Happy Birthday Catherine!

[Tobi]

Wishing you a very  Happy Birthday Catherine!

[Catherine]

You found a snake picture! Perfect. 
Thank-you. 
My neighbour has a birthday two days before mine so I joined them for a birthday dinner tonight. 
Tomorrow is Reptile centre day and I will take a birthday supper(with pumpkin pie) to share with the other volunteers.
Sunday I celebrate Thanksgiving with my friends/neighbours(I am bringing the pumpkin pie) and we also celebrate my birthday. 
Monday I plan to rest at home, eat leftovers and enjoy the extra pumpkin pie I bought. 

The weather is beautiful and there is pumpkin pie. My birthday is great every year because of Thanksgiving. 

[LPC]

Many, many birthday greetings, Catherine! Enjoy your special day!

[Catherine]

Thank-you. I love the dancing hamsters. When you are feeling good you have to dance.

I gave Barrie a good bath this morning and I am still happy that I still have Barrie with me so I can bath him. He is looking really good and I can tell he feels good.

Two big presents in the news. 1)The Energy East Pipeline project has been cancelled. So no tar sands oil travelling across my beloved prairies in a pipeline that we know will leak. And no tar sands oil passing by across the top of Toronto to threaten where I live now. 
2) The  government has okayed a major payout to Indigenous children who were stolen from their families and given to "white" families. It was an act of cultural genocide and the children are adults now and they struggle to reconnect their lives with their heritage. (I have indigenous roots through my grandmother and she shaped who I am through stories of her life and history)

The only thing that could sweeten it would be a ban on animal testing.

Now I am heading out to spend time at the reptile centre. We are raising some very tiny lizards that made it to Toronto on a shipment of plants from Florida. They are Brown Anoles and the florist brought them in. They were barely 1/2 inch long but they have grown to 1 inch now. 
I am bringing a birthday feast and pumpkin pie so I will celebrate later.

[Tobi]

I like the dancing Hamsters too! When you are happy and it's your birthday you have to make a song and dance about it!

It sounds like you had/are still having a super birthday especially with all that pumpkin pie.

I am glad to hear those tribal people who were taken as children, are being compensated. It is only fair. Actually it doesn't restore what was taken from them (their loving families, and awareness of their heritage as children) but it is an honourable gesture.
How dare people come in and take children away and give them to other families anyway??

And those tiny lizards are so lucky someone was observant, and didn't either -miss them entirely or squash them! How big will they grow when they are mature?

[Catherine]

We had a good birthday feast and the pie was good.

I still have the Thanksgiving feast tomorrow and Monday is technically the actual holiday. I count them all as my birthday.
Getting older is worth celebrating. In two more years I can get a seniors discount on transit, the zoo, the ballet and just about everything else. I think I get a tax break too. Who wouldn't want to get older when there are so many advantages.

It is sad about all the children that were stolen from their parents and given to other people. It is a dark day in Canadian history.
It is going to take generations to sort this out. We also had residential schools that indigenous children were forced into and where they were treated badly. That went on for generations and it is going to take a lot of time to heal the survivors of such schools. It is a step in the right direction to have the country admit that what was done was wrong.
Many children died in those schools and their families never learned what happened to them.  It is a very sad thing and we must as a country work to heal the damage that was done. It will take generations.  


Those tiny lizards will only be 3-4 inches when they grow up. Their parents get into green houses and enjoy eating the insects in there and then they lay their tiny eggs on plants. The plants are shipped to places like Toronto. If they are lucky they hatch in a safe place and they can end up at a reptile centre. We have the food that they need and a safe set up for such tiny lizards.

If the parents had laid the eggs outside they probably wouldn't have survived the hurricanes. These are very lucky little lizards.