Author: edebock

The worst and the best

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I’ve experienced the worst and the best of Alberta winter in less than 24 hours!

😦  The Worst

Winter travel in this part of the world is always unpredictable and yes, whether we like it or not, March is still winter here in Alberta! This year we’ve had so little snow that we haven’t had to worry about the roads the way we usually do but last night made up for that.

Richard had a medical appointment in Edmonton yesterday. The drive up to the city in the morning was uneventful and after his appointment, we spent the afternoon shopping at West Edmonton Mall. We were totally oblivious to what was happening outside. It wasn’t until we left the mall to meet Nathan for supper that we realized that the weather had become, to use Nathan’s word, stinky!

The trip home, which would normally take two hours, took over three and it was white knuckles all the way! I’m so glad that Richard was driving, not me. I don’t think he ever went more than 70 km/hour (for my American friend’s, that’s about 44 miles/hour) and much of the time we were going slower than that. The highway was a sheet of ice and for the last 50 km we were also driving through blowing snow. I’m amazed that we didn’t see any vehicles in the ditch along the way. I guess everyone else was being just as careful as we were. When we finally made it home, the driveway was full of drifts but we were never happier to be here!

🙂  The Best

Back in November when I blogged about the things I like best about winter, one of the things I mentioned was cross country skiing. This year, because of the lack of snow, my skis hadn’t been out of the shed all season. It was beginning to look like it they weren’t going to make it out at all but the snow kept falling after we went to bed last night and when I woke up this morning I knew that this was the day! I wasn’t sure how my still recovering toe would feel about being stuffed into a ski boot and put to work but it didn’t complain at all! That bodes well for hiking when spring finally comes.

As long as I can remember, I’ve loved being the first one to leave my footprints on fresh fallen snow. Imagine my delight at having an entire golf course of new snow laid out before me this afternoon! With the bright sun shining overhead as I set out to break a trail, the snow sparkled before me like a million diamonds. The temperature was just a few degrees below zero (celsius); cold enough to keep the snow crisp and dry but very comfortable for skiing. I’d love to get out on my skis a few more times before the snow melts away but if I don’t, at least I’ve had this one perfect afternoon!

Before

and after!

Nate’s date

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Tonight will be our final performance of The Black Bonspiel of Wullie MacCrimmon but unless something very unusual happens, last night’s will be the most memorable one for me. That’s because of who was in the audience.

Because this is small town theatre, we always know many of the people who come to watch but for Richard and I, rarely are they family. Last night was different. Our youngest son drove home from the city, two hours each way, to see us onstage. That would be memorable in itself but it was who he chose to take as his date that made the evening special.

For several summers back when he was still in school, Nate did mowing and other yard work for one of our local seniors. Mary would always have a cold can of pop waiting for him when he finished working and they would sit and chat. Out of that grew an unusual friendship that has stood the test of time. Now well into her nineties and still living alone in her own home, Mary always asks about “her boy” when she sees me. Though Nathan doesn’t get home very often any more, when he does he usually stops by to see her and once in awhile he phones her just to chat. Imagine her delight when he got in touch to see if she’d be his date for last night’s dinner theatre! Like any good date would, he took flowers when he went to pick her up and when I stopped by their table after the performance, she was glowing!

Can you blame me for being a proud mom?

Costa Rica postscript

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Can it possibly be over a month since we returned from Costa Rica? Granted, even with its extra day, February was the shortest month of the year but still, where did it go?

Back in November when we booked our vacation, I noticed an optional $10 per person “help fix our school” charge on the invoice. Considering the amount that we were spending for a fairly luxurious holiday, that seemed little enough to give back to the people of our host country so I paid the amount in full. I couldn’t help wondering about that school though. I emailed our travel agent and asked her if it was located in or near one of the communities that we’d be visiting and if so, whether it would be possible or appropriate for us to take some school supplies with us that we could donate.

“It is absolutely possible and appropriate — and so refreshing, you’d be surprised by the number of people who complain about that $10 and don’t want to donate even that,” she told us. She went on to tell us that the school is located just a few minutes off the main road in La Fortuna and that if we wanted, someone from the tour company that would be providing our zipline and waterfall tours would take us there. We decided that that would be a good idea since we don’t speak Spanish and might have a difficult time explaining why we were there if we went on our own.

We always travel light. In fact, we didn’t even take the full allowable amount of baggage when we flew to Japan to teach for a year. Taking an extra backpack on this trip would be no problem at all. I found a bright red almost new one at our local thrift store. I think it cost me a dollar!

Then began the fun of filling it. I didn’t keep track of how much we spent but most of our purchases were made at bargain stores like Dollarama so it really wasn’t a lot. First we bought the basics: pens, pencils, rulers, erasers, pencil crayons and glue sticks. Schools always need paper so in went a package of plain white photocopier paper and a couple of packages of multi-coloured construction paper. There was still space so we started to think of some of the fun things that teachers and children might use. A big bag of colourful balloons didn’t take up much room. Neither did a couple of packages of brightly coloured pipe cleaners. Little nooks and crannies were filled with packages of paper clips, elastic bands and post it notes. Last but not least, in went a small foam ball painted to look like a world globe. I even checked to make sure that Costa Rica and Canada were both clearly marked!

The red backpack flew as one of our carry-ons and travelled around the country with us until we reached La Fortuna. That’s when we learned that we wouldn’t be able to visit the school after all! We had arrived at vacation time. The children wouldn’t be back in school until late February but Ericka from Sunset Tours met us at our hotel, took custody of the backpack and promised to deliver it for us. Today an email arrived with these pictures!

   

Education is valued in Costa Rica and the literacy rate is high but like much of the infrastructure, the school system has been in a slow and steady state of decay for decades. Poverty isn’t as rampant as it is in many parts of the world but the gap between the rich and the poor has been widening for years. Tourism has become one of the country’s major sources of income and we were more than happy to be able to share with the school children of La Fortuna just a bit of what we’ve been blessed with.

Photos by Ericka Chavarria

We did it!

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It may not be Awesomeday, but what an awesome weekend it’s been! Our first three performances of The Black Bonspiel of Wullie MacCrimmon went pretty much without a hitch and the audiences loved it.

It’s always a privilege to work with such a creative, talented and fun group of people! Flagstaff Players is a diverse group made up of school teachers, students, tradespeople, young moms, and even old retired folks like us! We also have two men of the cloth and you’d never guess what roles they’re playing. The local United Church minister, a long time member of the club, was cast as Old Cloutie, better known as the devil himself, while the new associate pastor over at the Nazarene Church plays the role of Judas Iscariot!

Perhaps it’s the teacher in me but one of the things that I enjoy most about being involved in the whole process of putting together a play is watching someone who’s never done this before blossom. We have one such gentleman in this year’s cast. He was hesitant at first, willing to give this acting thing a try but not at all sure that he could do it well. He learned his lines, listened carefully to the director’s advice and as time went by his character began to come to life. As our first audience filled the hall on Friday evening, I know that he was very nervous but when he felt the rush that an actor gets when an audience responds, he was hooked! Watching him come off-stage with newfound confidence in his step and a smile plastered across his face has been such a joy!

One of the things I enjoyed about teaching school in a small community was watching my students grow up and become involved in the life of the community. This weekend I had the privilege of sharing the stage with several of them. In fact, at one point this afternoon, Richard and I looked around the make up room and realized that between us, we’d taught everyone in the room at that moment! Sometimes the hardest part is convincing them that Mrs. DeBock was my teacher name and that they no longer have to call me that!

There's those rubber chickens again!

Some of our productions involve young children. Here’s the littlest member of this year’s cast. She only makes a brief appearance onstage but this is just the beginning. Who knows what roles she might play in the future? Apparently one of our child actors, an adorable six-year-old, was heard to say “I love being in a play” as he drifted off to sleep after opening night!

It takes many people working behind the scenes to put something like this together and in a small town amateur group like ours, people often fill many different roles. Actors can often be found working on set construction, sewing costumes or setting up tables and chairs for the dinner theatre performances. One of our cast members is a talented photographer who took head shots of all of us for the playbill. Here are the photos she took of Richard and I.

   Photography by Natalee

 

After the adrenalin rushes of a very successful weekend, we all need a good night’s sleep and a couple of days off. We’ll gather again on Wednesday evening for one more rehearsal to keep things fresh in our minds and then finish up with two more performances next weekend.

Backstage glimpses

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There hasn’t been much time for blogging this week. An hour and a half of physiotherapy every day has resulted in a knee that doesn’t crack or pop anymore which is wonderful but it’s community theatre that has really cut into my time. We’ve rehearsed every night this week and tonight is the first time we’ve been home before 10:00. Why so busy? Because tomorrow night is opening night!

The play is W.O. Mitchell’s The Black Bonspiel of Wullie MacCrimmon and Richard plays Wullie himself, a role that has him onstage almost the entire time. I, on the other hand, have a very small role so I spend a lot of time backstage.

Theatre looks very different from the back side so I thought I’d share a few glimpses of my backstage world with you tonight.

   


The story takes place in the 1930s. Look at some of the things we found in local barns and workshops!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don’t touch anything on the prop table unless it’s yours and make sure everything is back in place after each performance!

Rubber chickens and microphones! What next?

With five performances over the next two weekends, life isn’t going to settle down for awhile yet!

Sometimes I need an ocean

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When life gets stressful, as it sometimes does, what I really want to do is walk by the ocean and be soothed by the sound of the surf. That’s probably because, as a child, I could hear the rhythm of the waves from my bed as I drifted off to sleep.

The past week has been a stressful one; a week of worrying about my parents. Dad hasn’t been well. That resulted in both parents literally sleeping through one entire day… no food, no water, no medication! If my sister hadn’t phoned that evening, who knows what might have happened?

Recognizing the need for a better emergency plan, my sis and I have spent the week making phone calls, gathering information, asking questions we’d rather not have to ask. Dad is Mom‘s primary caregiver and we’re a province away. What do we do if something happens to him? Is it any wonder that I feel like I need an ocean to walk by?

Alas, there are no oceans here on the Alberta prairie but as I mentioned in my last post, whenever I have the opportunity to walk by the sea I bring home all sorts of bits and pieces… shells, driftwood, sea glass. Many favourite pieces have found their way into our main bathroom. There’s a giant pink conch shell bought for $1 on a beach road in the Bahamas in 1977. We had just found out that I was pregnant with our first child. There’s a beautiful abalone shell, given to my husband by a ranger at a campground on the California coast in 1993. Then there are all the pieces that I’ve picked up over the years. Some are quite ordinary… oyster, clam and mussel shells. Others are special… moon snails treasured since childhood, a razor clam from the PEI beach where my grandfather probably played as a child, a tiny shell from our first visit to Japan, beautiful pieces of sea glass from Saipan and most recently, a shell from Costa Rica.

   


I may not be able to walk by the ocean and let the sound of the surf wash away my troubles but at least I can retreat to the bathroom and relax in a warm tub surrounded by my seaside treasures. Occasionally, a glass of wine even goes with me!

I’m honoured!

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I’m not the winner of many awards; just a few golf prizes and one teeny, tiny trophy. Perhaps that’s why I was so thrilled when Geetanjali, who writes The Open Book blog, nominated me for The Versatile Blogger award! Thank you, Geetanjali!  Geetanjali hails from India and writes about one of my favourite things, books. When I read her post about the Sunday Book Bazaar in Delhi, I was completely hooked!

Try as I might, I haven’t been able to find out anything about the origin of The Versatile Blogger award. I do know that it’s a bit like a chain letter, passed from one blogger to another but unlike the chain letters of old, it doesn’t promise fame or fortune to those who pass it on or threaten doom to those who don’t. It is, in fact, a way to share favourite bits of the blogosphere with our readers and to show appreciation to those whose writing we appreciate.

There are four rules for those who choose to accept The Versatile Blogger award:

  1. Thank the person who nominated you for the award and include a link to their blog.
  2. Select and nominate 15 blogs that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly.
  3. Contact your chosen bloggers to let them know that you are nominating them for the award.
  4. Share 7 things about yourself.
Sounds easy, right? I thought so too until I started thinking about who to nominate. There are a lot of blogs out there! I spent a considerable amount of time over the weekend revisiting blogs I’d stumbled upon in the past and searching out some new ones. I could nominate my daughter’s blog but she’s a very busy mother of preschoolers who simply doesn’t have time to search out 15 blogs to nominate. I doubt she’d appreciate me putting her in that spot. I eventually narrowed it down to the following 15, quite a diverse group. I could simply list the blogs that I’ve chosen but instead, I’d like to tell you a little bit about each of them.
  1. Those of you who’ve been following my blog for very long will have heard of Donloree at Bikini or Bust. I’ve been following her journey to health and fitness for over a year and look forward to every update. She is such an inspiration and I absolutely love her zany sense of humour!
  2. One blog tends to lead to another. I found Faith at The Serious Road to Fitness through Bikini or Bust and adopted her goals as my own.
  3. Nini at A Fine Balance writes about fashion, fitness and food. She calls herself a fashionista on a frugal budget and I like her style!
  4. Maggie at Living Life in Glorious Colour and I have been following one another’s blogs for almost a year and have discovered that we have a lot in common. Her photos are stunning.
  5. Grams is my high school friend, Janis, the only one of these bloggers that I’ve met in person and one of the most creative people I know. She hasn’t updated her blog in quite some time but I’m hoping that this will inspire her to start posting again. A look back at Janis’ earlier posts is well worth it, especially if you’re interested in crafting or home decor.
  6. If you like Grams, you’ll also enjoy Mimi Sue’s Cottage. I love her Sunday Sayings.
  7. I left a piece of my heart in Japan when we returned to Canada after teaching there for a year. Tokyoholic is a graphic designer living in Tokyo. I especially love her photos. She does a wonderful job of capturing the many faces of Japan.
  8. The Simple Life of a Country Man’s Wife lives in South Dakota “intentionally living life each day as it comes.” She understands life in the country and I notice that we often comment on the same blogs.
  9. The Big Sheep Blog “where imagination and business life collide” addresses a wide variety of topics with genuine wit.
  10. ihavetriedit offers lots of great money saving and do-it-yourself tips.
  11. I’ve recently started following Jen at The Scrumptious Pumpkin. Her Winter Vegetable Pasta with White Wine and Parmesan recipe is to die for and I’m looking forward to trying some of her others.
  12. Malou is a Filipina married to a Dutchman and living in the Netherlands. Her blog, Going Dutch, shares many aspects of life in the Netherlands and makes me want to visit.
  13. From a Tuscan Villa is another blog that inspires me to visit Europe soon.
  14. Elizabeth has been writing I Face the Sun for just over a year and I like her outlook on life.
  15. French Twisted Woman is a brand new blogger. She’s off to a great start and I hope this award inspires her to keep it up. Don’t miss her post about her car wash adventure!

And now for the fun part, 7 random things about me. I’ve tried to choose things that I haven’t included on my blog before.

  1. I haven’t actually written a bucket list but if I did, it would include riding in a helicopter and a hot air balloon.
  2. I don’t fit the normal oldest, middle or youngest child profile. Chronologically, I’m a second child but my older brother suffered a brain injury in infancy, before I was born, so in many ways I’m the oldest. Or am I just the most confused…?
  3. I love beachcombing; hauling home seashells, bits of driftwood and sea glass from beaches around the world. Many of them decorate our main bathroom.
  4. I love to dance, especially in my husband’s arms.
  5. I am an arctophile, a person who collects teddy bears.
  6. I am missions president at my church which includes preparing and presenting a five minute Moment for Missions each Sunday morning.
  7. I believe: God is who He says He is, God can do what he says He can do, I am who God says I am, I can do all things through Christ, and God’s word is alive and active in me. If you’ve done Beth Moore’s Bible study, Believing God, you’ll know that this didn’t originate with me but it is my “shield of faith”. Ephesians 6:16

 Happy Valentine’s Day! 

No more CRACK please!

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I clearly remember the first time my knee popped. I was visiting a museum in Sakura, Japan. The gallery was silent. I crouched down to look at something close to the floor and when I straightened up… CRACK! There was no pain but what a shock! What was going on? The year in Japan was a bit hard on our knees… lots of walking, millions of stairs to climb and then, of course, there was climbing Mt. Fuji but this was something new. That was over three years ago. Since then, the knee has popped and cracked with increasing frequency. Now it happens many times a day.

Breaking my toe on the beach in Costa Rica a couple of weeks ago threw a curve into my normal fitness regime but the timing could have been worse. I won’t be doing much walking for awhile and the treadmill is gathering dust but just before we left on our most recent trip, my doctor decided that it was time to try physiotherapy to see if that would help my knee. I saw the therapist a few days after we got back. It’s too soon to know if it’s helping my knee or not but half an hour of physio three times a day is definitely giving my legs a good workout especially since I decided to do all the exercises and stretches with both legs instead of just the affected one. After just a week, I graduated from beginner to intermediate exercises and I also continue to work my legs at the weight bench three times a week. By the time the toe is ready for hiking and treading, the legs should be in prime condition too! I just hope there’s no more loud pops from that left knee!

What a difference a year can make!

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In January of last year, our two-year-old grandson, Drew, was diagnosed with a severe phonological disorder. His speech was virtually unintelligible. Over the past year, Drew and his Mommy, our daughter Melaina, have worked very hard and Drew has had some speech therapy. The results have been astounding! By summertime, he had been upgraded from “severe” to “moderate” and at his latest speech assessment in late January, he was deemed to be within the normal range of speech development for a child of his age! Wow! What a difference a year can make!

Melaina delights in sharing some of Drew’s cutest conversations. Here’s a recent one she overheard between him and his 21-month-old sister as they headed downstairs to their bedroom:

Best Friends

Drew: Come on, Jami. We play soccer ours room.
Jami: Ok!
Drew: We best friends! Right, Jami?
Jami: Uh huh!

Doesn’t that just bless your heart? Here’s another one that tickled my funny bone:

Mommy: Drew, did you colour on your sister?
Drew: Yes.
Mommy: Why?!
Drew: Because! Her get in way of paper I colouring!

And here’s one more from yesterday:

Drew: Mommy, we go buy some new toys?
Mommy: No, we’re not going to buy new toys today.
Drew: Yes! Mine’s are old and strange!

While it warms our heart to be able to carry on a conversation with Drew and life is so much easier for him now that he can make his thoughts and feelings known, his challenges are not over yet. He still struggles with the sounds that are typically difficult for three-year-olds but, unlike his peers, these mispronunciations won’t simply correct themselves over time. Melaina and Aaron will have to continue working with him, carefully teaching him how to make each sound correctly.

They’ve also been warned that children with speech delays like Drew’s typically have difficulty learning to read. That was difficult news to digest for parents who are avid readers but Melaina isn’t one to take something like that lying down. In fact, she was already doing things that would give him a head start toward learning to read before she was even given this news; taking the children to an early literacy program at their local library and reading to them daily. She’d also started teaching Drew to recognize and print the capital letters. Now, three months short of his fourth birthday, he knows all the upper and lower case letters and is beginning to learn the sounds that each one makes. At this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s reading before he goes to school!

Ta da!

Photos by Melaina Graham

We’ve been to Houston!

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If you’ve only been to a city’s airport, can you really say that you’ve been to that city? I don’t think so but if you’ve stayed overnight, then I think you can. Though it was unexpected, we can now legitimately say that we’ve been to Houston, Texas!

On our recent trip to Costa Rica we were reminded of yet another advantage to being retired. When our homeward journey took 24 hours longer than planned, there was no reason to panic, no boss to call, and no substitute teacher plans to make and email or dictate over the telephone! An unexpected night in a Houston hotel wasn’t the big deal that it might have been if we’d still been working.

The delay was also a reminder of how dependant we are on computers to do the things that were once done manually. Our problems began at the Liberia airport where the entire system was down and every passenger had to be processed the old-fashioned way with boarding passes and luggage tags all being written out by hand. They were only able to process us as far as Houston where we’d all have to check in again before boarding our next flight. We were still standing in line when the plane was supposed take off and once we were all onboard, we sat on the tarmac for another hour. No idea what that was about!

Since we had a quick connection to make in Houston, we were pretty sure before we left the ground that we wouldn’t make it. Almost everyone onboard was in the same predicament but the stewardesses told us not to worry. Apparently, there’d been a major storm in Houston that morning with downed trees and power lines all over the place. Numerous flights had been delayed or rerouted. Though the storm had passed by, your planes might still be there when you arrive, they told us.

By this time, we were very hungry. We’d eaten breakfast at 6:30 a.m. before driving three hours to get to the airport. We’d left ourselves plenty of time to buy lunch before boarding the plane but that time had been eaten up standing in line. By now, it was well past lunch time. Gone are the days when airlines actually served meals at no additional cost but we can buy lunch on the plane, we thought. Not so! There were no meals onboard! We had to make do with a snack box. Trail mix and chocolate covered pretzels weren’t quite what we had in mind but they were better than nothing.

Sure enough, when we arrived in Houston, though it was already over an hour past it’s departure time, our flight to Edmonton was still on the ground. We had 25 minutes to catch it! 25 minutes to go through US immigration, claim our luggage, check in, go through security and make our way through the enormous airport to the right gate! Could it be done? We tried! We spoke up and were ushered to the head of the check-in line but there was no way to get through security quickly. When we finally reached the gate, the plane had just pulled away!

That led to another long slow line up as we waited to find out what the airline was going to do with us. Due to the storm, the airport was full of disgruntled, delayed passengers and many of them were in line with us! Though we were hungry, tired and disgruntled ourselves, we were determined to be pleasant. After all, the poor women behind the counter facing angry traveller after angry traveller weren’t at fault. When our turn finally came, Belinda treated us very well. We soon had vouchers for a hotel room and three meals each in hand. She even called to find out when the hotel shuttle would pick us up.

Park Inn on the northern outskirts of Houston was a lovely place to spend the night. Though it was almost 10:00 p.m. by the time we finally checked in, we were soon sitting down to a delicious and much appreciated buffet dinner in the hotel dining room.

In spite of the delay, the trip might have ended quite happily had it not been for baggage problems. Our suitcase spent the night at the airport as it would have taken 3 or 4 hours to get it back and, having had a premonition that such a delay might occur, I’d packed all we’d need for an overnight stay in our carry-on. The next day, when we boarded the plane, I sat down in my window seat, looked out and saw our suitcase sitting on the tarmac waiting to be loaded. Nice! Imagine my dismay, however, when I watched the baggage handlers reject it, load it onto a baggage cart and drive away with it! Alerting the stewardess and the captain did no good and we never did receive an explanation.

The suitcase arrived home three days after we did and somewhere along the line, it must have been used as a punching bag. My toiletries bag was a mess! The handle was broken off my hairbrush and a tube of lotion had been squished all over everything! I always pack a tiny container of powdered laundry soap so that I can wash things out by hand if necessary and that too had been broken open. Fortunately, it had been packed in one of the suitcase’s smallest compartments so the mess was somewhat contained.

Oh well, when I think of our trip to Costa Rica, these aren’t the things I’ll remember. No, I’ll remember beautiful beaches, zip-lining over the rainforest and swimming below a waterfall! And I’ll remember that we’ve been to Houston!