COVID cookin' and other updates

As seems to be the thing to do, let me open this blog with what has become the traditional greeting:

I hope this message finds you, safe, healthy and well.

What a weird world we now live in. My last post was from a few months back, re: fabulous Hawaiian vacation, when 'driving the Road to Hana on Maui' was simultaneously the most entertaining thing to do, and posed the likeliest threat Nowadays a trip to the grocery store fits the same bill. Go figure.

How is your household dealing with all the separation and change in routine? Around our house, I'm fully able to work from home. For Kate, it's been a rollercoaster. Her business model is all about delivering face-to-face therapy in a fast-paced office. She obviously had to close her doors, and lay off a significant number of staff members. But, she's managed to recoup some businesses online so that's good, and someday hopes to hire folks back on. Then there's the kids, with the cancelled team and community sports, and thrust into the world of online learning. We've very intentionally kept our kids off of computers for most of their lives, and that is showing up in extremely lack-lustre typing skills all of a sudden! They are adjusting well, and--no surprise--Kate is proving the most adequate educator at home compared to me.

Outside of work and school and a weekly grocery store trip, we've been nowhere, visited no one and done "nothing" (as it should be, after all). We're getting exercise together, mostly going for runs and bike rides, and the kids have been having fun cooking one meal a week for us. Some of that they've parlayed into a fun little video project, which we've called COVID cookin'! You can watch their latest video here. Three episodes so far. Thursday is their weekly night to cook something, so we'll see what comes next! It's a little painful to be behind the camera and not helping them when they make a huge mess, but that's all part of the fun I guess!

 

Aside from that, we've had one birthday in the house. Somehow Heidi went from being a teeny premature baby to a ten-year-old, just like that! having a socially-distant birthday was a curious thing, but really, very low-key and nice. AND, the grandparents conglomerate that exists in this family got together to help fund the purchase of a NINJA line (cool slack line with all sorts of cool attachments) Now, with the playgrounds all closed, we can bring a playground with us wherever we go!




OK, that's enough of an update. After all, what more is there really to say?!

Until next time, remember: stay safe, stay calm, and stay home (in the words of our much-respected Provincial Health Officer, Bonnie Henry!)

Adults only vacation!

Back at the end of January, thanks to the generous child-minding support of grandparental units, Kate and I were gifted the chance to go to Maui, Hawaii, for an entire week… BY OURSELVES!   

   

In the almost-12 years of having kids, we’ve only truly gotten away as a couple on two other occasions: once a few winters ago for a whirlwind few days in New York city, and prior to that, we flew across the Atlantic to the UK to visit friends and family. We may have ditched our own kids, but we ended visiting friends and family with their kids… so we didn’t exactly hit the mark for a kid-free trip.

This, however, was the first time in 14 years of marriage (and just about ‘ever’) that we travelled somewhere just for ourselves. No kids, no pets, no friends or family to visit, and no schedule at all. Just a glorious week of exploring a place we had never been before. A carry-on suitcase (flippers and snorkel mask included) was all we needed.

We intentionally laid out absolutely no itinerary for ourselves. We had a few items on the list of places we wanted to go and things to see, but we didn’t block out specific times or days to do any of it. It was MAGIC. Get up early and go for a beach walk? Sure. Get up late, grab a coffee and some fruit, then head out for some snorkelling or boogie boarding? Sounds good. Plan to go kayaking in an afternoon but go window shopping instead? Perfect.

We hit up some of the biggies: sunset at Haleakala (we thought about sunrise, but A) hadn’t pre-booked a reservation and that’s a requirement and B) why get up at 3:00 a.m. when we can drive up in the middle of the day when we’re not exhausted, hike around, then find a nice spot for the sunset show instead? ), a visit to the Nakalele blowhole, driving the road to Hana (with lots of stops there and back), whale watching (last minute, but awesome, decision), and spent plenty of time in the water otherwise, and went for nice walks.

The weather was ideal all week. 28 degrees and sunny, with some cloud cover coming along on the last couple of days of the trip, but the nice temperatures kept right along. It was made extra-sweet knowing that it was POUNDING with rain back home in Vancouver!

One of the smart things to do when you’re in a new place is to chat with a local about ‘what’s good.’ There’s no shortage of info about popular tourist spots, but the people that live there will surely come up with something slightly less known. To that end, if you’re headed to Maui in the future, look up a little place called ‘Alchemy’ in Lahaina. It’s not in the old townsite; it’s up the slope, across the highway, tucked into a corner location of an industrial area. 

We were flopping around in the surf on boogie boards one day (incidentally, Snorkel Bob's was a great deal. 3o bucks for a week's rental of a great board), and we started chatting with a guy who has lived on the island for a couple of years. He asked us what we’ve managed to do, and we asked him if he had any recommendations for places to eat. Alchemy was one of his recommendations. They bake these incredible take-away loaves of black salt crusted sourdough, make awesome sandwiches, and—as is the fad these days—brew a bunch of flavours of kombucha.

I would go back to Maui for the sourdough from this place alone. It’s fresh from the oven at 11 am when they open. Long, narrow loaves ready to take away. They also make sandwiches with the same bread, and they don’t mess around with their portion sizes. They produce a good selection of veggie options, helpful for us vegetarians, as well as meat (the pastrami seemed popular!), and all their food is local and non-GMO.

The bread didn’t stand a chance. It was like an extra on The Walking Dead. We tore the loaf apart, wolfing down big hunks of fresh, warm, tangy and salty sourdough. Washed down with the kombucha, it was delightful.

We went back again a second time and it was just as good.

But enough about bread. You want more Maui. Here it is. The video has jump links in the description, so if you want to see a particular section, just click there! https://youtu.be/F04I8Zz9iAY 

At the end of the week, we headed home feeling refreshed, relaxed and grateful for the time away. And yes, in case you’re wondering, we brought back a king’s ransom in Macadamia nuts to be able to spread the Aloha once we got back home, like any good tourist should :) 

Merry Christmas and happy new year 2019

Well, it's Christmas Eve and I've just enough time before the holidays kick in to make a quick reflection on the year gone bye. 2019 seems to have whizzed by at break-neck speed. I can't recall who said it to me, but they made the analogy of the passage of time being like a roll of toilet paper (stay with me on this one) At first, when the roll is new, things unravel slowly when the roll is fat and wide. But as the roll gets used, it seems to go faster and faster as you work toward the end. We experience time in the same way. When you're a kid, time seems to drag by, but as you age, time seems to speed up. If that's the case, I'm in the middle of my roll, I guess, and it's moving at a fair clip.

It was a heck of a year, with a house move, new schools for the kids in a new neighbourhood, new responsibilities at work for Kate and I, new goals in a new sport  for me(rowing)..., a new cat in the house which has made for an... interesting new dog vs. cat dynamic... well, the theme for 2019 appears have been new, new, new.

Both Kate and I continue to enjoy our work, which has definitely kept us busy and will do so into 2020. We're blessed to be doing work we love that we hope is good for the world as well.

We did lose a few good people to cancer through the year (Margie, Coleen... you are both missed), and we know many others battling cancer and either working through or recovering from health issues... which serves as a reason to send out prayers to those affected, and pause and recognize that we've been fortunate to maintain good health for ourselves throughout the year.

And with that, we take a deep breath, take heart in the Christmas season during which we hope to renew our energies, spend time with friends and family, and ring in the new year. Here's to hoping you all get to do the same.

If you haven't caught it yet, here's our annual family Christmas card! Please enjoy, and again: Merry Christmas to you and yours, and happy new year!

Twenty years later...

Some days you just don’t forget.

December 16^th, 1999 was a grey and snow-blown, chilly day in Kamloops. Out east of town in Monte Creek, temperatures hovered around freezing with a wind chill that bit in a few degrees lower than that. Christmas holidays were just starting and I was in familiar surroundings, standing on a work platform, facing east. Home from college in Vancouver for a few days before a planned Christmas vacation trip to Hawaii, I was putting in a couple of shifts to make some spending money while on my trip. This was the first shift back at the sawmill since the summer. It soon proved to be my last shift ever.

Sometimes I think about it. Sometimes those thoughts happen against my will. I can still feel that moment of inevitability in my whole body, looking down at my trapped hand; a flash of understanding about what was about to happen. I remember gut-wrenching nausea, the shaking, a deep cold inside of me. I remember my brother (working the same shift and stacking the wood I was cutting), being there as it all unfolded (he was a calm harbour in that storm. You don’t forget the good parts, along with the bad). I remember my co-workers and the boss; all their actions that got me rushed to hospital. I remember my mom in the air ambulance with me, being airlifted back to Vancouver where I had just come from, for a ridiculous 22-hour-long emergency surgery to reconnect the fingers I’d cut off in that saw.

drugs, good company, and cranberry cocktails kept me smiling

Nothing like spending Christmas in the hospital, amirite?!     

*****

It’s 20 years later now. Today, in fact, exactly. I mark the date every year, even if it’s just in my head. But this year marks a different sort of milestone. As of today, and every day going forward from here, I’ll have lived longer as an amputee than I ever did as a guy with all ten of those wiggly fingers. I had just turned 20 at the time, and here I am now 40.  Half a lifetime since then, and all the rest now yet to come. It’s an odd tipping point to think about.

Those first couple of years were painful and tough. Adapting to loss physically and mentally, and desensitizing slowly—again, physically and mentally.

I’m typing with five fingers on my right hand and my thumb on my left hand. My left index is conceivably long enough to type with, but it hurts too much, so I don’t. I have a bag full of prosthetic

hands and hooks. Round door handles are my nemesis, buying a pair of gloves is always a lost investment, shoelaces and waist ties
are more time consuming than they used to be, and my guitar technique is no better than basic strumming (just to name a few issues).

It hasn’t all been bad, and I’m not a negative person so let’s just end the list of woes, shall we? I’m actually looking forward to mitigating some of those issues with a new, more advanced prosthetic very soon. You may think that the bionic hands you see in movies actually exist these days, and for partial ARM amputees, they do. But for partial HAND amputees, the level of sophistication is very low in the prosthetic world. I’ll keep you posted on what’s to come, but let’s just say that there’s a company out there that is FINALLY going to help me open some literal doors.

What I could never have expected from losing my fingers all those years ago is how it would help my career choices take shape. A budding journalism student at the time of my accident, I thought I was destined to write for a newspaper. Instead, thanks to a work placement during my rehab within the WorksafeBC walls in their communications shop, I fell in love with public relations. I got the jump on a career choice that many now-former-journalist friends are only just moving in to. I also realized early on that I could get on a soapbox and talk about disability and inclusion and have people listen to me; that I was good at that. That was—and continues to be—empowering for me, and I hope, beneficial for others.

I’ve also been exposed to the world of para-sport. Missing a few digits doesn’t qualify me for much (I’m not going to complain that I didn’t lose more function!), but what I have been able to take part in has been incredibly satisfying, and there again, being able to use that avenue to talk about inclusion and access has been great.

I could go on, but that’s enough. I have a few friends who mark their injury anniversary dates as their ‘Alive Day’. Their life-changing circumstances were far more severe than my own, so it’s a bit heavy-handed (pun intended) to note December 16^th as my Alive Day. But it certainly changed my life, and for that, I feel the need to exorcise my feelings on the matter.

Circumstances are what you make of them. I’d like to think that in the last 20 years I’ve consistently strived to make good from the bad hand (more puns) I was dealt, and that I will continue to do so for whatever days I have ahead. I’m resigned to the fact—two decades later—that I’ll never shake off the occasional flashbacks and sensational memories of severing my own digits, and that my fingers probably aren’t going to grow back any time soon. But with more days ahead than behind and the right attitude, I think I’m pointing in the right direction.

That was the last finger pun, I promise.

A firm grip on mid-life

Forty is the new 30.

Heard that a few times in the past? Me too, especially this year as a lot of my 1979’ers join in the big 4-oh club.

Sorry, but no. Forty is the new 40. Be happy with that.

When I was 30, I had a noisy infant, with number two baby soon to be on the way. I had a job that was not permanent—a career stepping-stone, yes, but not the career I have today. I was down one parent in recent years then, and the other was fighting cancer at the time. To be clear, there is no lament about life at 30, and in fact, I was being retrospective and celebrating similar content about the end of my 20’s, when I turned 30.  But it was a very different place than where I am now.

And now, I’m 40. I have two older, competent, interesting, engaged kids. I'm headed toward the 14^th anniversary of wedded happiness to my best gal. I'm in a career—yes, career—that I love and can keep growing into. My parents are both gone now, and I’m past my own grief of that and their happy memories live in my heart. All in, it’s a welcome way to start the next decade.

14,600 days later... 

No lament in the loss of more youth. I took up a new sport in the past year (rowing, for anyone paying attention) and it’s clear that you can teach an old dog some new tricks. Granted, this dog still has a lot to learn in that sport. It’s challenging and technical and I guess that’s what I’ve enjoyed about it. It’s good to keep testing the grey matter and learning new things. I have a new home this year, too—the previous blogpost will fill you in on that detail—and it’s pretty cool to start a fresh decade with a new abode.

If you look closely, there are a few sprigs of grey hair appearing in my eyebrows and hairline (nose and ear hairs, too, maybe?!). I welcome each new silvery addition. Growing older, and all the signs that provide witness to the passage of time, are privileges denied to so, so many.

I suppose the list of positives about being 40 could go on, but let’s keep it short and sweet. Life is better spent living in the moment and looking forward to what’s next than it will ever be looking back on what has happened (or didn’t happen). I’m a happy, healthy, wildly fortunate 40-year-old. I don’t know what I did to deserve what I have, but I’ll take it. I feel like I’m successful in most endeavours these days—that’s not an overnight thing, but a cumulation of a bunch of good days, great support and hard work that lead up to today. I’m a really freakin’ lucky guy. 

I have no major life advice at this time, in case you're curious. Be good, try to do good, and most things will come out 51 of 49 most of the time (that's my favourite 'old man' saying, FYI). 

Happy birthday to me. Bring on 40. 

Now pass the pie plate (a la mode, if you please!)