Making The Best Of It

Two east of Toronto girls showing how it's done.


The hockey card shot.


Who needs a helmet when you have hair like Steve's?


Jacques Plante wannabe.


Who says you can't be cold and sexy?

Can We Talk About This Girl For A Minute?

This is Chelsea L.


This lady is originally from the United States of America. There are a few products that one can get in that country that one cannot easily obtain up here in the great, snowy, sled dog laiden north. While visiting a grocery store in her country of origin recently she remembered one of these products and checked to see if they had it.

She came back and presented me with this:



Chelsea L - you get 1,000 points and a large chunk of my love.

We're On A Boat (Yes, With Flippy Floppies) [updated]

Soooo, last weekend a couple of roommates' parents brought their bought up to our place and we took it out. Possibly at one point we found ourselves in a week channel meeting some sizable swells coming in from Lake Ontario. Here is some topsy turny (mostly what you'll have to do with your head) footage:

(UPDATE - you can actually watch it now)

Watching People In Labour

Willem and I took in Hamilton's Labour Day parade. There was a dragon, and we got a frisbee and some candy and there were dogs and buses and trucks and an old timey school teacher and whistles and pipers and waving and fun. Awww.

Out With The Old And In With The New

Many thanks to Jill for the gift of fresh Burt's.

It's A Sad, Sad Night

Tonight is the midnight breakfast at Redeemer. For the past 7 years I attended this event - both semesters. I feel sad I will miss bacon and breastfest tonight. This is truly the end of an era.

A Milestone

This guy turns 25 today.

In case you're new around here, that's my little brother up there. Little brothers should not turn 25. Don't get me wrong, I'm totally enjoying the maturity (sisters, there is hope!), but still, little brothers should not turn 25.

I would like to point out that this particular little brother is a foreman (yup, he got 2 promotions this year) at the 2010 Olympic Bobsled/Luge/Skeleton track in Whistler, BC. Aside from that, he's a pretty good kid who calls his sister pretty regularly and has learned to ride (a snowboard) like he was born to it.

Happy Birthday Johnny, I love you.

(also, a very happy birthday to the L.Bo - Les, your commitment to fighting the results of sin is a constant conviction and encouragement to me, keep fighting the good fight!)

Here and There

Friday I am going to this with this.
Saturday I am going to this with this.

There is a Joni Mitchell quote that would apply here.

Happy Pagan Death Candy Scary Day!

Did you know that palm trees are the opposite of Halloween?
(as usual - click for larger versions)



By carving a palm tree into a pumpkin, I have created a rift in the space-time continuum. We're all doomed.



If I stare long enough into the rift I think I see the Red Sea being parted... oh, wait, that's just me doing a canon ball at the old cottage. My bad.



This what happens when you let an over achieving ed student near a creative outlet (that involves) knives after she's finished her last exam (which was math).



Same deal. We're praying that her sanity will be restored.



Back row (l-r) by: Tashley, Chelsea, Michelle, Chelsea
Front row (l-r) by: Shawna, Tashley, Me, Alyssa, Chelsea



What a bunch of spooky over achievers. Boo!

Vote, Vote, Vote...

...unless you are a felon, 'cause felons can't vote.

I watch this every election day.

Also, ever since I became a laptop owner I spend my election nights with television coverage on and my laptop on my lap, checking the ridings of family, friends and roommates. I make a nice drink and I make popcorn and other snacks. Ohhh, its a good time.

Me = nerd.

Waking Up To A Dead Tongue

Chorus London has an upcoming concert and we will be performing Orff's Carmina Burana. This is pretty exciting as its one of those pieces that you should just sing in your lifetime.

Carmina Burana is in a mix of Latin, German and a few yiddish words, all of a medieval persuasion. Our rehearsals are for 2.5 hours once a week and I have the piece on my computer. The leaves me with bits of the work floating around my head. Thusly I have been waking up random Latin phrases from the piece running loudly through my brain.

This is not a new phenominon for me, it happened all the time in my days as an RUC concert choir memeber. All the time. But, when these phrases went looping through my head I could easily walk through the halls of the school, sing them and have the phrase continued by some pour sap who was suffering from the same fate. I think I liked having the company in that "misery."

Now I'm sure that other Chorus London members are having the same thing happen to them. But I only see them once a week and they are all (well mostly) real adults and I don't think they would react well if I walked into our rehearsal hall and looked at one of them and started bellowing "NAZAZA! NAZAZA! NAZAZA!"

I miss interacting on a daily basis with other choir members and hashing out our Latin, German, Rutter-an, Handel-ian, etc tune cooties together.

Are You Speaking My Language?

The subject of love languages came on my radar around 10 years ago, shortly after the time I became a Christian. I had not(and still haven't) read Gary Chapman's book(s), The Five Love Languages. Since the understanding of the concept of love languages came into my existence I have often used it a much more specific way than I have been told Chapman does. I guess I kind of create some sub categories. For instance, I would say that one of my Mother's love languages is food - she loves with the food she makes. I would say that one of mine is punching - I love with the punches I give to your face. That kind of thing.

It wasn't until church this morning that I actually got to hear what Chapman's 5 languages actually are (imagine my shock and awe when punching and food where not on the list!). They actually really resonated with me both as things that for the most part I think I successfully do, but also as things I very much crave in relationship. As a part of a sermon encouraging us to speak out our faith we were encouraged to listen, watch and learn what other people's love languages are (in A.Z. language - felt needs) and speak them (real deeds).

Chapman's languages are:

1. Words of affirmation - aka encouragement
2. Quality time - aka spending time with someone and making them the focus of that time
3. Gifts - the giving, the recieving, the treasuring
4. Acts of service - allieviating the burdens, meeting the needs
5. Physical touch - we need this to survive and grow

I was really encouraged to hear these 'cause well, I think they are something I do pretty well. Relationships are something that for the most part I do well (I will admit to having made abominations of some relationships). Obviously there is more I can be looking for, more language to learn and to speak.

So as you're going through your life - take some time to think about those who are surrounding you; coworkers; family; friends; neighbours; housemates; community and see if you can listen for those languages. If you can't hear them, pray and ask that you would. It can't hurt to have a little more love in the world.

The Process

Hi.

This is the first big family death for me. I reached 27 years of age with 4 grandparents. That's pretty stellar. But of all the grandparents to go first, it just had to be Grandma Stewart? She was my second mother. This is hard.

Family have been trickling into town in the same manor that baked goods and casseroles have. (I should really chart that) I picked John up from the airport last night. It feels right that the 4 of us are here now. The rest of our family from British Colombia will be here by Friday night. We have found places for them all to stay.

I think my Dad is in shock - he told my Mom to buy new mattresses for the beds that John and I have here. If you've ever slept in the cocoon - it will be no more. My back and my neck are ecstatic about this.

Yesterday was the meeting to decide everything about the funeral. If you're interested in coming its this Saturday at 11am at Carman United Church, just north of Brighton. There is lunch after. (just leave me a message if you want directions) It took almost 3 hours to get things figured out. There are so many details and I don't even realize half of them, I'm just a grandkid. I can only imagine what is swirling around the heads of my Dad and his 4 siblings.

And my Grandpa. I ache for him. Grandma was his worldview. She was his lens. I don't know how he will see. At 94 can you do a paradigm shift?

I am thankful for the support I have been getting personally - the emails, the facebook messages, the text messages, etc. I am really thankful for the group that is coming up to sing at the service. That just reads love. I will also be glad to see some friends, some faces that know me. As glad as I am to be around extended family, these peeps from the Hamilton area have spent more time with me and know how I operate. They are a part of my extended family too and I am so grateful to have their support, and in such a beautiful way.

You'll probably get some more disjointed paragraphs as times moves on.

Thank you.

Surprise!

Sometimes you're at home on a Sunday night unpacking and thinking about bed and a friend calls and asks if she can drop something off for you. You say sure. So the friend shows up at your apartment door.

Sometimes the surprise is this:


(that would an Amanda VH, home from Honduras early)

And sometimes the surprise makes you do this:


(that would be smile and then cry)

It Has To Do With The Epidemic

Last night I had the hottest date that I've had in some time. The lovely Linda and I went out for a "hey you finally graduated" and a "hey you planned the whole graduation" celebration night of dinner, making fun of Burlington and a movie.

The movie we went to see was Baby Mama. It stars Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, both of whom I love. Now I wasn't so sure about the movie though. I hadn't heard too much about it and sometimes these SNL flicks turn out to really suck. But I gave it a chance, and oh my, I laughed my stupid face off. Good gravy there were some good parts to it. I would totally watch it again when it comes out on DVD.

Besides all the good comedy stuff, you want to know why I liked the movie? You know how in those crazy, really only comedy movies they have to have a sort of crazy plot. Like something that sorta almost could happen in real life. And they surround it with lots of little things that do happen in real life, because real life is very funny if you step back. Anyway, always in this plot line the action has to fall, the shoe has to drop and something bad has to happen - the tension that the movie has been resting on has to break and ... bwah. I am kind of sensitive and for really real, and often when this tension breaks I have a hard time handling it - it makes my stomach hurt. So there are many times that I don't like watching a comedy more than once because it makes my stomach hurt too much. A lot of Leave It To Beaver episodes are like this more me - I used to sit on the stairs and wait for the tensiony part to be over and then watch the rest of the episode as a kid. But Baby Mama had the tension, broke it and kept moving forward enough that I didn't hurt. I liked that.

Alors, Linda = hot, Baby Mama = very funny.

Maybe

Maybe my parents surprised me today - maybe this morning they asked me if I might want to drive with John to Whistler and then fly back in time for grad on the 24. Maybe I said, "well, I don't know, me and my lack of job are pretty dang busy, but I guess I can fit it in."

We leave Wednesday morning.

Expect as many updates as I can manage.

Maybe Dad is sending his camera with us.

We are kicking off this voyage with a time of fellowship and Brassie Nachos, Tuesday May 13, 2008, 6:30pm. You are invited. But if you're gonna come, lemme know via email or the comment section so I can warn the Brassie staff.

Alto Friends Are Good Friends

Rubber Meeting The Road

I've been watching a lot of movies (or rather a few movies a lot of times) over the past little while. This morning I watched Fried Green Tomatoes for the first time in like years and years (like I probably haven't seen it since I moved out of my parents' house). After watching it, I realized that that movie is in essence a statement of how I view friendship or my philosophy of friendship. If you 're a friend of mine you should watch it sometime.

Terrifying Memories of High School

If you knew me in high school, and there are a few of you lovely readers out there that did, you'll remember my terrible, life interrupting, worry causing, doctor baffling migraines. When I left for University my neurologist said that he hoped for my sake that hormone changes in my early 20s would help me to grow out of them. I had a couple of doozies in my first year here in Hamilton, and then went on "the pill" and things evened out. I have still got some pretty terrible headaches, but nothing like the days of old. Until this week...

Oh holy shit. Yeah, I'm gonna leave the word shit up here, that's how bad it was. (Potential ministry employers beware, sometimes I say the word shit - I like to shift the blame for that to the Dutch)

I haven't been on the pill since September due to financial constraints. This past Monday I was at the ophthalmologist. She put some crazy drops in my eyes that made my pupils go crazy for a long time. This was happening while I had a crazy day filled meetings, a lot of painting and work for the mainstage set, not enough eating, not enough drinking (of water, Dad), not enough sleeping and general stress of mainstage crunch time and a CITB week.

By Monday night I had a pretty decent headache going, nothing that wasn't explainable or handleable. Tuesday morning I woke up and my neck and shoulders were just killing me. I figured I'd slept pretty tensely and that I would get over the neck stuff as the day went on. But instead it got to the previous day's headache and made things worse. By mid-afternoon I was starting to get a bit of a hurt on. I was relaxing with my friend Jacki who gave me a bit of a neck massage and I had hoped that would help things out. We went to choir and maybe singing, or maybe having sopranos singing in the row behind, made things worse. The pain escalated, and I ended up having to excuse myself part way through the rehearsal to go hurl. I went straight home after rehearsal to bust out the codeine and rest before Church in the Box rehearsal (and yearbook picture night!). The pain continued to get worse and I knew that I couldn't lead my rehearsal. Jacki's calm voice prevailed in also convincing me that it wasn't a good idea for me to drive either. I arranged for my lovely assistant leader Rachel to run our rehearsal and Jacki brought me in for the picture, took me back home and made sure that my ice pack and I were snuggly tucked into bed. I hoped for a full night's sleep, no more puking (pipe dream) and the ability to bounce back for Wednesday.

I spent the entirety of Wednesday in bed, getting up only to go to the bathroom or quickly get food.

By the end of Wednesday I thought I was feeling a bit better, had a much nicer over night and woke up on Thursday feeling considerably more human. Chelsea came over for a little visit. We talked for a while, and then I needed to rest and she needed to research. My head was beginning to hurt more and more and I hoped the rest would take care of that. That maybe I had just had my eyes open for too long and was excited at seeing another human who cared for me. I didn't fall asleep, but did rest, but at the end of the rest I did not feel better, I tried for more rest. Still no good. I cancelled my voice lesson.

Chelsea and I had a chiropractic appointment that she drove us to. Tony got some fantastic movement on my upper cervical spine (i think that's what he said, i was a little out of it) that was pretty locked up. He was concerned as he hadn't really seen me so much not like myself (Gayle and Mira, you should give him some lessons). Chels started to drive me home and I knew I wouldn't be able to do choir.

If you know me know, you know that I am not feeling any kind of good if I miss a CITB rehearsal the week of a service and a choir rehearsal when I know that there are already 3 altos missing from that rehearsal.

I get back to my apartment, get back into my bed, and get back to the codeine. I try to sleep with no luck. The pain is continuing to get worse. Later in the evening I alert Chelsea to my possible need to go the ER for help and ask her to be ready. She and Tashley make provisions for that. I try for more sleep, still nothing. The pain is getting crazy. Normally I listen to The Simpsons or well known movies on my laptop to help pass the hours. I didn't want to hear anything, the lappy was closed. My eye cover was on, while I was laying in a dark room already - the cracks of light coming in from the streets were even bothering me. And then I really began to notice that I was itchy. The Tylenol 3s had made me tingly and itchy, head to toe. I mentioned this to Jacki (who had called to check in) and she was concerned about an allergic reaction. Maybe so was I, but their pain killing abilities were the only thing holding me together.

Jacki and I tried to call Telehealth (yes Dad) to ask them about this itch thing and maybe this pain thing. It wasn't going to work and Jacki pleaded with me to just go to the hospital (when recounting this to my Mom, she wondered why I was so stubborn and just didn't go earlier - the triage nurse in the ER wondered why I didn't come in on Tuesday). So I called Chelsea and withing 15 minutes she, Tashley and I were on our way to Mac.

We had a relatively short wait of 3ish hours in the waiting room at the ER. Most of that was agony due to so much bright lights, so many uncomfortable chairs and so many loud, sick children (but loud, sick children need the most attention). Oh yeah, and there were some vocal parents wondering (very loudly to anyone who could hear - which was everyone) why their children were not already seeing a doctor and there was some very cracked out children's television programming (which I wasn't watching, but could hear the giggles of Chels and Tashley as they watched).

Around 5:30am I got into the ER and fairly quickly got to see a doctor. They had put me in a room by myself, which was nice as the lights could be turned off. The doctor gave me a through looking over, determined that I was not an addict and that I didn't have any obvious underlying neurological problems (neurological is different than mental, people!) and prescribed me a shot of Toradol. Not too long after that, one of Becca Scholtens' sisters in law came and gave me said shot. I had to wait a bit to make sure that I didn't have any reaction to the shot and then I was allowed to go. By 7:30am I was back in my apartment again.

Sleep felt like a victory as I had not seen it for 24hrs. I slept for almost 5 hours. When I woke up I felt like a new woman for about 2 hours and then needed to rest again. Of course yesterday night was the Redeemer Spring Banquet, and my friends had convinced me to go. I had made arrangements to have friends help me with hair and make-up and everything. Sigh. I decided while I was still feeling invincible that I should go for just the dinner. Jacki convinced me that driving may not be the best idea. So I arranged for Amy and Jon to pick me up and Jacki said she would bring me back.

I went back to sleep, and then got up and got ready. The getting ready part should have been my first clue to the fact that it may not have been the wisest idea to go. As it pooped me out to the point where I had to lay down for half an hour before my ride came. When we got there I felt pretty light headed and spacey, and Amy and Jon said they actually waited for me to finish a conversation with someone because there were afraid I wouldn't be able to get to our table by myself. It sucked to be at a banquet and feeling the way I was. Where I would ordinarily be flitting around talking to everyone, my instincts were to stay sitting (actually, I wanted to be laying back down). Garner was playing nice dinner music (which was the first music I had heard in days), but it seemed so loud, and there were so many people and so much light.

The pain was getting worse as the evening went on. My stomach started to churn as I put food in it. I finally finished eating, Jacki finished eating and she brought me back here. I went straight to bed.

I woke up in pain again this morning. And have had to write this post in shifts. My eyes can't handle the reading, and I'm still really exhausted and hurty. Mom said it will take me another 3 or 4 days to get over this. Especially with CITB tomorrow.

I just thought I'd update you, in true, too many details Laura style.

(this got written in shifts - sorry for lack of editing or continuity)

Combining Both

A combination of the previous two posts happened to me today - a food related milestone - I shared in my first Cinnabon today. Chelsea exposed/treated.

There was bewilderment as to how I could have existed so long without having one - but my explanation was simple - the notorious B.E.V. Who needs mall pastry growing up when you have Bev at home?