Digging my heels in.

Today I called Canadian Tire to complain about their generic "holiday" advertising ads, warning them that if they want my Christmas shopping dollars they can show some appreciation and break out the "Merry Christmases". The lady at customer relations was very nice and you could clearly tell that this wasn't the first such call she had received. We were joking a little about the fact that the store is 1/4 Christmas supplies and who were they trying to kid? Where they really expecting the Hanukkah or Diwali crowd to pop in for ornament hangers or the Santa inflatables?

I have been paying attention to the stores this year and only those that understand just who is coming in this time of year to drop fist loads of cash (just because they happen to be Christian) are getting any business from me. You can't have it both ways. If you don't want to offend the PC crowd, then stop carrying all the Christmas stuff and find a way to keep the lights on with the non-Christmas crowd.

Knowing your customer is part of good business and being thankful for the fact that Christians are going to be shopping at this time of year is the least a business can do.

Moving on now....Will is loving his skating lessons every Sunday. He improves by tiny steps each time. The coach came up with a brain wave that involved giving Will the chance to use a stick and puck. She let's Will shoot a puck, but makes him travel on his skates to the puck so he can hit it again. That is a huge incentive for Will.






Mitchell, Olivia and Jack were power skating every Monday until Olivia broke her arm after falling over her bike handles. She's been benched from the rink and her guitar lessons that had also just started. Jack is filling in for Olivia at the guitar lessons until Olivia gets the cast off. I don't know what we are going to do about Jack when we reinstate Olivia...we can't very well just leave him hanging with those first beginner lessons under his belt. I'm betting that Jack may be added to the roster permanently along with Mitchell and Olivia.

We finally got allocated health card numbers and we are all set except for the fact that we don't have a doctor. I have to go into an office and fill out a form and arbitrarily pick a male or female doctor, then I'm assigned a doctor and we get an interview. I don't know for who's benefit the interview is though. Maybe the doctor will meet us and decide we are not worthy and pass on us. I did enquire to the receptionist if any of the doctors had more experience with children with Down syndrome and she snapped that they were all equal in that department. I call B.S. on that. I have floated a possible line for a pediatrician for Will. Fingers crossed on that! Being more than a little political for a moment, let me decry what wonderful care the people in the U.S. get in comparison to here. Most Canadians won't understand that because we are all fed our daily anti-American pap here and saying something American is superior to our socialist health care system does not compute. My kids had such great care in the U.S. and if average Canadians would start complaining enough, we could get better service here too!