General updation

Updation. Its my new word. Embrace it.

Fall, my friends, is upon us. Of all the seasons, I find fall to be the most vain of them all. Sure, it wants you to look at it, no question about that.
“You there! Look at all of my glorious colours! I’ll even give you sunshine! I’m gorgeous!”
But inevitably, the more into you get, the colder and more distant it becomes. Such a tease. Just enough sunny days to remind you of the summer gone by, but the falling leaves become the finger wagging in your face saying ‘ah-ah, don’t touch.’ It is a unique season in this sense. Summer’s all ‘Booyow! I brought the heat, you bring the party! Let’s do this!’ and Spring is all ‘check out these blossoms! You KNOW good things are on the way!’, and winter, while cold and wet/snowy and at times miserable, is at least up front and unapologetic. It’s like the Eeyore of the weather world.

Okay, enough of my personifications of the seasons. Just had to get that off my chest. We had a busy summer, but not much vacation to speak of. Just some long weekends here and there. Lots going on around the house. A wicked productive veggie garden (as evidenced by photos) kept us well fed, and Sacha was always willing to help weed (read: pull productive plants out of the garden) or pick beans (read: pull productive leaves off of plants).

He’s a rockin’ little two year old with a serious dose of class clown personality that keeps us on the go from before sun up to after sundown most days of the week.

Heidi continued to grow like aforementioned weed, but we’ve opted to let her do that rather than pluck her. She’s a happy drooly fatty fatty fat fat now, engaged in her world and smiling away and cooing. Awesome change from the extended period of newborn-ness that we were forced to go through due to her prematurity. Kate is back to work part time and our nanny now has both kids on those days, so it’s good that Heidi is in a stable place where she can live without mum for a few days a week.

Given the kids and all that’s involved, we haven’t bitten off much in the way of house renos, but as you’ll see from the photos, we have been chewing away at things over the months. The plumbing job and a counter replacement actually happened mere days before heidi’s arrival, and we’re glad we got that out of the way. As you can particularly see from the pipe, we needed to do the plumbing at the very least >shudder< The fence was a summer project, which needed doing as it was fully falling over, and as much as anything the project was spurred on by a formal reprimand from the city, which indicated to us that our greenery was too fulsome, and now spilled out on to the sidewalks, thus inhibiting pedestrian access, thus in violation of city bylaws.

Yeah, we became that house. Ghetto.


The result of our project was a great new fence that has major curb appeal, and way less greenery to deal with. Not to say we didn’t like lots of flowers and bushy things, but really, with two kids and that hyperactive dog of ours, we’re barely able to keep up with mowing the lawn, let alone weeding and pruning.

So that’s where we’re at these days. Life is straightforward(ish) for us at the moment, which is nice. Other highlights of the summer included a slough of family and friend weddings, some great weekends up at Whistler, in Victoria, and in Kamloops.

Maybe something more substantive to talk about next month. In the meantime, here’s some more photos. If you’ll excuse me, the sun is out. I’m going to go enjoy it while it lasts. Oh no wait, it's gone. SO like you, Fall. So.Like.You.
this one comes courtesy of my talented sister in law Dina!
more tomatoes!
pumpkin patch

bye for now!

She's not so bad, after all....

To my big sister Kari,

Names, taunting, hair pulling, scratching, screaming fits. These are just a few common characteristics of sibling relationships in their early years.

The relations between you and I were of no different a sort when we were younger, either. I, the youngest of the three Chase kids carried a sense of entitlement (unconscious at the time of course), knowing my two older sibs had been there and done it all by the time I got to doing whatever it might have been. There was an ease there, perhaps, the road before me paved by my brother and sister. Which likely made me a brat towards both of you at times when I thought I ought to get something for myself. Turn on the water works, and there you have it. Younger child perceived as being picked on by older sibs got his way a lot of the time.

And as for you, my sister, the dreaded middle child. Classic symptoms of being the centre of a sibling trio include feelings of disassociation, of being ingnored, being passed over at every opportunity. One is also acutely aware that you were the girl sandwiched between two boys. All of it amounted to you being relegated to the middle bump seat in the family station wagon, each and every road trip (in fairness, you ARE the shortest). While “being ignored” by parents usually meant that Jamie would draw the fire from dad when he started yelling rather than you, it also meant that you maybe worked a little harder in life to make yourself known to the rest of the world; be a little bit of an independent soul.

Fast forward many years, and sibling rivalries sort themselves out. We’re all friends now, and we've all found our own ways in the world. But you, asserting that independence, that originality, found yourself doing science degrees while your brothers were both in some form of journalism school. You found yourself running campus dorms while your brothers lived together on the other side of town. Never one to be satisfied to do what some other girls do, you involved yourself in sports teams, took the lead on social activities like directing theatre, and continued to refuse to eat vegetables. Whatever the circumstance, you have never been afraid to be “out there”, and you have never been worried about what others might think about your goings-on.

Your sense of family has never waivered, despite perhaps feeling like the black sheep or different from us (these, may I remind you, are your words in past, not mine). When I lost my fingers, you took on a motherly role with me, kissing me on the forehead when ever we parted. This is something we still do now, a decade later. Going back further, the teacher in you—which you are now professionally, and a damn fine one I have no doubt—helped me wade through the murky waters of a university bio mechanics course >shudder. Dr. Moyls<. This was no easy feat; I do not take well to direct peer tutoring. Yet you applied an easy hand that led my arts-minded brain through physical principles and ultimately to a B in the course. I don’t think it’s every sibling that could do that, and I still thank you to this day for it.

Back to more recent days: You, not satisfied to stay a course, moved to England to see what life might be like for you there. Family brought you back time and time again--for illnesses, weddings, funerals, births.

But ultimately, the mother country has claimed you, and it brings us to a very special day, and I’m coming to that. But first, a little more about you.

As a younger brother, I have spent most of my life looking down on you physically, but up to you for all the positives that make up who you are.

I remember, once, when you came home from a day at elementary school, with a note from some so called ‘friends’ that wrote to you to say that they didn’t want to be your friend anymore. I remember your tears, and the pain you exhibited.

I remember Jamie and I playing our boy games that we kept you out of.

I remember the times your clumsiness took hold of you in very public places.

I remember you jumping through hoops to try and be a police officer in Calgary, and how disappointed you were when they ultimately decided you were too nice to be a cop (YOU will remember the relief your family felt as this put a lid on our visions of you shooting your foot off with a service revolver).

I remember you triumphing over medical issue after medical issue... after medical issue...

But with these and other such pains in life, I remember moreso the ways in which you chose—and do choose—to rise above it all. To continue being true to yourself and taking negative experiences whenever they occur and using them to make you a stronger person. And you did it all without building up walls around you, for you are loving and kind and caring and compassionate. You have always been wise enough to look at bad things in life and say to yourself ‘this does not have to be who I am’.

And, there, over in England, you found someone who sees those things in you and does not just admire those things and appreciate them, but who loves them and wants to be with you and those characteristics for the rest of his life. Smart man.

Black sheep as you are, you are the last of the three of us sibs to be married (this is moot, I just HAD to point it out! Ha!). And today, I am so proud to be your little brother, playing witness to this beautiful, strong, intelligent, amazing sister of mine who will be swept down the aisle on the arm of her big brother. perhaps keep the other arm out for dad, too, as you know he will be there, and he will also be so proud.

Marriage is not necessarily something that says ‘I am complete now.’ You are complete with or without your partner. Rather, it is a recognition by someone else of just how complete you are. You have always been complete, Kari, whether I as a brother have ever had the guts to say it or not. And I’m so happy for you that Matt recognizes it, and that this week you become partners for life. that is so SO cool.

You’re the best sister a little brother could want. Congratulations to you on your wedding day.

All my love,
Your little brother Stu

A big stinky problem

I have said to myself lately that life is a bit like Groundhog Day, the Bill Murray movie from 1990 something in which the main character lives the same day, over and over again. So it has felt like in my world. Get up too early, entertain Sacha for a while, go to work, entertain sacha some more, bathe him, put him to bed, clean up the kitchen, bounce baby when not demanding food but cranky none the less, cuddle said baby when she allows for it. Go to bed myself. Rinse and repeat.

Okay, so there’s more to it that that of course, but as a general theme, perhaps you get my point.

The routine was bucked today, however.

The tale begins in the dead of night, with Sacha waking and waling on about something…

1:17 am, and I’m on duty. It is my task to get in there where necessary and bring him down out of the stratosphere.

99 times out of 100, sacha doesn’t just wake up. He wakes up terrified or totally pissed off about something, and the scene does not deescalate without intervention. Without intervention he resorts to smashing his forehead against the crib railing, or throws himself over the top; that sort of scene. As I say, it’s my role to go in and manage the situation. Highly not fair to make Kate do it--she already has mandatory wakeups to feed Heidi.

Anyway, Mr. Sacha repeated the wakeup process a few times in the night. Pepper in wakeups for feeding from Ms. Heidi, and one dog desperate to go outside at some ungodly hour (o’dark stupid in army terms), and we had a night of little sleep well on the go.

4:17 am: Nellie is dying to get outside, again.

I plod bleary eyed down the stairs, grumbling something under my breath, and expunge said K-9 from the abode.

I sit at the computer to keep myself awake, waiting for Nellie to come back after dealing with her “Business”. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll readily get up and let the dog out any time, rather than have her vomit on the carpet or do whatever she’s gotta do. And she always asks to go out; we never wake up to surpises on the living room floor, which is a blessing I suppose.

4:23 am: I hear a sound that I haven’t heard before. It was a combination of a hissing cat-like sound and a shriek; in my head, I immediately think ‘I really hope that’s a racoon trying to claw my dog’s face off, or maybe we have zombies in the garden, because if it isn’t either, it must be a

SKUNK.

I fly out the front door and on to the porch to look down the side of the house and into the backyard. I do so just in time enough to see Nellie come wheeling around the corner with her tail between her legs, up the steps, and past me into the house. I then see the offending pepe le pew scamper deeper into the backyard.

It’s all too late by the time the smell hit me. Nellie has already charged upstairs, burying her face into our bedroom floor and the foot of our bed in a vain attempt to shake off the smell. Shoo’d out of the room, she comes downstairs to bury her face into her beanbag chair bed. Kate is up by now; inexplicably but blissfully having managed to escape the upstairs mayhem of Nellie’s intrusion with neither child waking up.

4:30 a.m.: We corral Nellie in the kitchen, not letting her go near a carpet or any soft surface for fear she’ll rub off more oil.

4:32 a.m. or so rolls around ,and I set to work cleaning the dog with baking Soda and dish soap, the best materials available at the moment.

4:38 am.: Heidi Awaketh.

It’s down to just me and smelly Nellie and a bucket of warm soapy water. We are banished to the front porch to complete the work. Nellie wants to go back in the yard to find the skunk again. Duh? she promptly - while soaking wet, plows her face into a dirt patch at the back of the yard to, once again, get rid of the smell. now she's stinky and dirty.

5:07, Sacha Awaketh.

I am in the middle of mopping up the kitchen floor with some lovely smelling orange oil. It masks the stench to a small degree. Kate has already managed to strip the bed and the beanbag chair is now in the garbage (she’s been wanting to throw it out for years. The mop job must now be abandoned to attend to (screaming) Sacha.

fast forward a few hours to 7:23 a.m.:

Relative calm has returned. Nellie still reeks. She, Sacha and I are in the backyard. Nellie is fixating on the stairs down from the back porch. Sacha is off in the corner of the yard, remaining motionless and not letting me come near him as he fills his diaper in secret.

Nellie creeps toward the stairs, and then I hear a ‘pfffft’ and the dog runs away again.

Pepe is holed up under the porch, and is sending off stinky warning shots at anything that comes too close. The air becomes acrid and pungent once again. I sound the alarm to Kate.

7:25 a.m. Sacha is still at a safe distance, still working on disposing of yesterday’s meals.

I throw a few rocks under the stairs, just to make sure we’re focussing on the right area. More ‘pffft’ and more stench.

7:35: I knock on the basement suite window, rather than the door, which is right next to the stairs. Occupants are advised to exit through our upstairs door rather than risking exiting the suite next to the stairs and being forced to run a gauntlet.

7:45: Sacha has been coaxed out of the corner of the yard and now wants to go up the back steps to get back in the house. He’s already two steps up. Thankfully no movement from under the steps. We ask sacha to come back down in a panicky voice.

I’m normally heading for the bus to work by now, but not today.

7:46 a.m.: Negotiations fail, and I’m forced to advance on the staircase and whisk Sacha to safety. He’s not happy about the decision and starts to cry about it. Heidi is crying about it, too. Nellie is being shoo’ed away from the staircase, again.

8:00 a.m.: Sacha’s Crayola crayons are used to draw an uncannily accurate portrait of the offending skunk, which is stuck to our side gate as a warning to any potential visitors. See photo:


8:15 a.m.: Sacha’s diaper has been changed, and I leave Kate with the two year old, the three month old, and a stinky dog which we’ve now barricaded on the front porch, allowing her access to neither the yard, nor the house.

8:16 a.m.: I walk away from the house, en route tot eh bus, feeling somewhat guilty that I get to escape the scene.

**********************
Epilogue:

Pepe is resident under the porch. Exterminators will not 'off' the beasts, as it turns out, allowing only for the installation of an exit-only mechanism over their entry hole to their hideout. Meaning once the skunk has left their safehouse, they will not be able to return and they'll reestablish themselves somewhere else and make someone else miserable for a while.

In any case, the pest control folks won’t be able to make it to the house until tomorrow. SPCA offers some solutions, but their key word is ‘patience’. Dammit.

We’ll be watching our step until we get rid of Pepe, and, we have no guarantees that Nellie won’t have another encounter, particularly since she seems keen on a rematch.

As of time of publication, Kate is at home, and is still sane. The dog has been shampooed with some sort of concoction that seems to be working, with no guarantees she won't get skunked again before this creature vacates our property. Stuart is wanting to go back to Groundhog Day.

Pomp and Circumstance

Don't let the title fool you. I hate pomp and circumstance

How odd then that a few Fridays ago, I found myself a part of a convocation platform party, head to toe in regalia, filing past onlookers and graduands attending one of Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s convocation ceremonies.

This behaviour, I assure you, is vastly out of character.

13 years ago, right about now, I begrudgingly sat through three hours of my high school graduation ceremony. I didn’t want to be there; didn’t see the point. But, the parents obviously wanted me to walk across that stage, so I did. About 650 of us, piled into the local hockey arena (how very Kamloops!). Sitting beside me, Heather Challenger, a friend at least to natter away with and one row in front of me, Craig Black, and Eric Brewer (good old alphabetical seating) passing a Nintendo GameBoy back and forth, over whose shoulders I could look to take my mind of the drudgery of this event. My diploma sits either in a binder or a shoebox. I’m not sure where.

Nine years ago, right about now, I begrudgingly filed my way in to my Langara College graduation ceremony. I didn’t want to be there, either. I believe I was pressured into attending by my mum, dad, sister, and girlfriend. My diploma is not in a shoe box, it has been upgraded to a portfolio binder so I can prove to employers that I have the credential.

And four years ago, right about now… I was flying home from a vacation in Turkey. Ha! you thought I was gonna say I was at a grad. Nope. I skipped my next graduation, this time from…Kwantlen. In Spring 2006, I put my foot down and said I would not be pressured into doing something I had zero desire to do. The Turkey trip didn’t actually conflict with the convocation ceremony; though I believe that is the excuse I used with classmates to keep them off my case.

So why then, was I standing up there last week, shaking the new graduates’ hands just after the hands of the school dean, the university chancellor, and the university president? Do I belong there?

It was last year, right about now, when I got a call from Kwantlen asking if I would consider being a board member for the Alumni Association. After some initial discussions with the exec director from the office of advancement, I decided to put my name forward.

My experience at Kwantlen was, after all, a rewarding and engaging one, and after I left the school I have returned on several occasions to speak with students in the PR program about what I got out of the school and how that has translated into my real world experience. As well, I’ve had prospective students ‘interview’ me about Kwantlen and life thereafter as they consider the school for themselves. As such, when the idea of being a board member for the alum association came up, I decided to go for it. I was brought on to the board, and now I’m Vice-Chair of the thing.

So, I stood there at grad in my role as Vice-Chair of the Alumni Association of Kwantlen Polytechnic University and greeted each grad and welcomed them to the alumni association of which they are now a part (ooh, and I gave them some gifties, too.)

From this perspective, the experience of a convocation ceremony was very different for me. Yes, I had to march in the processional to Edward Elgar’s March #1 of pomp and circumstance. Terribly cliché.

But beyond that, I enjoyed the perspective of watching the experience of others. And this is not to say I have not watched others before. Much as I hate grad ceremonies, I appreciate that they are important to others as milestone markers. But that still doesn’t explain why I was there.

In a world where the University of British Columbia has just raised the minimum grade point average required for entry to an ‘A’ across the board, I think it was in a comment that was made during the Kwantlen president’s remarks to the graduating class that rings true to me. He said that kwantlen does not believe that exclusivity is a requirement for excellence.

And that speaks to simple folk like me. I was never top of my class, but at times a decent student none the less. Never good enough to make it into a ‘big’ school, however. But I was able to get into Kwantlen, and now I have a university degree that in no way do I believe came with a sacrifice in quality of education. The program size was small, so lots of personal attentions with faculty whom I still keep in touch with four years after grad. It is a teaching school, not a research school, which means faculty pay attention to you, and not their next journal article. And by the end of it I won two scholarships; one a small monetary sum that bought a few text books, the other a fully paid opportunity for further study through a short certificate program at the University of Calgary (this was not part of Kwantlen, but I applied at the encouragement and with the assistance of the faculty at Kwantlen, thus, I owe them thanks!).

No one that shook my hand on Friday knew me (save a few PR students crossing the stage), or my story. But I am sure there are many who crossed the stage with a similar tale. So that’s why I was there. To celebrate an educational institute that is concerned with being accessible to its community, and just as concerned with making sure its students succeed. It worked for me, and I trust it has worked for the class of 2010 as well. Congrats to all of you.

I’m not about to frame my degrees or anything, but if asked to attend convocation again, I’ll happily stand up to shake some more hands.

Heidi's home!

For whatever reason, our kids just like to show up early and in speedy, dramatic fashion.

Back on April 14th, it took 3.5 hours from Kate waking up in the morning, thinking something was up, to the arrival a screaming pink baby.

Much like an entry I did just after Sacha was born, we have to stress the point that “fast” birth does not equate to “easy” birth. We’ve gotten our fair share of comments along the lines of “oh man, another baby that only took three hours of labour to deliver? You’re so lucky!”

Yeah, and the three weeks in hospital that followed that were a real cake walk. Not.


So, here we are and Heidi is over a month old now, and home with us, thank God. We’ve been debriefing ourselves on the situation over and over again, and we can admit it at this point: having your baby show up quite as early as this is terrifying. The morning of April 14th was a scary emotional rollercoaster, somewhat devoid of the joy that comes along with having your baby brought into the world. It was very fast, it came with a major sense of unease, and to say the least, heart wrenching to have your baby, just minutes old, whisked away from you. Tubes in her nose. Morphine, antibiotics, Tubes in her throat, Intravenous lines in her hand. Heel prick blood sample after heel prick blood sample. Incubators cutting you off from being able to have skin-to-skin contact. All this on a four pound little person just born.

This could not have been further from the quiet home birth scenario we envisioned for our second child. An hour after sacha was born, we were in our own bed with tea and toast. An hour after Heidi was born, Kate was in a recovery room, and I was with Heidi in a busy intensive care unit, alarm bells ringing, nurses and doctors and respiratory therapists and x-ray technicians, not to mention other sick babies and stressed out parents.

But it is the other stressed out parents in this scenario that make us realize the good fortune of heidi’s arrival, early though it was.

Heidi, at 32 weeks gestation, only had a little bit of growing left to do. We live ten minutes from the hospital, and we have a great support network in town. Many other parents in the Neonatal ICU are from North of God knows where, babies born at 24 weeks with open hearts and collapsed lungs, weighing a pound or only a little more. Some of the parents we met had been there for months, and were living in their camper in the hospital parking lot, with not much prospect of going home any time soon.

Heidi was transferred out of B.C. Children’s Hospital after five days since she was doing so well. We were moved out to the Burnaby hospital’s Neonatal ICU, where the pace is slower and there are less babies present. Another 14 days, and we were on our way home.

We’re happy to report that Heidi is doing very well, gaining weight daily (somewhere in the neighbourhood of 6 lbs, 8 oz. at this point). She’s five weeks old now, and feeling quite solid, thank you very much!

Sacha is adjusting as well as can be hoped for, though he is compensating for the
situation by getting up way too early every morning, which just adds to the sleep deprivation that comes free of charge with most every newborn.

We've all managed to get out for a few family outings, which is exciting and maybe just a little nerve wracking at the same time (what? we have to wrangle TWO of these little peole now? ack)


So, I know that what most people really want is pictures, so here you go. hope the few images peppered throughout have satisfied you a little!

Lastly, just a huge thanks to everyone for thoughts, prayers, and assistance (especially the assistance!) during the last month. With so much time spent at the hospital and a needy dog and two-year-old still to attend to, the many helping hands did a yeoman’s service in keeping our household sane. Blessings on all of you!