in front of their house when there was no parking available in front of ours. The note was outright rude, stating that this particular parking spot was “reserved for his son”, who coincidentally is a 35 year old man that still lives at home. Again, do I need to remind people that they do NOT own the public road space in front of their homes, and ANYONE can park there? One of our other neighbours doesn’t like people using his driveway to turn their cars around in. Not sure what the deal is about that, but a bit of a sticking point since the first 6 feet of his driveway from the street level is also city property (easement), so techinically people aren’t actually on his property when they use it to turn their cars around in. Prickly buggar from down under!
Today my husband was arriving at a client’s home for a brief visit and was very rudely barked at by their neighbour who didn’t want him parking in front of her house. She said “there is a by-law that says you can’t park in front of my house”, but there were no signs stating it was a no parking zone, no bylaws restrictions or otherwise marked on an official city sign. After pointing that out, the woman replied “It is a city bylaw and my mother visits here all the time and she needs that spot”. Ok, so the bylaw only applies to strangers? It’s ok for her mother to park there (special priviledges?), but not anyone else? All she had to do was politely ask him to see if there was another location to park his vehicle and he likely would have obliged her, but instead she came out swinging her arms and barking like a rabid dog that hasn’t eaten in a week. Seriously, what the hell?
So, for all you folks who think you own the roadway in front of your homes, get over yourselves. I get annoyed when I can’t park in front of my own home, but never have I left nasty notes, or screamed like a child at someone for parking their car where I ususally do. I know I don’t own the road, and that’s life.
January 18, 2010…
I had a very large (ok, she was down right obese) woman tell me a few weeks back that I should quit smoking. “It’s very bad for your health you know, and so is second hand smoke”, she said with a Dr. Oz kind of authority. Why she followed me to my 30-yard distance away from the building entrance to point this out when she obviously wasn’t a smoker is unknown.
I smiled and had to bite my tongue rather firmly. I am a polite Canadian girl after all. What I dearly wanted to say to her was, “Yes, and I hear that being grotesquely overweight can lead to diabetes, gout, clogged arteries, several heart conditions and premature death, and maybe you should quit eating”, but then that would just be insulting and down right rude.
I have to question what makes it politically correct for her to tell me, a perfect stranger, how to live my life while it’s not politically correct for me to comment on her super sized McDonalds double arched ass? Some might say that it’s because of the second hand smoke issue. After all, there is no such thing as second hand fat, unless you are trapped in your Air Transat seat next to a big mama during a 4-hour flight while holding your bladder because there is no way you’re getting to the bathroom until the plane has landed.
In my opinion, there is such a thing as second hand fat. Let us explore big mama’s household where big mama, and little-big jr. eat the same fatty, non-nutritional meals day after day while they watch Jerry Springer on the television. If mama is feeding her child the same garbage that made her so enormously overweight as to put her name on the 6-feet-under shortlist, is her routine of wielding her bad nutritional habits upon him not a form of second hand smoke, in the philosophical sense?
I’m not arguing that smoking is good, but I am supporting the old cliché that people in glass houses should not throw stones. I’m also pointing out that some opinions belong to your inside voice, or here on a blog post with no names attached. 
I have been honing my habit of putting my money in my mouth and burning it 20 times a day for over 30 years. I’m a 70’s kid who grew up surrounded by smokers in the perfectly acceptable realm of doing it anywhere they damned well pleased. It’s going to take a lot more than her rude intrusion into my personal life choices to successfully stop me from smoking. She and I are both on the same 6-feet-under shortlist, but for different reasons. It’s kind of like asking me to skip breakfast for the rest of my life, while ironically that’s what big mama should be doing.
Regardless, we all have vices. We do things that bother others, continue to abuse our bodies in one way, shape form or fashion, while readily pointing fingers at others for their vices. It is who we are and often what makes us tick. Just for the record, mirrors are equally as useful for applying makeup and fixing your hair as they are for revealing your flaws. I know I have many, and smoking is one of them. Not all flaws are on the surface, and not all smokers want to be slaves to their unhealthy habit anymore than overweight people wanting to stay overweight. Ultimately, the point of this blog post is “think first, speak later”, even if you’re only sending out smoke signals.
January 20, 2010
