It used to be this easy. Roll back into town, make a few lunches and send the squirts back to class. This classic Staples commercial is my favourite reminder of what back to school joy to mean for us parents and the faces on most of our kids. 2020 is going to be a completely different ballgame.
Where do go from here? Kids are back in class in most areas, being eased in before the long weekend with a whole bunch of new rules to manage around, no lockers to store stuff and a whole bunch of face masks that make it hard to know what anyone is smiling and saying. In Alberta, we have just seen a spree of teachers and support staff come through pharmacies to get swabbed and tested for COVID with the hope that they can set a baseline for themselves starting the year. We have also now had the first of the school outbreaks in some schools and the uncertainty starts from here. Only a small percentage of parents opted for their kids to school from home and the rest of the kids are in class again starting tomorrow.
There is no right or wrong answer here for parents or kids. Our experience with the web-based schooling in the fall was a difficult one. The teachers did a great job adapting to the style and preparing a new way of teaching. The issue was more so the fact that as working parents, we did a poor job of managing the boys through the challenges involved, starting with getting their asses on the computer! Hard to know what’s right for each family and if you are blessed with an educator at home, you may be smarter to keep the kids there too. For those of us who work, we rely on the school system to teach our kids while we keep the economy moving. What are the best steps to take:
Continue to get tested
In Alberta, I applaud the Government for making testing readily available for those that need it (symptomatic) but also for those who are forced to work in larger cohorts (asymptomatic) and have the risk attached to that. Armed with that, parents can have their kids tested as frequently as desired and better manage the seasonal cold realities. Your local pharmacies can test for people who have not been in contact with a positive case and who have no symptoms as listed by AHS. Set up a plan with your family to have them tested as often as possible.
2. Stay home if you have any of the symptoms
Seems obvious now but that makes for some tough decisions for parents. It is the only thing to do when faced with a child who has the seasonal flu and we should all take the decision out of the school’s hands. If you have older children, the issue is often whether they are telling you how they are feeling so we need to create some honest communication with kids along the way.
3. Get the Flu shot in October
This is essential for protection against the regular flu and this year you will not want to face the problems related to COVID compounded with the seasonal flu. Some reports out of South America are reporting that the strains of flu are responding to the vaccine this year. There are also studies that show that getting the vaccine is helping lessen the effects of COVID, should you contract the virus. Alberta has purchased only enough vaccine for 45% of Albertans and this will put demand on the vaccine. Get this as early as you can when it launches in October.
All we can do is do the right things at home and protect your family from COVID, through the interactions we have daily. Educate the kids on the things they can do and the importance of why school being open is important. If the cases jump and the schools close up, we will all face a challenge that will hamper the kids for years to come. Do the right thing now.
It’s no easy task thinking back to when you were 13 years old. My grade 8 brain had all sorts of notions about where life would go and what it would mean to be successful. Man was I an idiot. The best part of that year was the fact that we wrote ourselves a letter that was supposed to be opened when we turned 50 years old. By some stroke of luck, I found the seed envelope a few months ago and told the story to Mary. She was fascinated by the concept that something I wrote to myself had been unopened for this long. What had I written? What would I become? An astronaut? A baseball player? All I could think about were the stupid things my teenage mind would have written. Time will tell as I will open it in 2022 but for now I figured I would take stock against the things a 13 year old thinks makes you successful.
Strike out – Own a house with a pool (indoor would be awesome!)
No chance here. For one, we live in Calgary where you might be able to use a pool for 8 days a year. Not much value in that. Secondly, it one of those things that is the kind of luxury that very few people have the money to buy and less have the money to support. My luxury money has better uses.
YES! – Own a Big, Big, Big screen TV
That always seemed like something only the rich people would have. When you were 13, you were happy to have a 21″ colour TV and by 1985, you had at least a dozen channels to watch. The real lucky ones had a Superchannel cable box and more programming than you could imagine. In those days, all the good stations we on cable boxes and those of us without it were shut out. Like any typical teenage boy, we would spend late evenings watching the CBC French channel hoping to catch the occasional nudity or something dirty that only existed on the French channel. Now we take for granted that we all have TV’s larger than life and 900 channels of stuff we never knew we cared about. The is always a bigger TV out there somewhere and mine certainly isn’t the biggest around but the combined amount of screen in this house would make one hell of a TV.
YES! – A car phone
You know the ones from 1985, the phone built into the dashboard of your car or even better yet, built into the backseat! Nobody I knew had anything like the ones on TV and you would have thought that it would have been one of those things that would never happen. Suddenly, the microprocessor is created and we have phones that can basically do anything. It’s not the way I envisioned it back when I was 13 but I essentially watched a movie on my phone today and that’s amazing to me still.
YES! – A home basketball hoop that looked like an NBA hoop
This was another pipe dream for the pre-teen basketball fan. Most of us has a wooden pole with a wood backboard. If you were lucky, you had something mounted to the roof of the garage to shoot at. Even the luckiest of kids, had nothing that resembled the pro version. In today’s world, you can buy some sweet hoops now. We are lucky the boys are totally into basketball and we have a cup de sac to use it in so we bought one of those sweet hoops for them to enjoy. No wood backboards for these guys.
YES! – A home computer
You remember the computer of the 1980’s…
Nope, I didn’t have a Commodore 64 or an original Apple or even an early version of a PC. It took us until the mid-90’s before I invested my hard-earned dollars into my first PC. It was a clunky piece of shit but it was amazing. It connected me to things that my brain never had even thought of outside of my ole’ Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedias. Like we all did in the 80’s, we just wanted to be a part of the digital world. I was lucky to have an Atari 2600 to see what happened to the video game console evolution but through sampling programming and other simple computer options when in school, you wanted to have one of these things. It seems pretty trivial now with the technology we now see.
Being 13, these “might” be the kind of things that I would have written about in that time capsule letter. It could always be worse, as I might have written about the following:
Time will tell what my adolescent mind used valuable paper and ink to write about. It will be fascinating to me no matter what it says. My advice is get your kids to write something down for themselves as 50 years comes faster than you could imagine. Can you only imagine the amazing things they will predict will be in their future!
Canada is an amazing country with amazing sights and things to do. I love most everything about it and its people. There is one thing I could do without is the weather. Thankfully, the weather mostly turns around in June and if we’re lucky, it lasts until October. The shortness of the warm season is one of the big drawbacks of living north of the 49th parallel. Like a lot of us Canadians, we clamour for the warmth and try to pack in as much as possible as we can into these months. Covid-19 has made this year’s summer solstice more complicated than other years prior. I have some very specific things that I need to get done this summer to make it complete.
Simple time spent outdoors
It seems like the logical starting point for summer but easier said than done when things like work chew into the available daytime hours. This would be an easier task if you could wake pop everyday and just hit the outdoors but not totally realistic at this point of my life. My best ways to capture some of of the rays come from the the combination of evening walks with the pups, playing some family basketball and getting some selected moments with the family sitting on the deck. Getting outside doesn’t always have to be momentous, it just needs to be outside.
Lake-time Living
Mary has always been the driving force behind this in our family. I didn’t grow up camping, had done a bit in my early 20’s and with the boys when they were younger but largely never developed the full itch. What I did develop the itch for was the simplicity of sitting in the sun and doing very little. I like to read and write and there is no better time sitting in a lawn chair to do either. Oh sure, there are traditional lake fun things to do like boating and swimming but the best times are had sitting in the sun and soaking it up. Mary was right. Camping can be fun if you are with the right people and the sun is out.
Take up a new sport – biking
Like the old adage goes, Before buying a lighter bike, start by making yourself lighter. I could use some new exercise in my life after Covid took its toll on my routine and I think biking may be it. I have been on some recent rides and realized that it might be the perfect storm of my favourite things to do; exercise, music & sunshine. There are so many amazing places to bike in Calgary and I plan to try and explore many that I’ve never seen. I would also like it if Mary would take this up with me as I think it would be amazing to have a partner along for those rides.
Spend some time with Mary, outdoors.
We spent the early part of Covid doing some work around the house inside and out. The weather was pretty good in mid-April and we took advantage of the time. She loves to camp and I’m a fair-weather camper. I like to exercise outside and she likes to do her work inside. I am not a fan of the rain and she is not deterred by it. Through all of that, we generally like being outside more than inside and we will do as much of that as possible in July/August. I think I’ve finally realized that it’s less important what we are doing and more important that we do it together. There is no better place to hang out doing something, outdoors with her.
Do some travel within Alberta and Canada.
Normally, we would be using the summer months to travel to destinations unknown, trying to get away from normal life in Canada. This year, it’s time to do exactly the opposite and stay closer to home. Let me be clear, I am not a “staycation” guy. It’s impossible to escape the business needs and this model won’t work for me. But you don’t have to get very far away from home/work for you to turn things off and relax. Seeing parts of Alberta is something we all should do, and do it in a way that allows you to soak it all in. We don’t spend nearly enough time in the mountains and there are some amazing parts of the eastern part of the Province that need to be seen. I think we are all looking for new adventures to take us places this summer. Travel close to home, wherever you live.
There will come a day where Mary and I will spend parts of our year in places with far better weather than Calgary. In the meantime, the 2020 goal is to embrace the summer Calgary-style. There are amazing things to see and do here and why not do it during the best weather of the year. Take on your own personal challenge to spend more time outdoors, wherever you are this summer.
There is no doubt to anyone who is a parent, that it is a lifelong responsibility. Speak to your grandparents about the evolution of worries that occur throughout your life when it comes to the care for your kids. The dynamic of letting your kids go and be adults has it’s own fears, separate from the fears you hold trying to get them though the first 18 years of their lives. There is a responsibility we hold and I hold the responsibility to turn 4 four young men into great men in this world.
I am blessed to have 4 boys in my life, 2 that I helped create and 2 that I’m luck that they have come into my life through their amazing mom. They have a great dad in their life too but being the younger siblings in a larger family changes the dynamic for them here. They are learning and absorbing from the older boys, good or bad, in every situation. As the father in this house I have to navigate the difficult situations that arise daily in this place, I don’t always make the right decision but I make the best one I can.
With an age range of 23 down to 11 years old, there are some varying levels of conversation in the course. Here are my simple (really is anything simple with boys) rules of engagement with these knuckleheads:
The Older Boys need to respect the Younger ones
This has been easy as they have enough of an age gap that they have different interests at this point. They aren’t competing against each other for anything and don’t cross over with one another. They all play basketball now and have that bond but don’t need to prove they are better than each other. In their own way, they respect each other.
Be Who you Are
They have many common interests and many that are diverse. Some are driving, some are learning and some are no where near that. Some have girlfriends and others do not. They all are different in their ways and you have to encourage that to come out.
Respect one Another and your Parents
This one is a tough one for me. There is ALOT of man talk in this house and it is dripping with attitude and bravado. I like to encourage their freedom of communication, no matter how aggressive it has to be expressed. It leads to confrontation with Mary and I and often feelings get hurt between parents and kids but expression is the best way to get feelings out and sometimes we just need to take one on the chin for it. I try to make sure that respect stays within the context but it’s pretty free-flowing when it happens.
Do Your Part to Contribute
Mary is the master of this one as she has found ways to keep these guys doing their own work around the house. They should help more than they do and I still seem to be the only one who knows how to use a lawnmower but they do their part. Fold your laundry or do your own. Make dinner once a week for everyone. Walk the dogs. Put your damn dishes in the dishwasher! Every once in awhile they even help each other with basketball, schoolwork or even life advice.
Find common interests
There are 2 big ones in this house: basketball and video games. The first one is easy as they get outside and play, with or against each other. There is some cross-training and a lot of shit-talking to each other is they make a mistake. There is no mercy if you are young or old (in my case) so figure it out. Video games is more fascinating as they all play roughly the same games and they are all a different “rank” in the games. Age means nothing here and they are constantly picking each other’s minds on what works. We have 2 separate internet providers in this house for a reason as 4 Xboxes and 4 streaming phones (at the same time!) crews through a bunch of gigs of data.
Curb your Bad Influences
We have all done it and are all guilty of it. We ask of each other that we curb those bad influences around one another. No drugs, no excessive drinking, limit the swearing and no girls sleeping over. No small task with these guys around but we try very hard to live to this.
So what does it all mean?
We are not your typical family. We are a blended family that works very hard to make this one family, even too exhaustion for Mary and myself. As the oldest man in this house, I have a responsibility to be the best of them all and I am no bowl of peaches some days. I struggle to bring the energy to the boys that they need, to teach them and guide them. That energy has to come from somewhere and there is only so much to go around. What I have learned is that you don’t need to make big impacts in their lives when it’s really the small ones that make up the fabric of who they are. Talking to them about their day at school, a small congratulations for something they did, a recognition for putting their dishes away, or giving them an extra 15 minutes to play their game before shut down makes the bigger impact. Above all, boys are an emotional sort and you have to allow that expression, even at the peril of what you get from it. I need to be the main referee of those event and often I have to step in and be the lightning rod for their madness.
That’s the role a dad plays the lives of their sons. We teach and coach, lecture and referee, argue and listen, yell and wrestle. Above all, try to hug your boys and tell them what they mean to you as this will go the furthest towards turning them into the kind of men who will become future great fathers.
It’s hard to believe that we collectively have been isolating for the past 10 weeks. In many ways, it has been the shortest 10 weeks of my life. In so many ways, I have pissed away an opportunity to do so many things that I should have done. Rest assured, it’s not like nothing got accomplished in the past weeks considering work kept rolling along and was extremely consuming for most of the day. Between some evenings and the weekend days, this family did make some headway on some long-standing issues around the ole’ Casa.
Re-stain a deck, organize the mechanical room, clean out closets and cupboards, move an un-Godly amount of rocks to the backyard, re-bark mulch the back, re-seed the lawn, paint the house, try new cocktail drinks, set up the patio furniture, explore Fish Creek Park, re-border the flowerbeds, build some plant stands for Mary, change the headlights in my truck, watch parts of several Netflix series and a million 80’s movies and complete around a dozen puzzles. It sounds like a lot of things got done but all I can think about are the things that never got done.
I did spend a ton of quality time with my Mary and our collective of boys also made for some spicy dinners and evenings but when this is all over, I will still be left with some missed opportunities:
I should have made some time for the webpage
I really enjoy writing, even though I have a lot to learn about the craft. Somehow I ran out of time for this stuff a few years ago and I don’t know what got so complicated in my life. These past weeks would have been a great time to get some work done on the site, clean it up and add some bells and whistles that I would like. More importantly, I should have crafted a bunch of plans for future work. I didn’t do any of that and only stumbled back into this world while I was cleaning up files for tax season.
I have new goals for myself with the site and really would like to try some new things with new topics. I would also like to try and support small businesses by writing about what makes them great. Business in the 403 needs all the help it can get.
We should have found some new restaurants through Take Out
We really hunkered down, so much that we virtually ate nothing but at home. In many ways, that was a refreshing change for us and I know Mary enjoyed finding new recipes for us to try. Really, it was a good experience for us to bring the boys back to the dinner table for family dinner. Mary also convinced each of them to select and make a dinner for the family, every week. Those were amazing feats that would never have happened without the family lockdown.
We did miss the chance to try local restaurants and find new food choices. I swear, one of our neighbours ordered from Skip the Dishes every day of the quarantine and I was intrigued every time the car rolled up. What was in that glorious red bag? Could it be a game-changer in the household? What mystery hole in the wall could be sending the greatest supper ever to their home? Missed opportunity for sure.
I should have listened to more music
Music makes me happy. People who know me, know my sick addiction for classic 70’s music, particularly the sweet, smooth sounds of Yacht Rock. There were days where I would have the music on while doing some work in the yard or while I was doing some work in the evenings. It’s not that I wanted to branch out with my musical choices into Country or Rap or even the top hits of today. I really should have just listened to my music, more contently. I’m sure that over the next few weeks, I will express some of that love for music in my writing.
I should have sat around on the deck more
It’s hard to remember back to the start of COVID but the weather really was not very good. We had a cold and snowy start for an interminable amount of time, right into April. Although, that was not exactly deck weather it turned around quite quickly afterwards and I didn’t really grasp the opportunity enough.
There were chances to do it. We had some really nice weather as we moved into May and the chairs were sitting there waiting for my ass but I just couldn’t stop doing stuff. I feel accomplished by the number of things we accomplished at work and home but missed a glorious chance to rest.
I should have tried to find sports in my life even though professional sports stopped.
Let’s be clear, the pro sports leagues did the right thing in shutting down in mid-March. In many ways, I credit the NBA in creating the needed awareness about the virus, when they shut the doors. The collapse of the remaining sports leagues was fast and those that were getting started, were halted. For a family like ours, this was a devastating blow as the nightly sports event was the bonding moment for the boys. We would gather and watch and talk. I miss that.
At the same time, youth sports was an instant casualty of the pandemic and the season for basketball, never really got off the ground. Nic, Cam and myself were poised to coach teams with Rian and Liam on them and all of that was shelved, fast. We will never know what could have been with the spring basketball season, and I feel for those kids who have lost an entire year of development in the sport. We are lucky to have a hoop outside on the street and short of a few days, I didn’t do enough to get outside and shoot some hoops with the boys. They went out pretty often and I missed that chance.
I should have exercised with more creativity to stay fit
My daily trip for to the gym was the biggest immediate impact on my life and it took me a whole week to get my act together. We were certainly one of the luckier families because we had access to some weights and a treadmill to allow the family to have a fitness routine. It was certainly more limited than my gym but not a disaster. My issue was that I didn’t find anything creative to do with the equipment or without it.
As the weather improved, I had even more options available like walking and biking and should have looked harder for alternatives. Mary and I did get out most evening for a walk with the pups but that doesn’t replace the challenge of getting your heart rate pumping for some exercise. I often long for the spring and summer to come, if for no other reason than to get some exercise in the evenings. The grind during the day and the responsibilities during the evenings took its toll and it just never happened. The summer isn’t over yet and I will have to get re-focused and re-energized.
I should have completed at least one TV series along the weeks
Mary and I have this terrible habit of starting a series and not committing to see it through. We have a litany of titles that we have seen 3-5 episodes of and never to be completed. Part of the issue is that I need to be attached to the theme and the characters and most importantly, the theme has to be completely plausible if it’s going to be fictional. Here’s a few series that we started and are TBD on its completion:
Ozark – we liked it a lot but only got midway through season 1. I think we will get back to it and see it through at some point.
The Crown – an honest depiction of the Royals and their screwed up worlds. We are in season 2 (which is a miracle in our world) and it seems to be chugging along. We will complete it one day.
Sex Education – a fictional depiction of high school in England with the twist being that the main character decides to provide sex education advice for the other students. Got to season 2 and it lost me.
The Kominsky Method – fun show about old dudes who are trying to stay young as they advance through the latter years. I was entertained through season 1 but season 2 became repetitive.
We did make it through a couple of mini-documentaries with some mixed success:
Tiger King – basically unwatchable but a fascinating train wreck that we powered through in the early weeks. The fact that I had trouble figuring out what the most screwed up part of the series was, tells you all you need to know.
Waco – it had been out previously but we finally saw it through and it was great. I highly recommend the back story on David Koresh and his cast of followers.
My biggest regret was that I was following the latest season of the Walking Dead and the final episode didn’t get completed prior to the outbreak and it has yet to be completed. I was into it and wished to have some conclusion to this season.
I should have done a deep clean of the garage and shed
No complaints here as we did tackle several rooms and closets in the house but we left the grand daddy of them all. I was out there a lot and looked at strategies even more. I started to clean the tools and gave up. I cleaned the corner out when we swapped the winter tires off and got frustrated. We even took a load to the dump early on and I thought we had traction but nope. The garage in this house has always been a catch all for the stuff that has no home in the closets and rooms. I will get there before the summer is done.
I should have started to plan out where we should vacation to next
I love to travel and I know I am not a good “staycation” candidate so when the world of travel dried up, it took its toll on my mind. We had a plan to go to Palm Springs for our anniversary in June and that was cancelled. We usually plot out a plan for November and we can’t even think that far out yet. We normally would have some Western Canada travel wrapped into the boys club basketball and that went by the wayside. We have ended up in Vegas most of the past few July’s and it’s out of the question.
I’m open to suggestions for what to do this year. I now have 2 travel companion vouchers to use and our friends at Westjet are holding my money ransom. I should have put some work into this as I can’t survive until 2021 before I get to feel the heat of the Caribbean or the culture of Europe.
I should have told Mary how thankful that I am that she chose me in life and dealt with my ups and downs through the lockdown.
I did tell her but probably not enough. She basically locked herself in the home for 7- starlight days, making sure that the kids did what they should and kept the wheel on out bus moving. When I got home, she listened to me drone on about COVID related issues at the pharmacies and kept me motivated and healthy. She also stepped aside when she needed to, to let me work on a puzzle or keep slugging away at work issues into the late evening. Mostly, she was just there with me and for me. There were a lot of people stuck without the one you care about the most but that was never my issue. She sacrificed herself for the family and for me and I will make sure the knows how important that was for me.
Those were the biggies on my list. There were so many positive things along the way too and I am choosing to focus on the great things that happened along the past 3 months.Take a minute and formulate your own list of things you did or didn’t do. The outbreak is far from over and there is still time to wrong those rights. Seize the opportunity.
We woke up Monday in Alberta to a blast of winter snow. We were not, in any way prepared for that and it only led to winter chaos in the house. I love this country but I hate its weather. Mary and I long for the days where we can live in warm climate during the cold months. where we can say to the kids, “why don’t you fly down to Mexico for a week and bring the grandkids.” For the forseeable future, we will continue to live through weeks like this.
Nic’s school camping trip.
You guessed it, his school camping trip was scheduled to leave Monday morning. They were to go hiking out in Kananaskis Country for 6 hours, then settle in for the night. If you want to see 100 parents banging their heads against the wall at the same time, you can see it while trying to educate grade 12 kids to actually prepare for inclement weather. Would he bring more than a hoodie? No. How about wear hiking boots? Nope he will climb the mountain in his Vans. How about gloves or a hat? Are you kidding, he would rather freeze. This was no joke weather that morning with snow blowing and sticking to you like concrete.
I’m happy to say he survived and he suffered along the way. His shoes were soaked in the first 20 minutes and no number of socks was going to save him. He was cold and wet and hungry and you know what, he deserved it. Do you know what else? He had a great time, salvaged his reputation by not succumbing to traditional warm clothing strategies and came home in one piece. I’m not sure when we all went from being stupid to becoming conservative adults but it happens to us all. I recall my camping trip in grade 12. I brought a sweater, 2 cans of soup, a blanket and 12 rubbers. It poured rain and all I had to show for it was the rubbers. If I was smart, I would have worn them as a rain jacket but pride stepped in there too. We all learn the hard way.
2. We have a visitor living under the stove…
You know it’s winter when the dogs won’t go outside for a piss anymore. You also know it’s winter when you see a mouse scampering across the kitchen floor.
I heard the yelp from upstairs. Why is it that the person who is most afraid of mice is the one who has them run through their feet? I wish I knew but Mary is that person. I saw it too when I moved the stove. It is the smallest little thing but it’s a quick little bugger. I was instructed to, “get it but don’t kill it.” Right, like that’s going to be simple. One evening later, I arrived home to the military grade mouse trap, loaded with peanut butter, that clearly is not going to “catch and release” the little guy. Suddenly faced with the reality of sharing a kitchen for the winter with “Manny” as I have named him, it’s ok to bring out the heavy weapons. He will eventually meet his maker and life will go back to normal but for now, Mary will look twice when entering the kitchen.
3. Snow tires – it’s a reality again
It feels like I just put the all-seasons on and now it’s time to take them off. One day, it would be nice to just have tires, not seasonal tires. Now I am scrambling around trying to find a shop that will swap them out again and not thrilled about the idea of driving on hard pack for 5 months. Think happy thoughts Albertans. Spring is right around the corner.
4. The scramble for jackets was on
You are never prepared for that first snowfall or cold morning. The car doesn’t start well. There is a level of ice or frost on the windshield. And you think, “where the hell did I put that coat?” Inevitably, you find the closet and yank that dreaded coat out and trudge out into the cold. This week, we had a funny moment with Mary’s son Rian and his coat.
At least he wore one. In fact he now has grown enough that he is in his brothers hand-me-down jacket. Monday morning, I went and pulled the jacket out, placed it on him and had him two steps out the door. I was the man! Pulled that together masterfully. Until Mary notices that his older brother has torn the vinyl down the side of the jacket and the stuffing is coming out. Many parents would be mortified and tell their kids that we can’t send you to school with a torn jacket. Oh the embarrassment!
Not this crew. Mary, who is always quick thinking on her feet, goes and grabs duct tape and decides she is going to “sew” this thing up using the most magical tool in the toolbox. Nic is standing at the door watching this debacle go on thinking to himself, “this is why I took control of my wardrobe this morning.” Meanwhile Rian, who to his credit hasn’t let peer pressure take over his desire to remain warm, thinks this is a totally cool idea and keeps the jacket in play for the day. We high-fived each other and went along with the notion that duct tape on his jacket was likely the least of his problems for the day. Awesome moment.
It’s only going to get worse everyone. We will have many stories to tell over the next 5 months. In the meantime, I choose to put my attention into the holiday tracker which says that in 29 days there is a beach in our future. I will remain in denial over October for the time being.
Here we go again. The summer is long over and school is starting to hit the homework phase where kids are now coming home with the first waves of math and science review. The leaves are starting to turn to colour and there is a nip in the morning air. What does all of that mean…. We are again a slave to sport.
I don’t want to make it sound like it’s all bad but it sure sneaks up on your weekend plans. Mary and I were discussing what was on the go this weekend. She is a week into the recovery on her surgery and under doctor orders to not drive. When we started running through the agenda for Saturday, it was spretty clear that we were going to become the lowest paid UBER driver in the city, shuttling kids to and from sports events.
We have been down this road before. We knew what we were getting into when the boys were signed up for hockey/basketball. Like all parents, we want to spend time watching the boys play and get great enjoyment out of their successes while agonizing in their struggles. The part that shocks us every year is how quickly it takes over your life and dictates what your schedule looks like. For some reason, we just cannot get our act together in the weeks prior to this kick off, and that has a carryover into sport season.
Groceries… no chance. Thankfully Superstore is open until 11pm nightly or we might not eat. Clean up the house…choose your poison. Unless you are out of dishes or underwear, it is difficult to make the time needed. Walk the dog….think again. The days are shorter and shorter so your pooches will have to enjoy a run around in the backyard. Sleep in on the weekend…..are you kidding? You have a better chance of passing out in your mashed potatoes on a Saturday night. See some friends….what friends? The memory of a summer BBQ floated away like the waft of that steak you cooked yourself in July. The more kids you have in activities, the smaller your chance is of salvaging anything in the fall schedule.
September really is an incredible economic boost to your community. Back to school costs, school fees, sports/activities fees, childcare fees and costs that re-emerge with working, all take it’s toll on families. Besides or pocketbooks, we are poorer in time. The blessing of the summer months sure kicks us square in the balls in September. We milk th summer right up to Labour Day and when the calendar turns to September, you have to look back at those months and ask yourself, “could I have been better prepared for this onslaught?”
We all know the answer here is “I should have but summer is so short!” Canadian summers are in short supply and should be enjoyed and relished. To hell with organization in your life. Most families pay the piper for that fun and we are all ok with it. So while you are stuck in traffic to get to dance school, shoving Tim Hortons into your kids on the way to basketball practice or walking from 12 degree weather into what seems like -100 degree flash freezing in the proverbial Canadian ice rink, smile about what your August looked like. We earned that time away from the grind and equally, we earned the shock of what sport season does to your family. Hang in there everyone. Hockey season is over in March.
There are people in the world who live with injuries a lot longer than her but this has not been an easy stretch for her. She fell in February, while on a vacation and tore her rotator cuff along with dislodging her bicep from her bone. What does all of that mean? Essentially, she cannot lift her right arm higher than her hip. It’s no way to live your life asking for help to reach the cereal, needing someone to lift your arm to grab the mouse or trying to take your bra off with one hand (although that is a skill I mastered at one point of my bachelor life…).
Tomorrow Mary goes for surgery to repair this damage.
For months we debated the merits of the Canadian medical system. Should she pay for private medical to fix the damage in a world where you pay big bucks for instant help. Or should we wait it out for an appointment to see a specialist and hope to have it repaired in the next 18 months? It brought me back to the old days when we used to receive those extended insurance and dismemberment forms back in elementary school. You remember the conversation with your buddies where it listed the various body parts you could lose and how much it was worth if you lost it. The debate raged on whether it was better to lose an eye for $10,000 or lose one of your hands for $25,000. When you are older or injured, you debate what you will pay them to hopefully get it back.
Mary got lucky, with some dogged perseverance in chasing down various doctors who could hopefully help an active woman get her am back to full use. She was able to get into see a specialist after 7 months with a hope to get a surgery date before Christmas. Last week, her ship came in with a cancelation on the surgery and she is up for a new arm tomorrow. Suddenly, the reality kicked in. She actually has to have a surgery done which means real anesthetic and real risks.
We have had some strange conversations in the past day. Where is my living will and do you know what is in it? What do you mean I can’t drive for 4-6 weeks? How exactly are we getting the kids to all of their different sports with only one driver? The instructions even say she needs to take a pregnancy test prior to the surgery! These aren’t exactly topics that we have spent much time talking about in the past while so to say it was eye opening is an understatment. I suppose all the legal battles raged through hospital mishap have led to the days where no stone is unturned prior to an operation.
I am confident that she will be better than ever, sooner than even the doctors think. She will have a tough 8-12 weeks of recovery and at the end her “bionic” arm will be a great story to tell. If this is the worst of the hospital visits we see in our lifetime, we will be very fortunate. In the meantime, you can stop wondering why people have to wear that bar that holds your arm out on an angle. Her name is Mary, so say hi to her when you see her.
Good luck baby! Your career as a major league pitcher is over but here’s to being able to drink a beer with your right arm again!
This morning you could hear the cheers of parents from around Alberta as the majority of students went back to class. It has widely been recognized that parents have that relief on their faces as Labour Day rolls around that the challenge of entertaining their kids, all day long, has finally come to an end. Now I know that the summer is designed to give kids (and teachers) a break from the grind of education and it also give parents a chance to reconnect with their children. For some fortunate families, they can spend the entire summer travelling and vacationing across the land. That lifestyle can take the edge off the summer grind of entertaining the youth, while the rest of us look for ways to get our kids away from their electronics for a day. The answer all along was the almighty school, and it’s back!
Not so fast parents! The return of reading, writing and arithmetic poses all sorts of new (age old) problems for families. Here’s my Hateful 8 list of why school is not necessarily the gift our parents always used to think it was:
Kids hate to go to bed when the sun is up.
You know this is the biggest struggle in week 1. Kids traditionally have broken from their traditional bedtimes through the summer and reforming them to the standard is no small task. If you could bottle the energy being put into yelling “GET TO BED!” across this city tonight, you could power the oil sands.
2. Lunches.
Some parents have this down to a science where their kids make their own lunches. Others of us bang our heads against the wall to find the perfect combination of healthy and something that the schools will allow them to eat. If you are “lucky” enough to have teens you know that battle. They can’t take a lunch because it’s not cool yet they will eat everything and anything when they dig for it. Give up and let them fend for themselves.
3. School supplies.
It’s an amazing industry. They manufacturers of pens and pencils have made an art out of putting the cool in school. The days of school lists and foraging through stores looking for the correct duotang and correction tape have changed but make no mistake. If your kid shows up with some foreign notebook or pencil sharpener that wasn’t approved by the teacher, someone will know about it.
4. School fees.
I get it, the school board has no money. They have no way to fund all of the creative classes that your son or daughter has slected from their options list. Ultimately, we can do nothing about the machine that the school system has become but we are allowed to complain about it during the first week. Rage against the fees!
5. Homework
It’s a necessary evil to education and the schools have tried to curtail it but nothing turns your evening around more than to try and re-learn stochiometry, the parts of a flower or how to dissect math word problems. Why the hell do I care how fast a train is going if it left Chicago at 4pm Saturday? Because we want our kids to get into Harvard and this might come up on a SAT exam 12 years from now.
6. Clothes/shoes shopping
If you were one of those families wandering around the mall with that dreaded look on your face, I feel for you. I don’t know who came up with the rule that all kids should have new clothes to start school but they must be related to the Walton family of Walmarts. That propaganda has been haunting families for years. Is it to make them feel better against the new kids they will meet or so we as parents feel like our kids aren’t the little creeps they showed us all summer? I say we all send our kids to school with no socks as a show of force.
7. Crazy school schedules
Whatever happened to the days where school started at 9am sharp and kids rolled home at 3:30? Now we have kids in class before 8am and home early on Friday’s. How can any parent be expected to organize a work schedule around this schedule? Don’t even get me started on the way kids are bussed to school in this city. We aren’t going to change it people but I’m choosing to send my kids in late once a week as a way of telling them I simply can’t get my ass out of bed on time…
8. School borne illnesses
Yep these are back too. Ask yourself why doctors take 8 weeks off every summer. It’s because by mid-September they will be so busy raking in fees with runny noses, barking coughs and if you are really unlucky, the dreaded lice, cleaning process. You can’t stop these bugs from attacking your kids, you can only hope to contain them. Prepare to hose down your kids nightly to give you the best chance to avoid malaria.
I ask you again, why are we thrilled that the kids are back in school? The truth is they do actually learn stuff that will serve them well in life. They grow from social interactions and actually meet some pretty amazing kids. Do yourself a favour and stock up on beer and wine this weekend. You will need it at some point as it’s a long way until June. Hang in there parents!
It’s the age old question. Where did the time go? Last I was here, it was mid-February and I was in a good rhythm with blogging and things were cruising towards summer. Then all of a sudden, my life ran into the time vortex that we all desperately try and avoid. It ran into spring/summer.
Most of us are busier than usual in the summertime. You emerge from the activity slumber of the Alberta winter and you hit the ground running. Spring gardening, patio furniture organizing, trailer set up, and maybe the odd BBQ with friends. All of that plus more filled my last 6 months:
We found time to fit a wedding in! Ours!
It was in the works for the past year but the date kept sneaking up on us. At Christmas-time, we discussed a spring wedding. By March, we had decided that June made sense as it fit into a soft spot in our crazy spring schedule. By May, we were putting plans together for a June wedding and had rented a great facility. The toughest part of the planing was the discussion that we only had room for 50 people at the Glenmore Sailing Club, making it impossible to invite all of our friends and family. It became clear that we would be able to invite only our immediate family and a few of our closest friends. We proceeded to scramble together a spectacular venue with some great guests and enough food and entertainment to have a great day. Before you could blink, June 17 was upon us.
I’m proud to say that we really didn’t have to panic much going into that day. Dinner, drinks, dancing was in place and as the weather turned into a beautiful afternoon, it was time to get hitched. I had not seen Mary’s dress until that day and she looked amazing. The dress was perfect for her and we had decided that we would meet together at the club prior to everyone getting there and have a glass of prosecco. We planned to greet all of the guests with wine and appreciation for making the day special for us. The party was on.
Our boys looked great in suits and dress clothes. We made sure that they were an active part of the ceremony, after all, that is supposed to be one of the big benefits of a second marriage. The sun at 6:30pm was spectacular and we stood with our friends and family and had a beautiful moment that will carry us forever. Mary did a great job reading her vows to me and I tried to add a bit of humour to the moment. I will always remember her laughing out loud at my stupid jokes and the smile on her face! I love her with all I have and wanted her to know it. It could not have been a better ceremony in our eyes. The rest of the night was a majestic sunset wrapped around a hell of a party. The loving and comedic moments that went on into the night, will be captured forever in our hearts and we are truly grateful for everyone who could be there and those who were there in thoughts only.
I am so lucky to have a wife who loves me as much as I love her. I look so forward to the journey that life will take us on.
2. I survived another year of coaching club basketball.
The joy of my spring season has been coaching my boys in club basketball. I have enjoyed this for the past 10 seasons and with this year, it was the completion of Nic’s experience. The emotional highs and lows of the game taught me so much during my youth and I always hoped that my boys would learn the same virtues. Cameron made me very proud throughout his career. He always worked hard and was a great teammate to those boys who he played with for years. He has kept those relationships to this day. He was a talented shooter who always did things during the game that amazed me. I was sad to see his career end a few years back.
Nic started earlier than Cam, and had the privaledge of getting pounded on by his older brother. This made Nic a tremendous player who always played bigger than his size. This final year was a real tribute to Nic’s gift and he ability to make the people around him better. He was one of a few seniors on the Elite travel team and really took the younger guys under his wing. He has had the pleasure of some tremendous coaching over the years (certainly not my doing!) and he has taken something from them all.
We had discussed taking these boys on a journey across Canada West Universities throughout the spring. Saskatoon, Edmonton, Victoria and Calgary made this a season like none other for me. It was great to showcase these boys throught the west in front of CIS coaches and schools. They had a chance to see what it would take to compete at the next level, in some of the finest Canadian facilities there is. Capping it off was a trip to Las Vegas in July (hardly warm…) to play the best talent in the USA. Throughout it all, Nic played tremendous. He did everything you would expect of a senior point guard, to make these boys better. We won a “Karate Kid” sized trophy in vegas which I was proud to tell the Customs officer that we had stolen from some kids in Vegas! A great end to a great run.
Now I get the pleasure of playing men’s league with Cameron on our newly minted team named “Blue Balls”. We will tear up the Senior mens league and I will do my best to keep up to “white lightning” as we have dubbed him. Nic will play grade 12 and he has a legit shot to play for one of these universities after high school. I am hoping he will get his chance. I am also working on Rian and Liam to play basketball after hockey season is completed. I may not quite be done coaching with those two coming down the pipe.
There are so many other things that have filled our lives the past few months. Mary has taken her boys camping a few times while getting her Hockey School company rolling. She makes me so proud the way she deveotes herself to this company and to the families she has involved. The kids love her camps and if they only knew that she took her first skating class only last year! She loves it more, thuth be told. She is so pleased when parents and especially kids, tell her that this is their favorite camp of the summer. She is a wonderful ambassador for her brand and she will be very successful with this in the coming years. If you are looking for a camp for your kids, Edge Hockey Schools will celebrate it’s 25th year in 2018.
As Labour Day approaches, we will try and take some time to reflect on the busy spring/summer we have had. We are so lucky to be happy and healthy in what we are passionate about. We work very hard everyday but do take a few moments to remind ourselves of why we do all of this. There is nothing we love more than to get together will friends and family and be regaled in your stories of your summer fun. We look forward to catching up soon.
