The young and restless.

Last Monday I was involved in a fender bender, well I guess it would be more accurately described as a fender scratcher. Today I was called by the police and informed that she has filed a report with them. She has back pain you see. Back pain caused by our scratchy accident. Aren't these the kinds of stories that go down as ruining lives? Or at least insurance rates. I'm interested to see how the system will work for me.

Joey is home and that means happy warm fuzzy times. He has a fancy new car and the same Joey goodness, it is just not the same when he isn't here.

It looks like the Merrymeeting ladies will be disbanding (on good terms of course!). As McKayla finds herself searching for a place with Phil and Sierra and I join forces with Allan. Of course the housing market in St. John's is ridiculous right now (I'm not complaining, we're pretty much the only city in North America not feeling the recession, yay black gold), so no one has found anything. IT'S ALL RENTED UP, FOLKS.

And I'm finishing up work next week! I will miss my blonde children, but I'm pretty ecstatic to do the school bit again. I've been asked by my employer if I know anyone who wants my job. Part-time nanny work, anyone?

Loving you is easy ('cause you're beautiful).

I went to Twilight with Robyn and Kaylene, and although we arrived a half hour early, we were still faced with a packed theatre. Luckily, we managed to snag three seats together in the second last row.

We decided fifteen minutes before the movie began that we were all indeed quite thirsty. Robyn and Kaylene decided to run to Timmy Ho’s for some drinks while I guarded the seats.

Who knew I had the harder job?

A couple minutes after they left this woman and three of her friends (all of them adults, late thirties probably) started venturing up the stairs hoping to find seats of their own. I knew they would be out of luck considering we had barely been able to find three seats twenty minutes prior.

I wasn’t really paying attention to them, though the woman was standing directly next to me because my seat was next to the aisle. Robyn had left me her iPod and I was enjoying the wide range of music I had at my fingertips.

That’s when I noticed that the young girl sitting two seats from me was looking at me. Now she was looking at me like I was hella crazy. Shit! I thought, I was totally singing those Hillary Duff songs out loud, right?

I took out one of the headphones in case she wanted to say something, I then realized she wasn’t trying to tell me I was crazy. But she was definitely indicating that the woman standing directly to my right was.

This ADULT woman was ranting. Raving. Yelling. Cursing.

I find this terribly ironic considering the theatre was packed with adolescent girls.

In addition to the two vacant seats next to me (Robyn and Kaylene’s seats) there were also two empty directly in front of me (same situation, they’d venture for snacks and a friend was sitting there waiting for them to return).

Apparently this woman did not see fit for our friends to pee or get drinks or step outside. Though arriving much later than everyone else in theatre, it was her right to sit where she chose.

I know some of you might be chuckling now. Because I am Sarah Smith. And I have no time for this shit. And I am not afraid to tell you so. I am six feet of nonsensical bitch.

So I do the tough girl routine (secretly nervous though that I’m going to have to fight this obese woman and miss the movie because the cops will inevitably be called), meaning I take out the remaining headphone in a slow motion cowboy kind of way. I put my purse on the floor, uncross my legs, and shift my body so I’m facing her. I look right in her dumbass eyes and just challenge her to say something to me. I am made for this shit.

Unfortunately, the girl who was saving those seats in front of me was considerably less intimidating, probably around eleven or twelve years old. The girl had each of her friends’ seats saved with a single pink mitten. I thought that was pretty poetic at the time.

This dumbass, realizing she cannot pass by me to get to the two vacant seats on my left without a confrontation, marches down a couple steps to this young girl, picks up each mitten and flings them into her lap. “YOU AREN’T ALLOWED TO DO THAT.” yells the dumbass.

By this time she has attracted a crowd.

The guy sitting next to this girl looks at the woman and says “you better not sit in those fucking seats.” Luckily (?) the friends of the young girl are right behind the woman and they plop down in their respective chairs.

The woman starts ranting again; she looks at me and says “YOU AREN’T ALLOWED TO DO THAT.” I put both my elbows on my legs and lean in close to her. Total badass (and also dumbass because one of these days someone is going to call my bluff and curb stomp me).

She huffs off yelling “I’M GETTING THE MANAGER. THIS IS RIDICULOUS. YOU AREN’T ALLOWED.”

Humanity at its best.

Clutching mickey mouse.

The idea of Guantanamo Bay has always confused me. The whole putting an American prison in the same country they refuse to take sugar from is... funny. In that flabbergasting kind of way.

The rest of it just pisses me off.

The Omar Khadr tapes released last week have caused a frenzy here in Canada. Imagine, a Canadian citizen, jailed at fifteen and tortured. He is the youngest prisoner and the only Westerner left within the prison as Australia and Britain have already said "give us back our citizens and let us try them!"

Shit. I'm getting all shaky angry. Calm, Sarah. Finish what you have to say.

This is a matter of politics pure and simple.

In any other country, in the poorest countries of the world, a child soldier is told "it is not your fault". We as a people accept that a child's mind is too susceptible to the rantings and ravings of lunatics. So what's the problem here?

Khadr was arrested for allegedly throwing a grenade that killed an American soldier. Except the Pentagon accidentally leaked documents earlier this year saying that it was in fact another militant who did so. Oops.

But still Khadr sits in a prison cell six years later. Well, not in the same prison cell since he is moved to a different cell every three hours so that he is sleep deprived and more willing to talk.

Our government refuses to do anything. And though some would suggest it is a matter of race or religion, I would wager a guess that our PM has moved back into his perpetual state of fear. Go against AMERICA? Not on Harper's life.

Canada's indifference to this young man is a slap in the face. That these political games are allowed to continue in one of the freest nations on earth with absolutely no consequence for the players involved is a slap in the face.

And I'm wondering when people are going to wake up and see this country for what it really is.

When sun rays crown thy pine clad hills.

I went to Her Majesty’s Penitentiary this morning. Her Majesty needs to get her effing act together and give us a new prison.

Oh, I know it’s not her we need to rely on, but I’m so tired of everyone blaming Joey Smallwood for all of our problems. Let’s colonize!

To be honest the most interesting part of the tour was the tour my Dad gave me while driving there. Do you realize I haven’t been in “old” St. John’s since I moved here two years ago? I KNOW.

We passed the basilica, the lieutenant-governor’s house (and all I have to say is WTF, count those chimneys), the old, old, old graveyards, the Rooms, the super duper awesome old homes.

Sometimes I forget that my Dad grew up in the Newfoundland described in Michael Crummey’s The Wreckage. But then I ask him about random nondescript brick buildings and I get the response “The Roman Catholics own those, the Nuns live there or whatever nonsense they get on with. They owned every [expletive] building down around here back in the day.”

No, Papa! Really? Damn micks!

The prison is no exception to this theme of old England.

Built in the age of Charles Dickens, it is the oldest operating prison in Canada. You can even see where the gallows were.

Other than having a crumbling brick building on their hands, there is one other major problem.

Um. We kind of, might have, um, built our entire city around it.

Not on purpose of course, I’m sure a hundred and fifty years ago it was just trees and rock, right?

But don’t try throwing drugs over the four metre cement walls. For what they lack in infrastructure, they make up for in some seriously high-tech cameras. They can see the number you dial on your cell phone from like a million miles away. I KNOW.