Some People Juggle Geese

Moving Day

2006-12-10T12:30:00.000-07:00

While I very much wish this post was about moving to a house and away from our many annoying neighbours and unfortunate parking situation, it is actually about moving my blog. I am now located at http://dorktasticoddments.blogspot.com/, which is where I hope to stay. Come on over an see what's happening (meaning I am actually updating. I know, it's shocking.)

Farewell, small dizzy goslings.

Does whatever a spider can?

2006-09-27T13:17:00.000-06:00

I think this might be why Paul loves me....

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man		85%
Robin		75%
Superman		65%
Green Lantern		65%
Hulk		60%
Supergirl		55%
Batman		50%
The Flash		50%
Iron Man		45%
Wonder Woman		40%
Catwoman		30%

You are intelligent, witty,
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero am I?" quiz...

"Yessir, Captain Tight Pants."

2006-08-21T02:25:00.000-06:00

A bit of trumpet fanfare please. We have finally finished our wedding thank you cards (yes, 456 days after the wedding, shoosh). The main reason that they took so long is that we took on a seriously large project with them. We included personalized photos with each thank you card, Paul designed a website with all of our professional photos on it (password protected), and I compiled, sorted, edited and posted the best of the candid shots that our guests sent us. (If you want to see, drop me a line in the comments or send me an email). It was a lot of freaking work and I'm not even technically done because I have stalled on the Open House. Le sigh.

This means that I'm finally allowed to update again. I have a stack of entries rolling around in my head as well as a couple written in draft form that you should see popping up here in the next little while.
________________________________________________

Jayne: "Testing, testing. Captain, can you hear me?"
Mal: "I'm standing right here."
Jayne: "You're coming through good and loud."
Mal: " 'Cause I'm standing right here."

In the meantime, I don't think I'm able to hold this in much longer since Paul is asleep and has to be up at 6 to go to work...I was close enough to touch Nathan Fillion (of Firefly/Serenity - he was also the seriously creepy priest on Buffy) tonight but restrained myself despite Erin's frantic whispering, "Touch him! I dare you to touch his hair! Just lean forward and inhale!" I don't even know what Sarah was whispering at that point I was just gripping my hands together and holding my breath and probably blushing so much I lit up the room.

My impressions:
- he's really damn funny in his own right
- he's a lot taller than I thought
- he has a cute butt (despite what Erin says)
- someone cut his bangs too short and they're poufy
- he looks kind of amazing when he laughs
- it's really surreal to admiring that jawline in person when I'm used to it being crammed in a little box or pixilated on a theatre screen.

I don't typically go giddy over famous types, they're just people, but I do get a bit stupid around very attractive men and tend to not breathe enough which leads to stupid thought, actions, and every so often, words. Luckily I didn't make a moron of myself tonight. It's also kind of neat to see someone who is from here (seriously, who is from here? I mean who is from here that doesn't play hockey?) and who makes a pretty big name for himself and then comes back here. That's pretty cool, I have to say.

C is for

2006-03-03T20:58:00.000-07:00

Today we finally had Paul's appointment with the hematologist, 6 weeks after discovering the blood clots.

She went through Paul's medical history, examined him, and laid out the information as she saw it.

There are three possibilites for a cause of the clot:

Most likely - Carrying in 70 pounds worth of IKEA boxes a week before our hospital visit caused an injury to the blood vessels in his shoulder, resulting in the clot (I brought this up the last thing before we left - since Paul didn't mention it - and the doctor seemed extremely relieved by this and hopeful that it was the cause rather than the other two or some unknown factor).

Possible - He had high Antiphospholipid Antibodies in his blood. The levels were higher than normal but not so high as to indicate anything certain. This could potentially indicate a blood disorder that led to the clot or it could be normal fluctuations. He is having the levels re-tested in April and September to see if his levels are consistently high, usually higher, or if that was an anomaly caused by the blood thinner injection at the hospital.

Least likely - Possible cancer in the pelvis or abdomen - he has an appointment for a pelvic/abdominal ultrasound in April

He will be on blood thinners until at least October, which is when we go back to see her. He is allowed to start being more active, but still no lifting and no contact sports - nothing that is hard on his arms.

--------

It always amazes me the impact of the C word. Cancer. It chills us to our marrows, flushes us with panic, and makes us cling tighter to our loved ones. Cancer is larger than life and even though it was the least likely option, it was the one that both of us fixated on.

Everyone has a cancer story: a lump, a mole, a lost friend or family member. Someone who fought to the end, someone who lingered too long, someone lost too suddenly, or someone who fought it and won. There is nothing good about cancer, no hidden benefit or positive side effect. You wouldn't wish it on your worst enemy, even on your worst day.

The scariest thing about it is that it's an overgrowth of the very cells that make up your body. It's not an outside invader, it's your own body turning against you, out of control with growth. To defeat it, you have to kill or remove a part of yourself, surgical sectional suicide. Cancer is synonymous with terror, which seems irrational but sometimes isn't.

I guess you know you're grown up when C is not for cookie anymore.

Squid and Mina's Wedding

2006-02-24T14:12:00.000-07:00

As promised, we flew out to the land of warmer-than-here for Squid and Mina's wedding. We stayed gratefully but uncomfortably in Bethie and Dave's computer room (why do people persist in renting out half a house without control of the thermostat, I ask you? That would drive me nuts.) and got to hang out and shop and stuff with Melly and Roscoe (and Kristy, who was visiting too). We also ate some fabulous greek food, celebrated Bethie's birthday and I got awesome new shoes.

(I hope that I don't upset anyone in the following description. I want to remember the wedding as was and do not intend to offend.)

The real reason we flew out, though, was for the wedding. Neither of us really knew what to expect from this wedding. Squid and Mina met while she was a student in his ESL class and most of their relationship had grown a province and a half away from us. I barely knew Squid (he is a childhood friend of Paul's) and we had both only met Mina once. Mina had decided that she wanted a "traditional Canadian wedding" (who knows what that means?) and Squid had gotten her some books to help her out with the planning. A baby-sized wrench in the works caused them to jump their wedding forward by three months and increase the disorganization exponentially. As a groomsman, Paul had very little clue what was going on and I had even less.

The first hitch was the rehearsal dinner, which the parents and sister of the groom did not attend, nor did the bride's parents. Since there were now not enough people to fill the reservation and Kristy, Melly and Bethie were dropping me off at the restaurant, suddenly they were invited to the rehearsal dinner. We actually had quite a nice time getting to know the matron of honor (Eungin) and her husband (Gary). Those two were a barrell of laughs, I could see why they were friends with Mina (of the innocent face and wicked sense of humor).

The next morning Paul left early to get ready with the boys while I was picked up later by Jo and G in a rented PT cruiser. The church was just lovely, overlooking the ocean. Once everyone was inside, the music began. What music would accompany the typical wedding? The Wedding March, Ave Maria, and Pachelbel's Cannon, of course. On anyone else the wedding dress would have been garish and tacky, on Mina it was lovely and sweet. The volume of the dress only served to accent her tiny waist and delicate features. I don't know anyone else who could pull off a tiara, veil, gloves and butt-bow, but she did so with ease and grace.

The only hiccough came when it was time to exchange the rings and she hadn't thought about how to get her glove off. (Sadly the groom wore a beige sharpei tie with a white shirt, which no one can pull off. I then made the faux pas of asking Paul if Squid is colorblind. Oops.)

Parts of the ceremony were interesting, different from the typical Catholic wedding, primarily because there were less than 10 Catholics in the entire church. Everytime the congregation gave the 'wrong' response the preists eyebrows would rise sharply and then he would settle himself and go on with the ceremony.

From there we travelled to the reception, which was held in a fancy house at the ocean's edge. The lunch was nothing to talk about but the view was amazing and the speeches were funny or heartfelt and interesting. We were served up insight into how the adorable Korean girl ended up with her handsome Canadian teacher and what made the two of them such a good couple. We heard the story of their first date, from the Japanese girl (in Kimono, below) who went on their first date with them, and (by letter) from the Chinese exchange student who had given Squid pointers in charming the ladies so as to win the heart of fair Mina. Squid gave part of his speech in Korean, addressing Mina's parents who were newly arrived in Canada and had minimal skills in English. Mina's brother kindly translated his father's speech for those of us who didn't speak Korean. Then came the first dance, the Mother-Son dance, the Father-daughter dance and roughly two-and-a-half songs more where people were just starting to mingle when the music was cut off and we had to go outside for the bouquet toss (twice) and the garter toss (also twice).

We travelled to the third location, the very posh condo complex where Mina's parents lived. (On the way we saw a man dressed as a sheep waiting for a streetlight to change and a band playing on the roof of a car dealership.) There the happy couple changed into tradition Korean wedding garb and the real fun began.

There was both music and goodies from both cultures, and wedding cake and games involving kissing the groom and making the bride grab men's bottoms to see if they could identify their mate while blindfolded. There was an apple and basket game, and a one-couple wheelbarrow race. There was possibly more genuine laughter than I have ever heard at a wedding.

All in all it was a fabulous experience. I'm so glad that they were able to bring parts of the bride's culture and so many others into their wedding celebration, rather than having the stereotypical North American wedding. All of their guests were enriched by the experience.

Clot

2006-01-17T13:40:00.000-07:00

In the first week of January, Paul started complaining off and on that his arm hurt. He mentioned it kind of casually, that it was sore as if he'd worked out but he hadn't really done anything with it. He didn't sound like he was in a lot of pain or that he was particularly upset about it so I didn't think much of it.

On friday night he called me before he came home from school and said that he thought there was something wrong with his arm. Again, he didn't sound alarmed or in pain so I told him I would have a look at it when he got home.

He walked in the door, took off his coat and sat down on the couch. I glanced over at him and actually did a double take. I'm not sure that my butt touched the couch between my side of the couch and his, all I know is that I was examining his arm in under three seconds. His entire right arm was swollen and red, from his fingers right up to his shoulder and his chest and back around that shoulder. It was hard to the touch, like touching the fake plastic flesh of a mannequin. He said it only hurt in his shoulder but the arm ached like after a hard workout.

I couldn't convince him to go straight to the hospital, but I managed to convince him to go to the medicentre. Roughly an hour later we were on our way to Emergency with a referral letter from the medicentre doctor.

On a Friday night Emergency at the University Hospital is always a zoo, but because of the potential severity of Paul's case, we moved quickly through triage and into a "room" (curtained stall). After being examined by five doctors (one of them just poked his arm a bunch and acted like Paul was lying when he said he didn't work out), they sent him for chest x-rays and gave him a shot of blood thinners in his belly. They said that the biggest possibility was a blood clot and that we would have to come back the next day for an ultrasound.

Morning found us back in emergency, waiting for the results of the ultrasound. The technician found clots all the way up Paul's arm and a large clot in his shoulder, where the worst of the pain was. Apparently since there was no injury, no family history of clotting, and the clot was in an uncommon area, the doctors were quite worried. They gave him another shot of blood thinners and a prescription to continue them, a prescription for blood thinner pills, requisitions for a ton of tests, and a referral to a hematologist. We left for home, tired and shaken up.

It required a significant adjustment of our lives, a complete role reversal. Paul had always been the strong healthy one while I was generally weaker and sicker. Now I was doing the lifting and carrying while he had to rest and remember to take his pills and get his tests. We had to be careful of anything that might cause him to bruise or bleed, and he had to avoid all kinds of foods that would interact with his meds. While I was happy to cover where he needed help, Paul is just not good at being sick and remembering all of the important restrictions. He didn't want to have to slow down and not play hockey and watch what he ate. I was frustrated at what I saw as his lack of attention to his health and he was frustrated by all of the restrictions.

We've adjusted some now and found a better balance, but it's going to be a long haul until Paul is healthy enough again for things to get back to normal. I don't think they will ever get back to the way they were because I think that now he knows I am stronger than he thought I was (and I am less confident in his health than I was - paranoid, he says). The next hurdle is flying out to Vancouver for a wedding without me freaking out about him randomly hemoraging while fulfilling his duties as a groomsman.

RESOLUTION

2006-01-01T18:10:00.000-07:00

The beginning of a new year is a time for resolution, in every meaning of the word.

RESOLUTION (noun)

1. A decision to do something or to behave in a certain manner
A course of action determined or decided on.
The state or quality of being resolute; firm determination.

The most common association of resolution with the New Year is to write down one’s New Year’s Resolutions. For example, this year I resolve to:
a) get out of debt (and by default, Paul gets this resolution too)
b) get back into to debt but good debt, by purchasing a newer and more reliable vehicle, and also by paying for Paul’s schooling
c) get healthier – both in terms of avoiding illness and in terms of increasing overall fitness
d) be more positive and less cranky with people. I ended 2005 on kind of a sour note after a pretty fabulous year and I don’t really want to do that again.
e) get more sleep – I’m exhausted and only getting more so (this is actually a sub-resolution of resolutions c and d)
f) finish our wedding Thank You cards – which we’re hoping to do before our first anniversary (we’re doing a website with all of our photos on it and sending at least two printed photos with each card, hence the long timeline)

2. The fineness of detail that can be distinguished in an image;
The process or capability of making distinguishable the individual parts of an object, closely adjacent optical images, or sources of light;
The ability of a microscope or telescope to measure the angular separation of images that are close together
The act or process of separating or reducing something into its constituent parts: the prismatic resolution of sunlight into its spectral colors.

New Year’s Eve is a time when we put our past under a microscope and examine it closely. We take the beautiful blurry image that is our life and comb through it, analyzing our intentions and wrongs and hurts; poking and prodding at them to see if they still have the impact they did way back when. We stand, crouched with our noses to the weave in the fabric of our lives and examine each thread to see what they led to and where they came from. We peer through the prisms to examine all of the colorful components that make up our lives. Alternatively, we apply rose colored glasses to soften the edges, to back away and make things blurry and beautiful again.

3. The progression of a dissonant tone or chord to a consonant tone or chord (Music).

To break that down into lay-person’s term. To go from a part of a song where the music clashes to a part of the song where it doesn’t. This applies to several parts of New Year’s. Firstly, the singing of Auld Lang Syne, where there is invariably someone who is both drunk and tone-deaf shrieking along at the top of their lungs, resolution happens when the drunk person either falls down or passes out and either way stops singing. Secondly, with my friends, we have two New Year’s Traditions: we burn our regrets, and we hang our hopes and wishes on a tree with bright shiny ribbon. Regrets equate nicely to a dissonant chord, they are things within our lives that clash with the way we wanted things to be. Hopes and wishes are bright and shiny and happy, like a consonant chord. We’re basically hoping that the background music in our lives will stay consonant for the remainder of the coming year.

4. The part of a literary work in which the complications of the plot are resolved or simplified.

A large part of New Year’s is reflecting back on the year past. It is a time when you try to tie up any obligations and resolve the plotlines in your complicated life. This year I accomplished many things that I expected to and many more things that I did not. In 2005, I:
- survived breast reduction surgery
- got a new job
- moved in with Paul
- got married
- won NaNoWriMo (and didn’t hate my story)

So really, 2005 was a combination of beginnings and endings, I emerged from 2005 substantially different than I went in. It was the year of change and stress and incredible happiness and personal accomplishment, and while some of these things were hard, they were still good.

5. Something settled or resolved; the outcome of decision making.

In this way, 2005 is settled and 2006 is forecast. It’s an arbitrary landmark, this end of the year celebration, but it gives us a chance to end a chapter and begin anew, once every 365 days (give or take). We resolve while looking back at what came before, at what we would change in our past, and we resolve while looking forward that we will make changes, that at the end of our cycle we will have less to regret and greater things to hope for in the next cycle.
It continues, on and on, until we reach our final outcome, our final resolution, and we burn our lifelong regrets and tie our hope on the tree.

A Brave New Year

2006-01-01T14:10:00.000-07:00

For New Year's we were all pretty tired from the wedding and we went out to Amanda's place for a relaxing, game-filled New Year's. The best part of the night was from 2 am to 4 am when a smaller core group of us just hung out and talked and laughed.

This included three couples that normally lived far away and who add some indefinable quality to our group; they are catalysts, somehow, and make our group of friends greater than the sum of it's parts. When they are in town we have more activities and we have far more fun doing them. Even if we're just sitting around we laugh more and complain less. There are so many people that have moved away now that it feels like those of us who remain are just a shell, holding down the fort until the others come home for Christmas or a summertime wedding. The problem is, this year our group has no summer weddings planned. We may have to wait until next Christmas to be whole. Twelve months is a long time to go without your favorite people and it hurts my heart to think of so long an absence. The times when those special people get on the plane and leave puts teeny tiny holes in all of our hearts and I think that's maybe why we never do much as a group in January and February. We are all a bit curled in on ourselves, trying to rest and heal. Taking a break so that the contrast between life with them and life without them isn't so harsh. This year I'm going to try to suck it up and be brave, to plan parties and activities and fill the cold months with fun in any way that I can.

On that note, New Year's photos:

My gorgeous sister-in-law.

Amanda and the frame we gave her that Paul put together wrong, I affectionately called him a dummy, and Amanda laughed herself silly.

The Spud Trooper that Paul got from Sarah to go with his Darth Tater.

Chantal trying to teach us this tongue thing they do in Tanzania.

Melly trying to do the Tanzanian tongue thing.

Homey Hot Wheels.

They look so innocent sitting together until...

...Wrestlemania!!!

We laughed until late in the night.

And went home around 4 a.m. very sleepy.

Another Choir Wedding

2005-12-31T14:32:00.000-07:00

I'm apparently still a little too upset about some of the people and some of the events at the wedding to be very positive about it, so I'm going to write about other things instead and then show you some pretty pictures from the wedding reception (the ceremony was lovely, but most of our photos are crap). Deal?

For the wedding I got to try out my Chi hair straightener, which Paul and my sister and brother bought me for Birthday/Christmas, and which I love. By the time Melly had finished straightening my hair I was ready to shout from the rooftops "Chis are the best!" Fortunately, I realized in time that anyone who heard me would think that either I felt really strongly about dairy products or that I had terrible grammar (this is half true, I will let you decide which half). (If you don't get it, try saying it out loud.) Perhaps a T-shirt or sandwich board would be more effective.

Choir weddings are an amazing thing, if not for anything else then for the sheer number of people who meet in choir and marry. I'm sure that we number in the hundreds if not thousands. Choir is not a dating service, I promise it's not; I think it's just that you are guaranteed to have a larger number of things in common because you, by default:
a) Love music (or at least like it a lot)
b) Love to sing (if you didn't love it, you wouldn't get up for the ten o'clock saturday morning rehearsals)
c) Enjoy learning at least a bit (it's a university choir)
d) Have some shared history and many in jokes
e) Go to a lot of the same parties

This wedding, Brad and Liz's wedding, was a bit exceptional in a couple of ways:
a) They have been dating for ten years (TEN!)
b) An Alto married a Tenor (Choir marriages tend to be Alto-Bass or Soprano-Tenor, no one really knows why. Brad and Liz just wrecked our average).
c) It managed to make me not want to take any pictures again ever (between Paul and I on our two cameras we took roughly 700). Don't worry, the desire is growing back, it just may take a while.

Table number one of choir folk.

Table number two of choir folk.

Table number three of choir folk (and Emily).

Paul and I all dressed up (he cleans up nice, doesn't he?)

Baby Erica. Ain't she sweet? She really liked our new flash.

All Ethan wanted to do all night was dance with Julia (and Liz), if Julia said no he would ask to dance with "Julia's Mommy".

Two of my favoritest people in the whole universe.

I thought this was a nice effect (the first dance through the centrepiece.)

The first dance.

Look at them go.

Line dancing.

iHOP (The international House Of Party) together for the last time.

To Happy Endings.

Paul and Karen: SUV Hunters

2005-12-29T22:31:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year Paul’s Jurassic Truck died. We had been having trouble with it and we knew it needed a new engine and suddenly one day it turned a corner downtown, made terrible noises and died a smoky death. Paul towed it home to sit in our parking stall as our “outdoor storage” (it currently contains an entertainment centre, three CD racks, and a bottle of raspberry sourpuss). He went out to the farm and resurrected Stuart, his little white tempo, who had been languishing at the farm for two years waiting to be sold.

Since then we have been limping along. My Stanley (a Volvo station wagon) is 26 years old, and while being extremely low maintenance this year it is still kind of a wonder that he runs at all. Paul’s tempo turned out to need quite a bit of work and was painfully unreliable in the last couple of months. Finally we came to the conclusion that we really needed a new vehicle; one that was reliable and didn’t cost us a fortune in repairs. Perhaps even a vehicle that was made in this century (gasp!)

Last Thursday we made arrangements to meet with the husband of a co-worker who worked at a Ford dealership. He was actually off on sick leave, which we didn’t realize, and came in especially for us. (Please note: when buying a vehicle, do not start off feeling guilty). He had a good deal on a 2005 Escape that we very seriously considered, until we discovered that, in the long run, it was actually cheaper to get a 2006 (!) We ended up test driving the vehicle overnight but it turns out that I just couldn’t get comfortable in it. Either my foot was all crunched up by the bump under the carpet by the gas pedal or my arms were stretched out so far forward that my back cramped. By the time I had finished all of my driving, my ankle hurt, my back was cramping, and I felt like I’d done 50 sit-ups. Based on this, we ended up not getting the vehicle, but only with considerable angst and guilt.

Still, we are on the hunt for a new vehicle. We made a list of things that we liked about the Escape that we wanted in our new car. It gives you a bit of a picture of the state of our vehicles when our list included things like: “wipers that work” and “a good heater” and “accelerates”. We want a vehicle with 4X4, preferably with a manual transmission, and probably an SUV so next on the list is the Honda CR-V. Hopefully we will manage to find something that is comfortable for both of us.

I guess my parents had this in mind when they clipped out the article about a contest from Chevrolet where the company gave away a car to the couple that had the greatest height differential. The couple that won had a 2’2” height differential and were 6’6” and 4’4” respectively. Well, if they can find a vehicle that works, so can we.

Flashback on Friendship

2005-12-28T22:19:00.000-07:00

Brad's birthday is a traditional post-Christmas drunken celebration which I have attended almost every year for the past ten or so. Due to timing constraints and the very logical thought that it was a bad idea to be drunk out of your mind two days in a row two days before your wedding, his birthday was combined with his stag this year. Since the boys were out at the stag, the girls went out to Julio's for margaritas before meeting the boys at Sapphire. Liz, the bride, who isn't really into the bar thing came out to hang with us for a bit at Julio's.

Being the way we are, the girls set out to find out what specifically was stressing out the bride and what we could do to help. Soon she had run through her to-so list, which we casually decimated. She was left with a very short list and most of us ended up with an assignment of some kind. Go us!

This very much made me think back to the week before my wedding. I'm a bit of a control freak and I have a lot of trouble asking for help. The main person that I wanted to help me was Paul and he was pretty darn busy too. To top it all off I was horribly sick the week before the wedding (and actually for a couple of weeks after, too).

My friends did the same thing as we did for Liz. Sarah would force me to list what I still needed to do and then she would calmly identify things that I didn't actually need to do myself and assign them to herself or others of our friends. Not only that but I was able to put together a sizeable set-up crew, tear-down crew, and a few volunteers to get up early on the morning after the wedding to help my mom so that she didn't have a breakdown preparing for the open house. I was moved beyond words at the warm hearted helpfulness of my friends, who not only did everything I asked for help with, but did it perfectly and cheerfully and then turned around and gave us amazing wedding gifts on top of it all, when just their assistance was gift enough.

It's times like this that make me realize what an amazing group we are; not all groups of friends are like this. My bridesmaids and the groomsmen (and groomsmaid and bridesguy) helped but none of them were driven to exhaustion or near bankruptcy by the tasks given (or at least I'm pretty sure they were fine, we were very careful about this.) While I can get cranky with almost any of them, I realize that I am so lucky and very blessed to have such amazing friends, and I hope to never take them for granted.

Santa's reindeer are in the shop.

2005-12-26T23:55:00.000-07:00

Driving from the farm to my parent's place on Christmas day was a dreary affair. We had anything but a white Christmas this year and I was feeling a bit out of the spirit. It started to rain as we drove, melting the last of the scant covering of snow.

As we sped up the highway, we could see a little red convertible on the horizon. As we approached we could see that the top was down and wondered why the driver wouldn't pull over and put the top up to get out of the rain. Was it sheer vanity keeping the cover off?

It turns out that they were being generous rather than vain: the little red convertible contained a Santa and Mrs. Claus bringing Christmas cheer to Edmontonians.

With a smile and a wave as they drove out of sight,
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Boxing Day. The fight is on. Ding!

2005-12-26T22:19:00.000-07:00

I have figured out why Boxing Day is called Boxing Day. I always thought that it was because the day after Christmas is when you clean up all of the boxes from the Christmas booty and you put away all of the Christmas ornaments in boxes, or you would if you were not in my family of procrastinators where the tree goes up on Christmas Eve and stays up until the snow melts (this year the tree went up on Christmas day at 3 p.m. We suck.) No, Boxing Day must be named for all the boxing style fights that go on during Boxing Day shopping when people are battling toward their favorite deal and find that someone else has his hot little hands on the last coveted item and something goes 'snap' in their brain. Or I suppose when people get overwhelmed by hearing "BOXING DAY SALE" eleventy billion times and contract BOXING DAY MADNESS and run through the streets fighting with people over their purchases.

At five a.m. on Boxing Day I heard a strange noise, tinny music playing off in the distance. Somewhat intrigued, I reluctantly swam towards consciousness and Paul whispering in my ear "Time to get up". What on earth would cause me to climb out of bed at five in the a.m., since the phrase "not a morning person" is not strong enough to describe me? Is it watching the sunrise? Surely not, the sun will still be up whatever time I crawl out of bed. Is it to catch a Boxing Day sale, a new printer on cheap cheap cheap while our printer has recently become problematic? I think not, you know how much money I would pay for extra sleep, especially when I had none the night before. Is it the guilt that my new husband would probably go and brave the crowds all by himself to bring said printer triumphantly home? You got it! As I later muttered grumpily at Paul, there is no one else that I would get up at five in the morning for.

We dressed quickly, brushed teeth, grabbed a bottle of Yop to share and headed out to South Common. Both of us were relieved to find that yesterdays rain, which had frozen on walks and roads had not frozen on the car. There are few experiences more aggravating than attempting to scrape off the frozen-on freezing rain that has shellacked your vehicle overnight, and the resulting associated strained muscles and skinned-bloody knuckles.

On our drive, we passed another eletronics- and media-based store where insanity reigned. Throngs of anxious patrons mobbed the sidewalk and parking lot around the doors, each hoping for that super deal that would make getting up too early worth the sacrifice. Soon we pulled into view of the blue and yellow building that was our destination. The base of the building couldn't even be seen through the throng of humanity that surrounded it, and we were approaching from the back side. We quickly found a parking spot and, after a fall by Paul on the slippery sidewalk, joined the line.

I was becoming relatively certain, based on the length of the line, that the object of our quest would have vanished into thin air by the time we got inside. Surely a good printer at less than half price would be a popular item and all we would find would be a sad sign hanging and perhaps some dust bunnies or tumbleweed to mark the deserted location.

At five to six the line shuffled cautiously forward on the icy walks, each person yearning hopefully, if blearily, after the deals contained therein. Soon we were accepting our free gum and chocolate bar samples as we swept though the entrance and into chaos.

Paul forged ahead and I followed in his wake as he strode toward the Holy Grail (a.k.a. the cheap printer). We found it within moments and stared in awe at the stack that was left. We quickly staked our claim and set off in search of discount ink supplies and paper (not to mention a quick run through 'TV on DVD', our not-so-secret vice). Our quest thus completed we joined the trek to salavation, otherwise known as the cashier. The line snaked through the store along a bright yellow rope that followed the main aisle, lined with attractive bargains.

We floated merrily along our path, avoiding dangerous side streams and staying with the main flow. Oh, no! What's that up ahead? A logjam! The blue-shirted employee smoothly directed us into the smallest side stream of all: in line behind a family of six with an overflowing cart waiting on a single cashier-in-training. Ages after we should have been out the door we were scrounging for change because the trainee's credit card machine had stopped working.

Finally we surged toward the door, clutching our prize triumphantly. It was only seven a.m. and we had survived Boxing Day shopping. Eight o'clock found us snuggled on our couch watching Serenity DVD bloopers and we were back abed by nine, dreaming dreams of new photo printers with separate ink cartridges.

All I Want For Christmas

2005-12-26T01:12:00.000-07:00

Since this was our first Christmas together living in the same house as a married couple, I wanted to establish some traditions together. I had visions, not of sugarplums, but of decorating the tree together, romantically, in front of a roaring fire. I had bought a few new decorations, since most of what we have is uninspired, and I wanted to begin establishing all of the memories that we could look back on each year as we decorated the tree. I dreamed of waking up together under our fluffy duvet and crawling out of bed on Christmas morning to open up our stockings (he had filled mine and I had filled his, each of us playing santa for the other) while huddled together under a blanket on our new couch. In my head we opened our Dutch chocolate letters and ate the oranges from the toes of our stockings (my family's tradition) and poured our miniature bottles of Bailey's Irish Cream (his family’s tradition) into his morning coffee and my hot chocolate.

I’m not sure where all of these crazy expectations came from. For some reason the first year of marriage has a ridiculous amount of pressure. Each tiny action feels like you are establishing ‘the way it will be for time without end’, which is far too stressful, really, for what should be a relaxing and happy time. So, of course, reality didn't even bear a passing resemblance to my foolish fantasies.

We were far to busy to get our tree trimmed any earlier than the week before Christmas so on a night that we were both home, our friends basically staged an intervention. Roscoe was staying with us and Melly, Chnaners and Kristy came over and we all decorated the tree together. We had ‘Barenaked for the Holidays’ playing on the stereo and we joked and laughed and goofed around and generally had a great time. They all made sure to let us put up the few decorations that were special to us, but our tree was decorated in record time.

The next fantasy was about Christmas morning. Of course I already knew what our plans for Chrismas Morning were, long before I dreamed up “Christmas morning for Karen and Paul in an alternate dimension.” Every year we go to church with Paul’s family on Christmas Eve, play games all night, and sleep over at the farm. We wake up to the voice of a small child whispering “Mewy Cwistmas”, listen to Papa read from the bible by candlelight, meditate on what we are grateful for, sing happy Birthday to Jesus and blow out the candles, then tear open the brightly wrapped packages in a frenzy of gift opening joy. We then travel to my parent’s place for an intimate Christmas dinner for twenty, followed by a slew relatives arriving and cheerful Christmas chaos. We generally hang out and clean up with my brother while my sister sleeps and we gripe about her not helping. We come home to our snug little beds and smile that we have survived another Christmas with our families.

As we left the farm, Paul’s mom gave him a last little gift. Paul’s Grandma died last summer and when Mama was going through her belongings she found a Christmas ornament in a little box. The box was labeled “Baby boy Chrismas, 1977”, which means that his Grandma bought it when he was born, the first grandchild. I couldn’t have dreamed it, but that ornament will now be a sweet part of our Christmas traditions.

Now every year I can look back at our first Christmas as a married couple and remember how our friends came over and we had so much fun decorating the tree all together, and Paul can hang the ornament passed down from his grandma to his mom to him and add years of history to the first year of our tree.

Sometimes you don’t get what you want for Christmas, you get what you need.

Trimming the tree.

Giving Doug horns (which sounds dirty but isn't.)

Kristy with Paul's stocking.

Our temporary tree topper.

New ornaments.

A pile of fun on our couch.

The Grinch couldn't steal our tree (he's too tiny.)

Paul and spidey.

Me and Kermie.

Our paper bag angel from Amanda.

After the tree is done.

Santa Pants.

Our attempted Christmas card photo for next year.

Melly told us to battle with our antlers...

...but I got poked in the eye. (It's true: it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye.)

This picture actually typifies our relationship quite well.

Merry Christmas!

The Art of Love

2005-12-24T23:49:00.000-07:00

On Christmas Eve I went to church with Paul’s family. In the row ahead of me was a little girl of about age three. She was obviously dressed in her Christmas finest; a little fur-ruffed red jacket, a matching dress with a little pocket in the skirt, white tights, and shiny little black shoes. Initially her father was holding her in his arms, facing me and back to the priest, and we played peek-a-boo around her dad’s shoulders. When she giggled a little too hard Daddy put her down and she played peek-a-boo through his legs for a while. Eventually the parents tired of this game and dug around in her little pink backpack for a few sheets of blank paper and a baggie full of crayons.

As I watched, she started by coloring a wide swath of purple across the page. She then added orange highlights, some green shading, and balls of pink scattered around the page but still connected by a thin trail. Each mark was made with deliberation rather than randomness. She knew exactly what she was creating and every stroke had to be just so. Occasionally she would pause, study her creation, point to various areas of the page as if counting up to make sure that she got all of the important parts in, and only then would she carefully select a new crayon and add some subtle stripes to one of the busier areas of the page.

Each time she paused to point and mutter to herself about the various portions of her art I was immediately tempted to ask her what she was drawing. With difficulty I managed to restrain myself. It occurred to me that perhaps she was not drawing anything in particular, but rather creating modern art or a symphony of colour on her scrap page. I didn’t want to fetter her creativity by requiring her to be drawing something specific just so that she could give some nosy adult a label.

She completed the drawing with a flourish and then curled the paper into a tube, crushed the centre of the tube, then curled out the upper edges like a flower. As I watched her switch shamelessly from painter to sculptor, I wondered at the impact of art classes on childhood creativity. This little girl knew nothing of the subtleties of art; she had never been exposed to paintings in museums or structure or perspective. She had never heard of Monet or Van Gogh, Picasso or Renoir. The only tools she had were her instincts and her own inner vision, and yet she was an artist (although probably with less angst than most artists).

I, myself, generally refrain from practicing “art”. My sixth grade art teacher told me that I “shouldn’t draw” because I wasn’t very good at it. While I realized that my line drawings weren’t as accomplished as those of my classmates, I was still willing to learn and thought that I had a lifetime of exploration ahead of me. I was heartbroken that I was actually so terrible at drawing that my teacher, who I respected and adored, had already given up on me. That day I stopped drawing: no doodling while on the phone, no playing pictionary, avoiding art classes and eliminating jobs which required drawing skills in my high school career search.

The little girl unfolded her work of art, flattened it slightly and tugged on her mommy’s sleeve. Mommy glanced down, smiled and whispered, “Very nice.” The little girl shrugged as if the praise didn’t matter, she had just wanted to share her creation with someone she loved, to add some beauty to her life and share her experience.

I wondered what the world would be like if everyone could create art like that little girl did, without worrying about judgment or whether the drawing looked true to life. What a difference it would make if every single person drew what they loved onto a scrap of paper, and someone else loved them enough to hang it on their fridge. What a sense of accomplishment to have your creation so appreciated. What a beautiful way to share love and creation.

As for myself, I restrict my attempts at art to amateur photography and scrapbooking, which no one seems to find offensive enough to openly scorn me for. I have to admit though, that I smile a little inside every time Paul comments on one of my “artsy shots”, since it means to me that someone loves me enough to put my drawings up on the refrigerator.

Happy Birthday to Me!

2005-12-24T03:53:00.000-07:00

I decided this year to have an actual official Birthday Party. I turned thirty earlier this month and felt like this milestone event, managing to survive on this planet for thirty years, deserved some form of recognition. I was also feeling a bit ripped off about the dance at my wedding. You see, I didn't really get to dance at the wedding, maybe five songs including the one with my drunked uncle that Paul had to rescue me from. So I decided to rent a hall and have a big ass dance party.

I ended up planning most of the event in a day, which is not the way to do things. The only things done in advance were booking the hall (which resulted in a lot of "Christmas in Killarney" type comments) and arranging to borrow Erin's school's speakers. The afternoon of the party I picked up food and pop and liquor and plates and such. We loaded up the car and set off a bit late to the hall to meet Erin and set up the speakers.

I kept thinking that we must have forgotten something, that this was a bit too easy. Half way there I got a phone call. Erin was too drunk to drive and had the speakers with her at home. It was a bit of chaos, but with a bit of extra driving we managed to pull everything together.

The party worked out well. People danced, some of them drank, we had fun. I danced until my feet were sore; with Paul, with groups, by myself. I chatted with people a bit but when a song came on that I wanted to dance to, instead of feeling obligated to talk, I just went and danced. Despite the fact that the party cost significantly more than I had hoped, I'm glad I did something memorable to celebrate my birthday this year, instead of letting just another year slide by without a mention.

Opening my present.

Roscoe the Brachiating Bartender.

Kind of a line dance.

Paul and I salsa.

and some more salsa.

Sarah and Jamie Salsa too!

Charlie's angels?

Jo and G swing dance.

Trish and Mama swing dancing.

Paul and Debbie immitating ornamental lawn gnomes.

David gets down.

Junior high dancing.

Teaching Paul Irish step dancing.

Melissa, Tara, Steve and Gary hangign out.

Chnaners does her chicken dance.

Paul shakes it.

Dancing cheek to cheek.

My goof.

Kristy and Keith.

Mama had a bit much rum and apparently it's all Doug's fault.

Kristy and Amanda (just in from Hamilton).

Pinch.

No matter what, the party always ends up in the kitchen.

A Friend for an Outlaw

2005-12-22T10:31:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday night we went to the Jahnsi official Evening of “Dinner and Fun!”™. Jo and G had cooked up appetizers, garlic bread, salad (not actually cooked, of course), and some damned good lasagna even though it had yellow peppers in it which I picked out and Doug ate for me.

Dinner was followed by an assortment of board games, which is what generally happens when G is around; he is king of the board games. People were getting their vendettas on in the kitchen playing "BANG!" (Mancato!) while another group tracked their way to victory in "Ticket to Ride" in the living room. Jo, G, Dev and I headed down to the basement where G taught us to play "King's Gate", which I enjoyed very much. After losing, I headed upstairs to play some "Pirate's Cove" (Yarrrr!).

Something about being at G's parent's place took me back. My friendship with G started in my third year of University. We had a linear algebra class together and happened to recognize each other from Choir. Every class we sat together and wrote notes to each other, mocked the crazy guy that sat in front of us and generally had a good time in an otherwise boring class. We eventually took the notes outside of class, leading to lengthy emails and many late night conversations.

On more than one occasion people assumed that we were dating but luckily for both of us, the element of romantic interest never really came up. We both decided independently quite early on that we would never work as a couple. We became quite good friends, confiding in each other on many topics. It was both a comfortable friendship and an exciting one, with many new things to learn about one another. I can remember how much I looked forward to his emails, especially during exam time when we used these emails as an extreme form of procrastination. It's a bloody good thing that linear algebra is easy.

Our friendship flourished until he went away to BC on a school co-op. Our communication became gradually less frequent, but I still considered him a friend and made a point to get together when he was in town. That is the level that the friendship stayed at until 2001.

Let's bring the story back to choir for 2001. In the choir was a girl named Jo, who G was quite smitten with. Jo's brother Paul was also in choir. I'm sure you can see where this is heading. In October of 2001 Paul and I started dating. In December, G and Jo got together. In December 2002, Jo and G got engaged and were married in June of 2003. In June of 2004, the day before Jo and G's first anniversary, Paul proposed to me. We were married in May of 2005.

Small world, eh? Jo is now my sister-in-law, Paul is G's brother-in-law, and G and I call ourselves "The Outlaws" (we're going to make matching Outlaw T-shirts and bandanas).

It seems so strange to me that someone who I knew so well, who knew fairly intimate things about me and I about him, is now my relative. I know that he keeps his mouth shut, as do I, but if I think about things the wrong way, it makes me uncomfortable to think of the things I shared so freely then.

I have to say, though, that it's nice to have an in-law who’s my friend and a friend for an outlaw.

PseudoChristmas

2005-12-19T11:43:00.000-07:00

Pseudo Christmas is one of the great traditions within our group of friends. It usually takes place on the weekend before Christmas, when as many as possible of our friends are back in town, and before the rest leave town. We gather together all of our friends, cook a turkey and each person brings a dish traditional to their own family celebrations. We share food and talk and hug and catch up on each other's lives over the past year. There is always news to be discovered: a new baby to coo over, a new pregnancy, an engagement and many things to look forward to in the new year. In many ways our group of friends is more tight knit than family and it is fitting to celebrate a family event with our family of friends.

The other Pseudo Christmas tradition is disaster. The first two years of pseudo Christmas were held in a house and when two years ago the power blew in half of the house, including power to the stoves, microwaves and furnace, the hosts decided that perhaps a hall might be a better option, since it's quite cold in December in Edmonton and being without a furnace was unpleasant. This year carried on the tradition to the tune of gurgling pipes. Yes, all of the pipes in the hall backed up; toilets, sinks and dishwashers flooded onto the floor. Otherwise, the event was a complete sucess.

Chnaners cooking up a storm.

Kristy and Sarah hanging out after dinner.

Rachel's funky Christmas manicure.

Doug and Jenna.

Little Erica can't quite figure out what Lloyd, Jago and Dev are doing.

Ready for desert.

Cara and her old school friends.

Chnaners greets Cory Tanzanian style.

Christine and Trish.

Part of our circle of friends.

Giant Shinny Thingamadoo

2005-12-18T01:14:00.000-07:00

Saturday night (the 17th) we had our second annual Giant Shinny Thingamadoo. Unfortunately this year it wasn't quite as giant as the first one. Last year we had over 20 people, this year only twelve: six per team, which mean no subs for an hour of hockey. I was disappointed that more girls from the team didn't show up. There were initially about ten of us signed up but it ended up being just me, Debbbbie and one other girl, plus our friends and family (and Kristy and Cara took photos). I know that there were many hockey girls who wanted to come, but unfortunately they had exams in the next couple of days and didn't feel they could afford the time away from studying (what dedication, I wish I'd had that dedication).

If I can get it to work without eating my blog again (this is attempt number four) there will be photos below.

The goalies chat during a break from play.

Paul enjoying his time on the ice.

Chnaners and Debbie skating mitten in mitten.

Gary takes out Chantal.

Fancy footwork by Doug leaves us all standing still.

Mark chasing Rob chasing the puck.

Ira relaxes.

Doug takes a break.

Paul chasing Debbie.

Melly and Doug will never know what hit them.

Ira and I after the game.

The group.

Rob giving Chantal a rough time.

Little Lillian

2005-12-17T18:59:00.000-07:00

Saturday afternoon was Little Lillian's baptism. Kim and Liam played the part of proud parents perfectly while Lillian's big brother Nick patted her leg through the proceedings to show that he approved of the whole deal.

Kim and Liam are kind of one of my fairy tale stories. When I met Kim, almost five years ago, she was young, unwed and about to be a mother. The baby's father was a loser nicknamed Toad, which apparently was fairly descriptive and meant that it was a good thing that he was out of the picture. Nick was born and seems to take after his maternal grandfather, in appearance at least.

Three years ago our friends had a New Year's Party. Kim was invited along, through Chnaners and Joey, and Liam was invited through Debbbbbie. The moment Kim and Liam met you could practically see the sparks in the air. He left his number on the whiteboard and she carefully copied it down. Six months later they were engaged, a year after that they were married. Liam adopted Nick shortly after that and another year brought Lillian.

Kim got rid of a Toad and married a Prince. Not to say that Liam is perfect, but Liam is perfect for her; they are a fantastic match and he's a wonderful father to both children.

A happy Chnaners plays with an anxious Lillian. I'm not sure why she looks so anxious, maybe it's stage fright.

Chnaners, Joey, Trish and Mama playing with Lillian.

Chnaners and Little Lillian with Paul’s hand for size perspective.

Paul and Lillian, which of course started all the remarks about us needing to start popping out babies.

I'm not sure what it is about the sight of newlyweds holding an infant that causes people's brains to turn off and their mouth to blurt out "You are newly married and therefore must reproduce post-haste!" (We got asked at our wedding when we were planning on having grandchildren! No that is not a typo.) Really, we are still trying to adjust to living together and being married (not to mention digging ourselves out of debt) without adding a whole new tiny but highly demanding person to the equation. Give us a few year to settle down and I promise, if biology agrees with our intentions, you will have adorable photos like the one above with a little Paren or Kaul Schaapsher.

The Cane People

2005-12-16T23:44:00.000-07:00

I discovered something when I worked in Sundre for the summers; it is customary to give a casual wave as you pass another vehicle on a gravel road. This ranges from a nod to a raised hand to just a single finger (never the middle) lifted off the steering wheel as you pass and make eye contact. I’m not sure why it’s done. It may be a case of seeing so few other humans that they feel the need to show a bit of solidarity "Hey, we’re both human." or "Hey, we both drive trucks." It could be "Thanks for not running me off the road." or "Thanks for slowing down a bit and not dusting me out." It might be a bit of tradition left over from when you actually knew every single person on the back roads, or at least knew them by association, and the custom has now transitioned to pass that little touch of friendliness on to strangers.

It’s a friendly little tradition, quaint and instantly comfortable, but one that just doesn’t make the transition back to busier parts. I can’t even imagine trying to give a finger wave (not the hair kind) to every single person you drive past in, say, Toronto. You would develop a repetitive strain injury within two blocks. (Although there are some people that try to do this with the wrong finger, but we won’t say what we think of them.)

My partner in Sundre once brought her mom down to visit and took her on a tour of the area. Melissa explained the whole "casual wave" custom to her mom. Her mom was so excited about it that the first truck that passed she sat bolt upright in her seat, plastered on an ear-to-ear grin and waved as if she had found her long-lost twin. The old farmer nearly ate his beard and drove off the road. The poor man probably spent months wondering why this crazy Dutch woman was hitting on him.

Apparently, people who ride Harleys have a similar tradition of nodding to others riding Harleys. Since I have no first hand knowledge, I’m not going to expand on this in particular. I just thought that the similarity was worth pointing out by way of contrast.

I have just discovered that the cane people do the same thing. Seriously, there is a "cane people" culture. My friend’s boyfriend has injured his back and has been walking with a cane for the past month or so. They have discovered that when other people with a cane pass him on the street they will give a nod as if to say, "Got a cane? I approve. I, too, have a cane." or "Hey baby, nice cane." or "Cane solidarity! Viva la revolucion!" At any rate, there is an entire cane culture that we had absolutely no idea was out there.

What’s next? Walkers? Crutches? We’ll I can vouch that there does not appear to be a crutch culture, but let me tell you, the next time I’m on crutches I may start one.

"Viva la revolucion!"

(I bet you thought this was going to be about little men made of candy canes in the style of gingerbread men. Boy, were you wrong.)

"The Chad"

2005-12-16T09:08:00.001-07:00

I had the weirdest cashier at Michael’s last night. He gave that feeling of being just slightly off from the rest of the world. His hair was a shade too dark, his skin a shade too pale and his eyes a shade too bright. I think he was going for “casual friendly” but it was coming out “aggressively friendly” and it clearly made the 40ish-year-old women passing through the till fairly uncomfortable. The women responded but always after a pause, as if they were trying to figure out who this strange male teen figure was in their usually homey craft store. His name tag said, “Hi, I am in charge of customer service” followed by “Chad”, followed by “Internal Production Manager” or some such thing, which was crossed out and he had scrawled in “cashier” instead. It made me think of “The Chad” played by Tom Green in Charlie’s Angels. “Chad the Cashier” had a slight Tom Green weirdness quality about him.

My turn at the till came and the boy didn’t even look at me. He picked up the phone hidden beside the till and dialed. He then glanced down at the counter in front of me and looked dumbfounded. His eyes swept the counter again and his eyes furrowed. “Gift Certificate,” I whispered, just as he began to talk into the phone, “Can you bring me fives and a gift certificate?” He hung up, “I thought maybe it was invisible.” I blinked at him. He stared at me. I stared back at him. There are just some places that I can’t manage small talk and when I have weird guys staring at me is one of them. He finally said, “I need your name because they won’t let us take the book from the front.” I assumed this meant that they recorded who bought the gift certificate in case there was a problem. I gave him my name which he proceeded to write, not on a scrap of paper but on his arm (!)

Oh my god, he has my name on his arm. Every person who goes through this till after me will know that I was there until my name washes off his arm. That could be days. That is incredibly creepy. I was thoroughly relieved that you can’t currently find my phone number or address using the name that I gave. I think that if he would have asked for my phone number I would have just walked out. I stood there, staring in horrified fascination at my name scrawled on his arm. I had the eerie experience of feeling like my name was cut into his skin, drawn out in blood. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand right on end. I eventually got my gift certificate and left, but today I can’t get the image out of my head of my name being carved into his too pale skin.

I guess this is more of a Halloween horror than a Christmastime craft story.

Narnia Revisited

2005-12-14T18:00:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to see "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" (not the crap cartoon one which made me hate the book a bit, but the new fancy one). I have to say that I was quite impressed with most of it.

I'm the kind of person who makes a good quality assurance technician, or editor, or really anything that means you find other people's mistakes. With that in mind I only had the following complaints about the movie, on first viewing:
1) The snow. It was not the worst snow I have ever seen, but it was not great. Wasn't Narnia supposed to be bitterly cold under the grip of the White Witch? There was far too much exposed skin for it to be truly cold, and none of that skin had white blooms of frostbite on it. Also, unless you are really freaking cold, snow melts a bit on your skin; it doesn't hang there, waiting to be brushed off your lips or out of your ear (I'm looking at you Edmund). Clearly the people in charge of snow haven't spent any time in Canada.
2) I also found it weird that everyone had British accents except the wolves, who sounded North American. What was that? Was that a "North Americans are evil"?

I found the movie to be true to the original tale; that it caught the feeling of the book. The CGI stuff surprisingly wasn't annoying and cheesy.

Watching the movie took me back to my childhood and the eleventy billion times that I read the Narnia series (except "The Horse and His Boy", which I thought was crap until I got older). I used to dream that I would find Narnia and get away from my problems in the real world. Those books are what got me hooked on fantasy and led to David Eddings and Robert Jordan addictions, to name a few. Watching a well-made movie based on a book from my favorite series as a child revived the wonder that I had in my youth, the feeling that another world could be just around the corner waiting for me to find it. Of course, now I'm not grubbing around in the back of old closets to find this fantastic world, I'm looking for new adventures in the world that I live in.

Alterations

2005-12-14T00:17:00.000-07:00

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.” Nelson Mandela

When I read this quotation, my mind immediately went to Sundre. Sundre is the only place that I have ever been able to call home that wasn't in Edmonton. I lived there for the summers of 1998, 1999 and 2000 in a rickety old 18 foot trailer from the late 1970s with a leaky roof and a bathroom that didn't work.

Living in that trailer was like baking inside a giant tin can during the day and freezing your butt off at night. The screens were torn, so we would spend the last ten minutes before bed every night killing the mosquitoes that had gotten in during the day. We rode out infestations of both mice and ants, and endured a fitful furnace in late November when the snows flew. That trailer had the world's most comfortable foam beds and the added convenience that you could reach almost anything in the room without getting up from your seat at the tiny convertible table. It had a beige with gold striped exterior and brown, orange and gold interior. Very 70s. Also very ugly.

Working in Sundre was my first real job in my field. I was a range and forest technician, and I absolutely loved my job. Sure it had hard parts; days when it snowed in July or we got stuck in the mud or our bridge washed out and I had to back down 8 kilometres of winding muddy rutted forest road with a trailer. There were days when the mosquitoes swarmed so thickly that we wore full raingear and shirts on our heads instead of the bugthug so strong that it melted our pencils and equipment. There were encounters with bears, benign and otherwise. Sometimes the job was dangerous, like when I was loading a quad and the ramp was icy and I flipped the quad off the back of the truck and by all rights should have been seriously injured but got away with a bruise on my back and a charley horse in my leg. There were injuries, like when Melissa got hit in the face with the arm of the jack-all under the load of the truck. There were scary parts – an encounter with a hunter – and funny parts – the time I fell out of a tree and into a fallen tree and not only got stuck but my head was glued to the trunk with sap. Sometimes our equipment broke, like the time we had flames and smoke coming out of the axle on our trailer.

Despite all this, there were moments of indescribable joy in my work. My personal happy place is in a certain cutblock, on one of the higher peaks in the area. I’m sitting on my little clipper canoe chair with my veg frame in front of me. To my right are brilliant orange Indian paintbrush, cobalt bluebells and the tiny white florets of yarrow; to my left, a single tiger lily bloomed. The weather is just right: warm enough to not need a jacket but overcast, so my brains aren’t boiling under my ball cap. I can see for miles, the mountains crest the misty horizon and the distance to the peaks is carpeted with the green of spruce, pine, and the occasional poplar. The air is crisp and fresh with morning and my boots glisten with a fine sprinkling of dew. I sit. I breathe. I worship.

That was the path I thought I would follow, possibly working my way up for a while with that company, then going back and doing my Master’s degree, maybe even a PhD. I loved field work, and that’s what I wanted to do. I loved the science of it and the questions that it caused to spring up in my brain demanding experiments, to find the answers. I found out later that there were serious money problems in the company, and that branch basically went under within a year.

By that point I had just graduated with my BSc, and then moved out of my parents place and in with Roscoe. I was single, jobless and directionless.

If I were to go back to Sundre, the contrast between me-then and me-now would be quite striking. Then I was gearing up for a career in the forestry field, with frequent unemployment, now I work a steady desk job at the University. Then I was moving toward a Master’s, now I’m thinking about taking a writing class or a photoshop course. Then I was single and miserable, now I’m married and much happier (this is not a “marriage makes you happy” section. I was miserable for reasons independent of my singledom). Back then I was commuting twice a week for choir (a three hour bus ride), now I don’t have a place to sing but I have my choir friends, who are the best.

Sometimes it’s just nice to saunter down memory lane and stop to smell the mountain-top flora.
Sometimes it’s the contrast that makes you realize what you have and take for granted. Sometimes this introspection helps you to find what you are missing in your life that you used to have and to see more clearly where you need alterations.

Traveling Shoulders (Travelin' Shoes)

2005-12-13T00:05:00.000-07:00

When I was in high school I had traveling shoulders. By traveling, I do not mean that they visited Costa Rica or toured France solo; I mean that they had a bad habit of falling out of their sockets. This was unpleasant. I didn't technically dislocate them; they would slide out and slide in more or less on their own, but with considerable pain. I later learned that the technical term for this is "Subluxation" (temporary partial dislocation).

The subluxations went on for years. The first time it happened I was taking off my jacket (left side), then when I was waterskiing (both sides), then when I fell caving (both sides), and almost every time I threw a baseball (right side). I was careful to avoid any activities that made my shoulders feel at all 'slide-y', and gradually it improved, but I never really addressed the problem. Now I'm wishing that I had.

For more than ten years now, I have had a lot of pain in my back between the shoulder blades and funky crunching noises when I moved the wrong way. About three years ago, the pain became unbearable and I finally started going to a chiropractor. Between the chiropractics and the massage, there was some improvement but not a lot. My massage therapist commented that my shoulder doesn’t feel like other people's shoulders. It feels like there is something underneath it; it just doesn't move normally. I discovered in my yoga class that there are many things that everyone else in the class could do that I couldn’t, like balancing on my hands and knees, or holding my arm up above my head. My class was called “Gentle Yoga”, and some of the other students were twice my age but they seemed to handle without a hitch the motions that had me shaking with pain. Finally, after a bad week brought on by push-starting vehicles and carrying too many heavy groceries, I talked to my doctor who referred me to a Sports Doctor.

My appointment was this morning. The doctor asked many intelligent questions while taking my history. The doctor had me move my arms through all kinds of motions to assess where in my range of motion there was pain or popping under my shoulder blade. She tested my strength and compared my good arm to my bad. She looked at my shoulders, my elbows, my wrists, my back, my neck. She had me show her the motions that were a problem for me in yoga and then had me attempt push ups against the wall. I had x-rays of every possible angle of my shoulder, including on where I was lying face down on a foam thing with my face pressed into a pillow, my legs off one side of the table and my arm off the other, but propped up at a funny angle on another foam block. I must have looked ridiculous.

The results were both good and bad.

The good news is:
- my bones are all intact in that area: no fractures, no chips from the dislocations, and no arthritis (yay!).

The bad news is that I have (and remember that I might not have this right, it was a lot of information and I am not a doctor):

- multidirectional joint instability in both shoulders (and loose joints in my wrists)
- tendonitis in my left shoulder (and I already knew I had it in both wrists and elbows)
- bursitis in between my shoulder blade and thoracic wall, apparently it is inflamed enough that my left shoulder blade and the area around it is visibly different from the other side
- shoulder bursitis, also known as impingement syndrome (mild case in both shoulders)
- instead of sliding smoothly from side to side, my shoulder blades come away from my body at their lower central points when I do certain motions (which really is roughly what it feels like they are doing)

More good news:

- the doctor does not want me to have surgery
- the doctor does not want me to take any more pills
- the doctor wants to focus on strengthening the joint through physiotherapy
- the doctor believes that physiotherapy will lead to a decrease in pain, an increase in strength and an increase in joint stability (in both shoulders!!!)

A bit more bad news:
- I don't know if any of the treatment will be covered by health care
- I don’t know yet if any of it will be covered by my benefits
- I can’t really currently afford $88 for the first visit and $44 for each visit thereafter.

Despite the obvious negatives, I just can’t help being happy about the whole thing. It is a rare thing for me to get thorough medical care on anything. I am just so pleased that one of my problems has been thoroughly evaluated. I trust the doctor, the diagnosis makes sense, and I am quite pleased with the treatment plan. This just may be a first.

I feel like I’m on the path to recovery; that I’m finally traveling in the right direction rather than falling behind and moving backwards. I've got on my travelin' shoes.

One of these days I might realize that when people say that something hurts, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are feeling the same pain that I am (You’d think I would have learned this with my plantar fasciitis incident, but apparently not so much.) Everyone complains about their back hurting so when my back hurt for roughly 10-15 years, I thought that it was just the same as everyone else until I had almost overwhelming evidence otherwise. When I told the doctor today that the pain in my back and shoulder had woken me up more nights than not, for more than three years, she was incredulous. I could just hear her thinking, “why didn’t you say something sooner.”

Sometimes I am a dummy.

(Incidentally, the title of this entry has got Ruthie Foster’s “Death Came A-Knockin’ (Travelin’ Shoes)" stuck in my head:

“Den she shout:
Hallelujah!
Done done my duty
Got on my Travellin’ shoes!”)

Happy Birthday to me

2005-12-11T00:32:00.000-07:00

My family is odd.

We had my birthday dinner today at an extremely garlic-y restaurant. This was not the weird part; it’s the delicious part. I had an amazing garlic butter steak and potato slices cooked with garlic and caramelized onion. (Yum!) We passed on the garlic ice cream with strawberry sauce this time.

No, the weird part was my birthday gift from my parents, which consisted of:

1) Portraits of the Bison: An Illustrated Guide to Bison Society (in 1997 I volunteered for the National Park Buffalo Round-up, which I guess my parents remembered and thought I really liked bison or something. While it was interesting and at times terrifying, and baby buffalo are really cute, I don’t really consider myself to be a “bison enthusiast” as described on the back of the book.) I honestly didn't know what to say.

2) A small stuffed bear dressed as a postal delivery person, with receipt, that was actually intended for my sister to give to my grandmother for Christmas. (My mom forgot that it was in the bag)

3) A jar of crabapple jelly (I love crabapple jelly and it’s hard to find the good stuff, while it was an unusual birthday gift, I definitely appreciated it).

4) A Sears official Christmas CD, $1 with purchase. It included a medley (does it count as a medley if there are only two songs) of my two most hated Christmas carols: “Do You Hear What I Hear?” and “The Little Drummer Boy”. At least Celine Dion and Mariah Carrey weren’t on the CD.

What I don’t get is why my mom asks me for a birthday and Christmas list every year and then proceeds to completely ignore it and get me very odd things, like the above. Not that I’m not grateful to be getting something for my birthday and celebrating it with my family, but why bother with the list?

On the plus side, they also gave me cash, which I can later use toward the items on my list (like TV on DVD) or, if I’m behaving myself, toward paying off some of our debt.

Sigh. Happy Birthday to me.

Internet Kismet

2005-12-09T08:16:00.000-07:00

I may be a tease, but I'm not that much of a tease.

This is the excerpt, as I didn't read it:

I had spent most of Naomi's wedding day in a daze, not quite believing that my marriage was fully and formally over. Forever. A word like forever has a big impact on a wedding day; your vows are forever, unless they're not, unless you find a love letter from your husband addressed to a big-breasted blonde named Sam on the night of your first wedding anniversary. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

I was sitting in that corner my own brooding little world, trying hard to be happy for Naomi and David, which shouldn't be hard if you know them. It's just a little frustrating that everything always works out so perfectly for them and everything seems to be so much harder in my world. Enough with the self-pity.

At any rate I was brooding and staring, at nothing or so I thought, when I heard a cough and realized that I was staring directly at the crotch of someone's pants. I slowly looked up and realized that the owner of both cough and crotch was staring back down at me, his eyebrows squinched together in little creases. "Can I help you with something?"

"Eh?" Clearly I am the world's biggest drooling idiot.

"Well, you look pretty upset, and I figure that on such a happy day no one should be sad. Unless they're in love with the groom. Or the bride I suppose, I have to be open-minded about these things, I guess." He grinned charmingly down at me, a mischievous glimmer in his bright green eyes. "Or are you just angry at my pants?"

"Bah?" Beyond idiot! Here is a real living breathing man, engaging me in conversation and all I can do is make sheep noises at him.

"R. U. O. K." Oh god, he thinks I'm deaf and is signing at me. Horror! (but very considerate of him to accommodate my hypothetical deafness.)

"Good. Me. I'm good." Okay, that was technically a sentence, but I sound like a cave woman now. Better that he think I'm deaf, better still if I were actually mute.

"Uh, thanks."

"So are you?

"Am I what?"

"Are you in love with the bride?"

"Oh, that. Um, no."

"What about the groom?" What on Earth is he talking about?

"What about the groom?" Ack! Dumb!

"Are you in love with the groom?"

"God, no!" Oh crap. Now the eyebrows are furrowed again. He must be a friend of David's. "Not that there's anything wrong with David. David is good. Great even!" Now the mysterious man looked slightly alarmed and suspicious, as if I might be stalking David. "Not like that. Naomi is like my sister so David is like my brother-in-law. I adore Naomi and David."

"Then why so bleak and stare-y?"

"I'm..just..having a personal crisis." Great, that sounds like I've broken a nail in an uncomfortable location or something. Now I'm not only deranged but high maintenance. "I just have some stuff to work through and I didn't really want to bring anyone down."

"Well, how about we just bring you a little ways up then? How about a dance?"

I considered my dark mood, debated turning him down and staying alone in my mope but then I happened to catch a motion in the corner of my eye. Eve was frantically hopping up and down and gesturing at me that if I didn't dance with the nice man she would personally kick my ass into next Tuesday. Either that or she was doing a Mexican hat dance with a scorpion in her bra. With Eve you just never know.

I nodded at the Mysterious Man and stood. Taking a step, I realized that my entire left leg was asleep right up to the waist, including the entire left buttock. I lurched and stopped.

"Yes?" He was looking at me strangely again.

"Give me thirty seconds, a minute tops." Sigh. What can I tell him that doesn't make me look like a bigger idiot than I already seem to? Alright, shooting for sanity or even dignity seems impossible at this point, so out with the truth. "My…butt is asleep."

Hackbus

2005-12-08T08:32:00.000-07:00

Hackbus: a traveling assemblage of amateur writers

This November I was a "winner" in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, for those of you that haven't yet been nagged by SarahJanet to join). The basic idea of NaNo is that people are always saying they'd like to write a novel 'someday'. Wrimos (not to be confused with Winos, although similarities are evident) say, "why not today?" and then proceed to write a minimum of 50,000 words in 30 days while juggling careers and family and schoolwork and weddings and illnesses and life and friends and possibly geese. (Yes, some people juggle geese. Baby geese, they were juggled; which kind of makes this project seem a bit less insane.)

In some ways Nano was way more difficult than I expected. I discovered 20,000 words into my novel that I only had enough plot planned for roughly 25,000 words. This is when I started expanding, embellishing and adding plot twists with the result that now at 50, 853 words, my little-novel-that-could is only roughly two thirds complete.

I also became dreadfully ill on November 7 th, so sick in fact that I wasn't sure that I would personally finish the month of November, let alone finish a novel by then. I had several days where I couldn't even sit up, let alone look at a computer screen (I really should have gone to the hospital, plus there are usually interesting people to write about after a hospital visit). By this point I was roughly six thousand words behind, and falling. After missing two weeks of work, losing 18 pounds, having a series of tests that told me nothing, and taking the world's scariest antibiotics (possible side effects included: tendon rupture, and mental and mood changes) I made a comeback and crossed the NaNo finish line at roughly 11:30 on November 30th.

This past Sunday we had our Thank God It's Over party. We played Cranium and Harry Potter Trivia and Balderdash (see Hackbus, above) and pool (badly). We karaoked (also badly) and read novel excerpts and ate and blew colorful conical noise makers as each of the winners received their mini-trophies. In summary, we were geeks in a geeky setting allowing ourselves to be as geeky as we possibly could.

I'm an introvert by nature and not exactly a social butterfly, but I did okay. I played some pool (badly) with people I didn't know and chatted and sang karaoke and thoroughly chickened out of reading my excerpt.

It turns out that we Wrimos were a Hackbus, a traveling assemblage of amateur writers. We wrote in coffee shops and libraries, on campus and on the bus, on the couch and in bed, we even caught someone jotting notes while driving (please note that neither NaNoWriMo nor I recommend this as a way of getting your daily word count.) Even when I wasn't writing I was thinking about writing: at work, in the shower, on the bus, in medical waiting rooms and while waiting to fall asleep at night. I'd be almost asleep and suddenly a character would wind up and give me a swift kick in the seat of the brain and I'd have to hop up and scribble down a few notes.

I won't ever say that I'm good, but there were occasions that I took genuine delight in the words that poured out of me. I made myself laugh out loud on occasion, which caused me to get many odd and a few alarmed looks. NaNo's focus on quantity, not quality, took the pressure off and allowed me to try. I haven't taken an English class in over 10 years. I don't know what a gerund is or why I spell things the way I do or what the elements of style are. I'm sure my grammar is purely abysmal. For one month though, I got to be the storyteller, the novellist, without worrying about all of that.

I guess now I can say that I'm a writer. I have a "winner" certificate to prove it.

Some People Juggle Geese

2005-12-08T00:15:00.000-07:00

"Dear Diary...today I was pompous and my sister was crazy. Today, we were kidnapped by hill folk never to be seen again. It was the best day ever." Jayne - Firefly

I’m very much annoyed with myself.

I spent a great length of time trying to think of a name for my shiny new journal (I don’t care that it’s a blog, I’m still calling it a journal. I may even force it to be journal style.) The best I could come up with was "The Schaapsher Chronicles", although I flirted briefly with the idea of becoming “Captain Cheese”. I'm finding my new name to be painfully uninspiring.

Today, while writing my first entry for Holidailies, which will now be my second entry for Holidailies, I stumbled upon a name that I much prefer. I am very seriously considering changing the name of my journal to “Some People Juggle Geese". It makes me laugh, it’s a bit ridiculous, and it’s a tribute to Wash. If you don’t know who I’m talking about that means that you haven’t yet watched either Firefly (the TV show) or Serenity (the movie). Go watch it now. It’s far more important than reading my ramblings. I’m serious. I’ll wait.

Please help me out; I am chronically indecisive. Vote (in comments) for the blog title that you prefer: "The Schaapsher Chronicles" or “Some People Juggle Geese" or something altogether more inspired.

Hello Blogspot

2005-11-30T17:52:00.000-07:00

I've been debating this move for a while, and the advent of Holidailies prompted me to go for it. I was too hung up on adding photos at Diaryland, which resulted in no updates, and then I ran out of photo space, which was frustrating. I wanted a new name, a new look and a new place to hang my hat. So here I am.

Plus I was hung up on writing about my wedding so I'll just finish that up at http://canoegirl.diaryland.com/ If you want to read about my wedding and look at the pretty pictures feel free, and then come hang out over here for a while.