The Bridge

Being in Regina can be difficult at times but there are many lovely things about this city as well. I was looking through some of my photo's and up popped some pictures from a walk my friend Danielle and I took through the amazing Wascana Park. Wascana sits in the middle of the city and it is a huge hit with all the residents of Regina, so it can be busy on the best of days.

Now Danielle and I have walked through this park many times over, and we have complained about the bottle-necking that occurs on the road bridge on Broad street. This complaint is not just our own, because finally they decided to make a pedestrian bridge to ease the foot traffic that would constantly occur. All last winter and all through the summer we would look to where the bridge was being built and wonder why it was taking so long. We could imagine the awesomeness of this new feature to the park and anticipated the day the bridge would be open.

Early this fall we went on our walk, no expectations in mind preparing for the clog, but when we got there we found that the bridge was finally open. We decided to honor the moment by taking photo's and calling it an inauguration. We were so happily surprised that the entire walk turned out to be a lovely evening, and it happened to have us meeting up with Danielle's mom and sister on a walk of their own.

Girlfriend in a Coma... I know it's serious

Today I don't have any memories that are popping up as being super significant. I just thought I would update the blog as I haven't been on in awhile.

Right now I'm reading Douglas Coupland's Girlfriend in a Coma and I find i have a hard time putting it down because he is such a great writer and it's a mash-up story about a group of friends, one of which falls into a 17year coma, and the rest of them, not asleep, move through life in an awake coma like state. They fail to develop into adults, and when the one friend wakes from her coma she still feels 17 even though she is now 34. The story takes a drastic turn after that and turns into an apocalyptic warning that makes it even more difficult to put down.
I just really like the way Coupland see's the world and looks at the future. After reading many of his books, certain themes ring out. The future is now, the grouping of friends/ people (the need for them to survive), the constant search for meaning in this world (with traces of existentialism), and just a completely different viewpoint from my own. I wish I thought like Coupland, but I also am happy I don't.
I don't know how he continues to create when he sees disaster coming. He presents a cynicism and satirical look at the world with the potential for hope and I don't know how he does it.

Patios, mini golf, and Queen's Don't Stop Me Now

This is a short one. My good friend Danielle had one of her good friends Sarah from the UK come and visit her in Canada after they had a short trip to New York together. On celebration of Sarah's arrival in town a group of us went out to the Fireside patio for Friday night Dinner and Drinks.Where we heartily drank, got to know one another and laughed belly laughs. After dinner and being slightly drunk we hopped in the car (designated driver, so no drunk driving was done) and when Queen's don't stop me now came on we all joined in a mad serenade of the song, which always should be sung madly and with lots of passion, cause you're having such a good time, you're outta control. The song may have ended but the good times didn't and we had a mini golf extravaganza where we wildly hit balls into holes, and no one kept count (because this is not a competition this is an evening of enjoyment) at the end of the Game I dropped my ball into this randomizer slot machine and  I won a free game. More drinks were had and the evening finished with the wonderful flavor of laughter, beer and new friends.

Memory of Onion Rings

Halloween was last weekend and as I was walking home from the bus stop today I was reminded of the chaos of the night of our pub crawl. It may have been the worst pub crawl in the histories of pub crawls. The evening started well, getting ready having a few drinks before leaving and eating chocolate. Halloween mini chocolate bar style. With a lift from my friend's parents (look at us in our approaching 30's, getting our parents to drive us ) we arrived at our destination of debauchery and tomfoolery. Where we waited, and waited, and waited to get inside to register for the evening. Foreshadowing of the evening. We ordered a drink and downed it quickly as we were soon off to our next destination where we waited in line once again  to get into the bar. Pub crawls on Halloween are made to help people get to and from bars with a quickness and ease. There's no waiting in line with pub crawls they have destinations planned beforehand, they know we are coming, so imagine our confusion when we had to wait in line yet again.
This time we stayed a bit longer, we danced and drank and enjoyed the company of our friends. Soon it was time to leave for our final destination.
Leaving proved problematic as we couldn't find our buses, many were arriving and none were leaving.  Eventually we found our bus, but we had to stand in the aisle because they didn't have enough buses for all the crawlers. Half cut and standing on a moving vehicle could have proved difficult but we managed by leaning on one another.

We arrived at the Drink, ironically a place where no drinking was to be had. Everyone lined up and then proceeded to crowd around the entrance. Me and my friends were together at this point, but soon the crowd became upset as they continued to stand around waiting without any movement in the line-up. People at the back started pushing forward and we all became crushed together as one giant Halloween monster. A monster with many costumes but no visible form, and lots of growling. I was parted from my friends they somehow fell behind, and a stranger linked her arm in mine hoping that I would keep her warm. I stood there being crushed thinking, so this must've been what going to a Who concert in the 70's felt like. It became more and more dangerous as a drunk rowdy crowd had no concept of the consequences of their actions. My friend texted me from the back saying they wanted out and I should join them, but by this point I was in the alcove of the entrance so close to the door. However I no longer had the taste for dancing let alone doing the monster mash. So I proceeded to push my way out. As I squished my way past many bodies I thought hey this must've been what being born felt like except my head is fully formed and its the only thing not being rushed right now. I got out, and once reunited we proceeded to walk home in the cold.  Once home our sober friend drove us to a restaurant and we had a late night dinner, where I ate the best onion rings ever, they were so good that I honestly cannot remember what the main dish was.

All in all the pub crawl was a disaster but the ending was fantastic because we laughed and talked and ate delicious onion rings.

Memory of Future Technology

Today I was sitting at my usual spot for lunch and unlike other days I was sitting alone, as my lunchtime friends were out and about. I've been reading this book called Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, I highly recommend it, very moving and charming story based on a boy who lost his father in 9/11. As I sat reading this book I was reminded about the moment when I first heard about 9/11 and where I was (probably everyone does) and I remember how not until I saw what happened did it truly affect me. It was words coming out of someone's mouth and having never been to New York and not knowing what the twin towers were, it didn't become fully realized until I was at home watching the news.

But that is not what this memory is about, it just played a part in it and maybe I will revisit that memory later, (it's quite blurry and linked to a memory of feeling rather than experiencing). So back from the tangent, thinking about that moment made me think of other moments in time that were epic in nature, yet unrealized at the time.

This memory could be when I was in grade 8, maybe grade 9. My social studies teacher Mr. Aikins was a bear like man with a salt and pepper beard and the same growly nature. He was strict, and I remember little bits and pieces of his classes but not much else. One day during class we were sitting and writing on the Amazon Rainforest (I think), and Mr. Aikins started talking about this new thing happening with computers. He told us that soon we would be able to access all kinds of information around the world by using a computer. He spoke of libraries being able to share information with other libraries and that we wouldn't have to take books out. Now to a class full of pre-pubescent teens it really didn't seem that interesting. Information from libraries? what? who cares about research this really isn't going to affect us, we barely do research as it is. All this stuff on the rainforest I made up after watching the movie he showed us. what about this awesome cd-rom encyclopedia shouldn't that be enough? I don't know seems like the computer is a nerd's paradise, i'm out.

It was before the future but also in the midst of it. The internet was useless to me at first, waiting for the dial up then one of my many siblings picking up the phone and all that time waiting wasted. It was a completely revolutionary idea, and not until dial-up ended and I saw the use of research and knowledge became very valuable and how convenient everything became that I now know I can never go back to a life before it. Have a question? answered! Need something but have no idea where to get it? Found it, it will only cost 40 dollars in shipping but still it exists! Our lives are shared online, we meet our future husbands and wives online. The uses of the world wide web can only be re-created over and over to mold it to our needs, people's voices can be heard across the globe, and we can find the weirdest of weird things, and the small lives we live in real life can be made global. This world wide web was not just limited to libraries and encyclopedias, he really downplayed the entirety of it all, but then maybe no one really knew the true outcome of this small invention, and how it would affect so many people.

I recently helped a young Somali man radiowiilwaal.com create you tube posts of his comedy routines, this simple act he hopes will get him global recognition, and that it will reach a Somali audience from his new home in Canada. His life will forever be changed if it takes off, and a promising career in making people laugh in the midst of turmoil can be had. Even now I write this post hoping one day someone will read it and enjoy it, and even if that day never comes its still out there in the world taking up space on the information highway.

The question remains was my imagination of the www small or was it focused elsewhere just unrealized at the time?

Memory of Illness

I recently had a conversation with my mom about my sister who had to go to the hospital with the same condition I was inflicted with a few years ago. We spoke about the differences and the similarities of the condition, and it brought about the retelling of my story leading up to my hospital stay. We shared it through both my experience and hers. Mine as the patient hers as the chauffeur and mother.

In 2006 is where this memory takes place. I had recently arrived home from traveling for a year in Australia close to Christmas in 2005. In Australia I had met my boyfriend Bernard, at the time, and he made his way over to Calgary to visit and stay with my family. During his visit I was struck with some episodes of very uncomfortable stomach pain. Stomach pain so intense that it would render me stuck in the foetal  position or throwing up from the pain until it passed, and it always eventually passed. This happened on several occasions before Christmas, and I just shrugged it off as food poisoning or something like it.

On the last day of Bernard's visit the pain came back but this time it didn't pass, I decided that I should go to the emergency room and get checked out. What a great last day in the country, sitting in a waiting room in a country where waiting for health care to be provided can take years. After a few hours of waiting hunched over in pain, I decided I would go to my regular doctor who after 4:30 had a walk-in clinic. Not much was happening for me in the waiting room, so I thought I would try something else.

The walk-in doctor diagnosed the stomach pain as an ulcer, I didn't know better to think any differently and I walked out of the doctor's office with ulcer medicine thinking life was going to better once this medicine kicked in. That night we went out with friends for sushi to celebrate the last day Bernard was in town. I actually ate some food and thought, "see life is already better"
We finished the evening and went to bed early as I had to drop him off at the airport very early the next morning.

The night was restless, my stomach was still hurting, I don't know if I slept or not. I woke up very early and before I got in the car to drive to the airport I threw up the sushi from the night before, I tried drinking some water, that came back up too, and I proceeded to drive in extreme pain to the airport. Bernard and I gave hugs and kisses and he told me to not stick around, and to go home and crawl into my mom's bed so she would know if I needed help. I drove back and climbed into her bed, shortly after I told her that I needed to go to the hospital. The pain was too great to bear anymore. She proceeded to get ready...it seemed like hours and I was waiting impatiently as people in pain usually do. "why was she taking so long? didn't she realize how much pain I was in? this is an emergency, there's no time for brushing your teeth in an emergency!"
I was so thirsty I would try to drink some water and then it would instantly come back up. Sitting was uncomfortable, standing was uncomfortable, lying down was uncomfortable, I felt like I was dying the most painful death anyone could ever die. Torture victims had it easy compared to this. My insides were my enemy and my mom was the slowest driver in the world!!!

We arrived at South Calgary Urgent Care, because the emergency room at the actual hospital was a joke. We signed me in, and there we proceeded to wait what seemed an eternity, but was probably only half an hour. I think they understood the pain I was in because sitting was no longer an option, lying on the floor with my head against the cool tile was the only relief I could find. My mom says she sat near me, not knowing where to look. People were watching and I was quite an embarrassing sight, what could she do?

She held her hands,  trying not to look like she belonged with me, and waited for someone to call my name so the crawling on the floor would stop?  I was pretty much incoherent at that point, and I certainly couldn't hear anything past the pain. Fortunately we both didn't have to wait long. Who knew crawling on the floor moaning gets you great service? My suggestion is try this and see what it brings you. I had a bed, I had a room, I had a nurse that could not find a vein to take a blood sample, and so to add more pain on top of the pain already endured I was poked several times with a needle.

Finally someone came back with the correct diagnosis and I was given my favorite of medicines, morphine, to stifle the pain. Pancreatitis caused by a gallstone. now that they knew what it was they shipped me off to the hospital where I hung out on a stretcher because they had no beds, and was finally placed in a room in the cardiac ward with three women over 80 the next day. That hospital stay is another story to come.

Childhood

I've been absent from posting anything in a long while because I've been wandering down this stream of aimlessness for about a year now. No focus, no money, and no real desire to pursue much of a career.
Where did my creativity go? Somehow it disappeared and in it's place there I planted stress. Last night I watched a film by a local Regina filmmaker called "My Dinner With Generation X" it resonated with me. Little did I know that my birth year placed me within this generation's label. To the filmmaker however Generation X was reserved for people born within 1961 - 1969. They were the disenfranchised, and directionless, they were the result of being neglected in childhood and they are the ones wandering aimlessly, but not without purpose, in life. I found that I was able to relate to these people in the film and that my childhood didn't feel much different than the ones they were describing, and my adulthood is beginning to resemble something like theirs.

Instead of continuing down this path of directionless self-pity that i've been wallowing in for the last 6 months I've decided that my postings on this wall are going to be a mixture of childhood memories, and things that have and will shape my life. The future is now, or at least a second from now, and if I can't be generation X and I must somehow have a label, I would like to take Douglas Coupland's new novel titled Generation A and apply it to who I am. It's fitting that he's given a new name to another generation, and in reality I probably don't really represent it, but what I gathered from his novel was that these people who live without real contact are in the middle of a world they grew up in and a world that has changed so drastically that it is barely recognizable.

I feel that I am in this middle ground. I was part of a generation that can remember a time before internet, and grew up to be technologically inclined, yet not quite as immersed in it as children of the millennium are. Where our environment was not yet needing to be saved, but it was on its way.

I feel like I am in the future, yet only as an observer, not quite a participant.

Memory of Forgiveness

I grew up in a family of 5 kids, 4 girls 1 boy. I was the 4th child the 3rd girl. Timid and shy I grew up very quietly but there were times where I added to the chaos of a big family.
I spent a lot of time reading in my room, I loved reading, loved stories and just couldn't get enough of the imaginary places in my head. Sometimes I would let those imaginary places out of my head and enter the real world. I remember one day I finished reading a story, it wasn't Tarzan (and oh how I wish it was, because then it would make more sense to how this incident came about). I was lying on my bed sad that I had come to the end of a story, and looked at my curtains. I then looked at my stool seat. It was pink and would flip up to store things. It held my most favorite barbies(my little treasure box) I got out of my bed and pushed the seat over to the window and decided that I wanted to know what it was like to swing on a vine in the jungle. I stood on the stool grasped the curtain in my hands and leaned forward putting a little of my weight on the curtain. It held, so I let go and swung out about a foot. I stood back up and climbed back on to the stool, this time I just let myself fall off the chair holding onto the curtain, I went a bit farther out this time. It held again, and it felt pretty cool.

Downstairs I could hear the noise of my family. My parents were making dinner, my sisters were fighting, and my brother was probably playing with lego. I decided I was really going to swing out far and then grab onto the next curtain, just like Tarzan. I climbed back onto the stool and this time as I grabbed the curtain I leaned back, to give myself more momentum, and pushed myself off. It was a force too strong for the curtain rod and instead of swinging out and latching onto the next curtain, everything came tumbling down, including me, the crash was loud and when I got up panic had set in.
I could hear my father's loud footsteps as he quickly climbed the stairs, I stood looking at the disaster that had befallen my windows. What am I going to do? he's coming, I'm going to be in so much trouble, help!
I tried putting the curtain rod back up, but I couldn't reach and when my dad opened the door, he saw me struggling to put things right.
"What happened!"
I couldn't speak. Then I thought of the perfect lie.
"It just fell?"
My dad looked angry, I thought I was in BIG trouble, but he just let the lie go.
"Just fell hunh?"
"yeah, I was reading my book and CRASH the curtain fell down"
"hmmn..."
this was it I was going to get it, a spanking, the worst punishment possible. My dad went over to the window, looked at the curtain rod.
" I can fix this, but I know the curtain didn't just fall"
Deer in headlights
"you were swinging on them weren't you?"
head down in shame
"yes"
"okay then... its time for dinner"
What? that's it? I broke the house! How can I be allowed to eat? This makes no sense at all. I got away Scott free? Dad never lets us get away with anything.
I was shocked, I thought I would be in gigantic trouble but there was nothing, not even anger.

The more I think about this event the more I realize that it was probably a moment when parents are supposed to be angry at the kid to teach them a lesson, but the situation is too funny to be mad at, I went downstairs for dinner and my dad stayed behind to fix the curtain, but the more I think about it the more I realize that he probably stayed behind to laugh, and where I thought I would be in trouble I was given the gift of forgiveness.