A couple weeks ago on my birthday weekend, we went camping at Nickle Lake which is a regional park just outside of Weyburn where Shea's parents have a seasonal camping site.
My parents came down with their camper as well (surprising Shea's folks which is an ongoing back and forth contest between them.) On the Saturday, we all drove out to Creelman which is Shea's hometown ("population: 50 if nobody died that day" as my slightly insensitive but oh so true joke. Oops, looking at that Wikipedia entry, the populations's actually 81. My mistake!) for their annual Agricultural Fair.
The Weyburn Review was out taking photos of the day's activities and though Pace didn't make the paper, he (along with the rest of the not-as-cutes in his family) did make their online gallery (see photo 15 for the shot of our crew plus a couple that Shea went to school with and their kids at the parade). There are some other familiar faces in the gallery - Shea's aunt is in photo 21 for example. And my favourite is photo 12 from the infamous "pig scramble" which we almost got Pace to enter but he changed his mind right after going into the pig pen.)
I thought about putting some video I took of the pig scramble on YouTube but I'd hate to be the person responsible for getting it shut down by PETA or whichever animal rights group monitors these things. I did come across this photo on some random photo site which actually looks like Pace's cousin who *did* win $25 in one of the heats!
So if you don't click through to that gallery to see me wearing a very sexy bush jacket, consider this your Saturday Snap of the week...
The controversial traveling show "Our Bodies" is at Regina's Science Centre right now and they're offering a lecture series each week to go with the topic. This week's subject was "Kids As Couch Potatoes" and that seemed fairly relevant to our lives these days so we decided to go check it out.
Some random thoughts on both... - I'm not sure what I expected but the exhibit didn't blow me away. I even wondered if we were getting the full show or if we got a bit of a mini-version being a smaller centre. (My memory of hearing about it when it played Toronto while in library school was that tickets were like $50 or $75 or something. Here, I think it's $20 and we got a discount for coming on lecture night.)
- the lecture revealed that kid watching TV is...bad! (Who'd a thunk it?) But still an informative talk with lots of good information and statistics (now where do those come from?)
- also lots of information about our society's less-than-active lifestyles - kids *and* parents - which are obviously closely linked.
- Shea and I both know we let Pace watch too much TV (and here I'll sound like that smart but not too smart friend from a recent blog post who happily used a sample size of one to show that formula feeding ain't that bad) but I watched a lot of TV growing up and I feel like I turned out okay. In fact, you rarely hear people (outside of the TV industry I guess) citing some of the benefits of watching television - it gives you cultural literacy and I'd argue a better awareness of our commonality than perhaps any other medium, it gives you visual literacy, it helps you in social situations, it can help you win money on TV game shows (okay, now I'm stretching and my arguments are collapsing in on themselves too!)
- speaking of breastfeeding, again that idea that extended breastfeeding doesn't get the promotion it deserves is all over the place when you're looking for it. The lecturer pointed out that UNICEF recommends six months of breastfeeding and I felt Shea tense, knowing she wanted to scream out "two years!" (They're both right - UNICEF recommends six months of *exclusive* breastfeeding but for that to be sustained for two years. But the point - why wouldn't a PhD in children's health studies take this opportunity to promote breastfeeding for the longer length of time in a crowd with lots of parents and families present?)
- Then, in the "fetal" part of the exhibit (not as bad as it sounds but they had it curtained off with an additional warning notice), they had one sign talking about SIDS which listed some of the contributing factors - pre-mature birth, drug & alcohol dependency in the mother, etc. But of course no mention that not being breastfed is now considered just as much of a potential cause of SIDS as those other things.
- Lots of the controversy around the exhibit is about the exhibition of human bodies for what is, in essence, entertainment (edutainment?) There is also some concern from the religious angle which, as an atheist, I can nicely ignore. Much more worrisome is the uncertainty about how the bodies were obtained and what sort of consents (if any) were in place. I mean, I've got my signed organ donor card in my wallet. But no similar document can or has been produced for these specimens who are suspected to possibly be executed Chinese criminals or worse (body trafficking?)
- our regular babysitter got her license recently and that's probably a clue that we'll be looking for a new babysitter soon. She's already gotten a job at a local bakery but says she'll still do some babysitting...at least for the time being. Man, where did the last couple years go?
It's World Breastfeeding Week so here's a song, written by a nursing student, about the subject.
I don't usually
do a long narrative for my Music Monday posts but I'm got to say that
I'm so amazingly proud of Shea for the dedication she put into
breastfeeding Pace for over two and a half years - never spending more
than 24 hours away from him in all that time (actually, she might not
have done so to this day!)
Breastfeeding
(and especially extended breastfeeding) is one of those things in life
that you feel like you can't talk up because it's (sadly) such a
minority position. Shea once mentioned to a friend that part of the
reason we haven't had a second child yet is that it's so draining to do
extended breastfeeding and she feels like she's just finished doing it
for our first child even though he was now three.
"Well, you don't
*have* to do it that long" the friend responded. Now this friend
wasn't one of those new mothers who leaves their freshly hatched baby with the
grandparents when the baby's three (weeks, not years! ) to go on a jaunt to Vegas. In fact, she's fairly "crunchy" (eg.
hippy-esque) in most ways. But still that suspicion of extended
breastfeeding comes through when you hear comments like that - even from
people who you'd expect to be a bit more open-minded.
Another
friend who's otherwise extremely intelligent brought out the "I was
formula fed and I turned out okay" argument. True, this person is smart
but apparently not smart enough to recognize that a sample size of one
is statistically invalid!
Anyhow,
I didn't mean this to be a rant (and I'm very aware that's how many
"lactivists" are thought of within larger society. Or should I say,
that's how they're portrayed. There are some very powerful corporations
and special interests who stand to benefit greatly by marginalizing
breastfeeding and making it shameful.)
But one of the ways that Shea's influenced me is by making me an even
bigger believer in breastfeeding than I hope I would have otherwise
become. (It's not something I probably thought a lot about before
getting married and having kids. But I'm pretty sure I would've been a
breastfeeding believer on some level - if for no other reason than the
common sense science of it. Hmm, something the human body has evolved
over thousands of years as the perfect food to give a newborn every
advantage or...a powder made in a factory?)
We happened to
just watch *Grown-Ups* the other night (thanks to the staffer at "Live
with Regis & Kelly" who put it out as a torrent! ) and one of the running jokes was that one character's wife is still breastfeeding their child at four years old. "Oh well, at least extended breastfeeding is getting some publicity?" I said to Shea.
On the other end of the pop culture spectrum from Adam Sandler fart and poop movies is the supermodel Gisele who is a proud breastfeeding advocate,
saying it helped her regain her figure after giving birth and if she
could, she would make it law that new mothers have to breastfeed for a
minimum of six months. (Yes, I know all the arguments about "My milk
didn't come in - I had to bottle feed" or "My baby just refused to latch
so I had to bottle feed" but that's a whole other post for some other
time.)
So anyhow, given a choice between a supermodel and Sandler, I know who I'd pick!
Recurring feature alert! I've done this before where I do five quick hits on my five most common topics on this blog and why not, let's do it again.
Here's a few quick hits on my most popular topics...
Hockey Uhm, it's July 28. This does not bode well for this aspect of the Pop Topics recurring feature. Luckily the Reddit hockey sub-reddit has lots of posts to keep a fan interested. Here's one on "The Ten Ugliest Hockey Players of All-Time" and I'm proud to say I picked #1 before clicking the link!
Libraryland "Libraries get a mall make-over" highlights a trend for locating public libraries in malls and I've gotta say, RPL has been on this trend for fifteen years when we first put a library in a local mall. (Er, that date may not be exactly right. I wasn't around then...) Plus we're doing the co-locating thing all over the place - we've got one branch from the same era in a city facility that also has an indoor pool, we've just broken ground on a re-located branch that will become part of an inner-city community centre and another will be part of a shared facility that has a wide range of community organizations in it including public health, police, schools and more.
Pace Cuteness Let's see...this wasn't Pace directly but we thought it was funny when he came home with some art from daycare labeled "Paste" by a casual worker they had in that day. We knew "Pace" was a fairly unique name but never expected it to be mis-heard like that! This probably doesn't count as "cute" either but when we were heading out of town last weekend, Pace immediately recognized McDonald's, thought Superstore was Wal-Mart and today, saw a Domino's logo on top of a car and happily exclaimed, "Pizza delivery car." His brand awareness probably provides way too much insight into the crap we do as consumers!
Politics I love this take-down of the Tea Baggers. They don't get mad at some of the most outrageous acts in the history of their nation but try to offer people the ability to go to a doctor when they need to and look out!
Went to my hometown this weekend for the grand re-opening of the historic Bell Farm Round Barn , a reconstruction of the original building which had been near collapse only a few short years ago which would've been a shame, both for the loss of history and also, on a more personal note, as this farm was on the way to our own family farm and I've spent much of my life driving past this building, which often inspired thoughts about the people who settled in the area and the groundwork they laid for our present lives here on the prairies.
The reconstruction used many of the same stones and materials from the original structure although with a few added touches to keep with modern building codes (the original had neither plumbing or electricity.)
It did however have many firsts and significant accomplishments including the first phone system ever operated in Saskatchewan. This was how the founder, Major Bell, kept in touch with the twenty-seven cottages where his foremen lived and worked across this 53 000 acre farm - a farm so large that that passing trains would often stop so passengers could have a gander!
Hopefully one of the areas original tourist attractions can once again regain that mantle. If you're in the area, I encourage you to check it out.
4400 km. 20 days. 9 stops. 3 provinces. One really awesome trip! And a super-long post to vent all the built-up thoughts after three weeks without blogging!
Here are some random thoughts about our trip...
1. "It's the journey, not the destination" Shea's a "destination" person and I'm a "journey" person and though neither is right or wrong, I was happy to hear Shea say really early in the trip that she's getting to enjoy the journey instead of just wanting to get to our destination. If we'd just focused on our destinations (at least as we roughly outlined them before the trip), we'd have missed so many serendipitious experiences - from the enjoyable evening spent in the pools at Harrison Hot Springs to once again seeing the beautiful sight of the endless wind turbines on the southern route home, via Crowsnest Pass and Lethbridge.
2. The iPhone Rocks I'm already on record for how much I love my iPhone having named it "best purchase of the year" in last year's Christmas entry (I think I said it was the best thing I've ever bought actually.) But this trip made me realise even more, how amazingly useful it is. We took Shea's dad's GPS system but never even used it because the iPhone (even without a turn-by-turn GPS app) with Google Maps was more than sufficient for finding where we were going. With the tap of a button, we could call hotels from the road after doing a Google search for them (and a quick scan of TripAdvisor to see how they were rated.) I bought an FM Transmitter before we left and after loading the iPhone with about 10 GB of music (roughly half of our favourites and half randomly generated by iTunes), that became our radio for the trip. The camera was so convenient during our various roadside stops compared to our digital camera which we never seemed to have at hand. Pace could play games on it during those few occasions he got bored in the van or while waiting in restaurants. On and on and on.
3. Four Square Rocks Too...When Traveling Anyhow I'm still not sure how much I'll use Four Square (a location-based service where you "check-in" as you stop at various locations) in Regina since my check-ins would be some variation of: "Home", "Work", "Playground", repeat. But while traveling, it was great to check-in at the various hotels, restaurants, tourist attractions and so on. Often, you'd find that people have posted "tips" and those could be useful. For example, I looked at "Nearby Tips" while waiting for Shea to run back to our hotel for her sunglasses just after we checked into our Vancouver hotel. By the time she got back to the street, I had an awesome avocado milkshake in hand from a nearby coffee shop!
On a related note, it's getting to the point that you could probably follow our entire trip, not just by our Facebook updates and Tweets (which we didn't do that often) but by the other similar but more targeted services we use - Four Square to track where we went, Last.fm to see the music we listened to and so on. If I was brave/stupid enough to join Blippy, you'd know everywhere that I'd made a purchase including hotels, gift shops, restaurants and so on.
4. It Never Rains in Vancouver Although I've never spent a huge amount of time in most Canadian cities (save Regina, Calgary and London), I've visited many of them. And based on those limited experiences, I came to the conclusion that I could live in mid-sized cities like Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, London - cities in the roughly 500 000 to 1 million range) but that I could never live in the bigger cities - Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver. Our time in Vancouver, though completely biased by being tourists and having barely a single drop of rain during our time there, made me think that I could possibly live in that city. Maybe.
5. Three Weeks Holidays My standard line about taking three weeks holidays was that "I haven't had that much time off in a row since I was last unemployed!" (I only took two weeks when Pace was born - something I regret to this day.) It was so weird at the end of the first week to think, "Hmm, during most of my holidays, I'd be getting ready to head back to work next Monday and now, my holidays aren't even half over." I've got a few other thoughts about holidays - how long they should be to be optimal and that dread comment, "You must be really refreshed and ready to go back to work" but I won't get into them here.
6. "Honey, Where's the Animatronic Mouse?" Shea and I got two "Valentine's" meals during our entire trip - wicked meals in nicer restaurants where your tab for two people might be bigger than the tab for six the following night at a Memphis BBQ joint (er, just as one example off the top of my head.) One was at Hanna's in Kelowna while Pace was being babysat by relatives and one was at the Teahouse in Stanley Park which our non-child having friends thought would be a great place to go for a Friday night sunset meal. Luckily, Pace was on his best behaviour for the most part and we ended up having a wonderful experience and nothing from the bread plate was thrown at any nearby tables. (We also got to eat a wide range of cuisines - from sushi to Korean to East Indian - throughout our trip and we're lucky Pace will eat most things. We only had fast food twice - once on the way out of Regina and once just before we got home while passing through Swift Current.)
7. The World's Longest Wine Tour? We managed to hit three wineries in Kelowna - Tantalus, Cedar Creek and Summerhill but a highlight was on our last day when we stopped at last year's Tourism Saskatchewan "Business of the Year", Cypress Hills Winery and Vineyards just outside of Maple Creek. (More serendipity - the winery had been closed by the flooding in the area - which also made us wonder if we'd get home - but had just re-opened on the day we were passing through.)
8. Let's Go See What They've Done With the Hospital Gift Shop! After visiting a few different libraries on our trip - in Calgary, Kelowna, Vancouver, North Vancouver and playing "spot the local branch" as I drove through many smaller towns - I started wondering "Is there any other profession where practitioners visit similar operations in other cities?" Shea has no need to visit hospitals in other cities. Teachers don't go to other schools. But lots of librarians visit libraries. I wonder why that is?
9. In Absence of Blogging... ...I rediscovered my personal journal which I wrote in more than I have since, well, since I started this blog four years ago. Each has their advantages - I love the connection that the blog gives me to people around the world and the platform it gives me to blab my thoughts so freely. But the journal is special too - for allowing me to truly record my thoughts and opinions with no self-censorship and no thought of who may read it - now or in the future. (Okay, I sometimes dread the thought of Pace reading my journal someday after I'm gone from this earth. But I guess I wont' care much by then either, now, will I?)
10. One Highlight? The question you always get asked after any trip - what was the highlight? - truly has no answer this time around after a trip where we had so many fun, exciting, magical experiences - both planned and spontaneous.
If someone had a gun to my head, I think I'd pick our night in Harrison Hot Springs, halfway between Kelowna and Vancouver. That's a trip you can do in a day easily but we'd decided, both to make it easier on Pace and also because we had such a large amount of time off, that we'd break our trip into lots of little stops.
We were looking at a map and noticed Harrison Hot Springs and after talking to some relatives who raved about it, decided to stop there. I'd checked online and it looked like they didn't have rooms available but when we called from the road, they said there were lots available and to just show up. We not only got a great rate (the hotel was at low vacancy due partly to recent bad weather and partly due to the depressed economy) but unasked, they also gave us a free upgrade to a pool view room.
We enjoyed their tea time service (yep, it's a pretty traditional hotel in some ways) soon after checking in then went for a swim. Pizza in our room to relax then another swim that extended to nearly 11pm since we ended up chatting with a fascinating couple who'd met protesting at Clayoqout Sound, had lived in Australia and Bali, were traveling across Canada in a camper van (well, we saw the next day that this is what they called their motorhome so not 100% the hippies we'd assumed!) and had two young kids including a girl who was Pace's age who hit it off marvelously.
Delicious breakfast buffet the next morning overlooking the scenic lake and then on the road after stopping for some locally grown hazel nuts. Good times!
We're off for a few weeks' holidays, planning to hit Calgary, Kelowna and Vancouver as our main ports of call. Here's a shot from somewhere near Brooks, Alberta. "When you gotta go" and all that - glad we decided to throw the potty in the van with us!
The funniest/scariest part of this was the two dudes who stopped where we'd parked on a side road to ask if we were okay. We told them we were and that we'd just stopped for a potty break. "We'll need one soon, too!" they said, holding up their beers and driving off, turning onto the #1 highway!
Stupid YouTube blocked the audio on this stupid video because I used a stupid Oasis song as the backing track.
So there was a bit of a delay (which you might not even notice since I'm backdating this post to May 19 when the video was supposed to go up, dagnabit!) so I could get this uploaded to a different service, Vimeo, which I now *highly* recommend for not being copyright jerk-holes!
The names of your own generation sound too ordinary, your parents' too
boring, your grandparents' too old. But by the time you make it back to
your great-grandparents' names, things start to perk up. You've never
known a young Vivian or Julius, so those names sound fresh to you.
I rediscovered this this box in the garage recently and Pace was *very* excited to get so many "new" toys all at once!
For Pace, it's new but for me, this box contains so many childhood memories. I used to spend hours, not just re-enacting Star Wars & GI Joe scenes but using the figures to simulate hockey games, wrestling matches and football games. I used to act out movies, TV shows and rock bands with these figures - some based on real shows or bands I'd seen but many times creating originals out of my head.
) to go on a jaunt to Vegas. In fact, she's fairly "crunchy" (eg.
hippy-esque) in most ways. But still that suspicion of extended
breastfeeding comes through when you hear comments like that - even from
people who you'd expect to be a bit more open-minded.
) Plus we're doing the co-locating thing all over the place - we've got one branch from the same era in a city facility that also has an indoor pool, we've 
