Watch and Learn

Kevan and Kim: Healthy and Happy

This week's picture features Kim and Kevan smiling as though the events of a couple of weeks ago never happened. This is truly awesome.

Meanwhile, back at the ministry, things are progressing with the speed and coherence of a long run out land slide. 

Of course, these matters are 100% confidential, and my usual ruse for communicating such stuff is not available. Our friend the Ruler and her advisors failed in their attempt to have the Thing perish in a fire (who knew it would be fire proof) and are now wandering in the wilderness looking for a place to abandon it. 

So let's try this instead:

A colourfully diverse group of young people dressed only in bathing suits has been working for the past week on a giant sand castle. It is vast, sprawling, both impressive and fragile. 

In the time they have worked on the castle, they have come to trust and respect one another. 

They share an understanding of the rules and principles of what they are building. The castle is made of sand, so it can't do everything and it is particularly vulnerable to being top heavy.

They work under the distracted gaze of a lifeguard who is not involved in the construction of the sand castle, but, like them, is wearing a bathing suit. So, they all have that in common. 

After a week of hard labour, the castle is all but done. There may be some fine tuning still required, but it is a thing of beauty and folks from miles around come to admire it.

Now it is the night before the judges arrive. A few young people have stayed late to fuss over the smallest details. A gang of fully-clothed thugs shows up.

They admire the castle, but they have authority to make changes to it. 

"We need to add a thirty-five foot spire here" they say, pointing to a spot where a two-foot turret stands. "If that takes too much sand, we can remove that thing over there," they say, pointing to a small dome at one end of the castle.

One of the bathing-suit-clad young people comes forward, "Um, guys, the sand castle has been built to stand the way it is now, so I don't think we can do that."

"Sure we can," says the life guard, springing down from his high platform and nodding respectfully at the thugs. "Whatever you say, sirs."

Then he turns to the young person. "Watch and learn," he says, "This is what it's like."

"You're the boss," says the young person. She gets on her phone to let the rest of the crew know about the changes to the sand castle.

The next morning, a large crowd of young people in bathing suits stands in a ring around the sand castle. The castle is the same as it was. 

Looking at the crowd, a new idea occurs to the life guard. He gets on his phone and calls the thugs "We'll get you your thirty-five foot tower, but not today, and not with this castle. We're building another one next week. We'll do it then."

Today's moral: Half-naked people should think twice before saying "yes" to anyone fully clothed.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Smoke and Mirrors

Happy squirrel chowing down on snow-flavoured popcorn.

This Week's Picture comes to you from Belleville, where I'm hanging with Kim and Kevan. The pictures come from the Allan Gardens.

The title comes from a meeting I sat - and occasionally napped - through this past week. 

Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

About a year ago, I'd met for half an hour with a man, retired from the public service, who had a great concept to pitch. I sat patiently through the pitch, accepted for future reference (not) the materials he handed me and promptly forgot about him and his half-assed concept.

That's why, when he started hounding me earlier this year, I had no idea who he was or why I would want to talk with him. So I ignored him.

He then took stronger measures. He used some of his contacts in another ministry to finagle another meeting with me. Fooled by the subterfuge, I went along with the request.

To prepare for the meeting, I looked up the web presence for the organization - let's call it SwiftToss - and slowly started to connect the dots between SwiftToss and the man I had met with the year before.

The web site featured assertions of empowered communities, sustainable economies and pictures of smiling, apple-cheeked children. The one thing missing was any explanation of how these happy outcomes could be achieved. 

But I figured that my colleagues in the other ministry would not bring me a complete charlatan.

In fact, they brought me two. The man was accompanied by a partner. They took us through a slide presentation so bogus, so full of hot air and so boring that I struggled to stay awake.

I had actually nodded off when they got to their penultimate slide - the one asking for $350,000 taxpayers' dollars to pay for a conference to bring their brilliant idea into the world.

I got a bit less groggy.

I asked if they had any proof of their concept. Had they any case studies they could provide to show that their methods brought about the results they claimed.

Boy were they ever pissed with me. His partner, a middle-aged woman, turned to the man and said, "I wasn't expecting to have to do this at this meeting."

The man explained that they had no actual case studies. Even though their idea was a sure fire winner, no one had taken them up on it in the two years they had been shopping it around.

"Come back when someone does," I said, and ended the meeting.

I got a crabby e-mail from the man the following day, chastising me for having the temerity to ask that he demonstrate his concept works before handing him a haystack of dough.

We should all be grateful that this man is retired from the public service.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Your Tax Dollars Still Hard at Work

Spotted in an Elevator in the Frost Building - Home to the Ontario Ministry of Finance and Treasury Board

In case you've always suspected that public servants - especially those tasked with matters financial - are insular sorts, highly risk adverse and not naturally inclined to playfulness, be glad to know that you are absolutely correct. The proof is in the signs I saw while visiting Treasury Board one day this past week. Posted in elevators and on the walls: "Lunch and Learn - Adult Colouring." 

Further proof surfaced when I commented on how strange it was that people needed to "adult learn" how to colour (for Pete's sake). My colleagues, even the ones who were not financial types, did not get my point.

Sheesh.

Anyway

The title of this week's post does not relate to the sad strangeness of public servants, but to the miraculous events of the approximately 24 hours between 7:30 a.m. Wednesday and the same time the following day. My sister Kim and her husband Kevan were having a normal morning on Wednesday when Kim noticed her husband's speech was suddenly slurred. Remembering the public information campaign for "signs of a stroke", Kim sat Kevan down and called 911.

The paramedics arrived promptly. They got Kevan to the nearby Belleville hospital similarly promptly. Waiting when they arrived was a 9-member stroke team aiming to take care of Kevan and Kim, too. 

Kevan had a very large blood clot in his brain, but they administered TPA, a blood-thinning, clot-busting drug that, if given in time, can drastically reduce the impacts of a stroke.

Kevan's blood clot was still pretty big after the TPA, so they shipped him down the 401 to Kingston where there was a surgeon who could remove the clot. But, by the time they got to Kingston, the clot was broken in two and the surgery was unnecessary and/or too risky.

The doctor in Kingston said, "Now we have to see if we need to send you back to Belleville."

They spared Kevan another road trip and he spent the night in Kingston.

By the next morning, approximately 24 hours after his being struck by a potentially fatal blood clot, the medical team was seriously talking about letting Kevan go home.

And home he was at 5 p.m. that day.

Let's review. It was your tax dollars that paid for the public education campaign that helped Kim understand the severity of the situation on Wednesday morning. Your tax dollars paid for 911, so Kim had someone to call. And, of course, your tax dollars paid for the health care teams, equipment and medication that saved Kevan's life.

So please accept my heartfelt thanks.

Have a great week!

Karen





  

Neighbourhood Turnover

Another odd little vehicle.

Parked, as always, in front of our doorstep. 

 Our condo held its annual general meeting this past week. For the second year running, Bruce and I hosted the event.

The crowd in our livingroom measured sixteen on Tuesday night.

At past AGMs, there had been a lot of complaints about high condo fees, delays in maintenance jobs, and unspecific grievances about the fireplaces and the gardens. This pervasive whining made these meetings tedious and unpleasant.

A tactic the board has adopted over the past several AGMs to quell the bitching and moaning, is to remind owners that the volunteer Board does all the work that a maintenance company would otherwise be paid $20,000 a year to do, and, if the owners don't like what the Board is doing, they can either volunteer themselves to do the work or add another thousand plus dollars to their annual maintenance fees.

This message seems to have sunk in. There was no whining at the meeting on Tuesday night. It helped that some of the most vocal malcontents sold their units this past year.

The new neighbours that have moved into these units are young - there are several sets of Muppies (millennial urban professionals) and even a family with young children, aged 7 and 9. At this meeting, people offered to help, and the children, with their father, have been dragooned to work in the garden.

After the meeting, we held a reception with wine and cheese. Ten people stayed behind to fill our home with a hearty roar of conversation. It was 'way past my bedtime by the time I shooed the last of them out the door around 10:45 p.m. 

Best. AGM. Ever.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Kinda Grumpy

Colouring: harmless, low-carbon fun.

Thanks to the leader of the free world keeping his campaign promises, I'm too grumpy to blog. 

Here's some pictures instead. 

I have a thing for owls and water lilies.

Thanks for dropping by!

Have a great week!

Karen

Solidarity

Photo credit: Denver News

The reason this post is coming late to you is not because I was at the Women's March in Washington or even downtown Toronto.

Instead, I was at session with the Metis Nation of Ontario, talking with them about the province's Climate Change Action Plan, and all the things promised them there (let's say, for the sake of argument, about $40 million in projects to help them offset the carbon price).

The last time I'd seen some of these folks was in July 2015, in my pre-cane days, and I remember I had a bad cold. I also remember I really liked the people I met. And I noted then, a bit amused, the signs of divided gender roles.

In 2015, the room was set up with round tables, with six seats per table. Women filled the tables at the front of the room; men filled the ones at back. The women participated earnestly in the conversation. The men chatted among themselves. 

Yesterday, the room was set up with one big table, so the genders were more mixed together. They'd had more than a year to think on the matter of climate change and they all came prepared. This time men and women spoke more equally. Pauline from Thunder Bay and Ernie from Cochrane talked the most.

Over the course of the day, we talked about the Action Plan, about cap and trade and about adapting to climate change. Then everyone was supposed to break out into groups to brainstorm ideas. I joined one group, just to listen, but, as soon as Tom from French River saw that I was the only woman, he assigned me the role of writing everything down on the flip chart paper.

So I did.

We goofed around a bit - two of them asked if I was married when they heard the Action Plan would spend approximately 8 billion dollars over five years - but we worked fast and were done before the other groups. 

So John from Sudbury told me the 100% true story about how he renovated his wife's kitchen. First assuring me that his wife is a good woman, he told the tale of how he offered to buy her new appliances. So she got a beautiful new stove and dishwasher and fridge. Then he told her she could have anything else she liked. "Anything at all," he said, "Just tell me and I'll get it and install it." She asked for new cupboards and a new countertop. "So I bought it all, and installed it myself," he said. "Cost me fifteen thousand dollars." 

"So I was talking to my wife afterwards, looking at how nice the new kitchen was," said John from Sudbury, "and I asked her, now that I spent all this time and money on your new kitchen, are you going to become a better cook?" 

"She looked me right in the eye and said, 'no.'"

"Then there's no way I'm renovating the bedroom," said John from Sudbury. 

We all had a good laugh.

This was a nice moment for me because, while in major cities around the world millions of women were peacefully protesting the divisive words and cruel intentions of an unimaginably powerful man, these nice people enjoyed the gentle comedy in the differences between men and women.

I held onto that happy thought as I walked the three kilometres home, grateful for that experience and grateful, too, for how much my hip continues to improve.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Choose Your Adventure

Lots of room for sentimental value - California Closets Jewellery Drawer

Last week's blog featured the Filmore's sign's assertion that "no great story ever starts with 'Let's go grab a salad.'"

I disagree.

A great story can start any way it likes.

To test my assertion, I'd like to enlist my readers in proposing a great story beginning with those five words. 

Here are some possibilities. If one appeals to you, put its number in the comments section. If you have a better idea, put that in the comments section. If all the stars align, I will write a story around the most picked readers' choice and/or best idea and post it on this blog.

Story #1 - A tale of heroism and tragedy when two friends - one allergic and one not - are stung by the same wasp lurking in a salad they had just bought to share for lunch.

Story #2 - A tale spanning the US Civil War and the First World War, told as two recently-met strangers reminisce over dinner at a retirement home and hospital for veterans in early 1920's Charleston, South Carolina.

Story #3 - A gritty tale of inner-city crime and violence told by a veteran cop warned by his doctor about his high blood pressure and trying to lose some weight. 

Story #4 - A comedic tale of two women who battle, bicker, bitch and fall in love while serving up organic food in a trendy restaurant on West Broadway in Kitsilano.

***********************

Not Another Product Endorsement!?!

Once we'd spent all that money on tearing out the stupid sauna and restoring our master bedroom to its former glory, it seemed natural to continue to spend money on a decent closet.

To help me make an informed consumer decision, I checked out Simply Closets and California Closets online. Neither web site had much information about cost. Without that to form a preference, I found myself persuaded by California Closets' commitment to sustainability. So I e-mailed them.

Very shortly after that I was contacted by CC, and shortly after that, on December 19, a nice young man named Nathan dropped by the house to talk about my "vision" (it's OK, thanks, but I need corrective lenses) and take measurements.

Not long after that Nathan e-mailed me CAD/CAM diagrams of his ideas for our closets. I got a quote for the second floor closets as well as for the walk in, figuring I would only do the walk-in if the cost was too high. 

The big surprise: the quote for all three closets was less than what I thought I'd spend on the walk-in alone.  

On December 22, Bruce and I both went to the CC showroom on Davenport Road to select finishes and handles. We made some tweaks to the design proposals. The CAD/CAM software upgraded the quote as we made changes. Impressive.

CC installed the closets on January 9. Here they are:

The guest bedroom closet (still needs doors), with lots of room for towels and linens and the clothes we wear not all that often.

The "office" closet (still need how to figure how to rehang the doors), with shelves for shoes and yoga stuff and the clothes we wear in the summer.

Hardest to photograph, but really the most swell, the walk-in closet with six spaces to hang clothes (five "short" for shirts, skirts, pants and jackets and one "long" for dresses), twelve open storage cubby holes, four full-depth drawers for socks 'n' undies and one half-depth jewellery drawer.

All together, including custom design, manufacture, materials, installation and tax, these three closets cost about $4,000. The walk-in was the most expensive. The two smaller closets were just over $500 each. 

Finally, something important to us: the shelves we selected are manufactured in Ontario.

And I think that's it. I renovated my hip. We renovated our master bedroom. We bought new closets. 

We're done spending money on making things better. 

Next, we'll be spending money on moving ourselves around. 

We have trips to BC in July, to Italy in September, and a destination to be named later for May/June.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen