A Weekend in My Village

Well, we’re heading home this weekend.

And by home, I mean southern Ontario - the Golden Triangle - Hamilton, St. Catharines, Fort Erie. And this time, it’s just a pleasure cruise. Oh how we’ve been waiting . . .

The last time I was “home” was a little more than three years ago. And that was to attend my father’s funeral. The time before that, I believe it was for my step-father’s funeral. And the time before that it was my grandmother’s funeral.

This was one of the things Neomom and I found unappealing about the RCMP lifestyle. It seemed like the only times we’d get back home was for funerals. That would eat up the ol’ vacation budget and it was usually only one of us that could go. Way too expensive to fly four people from Winnipeg to Niagara for a couple of days. It’s one of the things they don’t mention in the recruitment brochure.

So I’m really looking forward to this trip. My boys get to see Grandma R for the first time in a few years (she came to visit a few times) and they get to see Uncle J, Aunt P and, hopefully, a few of their cousins. We’ll swim, drink beer, eat wings, catch up. Awesome.

You don’t fully understand the “takes a village” concept until your village, your tribe, is more than 2,000 km away when you have your first baby, your second baby. When you’re raising your kids and they don’t have the benefit of watching Uncle J fix a car, or of sharing Uncle D’s wacky sense of humour and compassion. They don’t get to see Aunt L’s strength and the other Aunt L’s artistic, creative process.

My boys would have benefitted from all of that.

And when life occasionally handed us lemons, and the tribe was out of reach, it added to the challenge. (See how I tried to keep it positive there instead of saying something like, it made it suck a septic system milkshake?). 

Yes, during our short stays in several Manitoba towns, we picked up surrogate grandparents and surrogate uncles and aunts for the boys. And some of them were truly awesome and really helped through some difficult times. But each time, we had to say good-bye and move on.

And now, for the first time in 14.5 years, we are within 3.5 hours of family. That is just awesome. More family is only 6.5 hours away. May seem like a lot to some, but for us, that’s less than a day’s drive. For a while there in Manitoba, it was a day’s drive to the airport to catch a plane to fly home. 

So yeah, counting my blessings this morning. Looking forward to the weekend.

Have a great Thursday.

Change of Plans

So . . . change of plans.

Didn’t end up in Golden, BC. We’ve gone in the other direction and are now living in Huntsville, Ontario.

I’m not ready to get into the why and how just yet. It’s not entirely my story to tell. I try to tell only my own.

But, bottom line, Huntsville is one of the places Neomom and I loved as children. And when starting a new chapter in one’s life, why not start somewhere you love. So we did.

Huntsville is beautiful. This is the third tourist town I’ve lived in, so I’m okay with the crazy influx of “citiots” every weekend. Yeah, they call them that in every tourist town; the folks who invade and believe the laws of the land are different in your small town. But I’m not going there right now.

I know you’re wondering about Sonwun and Sontoo. After all, when I started this blog thing, that’s pretty much what it was about.

Well, Sonwun is now 9 and extremely adventurous. He lives to climb, swim, bike and eat beyond his limits. He is responsible for my ever-increasing grey hair. But I wouldn’t have him any other way.

Sontoo is an artist. In every way. He expresses himself in ways others wish they could. He prefers not to talk, if there’s an option. He would rather point, act out or speak in his own language to communicate. 

And here in Huntsville, I believe, they will have greater opportunities to channel their energies and turn them into something awesome. I’m looking forward to it.

For Neomom and I, Huntsville offers clean, beautiful water in abundance. We live to swim, kayak, canoe and fish. It’s a bit of a dream come true to be able to do that within five minutes of our home.

That’s all I have for today. Have a great holiday Monday.

Hope . . . kinda

So yeah, we’ve been transferred. It’s an ongoing part of the RCMP festival.

We’ve been at our current post for about 4 and a half years now, and it’s time to move on. In fact, it’s a little past time.

We’ve been in Manitoba for about 15 years. We’ve had our children here. We’ve been to the north, to the south, to the “big” cities and to the tiny towns. We’ve seen a Goldeyes game, experienced the Forks and had dinner and 529 Wellington. The wife’s been to Churchill and I’ve driven a 6-tonne snowmobile trail groomer across a frozen Lake Winnipeg, as the ice cracked beneath me.

We’ve been to a Hutterite Colony, driven the TransCanada from east to west and west to east. We’ve been to the Potato Festival, the Strawberry Festival and Islendingadagurinn, the August Long Weekend in Gimli that celebrates Icelandic Heritage in the area. Mostly, however, it seems to celebrate drunken stupidity and the violence that goes with it. 

But we’ve been transferred to British Columbia and we’re excited about it. It’s an unusual transfer, because the RCMP likes to keep it’s people in one province as much as they can. But we managed to make our case to the right people and, about six months ago, we got the coveted transfer order.

And, by the time the paperwork crawled through the system, last fall’s real estate market was well into its annual hibernation. So we’ve been waiting . . . enduring the occasional showing of our home . . . all through the winter.

I can’t talk much more about it, for fear of the toxic emotion known as hope. In a “down” real estate market, it’ll kill ya.

Suffice to say we are looking forward, with measured detachment, to the sale of our home. It’s the best we can muster for now.

Less Than Impressed

Again, I find myself less than impressed by health care in this province.

As I type, I am listening to Sontoo coughing, sniffling . . . not feeling all that well.

I took him to the clinic here in town yesterday. We waited about an hour (not bad) to be seen. The doctor looked at the spots on his chest very carefully. Given that Sontoo was vaccinated for chicken pox, the doctor could not decide whether or not it was a mild case. Fair enough.

“Keep him home from school until Monday, just to be safe,” I was told.

He then looked in Sontoo’s ears and throat and decided to take a swab to test for strep throat. Good.

Strep test came back positive. Prescription for amoxycillin and we were on our way.

Now, I know what you’re thinking . . . so what’s the problem??

The problem, my friends, is that we were at that self-same clinic two days prior, with the same symptoms, the same concerns. And I do mean the same. If anything, the symptoms were slightly less pronounced on the second visit.

And, on the first visit, we received a cursory exam, a similar may-or-may-not-be-chicken-pox diagnosis, no test for strep in spite of our expressed concerns about that precise disease, no prescription, a pat on the head and a push out the door.

The kicker? I’d take this all up with my family doctor, but he skipped town without telling any of his patients. I’m told the wait for an appointment with one of the two docs taking new patients in town is about 2 months.

Less than impressed.

Candy!

So . . . where were we?

(Checks back at blog . . .)

Good lord, the last time I posted was in 2013, December. Time flies.

So, quick update. Still a stay at home dad, still have two energetic sons (Sonwun and Sontoo), still have a lovely wife and am still coming back to my creative outlet once in a while when I the need to write rears its ugly head. (I think it was a review on Urban Spoon this morning that sparked the need to write again.)

I guess the most significant change of late has been the introduction of Sunny’s Treehouse Candy . . . my first real run at doing something to earn a little cash to add to the family stash. It started a couple of Christmases back when the wife and I decided to make candy for our family members who live in other provinces and countries. We wanted to do something different. So we did.

And just this last Christmas, the wife’s sister, who works in Toronto, asked us if we could pull off 5 $200 corporate gift baskets. We had no idea. But I’d read Richard Branson on Twitter say something like, “If someone asks if you can do something, say yes. Then figure out how and do it.”

So we did.

And then in January, we started hitting Farmer’s Markets here in town and in Winnipeg. We’re not yet profitable, but we’re getting there.

I gotta say, I really enjoy making the candy. We’re up to about 18 different flavours of Hard Candy, four flavours of Salt Water Taffy, Sweet and Salty Peanuts, Sponge Toffee and three different kinds of Brittle (peanut, chocolate peanut and almond).

We’ve designed a logo, labels and packaging in keeping with our Treehouse theme. (Mostly the wife there, she’s really good at this stuff!) We’ve sourced inexpensive suppliers for candy ingredients as well as packaging. It’s been an education and, in a couple of months, we might even be profitable!

So that’s what’s kept us sane over the winter. More later, I hope.