And Now For Something Completely Different

It was one of  those opportunities that you just don't say no to. Chances to appear in a documentary don't come along every day. And I just couldn't say no, given that I find allergies and our seemingly compromised immune systems incredibly interesting. And with all my goofy health issues this year, it was sure nice to focus on something completely different.

However, when Bruce and his team from the Nature of Things first arrived at the house, I wondered if I had made the right decision accepting the invitation to appear in the program. They wanted shots of the house, shots of the playground, shots of our living room, shots of me. Sheesh, I don't know if I'm relaxed and confident enough to just accept both the house and myself as we are and be set free, so to speak, in a documentary. With any luck they'll be able to edit out all of my perceived nastiness. What the heck, it's my home and I should be happy with it as it is.

So... Bruce and his crew filmed the boys playing on the playground and playing with bubbles. Then we all traipsed inside to watch Rosita, the woman in charge of sample collections with the CHILD allergy study, "collect" dust samples and pretend to take Andy's diaper. It felt so odd, I had a difficult time believing anyone watching the documentary was going to buy into our awkward "Here's his diaper, thank-you for coming" interaction. I'm definitely not an actor, this became glaringly clear as they filmed. The sound guy's microphone hovered ever closer as Rosita and I spoke at the door. Sound? Really. My goodness - I'm definitely outside my comfort zone. I'll be absolutely shocked if our brief conversation makes Bruce's final cut for the documentary. But the reality, way back when Andy was an infant, was actually remarkably similar to what was so terribly re-enacted.

During Rosita's sample collecting spree, Bruce commented on how cute and natural Andy was in front of the camera. Wondering what exactly he was referring to, I looked over and saw Andy sucking on the end of Rosita's vacuum cleaner. Cute? No, I don't think so. Disturbing? Yes.

After Rosita had packed up her things and left the house, we had to get down to business and do the dreaded interview.

Of course now I've had time to think. I could have said some intelligent things like: "I think, as a species, we've messed with Mother Nature too much and our immune systems no longer know how to react." or "I hope that we'll soon figure out where we've gone wrong and will be able to reset our immune systems, and in effect reduce or eliminate diseases like type 2 diabetes, MS, Parkinson's, rheumatoid arthritis and others that are considered to ultimately be autoimmune disorders." Shamefully, in reality I told Bruce "no, I don't have anything else to add."

However, what's done is done. I should be content that Andy behaved like an angel and Daniel enjoyed himself. As for me - I'm just glad it's over.

Gentle Assertiveness

Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives.
 - Andrew Carnegie

An efficient office works well when people communicate well, allow each other to focus on their own responsibilities and support each other. If one person begins to neglect one or more of their duties or tries to take over the duties of others, the fine mesh of the office network begins to unravel. This picture is perfect: can you imagine what would happen if someone let go and tried to take over someone else's link?

At the moment I feel like my link is being taken over in subtle ways. Little duties, here and there, are being completed without my permission or input. Duties that are directly my responsibility, no one else's. I need to become assertive. Assertive in re-establishing my role in the network, assertive in getting my needs and the needs of others met in a friendly, respectful, positive manner. Recently, I've found myself just accepting changes around the office. Accepting without even questioning or checking into things or taking a moment to consider the ramifications. My decline into complacency has been worsening lately. It started a little while ago and has quickened its pace now to a rapid descent, or should I say plummet, bringing me to a sad but real level of distrust of the people I work with.

I cannot allow this to continue, the easy road never takes a person anywhere good. It always dumps you in some forlorn, ratty, smelly hole. These days I need to get back on top of my game at the office and manage things more closely. With my energy levels at an all time low and my thinking/analytical capabilities seem to be somewhat diminished, I can't risk losing my place in the network. I need the people around me at work to focus on what they're responsible for and let me focus on my own responsibilities. I had a brief, hopefully not too unpleasant, discussion this morning about duties and responsibilities. While I appreciate that the person I was speaking with had been trying to help ease some of the perceived burden I'm under at the moment, taking initiative to perform work that I would normally do, I explained that I would prefer they ask first before proceeding. For now I can manage quite well, if I need help, I will ask for it.

Being assertive with myself sounds silly. But I have to push myself to complete certain tasks and stay focused. Often these days I struggle, in complete silence, with tasks that I once performed while whistling, listening to the radio and possibly even chatting on the phone. It's as though most of my brain cells have vacated my brain and haven't left any instructions for the remaining ones. I imagine my little herd of cognitive abilities roaming around on my desk. When I try to round them up and put them to good use, they gather together, lemming-like, and dash themselves over the edge of the desk into a sad heap on the floor. Rather than just give up, I must redouble my efforts and make new connections in my brain. In effect replacing the abilities that threw themselves over the cliff and try to resuscitate the few that remained. I'm really counting on the fact that I haven't been using all of my brainpower - isn't that what they say? We hardly begin to touch on the potential of our brainpower? With any luck the activities of puzzling and working through challenges at the office, making new connections between brain cells will keep me in good order.

I'm hopeful that re-establishing the tried and true network of duties in the office will be effective and that my perseverance with resurrecting my own abilities will have positive results.

Falling Behind

I've fallen behind on my ukulele practicing. It was going so well, too.

And then holidays happened. And then I returned to work at the beginning of August. And then I was still trying to squeeze in visits with friends. And then, and then. I haven't tuned or played my ukulele since mid July. Guess what I'm going to be doing this evening? That is if I can get away from the dishes, dinner prep, lunch prep and laundry long enough. Even if I find the time, practicing is fraught. Here's how I picture the evening unfolding:

Tune ukulele. I've nicknamed it Little Green, LG for short. I usually begin practicing with Edelweiss. It's a simple, easy song to play and it always puts me in a cheerful frame of mind. Strum, strum, practice changing chords. Begin singing... You know how it goes, sing along with me.

Andy, wanting to play with me, reaches up and grabs all the strings at once and pulls. While I understand that he's just being curious and wanting to have fun like me; I cringe as I carefully extricate his little fingers from the strings. Time to tune LG again.

Okay, here we go...

Strum, strum, hum a little, then sing. Repeat as necessary. This time around I'm standing so that I can practice without little fingers getting in the strings. Things are going quite well, we're just ticking right along. Whoosh... The fan blows my music onto the floor. Arrrgh. Gosh, I need a music stand. Or... what've I got around here that I can make do with in a pinch? Tape. A piece of tape to stick the music to my armoire oughta do the trick.

Much better. Just as I settle into practicing again, I realise that it is 8:30pm and the boys are still wide awake. Oh well, perhaps they'll go down quickly and I'll be able to return to practicing. Wishful thinking. An hour of crying later (mostly on Andy's part) and I'm exhausted. I can hardly find the energy to get ready for bed, I'd rather just collapse on the bed and deal with my jammies later.

Goodnight LG, hopefully we'll have a better practice session tomorrow.

Group Link Camp Adventure

After work on Friday I walked with Sherry, both in flourescent yellow safety raingear, through the torrential rain across the Alex Fraser Bridge. Little did I realize that this was an omen as to how the weather would behave over the coming weekend.

At 6:00pm, after a quick change of clothes, frantically packing our gear and gulping down a quick snack, Daniel and I were ready to head up to Cultus Lake for the 4th Surdel Scouts Group Link Camp. Not surprisingly, we barely made it to camp on time. Pulling in at 7:30 on the dot, Daniel and I threw our bags out of the van and set off to locate our sleeping quarters. As Daryle pulled away with Andy, I felt a twinge of anxiety. We were now effectively stranded here for the entire weekend. My recent medical issues have left me feeling vulnerable, but I settled into our cabin determined to enjoy this adventure with Daniel and his Beaver Scouts group.

Welcome to the 2012 Group Link Camp

Medieval Adventure

Daniel guarding the door to our cabin.

Within a few minutes we'd thrown our things in the Birch cabin and headed over to the main hall to meet up with the rest of the group. Together, Daniel and I constructed his shield and sword. Daniel did a great job tracing and cutting out his cardboard armour. Once covered in foil and duct tape, he decorated his pieces with his self-designed coat of arms and encrusted them with jewels and glitter glue. It was a little difficult to get him to part with his shield and sword long enough to head into the field for the official opening ceremonies.


As all the groups gathered for the final opening ceremony, tears started to well up in my eyes. I'll truly miss all of our new friends. They're such a fantastic group of people; the adults all inspire me in one way or another and the kids... they're amazing! It has been such a pleasure throughout the year to help during the meetings, interacting with the children and leaders. After the opening ceremony we headed over to the campfire, complete with hot dogs and marshmallows. Drizzling rain didn't put a damper on anyone's spirits, it looked as though everyone was having a great time.

Our final opening ceremony with Beavers

After wrapping up at the campfire we returned to our cabins and prepared for the night. I was still too wide awake to sleep and when Daniel was settled into his sleeping bag, I headed down to the campfire to chat with the adults. This is another aspect of Scouts that I love - getting to know the other adults. It was fantastic talking with them. Unfortunately, within half an hour the sky opened up and we had to hurry for shelter (of course after dousing the fire). My flannel jammies a little wet from the grass, I crawled into my sleeping bag, plugged in my earplugs and settled in for the night. About an hour later I awoke to hear that Daniel couldn't sleep and needed to cuddle. After half an hour of cuddling, he went back up to his bunk. Another half hour later he declared that he had to go to the washroom. There was no doubt this was true, judging by the amount of fidgeting. Together we ran in the rain from the cabin to the washrooms. Snug and tight again in our sleeping bags, I thought our escapades were over with for the night, but I was sadly mistaken. Daniel had misplaced his earplugs in all of our activity! Oh no! This is a small catastrophe - he gets so upset when he hears people snoring, or even just breathing heavily that he'll begin crying. I can still hear the rustling plastic crinkling as I rifled through my bag for another pair.  My deepest apologies to everyone in our cabin for our constant disturbances. Still unable to sleep, Daniel climbed down the ladder one last time, I think it was now 3:00am, to check if the glitter glue was dry yet on his shield and sword. Ugghhh.

Daniel canoeing with Tony and his father, David

Needless to say, 7:00am came very early. Luckily a nice light breakfast awaited us in the mess hall. I devoured some yogurt and fruit while Daniel inhaled his ham and egg English muffin sandwich. After filling their little bellies, the children headed over to the hall to construct their mini catapults. Too cool! Built from popsicle sticks, glue, two wooden clothespins, a plastic spoon and an elastic, they worked surprisingly well. Next activity - canoeing! This was Daniel's favourite activity so far. He went out in a canoe with his friend Tony and Tony's father David.

Quick lunch of buns with cold cuts and veggies and the white tails (third year Beavers) were linking with the Cubs, building a castle fort together. One of the main purposes of the group camp is to link the children (and probably their parents as well) from their old group, say Beavers, to their new group, Wolf Cubs. They're to meet their new friends and participate in the more advanced activities. Building a fort together was a great activity and the children worked well together. Using two large trees for the towers and placing a picnic table between them for support, the cardboard outer structure quickly took shape. I loved that the leaders were very strict about not permitting any damage to the trees. They were taped around, tied to, wedged into and climbed on, but no nails, staples or cuts were used. After constructing the castle fort they made and hid their flag. The plan was that the different groups would have a mock battle on the field then raid each others' forts to capture the flags. Unfortunately the groups didn't get the chance to have their battle.

The Forest Frenzies playing in their fort

As we were standing in the field admiring the various forts, the wind swept in, clouds rolled across the sky and a coldness enveloped us. Within minutes a nasty storm was upon us. Adults scrambled to take down the picnic table canopies as the wind attempted to tear them from our hands. As we disassembled the last canopy the Group Commissioner began sounding the air horn and blowing his whistle to gather everyone into the hall. It was quite a sight: children and adults running from every direction towards the hall as the storm began to pummel everything around us. Power had already been lost and some of the younger children began to cry, thinking that a tornado was upon us. As the head-count was performed and the smaller kids were comforted, large tree limbs crashed down, one came down on a tent, another came down on one of the forts. The remaining forts were torn apart within minutes - they didn't stand a chance against the terrible wind. So much rain poured from the sky and ran down the slope and through the tents that all the sleeping bags in the tents were soaked. Even after the worst of the storm had blown through, the children had to be accompanied by an adult to leave the building.

Look out! He's armed and dangerous!

A somewhat meager dinner of chicken legs or meatballs, perogies or fries plus leftovers from lunch was devoured. Unfortunately, a few boxes of frozen food hadn't been thawed and cooked - they'd been forgotten in the freezer. Some folks actually didn't get first helpings and went hungry. I can understand why they were upset, I would have been as well. Everyone was very hungry after so much activity since lunchtime and no snack had been provided.


Building crossbows certainly took everyone's minds off dinner. The children were over-the-top excited that they'd have a real weapon! This was indeed a cringe-worthy craft. I suppose it had a few purposes: to teach the children to respect a potentially dangerous piece of equipment, fine motor skills development, patience as parents struggled to assemble the crossbows. The results were great though! Fully charged with confidence, the children loved target practice and tried their best to keep their weapons pointed to the ground and wait patiently. (ha!) We knew the activity was a success when the Beavers didn't want to stop and the parents began target practice themselves afterwards. Our Daniel was the first child to have his crossbow confiscated. He just couldn't resist going 'hunting' at the playground. Is he my child? Nope, never seen him before. Sheesh. However, no time to dwell on talking to him about his hunting escapade, a scavenger hunt awaited!

Steady  Aim  Fire!!!
Gotta love the shorts and gumboots.

After all the treasures had been collected, we participated in the group ceremonies where the older children from one group move up to the next group. The older Beavers "swam up" to meet their new Wold Cub group and the the oldest Cubs met their new Scouts group, and so on. As you can see Daniel was so proud to be moving up to Cubs.  He was so focused on the ceremony and behaved very well. I was so proud of him. 


After the moving up ceremonies, we were all campfire bound. Appetites were satiated to a degree with popcorn (thankfully no longer being stored beneath my dining table) and songs were sung with enthusiasm. Daniel was exhausted though and started to wander off towards the cabin. Not worth the fight to try to keep him awake, I said our good-nights and followed him. The rest of the group stayed up only another forty five minutes around the campfire and within the hour we were all snug as bugs in our sleeping bags. However, at 12:30am Daniel woke the cabin up by crashing out of his bunk. Malek rushed over to make sure he was alright and stayed with us until he'd settled into the cot at the foot of my bunk. We didn't want to chance him falling from heights again. Luckily he'd landed on our bags and suffered only a scratched and bruised chin.

Waiting with his fellow Beavers to swim
up to Wolf Cubs

Scheduled to meet Sam and the Venturers in the kitchen at 7:00am, I bolted out of my sleeping bag at 6:50am. Only a couple of minutes late, I rushed into the kitchen to find Sam already cooking the sausages on the grill. Happily the power was finally back on! I broke 5 cases of frozen sausages apart, toasted 10 large trays worth of waffles and two trays of English muffins, made countless pots of coffee... It was fun. I even managed to sit next to Daniel as he ate his last couple of mouthfuls before he ran off to play. I quickly polished off my breakfast then started on the cleanup prior to inspection. The parents cleaning with me were fantastic, we all worked really hard and did a great job!

Daryle and Andy rolled in and loaded up our van just in time to walk down and witness the official closing ceremonies. Andy ran around on the field a little bit and then we piled into the van and meandered home, not wanting the adventure to end.

Saluting the Wolf Cubs leader. Note that he's no longer a Beaver; his hat and necker have symbolically been left behind with the Beavers. Well done Daniel!

Cheerful, Rainy Day

It is my father's birthday today. Happy Birthday Dad!!

When I was quite young, every Saturday morning we would go for a walk, rain or shine. How I loved walking with him in the rain. We talked about... anything, everything.

As the rain began to fall this afternoon, I began to hum a tune. Then a few words started to fill in. Very quickly a little simple song evolved. I wish I could write the tune down, perhaps I'll pick out the chords on my ukulele and jot them down sometime. Anyways, here's my little ditty:

                                                                   

Here comes the rain

Falling, tapping on the windowpane,

knocking at the door.

Come outside and play, to me it sang.

La, la, la, la, la la

Rivulets of water, my hollow soul to fill,

resist them if you can, resist them until…

Rain drops, splashing, laughing as they fall,

tickle down my back. What a sense of thrill.

Take my hand, sing with me.

Together we’ll dance. Together we’ll be.

Rain washes all the pain away,

Rejoice in the rain, come dance with me.

La, la, la, la, la la

                                                                 

Have a lovely weekend!