If it’s love, make one city work for you both

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: We’re living a lie over at our house, but it’s holding the family together.

I know my husband is deeply into gambling. If it weren’t for my steady job I don’t know where the family would be! I insist on paying all of our bills. I also funnel some major cash off to my sister, in case my husband tries to tap into my accounts somehow when I’m out of the house.

He doesn’t know my passwords, since I keep changing them, but he sometimes shows up behind me when I’m online, like he’s dying to ask something.

I say, “What are you looking at? Stop looking over my shoulder!” Then he makes a lame joke and goes away.

A Winnipeg lawyer has been disbarred after admitting to six counts of professional misconduct and two counts of providing incompetent service involving eight clients.

The career-ending decision marks the sixth time Gisele Champagne has been disciplined by the Law Society of Manitoba since she was called to the bar in 1992.

“Disbarment is the appropriate remedy when a lawyer has demonstrated a repeated pattern of conduct that violates professional standards,” a law society panel said in a written decision released Wednesday.

“A lawyer who has been unable to learn from past discipline proceedings to fulfill his or her obligation to provide ethical and high-quality legal services must at some point lose the privilege of practising law.”

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: My “not so ex” boyfriend will be driving back from Ontario for the holidays, staying until New Year’s Day. We have remained friends, and recently things have escalated on the phone to “I love you” and phone sex.

So, here’s the problem. My ex has hinted he wants to get serious and “put a ring on it” this Christmas and I’m not sure I want to go that fast. When he left Winnipeg, he was heartbroken I wouldn’t give up my job and go with him. By giving me a ring, he may think he’s upped the ante enough for me to ditch my career here. I will not quit my wonderful job. In his mind, that puts us right back to Square 1! I think I love him. Please help!

— Cornering Me Won’t Work? St. Boniface

Dear Cornering: If things go really well this holiday, you should both start looking for work in each other’s city, so you can possibly be together. Neither of you wants to go haring off to a new city, with no job waiting. You’ve proved you’re both career types and obviously, the feelings are deep enough they continued on even though you broke up after he left.

I Built a Rocket Ship (Kids Can Press, 32 pages, hardcover, $22) by Winnipegger Anna Lazowski is a tender story for children ages 4-8 about a little girl trying to make sense of her mother’s death. The child engages in conversation with her late mom, agreeing and disagreeing about things said as she carries objects (and of course, the cat) to the backyard. There, she is building a rocket ship she will pilot into the skies to find her mom again.

Jennica Lounsbury’s varied perspectives show the range of emotions the little girl experiences.

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Northwoods Lullaby by Mary Casanova (University of Minnesota Press, 32 pages, hardover, $25) is a bedtime book for readers up to age eight, perfect to bring a busy, happy day to a close. Just like children who are listening to adults reading the book, all the animal babies are being tucked into their nests and burrows by loving parents: “Thump and scamper,/nimble clover./ Soon it’s time to rest. Baby loon/ nestles in/as Papa floats along.”

I demand restitution. Where’s my hour?

In the traditional fall-back, spring-forward time change set up — you know, ol’ trusty that’s been effect for lo these 63 years — we lost an hour in the spring that we got back in the fall.

That was the social contract: you commit to feeling like you’re on cold medication for a week in March because you know a glorious extra hour of sleep will be returned to you in November. (Unless, of course, you have little kids, but look: we all make our choices.)

Well, that transaction, flawed as it was, isn’t happening this year. That hour you sacrificed to the sun gods in the spring? Gone. Not coming back. We’ve sprung forward and we shan’t be falling back — not in November, and (possibly) not ever. The scale shall remain unbalanced and the loop shall remain unclosed as Manitoba has adopted permanent daylight time.