About Terry and Zach

Yesterday afternoon we went for a family bike ride. Gavin took a bit of a spill and ended up with a few scratches and some oil from his bike chain on one of his calves. It wasn't anything major and he continued on his way and spent a lot of time running around the playground. Honestly, we all forgot about it which is why it wasn't until after supper during his bath that I saw it and remembered I should clean it all up.

Isn't that what Moms are for?

While I was trying to scrub the oil off, he started squirming. Of course this made getting it clean all the more difficult so I told him that he had to stay still because if I couldn't get it all the way clean it could cause an infection.

I have no idea if this is true, but it worked. In fact, it worked almost too well because what Gavin said next was:

"Yeah, because I don't want to end up like Terry Fox. He just skips now."

This, of course, led to a bit deeper of a conversation than I was anticipating during bath time, involving a rudimentary explanation of cancer and how brave Terry Fox was. We'd seen one of Terry's shoes and his Marathon of Hope T-shirt at Canada's Sports Hall of Fame over the weekend and if you ever need to give yourself a dose of perspective, that exhibit is the place to find it. 

After putting the kids to bed, I sat at the computer and checked my Facebook.That's where I first saw the story of Zach Sobiech, a 17-year-old from Minnesota who died yesterday of osteosarcoma, the same cancer that took Terry Fox.  Before he died, Zach hooked up with the people from Soul Pancake (an awesome website founded by Rainn Wilson) and recorded a song and made a video as part of their Last Days series. The main message of all of this is that you shouldn't wait until you find out you're dying to really start living. Zach and his family agreed to participate in this project as a way to encourage donations to research that will help others who find themselves dealing with osteosarcoma. 

I guess I just wanted to remind all of the people sharing Zach's story that here in Canada we have a phenomenal organization that has been doing this kind of research for over thirty years: The Terry Fox Foundation. What Zach's death tells us is that while research has come a long way to improving survival rates of this type of cancer, there is still so much more to be done.

So much more. 

Masterpiece

Sometimes you start writing something and in the space between start and finish something awful happens. What you've written no longer seems relevant at all, and can often come across as trivial or petty. That's what happened to me tonight. A tornado devastated a suburb south of Oklahoma City and last I heard 37 people were dead, several of them children. My thoughts tonight are with those who have lost so much in this disaster - maybe everything. If you can, please consider donating to the Red Cross to assist with the relief effort.   

One thing that I've never been really good at is personalizing my work space. Wherever my desk has been, you would have had a hard time finding out anything about me just from looking at the space. I'm not sure why that is, and it's not unique to work either. For example, even though we've had several professional family portraits taken over the years, only one has found its way into a frame and that frame sat on a dresser instead of hanging on a wall in our home. So this is not a strength of mine, obviously.

My current office is no different. It's made a bit more difficult by the fact that I don't have a lot of space on my desk for knick knacks, nor any natural place to display photos. Thanks to my office-mate, our office has lots of personality, but so far that personality hasn't been mine. I've been pretty lazy about adding my own personal touch.

But then a couple of weeks ago I decided to take matters into my own hands. I asked the Administrative Assistant who orders the office supplies to order me a cork board that I could hang by my desk (hey, baby steps). It's not much, but there's enough room to hang a few things from home. This is good, because lately Mia has been drawing or colouring pictures for me to "take to your work", and now I actually have somewhere to put them. 

Like this masterpiece: 

These scrawls might not look like much to you, but this is how my daughter described it:

"Mom, look! I'm drawing a picture of Bohdi [our dog]. Wait. Actually, it's you."

Honestly, how could I not hang that one up.  I love how she included my sideburns, even if I'm not quite sure what's going on with my hand, or my hair. And she refuses to clarify just what exactly is growing out of my leg. But hey, that's art right? 

Maybe some day I will have more than just a cork board for my kids' artwork and photos; for now I think it will do just fine.

How do you personalize your work space? Have your kids ever drawn a crazy portrait of you? 

Biking Pretty

Like all of the other moms I know, my most precious commodity is time. There is never enough, and it's hard to figure out how to prioritize everything. It's like every day is an emergency room and I'm in charge of triage. Certainly, the consequences of a wrong move don't often include life or death, but some days it's pretty close.

Then there are those things that never seem important enough, that can always be done another day.

Like exercise. If there was an award for Easiest Thing to Procrastinate About, “exercise” would win. Every. Time.

Oh, I have such good intentions. As a family we enjoy weekends spent hiking in the mountains and now that the weather is finally nice and there’s no snow on the pathways, we’ll go for bike rides to the park. On vacations we try to fit in at least some activity, whether it’s been hiking up Diamond Head in Hawaii or biking across the Golden Gate Bridge.

The problem is that those things aren’t consistent enough to really make a difference. As my age has moved up, my metabolism has gone down. Honestly, I don’t know if it even exists anymore, that’s how useless it’s been for me.

So using some money from one of our wellness spending accounts, we decided to buy some home exercise equipment. We got an elliptical machine, an exercise bike, and weights.  (At least I think they’re weights. I haven’t been close enough to tell for sure.) I had grand visions of getting on the machines at night, watching my shows on Netflix while working up a sweat. My muffin top would melt away as I finally got caught up on Mad Men.

Instead, I was so exhausted by the end of the day that the idea of putting on work out clothes was overwhelming, let alone actually working out in those clothes. This means that as far as I know, Don and Betty Draper are still married. (What? The secretary! Really?) 

And I have read all of the tips for scheduling exercise into a busy life. I am well aware that if I exercise and eat right I will have more energy for my family. I have seen all of the motivational quotes on my Facebook feed but instead of making me want to live each day like it’s my last, or taking the single step that begins the journey of a thousand miles, I want to give 112% to punching that person in the throat (sorry, but kind of true.). I mean, my husband is an exercise physiologist who works for a program that helps people with chronic conditions use exercise to live a better life. Believe me, I know what to do. It’s the doing of it that’s the problem.

So I decided to throw one more thing into the mix to see if that will help find my misplaced motivation. Isn’t she pretty?

My current bike is at least fifteen years old and the parts are starting to go. Murray suggested we go shopping for a new bike for Mother’s Day and I used his generous spirit to my advantage. I won’t be doing any mountain biking with it, but it will get me around the neighbourhood and will be perfect for pathways and hills. I took her out for a ride tonight and something about it just felt better than it did when I was on my old Sears special bike (not that there’s anything wrong with a Sears special exactly; ugly bikes can be found anywhere.)

And maybe if I feel better about exercising when I’m out doing it, then logic goes that I should want to do it more often, right?  The hills in our neighbourhood make for a really good work out no matter where I go. Bike riding doesn’t make my knee feel like jelly the way that running does and grabbing my bike for a ride is almost as easy as going for a run anyway.  The basket on the front means that I can take my bike to the store for quick trips rather than drive. I can even ride to the liquor store for a bottle of wine.

It might sound shallow, but if being able to ride a pretty bike is what it takes for me to exercise, then that has to be good enough.

For now J  

I think my bike needs a name - suggestions?