Vote for my Blog (if you are so inclined)

Circle of Moms/Mums has a Top fitness blogs thing going.  (You may have noticed the vote for me in the top right corner of my blog).

When you follow the link - the blogs with the most votes are listed first but you can do Ctrl + F and then enter Fat, Angry into the search box to get right to my blog.

Looking at the list - I don't even have as many followers as the top voted blog but I'd still like to make a decent showing, if you know what I mean...

http://www.circleofmoms.com/top25/health-fitness?trk=t25_health-fitness#_

 Thanks!


Today, it's supposed to be rainy and gross and we are off to take Rhyme Girl back to her mother's and then we'll visit with my lovely in-laws.

Though I hate driving in the rain and by driving, I mean sitting in the passenger seat of my PT cruiser cautioning Hubs to, "give yourself more braking space" or "slow down" or "those cars 8 feet ahead of us are braking" et cetera.

I cannot believe that Thursday night is when I leave for my trip with S-girl and Suze.  I guess I really need to figure out what I should bring with me.

Have a great day, everyone!

FAB... on politics

I live in Canada.

I am very anti-Conservative.

I am appalled by the election results.

The Harper government was found in contempt of Parliament and yet, they then managed to pull off a majority government in our May 2nd election.

How did this happen?  Well, beyond fear-mongering ad campaigns and always talking about why the other parties are no good without giving an accurate representation of their own plans (ahh deflection - what crap!) it's also one of the major issues with our election system.

Commonly referred to as the "first past the post" system - it gave Harper's government a majority government even though it had less than 50% of the actual votes from the Canadians who actually got off their asses and went out and voted.

Let me state, right now, that I respect people who came out and voted for ANYONE more than I do people who willfully stayed home and didn't bother to use their hard-earned right as a Canadian citizen aged 18 years or older to have a voice.

I read an interesting blog post about First Past the Post which nicely sums up my issue with the system.

In fact, I am still bitter about the half-assed attempt at electoral reform in 2007.  I felt at the time that the public was not properly educated on how the proposed changes would work and that the ballot itself was rather off-putting and would likely confuse many people.

As for what I would like to see in a political party, putting aside my awesome idea of a coalition party called Cerberus (3-headed dog consisting of Jack Layton - NDP, Elizabeth May - Green & I picked Justin Trudeau for the Liberals) and their party colour could be a nice plaid, but really I have been keen to see the following issues addressed for YEARS!

Here are some of the things my dream political party would address:

• electoral reform
• income tax changes - everyone pays in 6 % of their gross income for taxes unless they made 20,000 or less annually as a single person or 10,000 PER person additional person in their family (family of three pays taxes on gross FAMILY income over 40,000)
• significant changes to the Young Offender's Act (it's too lenient and I think harsher measures should start at the age of 14 or as of the year the person is turning 14)
• wages of ALL government employees would be frozen at the rate of calculated cost-of-living (or at the rate the employees were being paid at the date of freezing) for the term of the party being in charge
• complete accountability of how tax-payer funds are used to pay for government decisions and initiatives
• minimum wage (for all employed persons) would always increase to match the calculated cost-of-living
• major health care changes (mental health - therapies & medications and basic dental covered for ALL Canadian citizens and more reimbursement for verified medical expenses during the income tax process INCLUDING a fitness tax credit for adults re: gym memberships & personal training)
• political campaigning can only be about the individual party platform THEY are presenting so it's about the issues and promises

 That's all I've got for the moment, I'm going to set this to post tomorrow.

Walked to vote

So it's 1 km (according to Google maps) from our residence to where we needed to vote.  That took us 10 minutes to walk, pushing Baby Girl in the stroller each way so I got 20 minutes of walking in and I had a voice in the election which means I can bitch about how things turn out if I don't like them.

I firmly believe that if you do not choose to exercise your right to vote - then you forfeit your right to complain about what the government/elected officials choose to do.

Two of the other issues we had to vote on today was re: whether or not our city should keep fluoridating our water (I voted "NO") and on whether or not our city and our adjoining city should talk about possible amalgamation (I voted "NO").

Tonight I am attending part 1 of 2 of a CPR training session.  I am feeling anxious about participating but I will overcome my anxiety and do it!

It's actually quite a busy week for me.

Monday and Tuesday night - CPR training.  Wednesday morning - meeting at Son's school. Wednesday night - boot camp. Thursday night - meeting. And Friday night Hubs is off to his parents' place while I stay home with Baby Girl and Son, since he is spending the day with Step-daughter on Saturday.

The issue is because Sunday is Halloween.  Baby Girl's first Halloween.  If we had Step-Daughter here this weekend, our concern is on returning her home (2.5 hrs drive from here with minimal traffic, usually 3 hrs) and then getting back here for Son and Baby Girl.

Whereas Step-Daughter's mother is concerned merely with what time we would have Step-Daughter back because Step-Daughter has a half-brother at her mom's house who will be having his first Halloween this year (he is 3 weeks younger than our Baby Girl).

So it ended up, after some other BS, that Hubs would just go to see Step-Daughter this weekend instead of her coming here.

That means that those of us staying home don't get to see Step-Daughter, MIL and FIL, and Nanny which is a bummer, but it is what it is.