Round A-bouts

Years ago when I was in Australia, I remember making a comment to my Aussie friends about their Round a-bouts. These r.a.bs (rounds a-bouts) were everywhere instead of stop signs. Even in the big city of Sydney there were r.a.bs . I told them that this would never work in Toronto because people are not patient enough to yield to traffic.

Well, years later I moved into a new subdivision and instead of stop signs we have r.a.bs. We've been in the house for only 3 months and I surprised I haven't seen an accident. For those of you that don't know about r.a.bs let me educate you on how to drive a r.a.b.

When you approach a r.ab. you MUST slow down and YIELD to the cars in the r.a.b. If there is no car you may proceed in...but if you see on oncoming car you must STOP before entering the r.a.b. I can not tell you how many times I had to STOP when in the r.a.b to cars speeding in. NO car should have to stop while in the r.a.b.

Today it happened again while driving the kids to school. I'm in the r.ab. and I can see the car speeding up to try to bet me...but today I played a little chicken and I didn't stop. In the end I had to slam on my brakes and exchange some nasty looks.

Silvana

Santa Claus Parade

Yesterday we got to go to the Toronto Santa Claus Parade. I specify Toronto because each little town has it's own parade but it's not like the one in Toronto. This is the one that gets coverage by all the big TV stations not just local cable 10 coverage. It's been around for over 100 years. The website sucks but you can get some interesting info in the history section. It even gets coverage at the U.S. Thanksgiving parade when they break away for a few minutes so our U.S. friends can see the real Santa. As you know Santa is Canadian given the North Pole is part of Canada. With a postal code of H0H 0H0 where else would it be.

If you speak to anyone from the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) that has been here for a while they will have stories about going to the parade. How our parents would take us down on a cold winters day, hoist us on their shoulders or put us in a tree to get a good view of the parade. Things haven't changed that much as the same thing is happening today. You can even see some people on top of buildings in the photos getting a birds eye view.

What has changed is Toronto!!
We did not go around the Queens Park/ University area were the parade is actually filmed but rather went around the Bloor and Bathurst area near Honest Ed's. Most of the shops are closed, the houses around the area although worth close to $750K were in various levels of disrepair and everything seemed to be one step away from falling apart. I spare you the details of the smells as blogs are better for visual repesentations.

It took lots of planning an co-ordination to get down there on time with the appropriate amount of snacks, drinks, clothing, blankets... Most importantly the kids had fun and got to see a real parade with some excellent marching bands playing festive tunes.

We even got to visit Silvana's former next door neighbour who treated us like family with her hospitality.

Dealing with Healing

Over the last little while I have been dealing with healing and understanding more and more about it. I say understanding but I think it is more of an realization of things I already knew but hadn't experienced in a while.

The brochures and media available in the hospital mention that without managing the pain it will take longer to heal. This kind of goes against the "no pain, no gain" theory but that theory is not for healing. Almost all of the patients (mostly men) that I encountered in the hospital would say they are feeling o.k. or good but I knew there were in pain. I'm not sure if this was machismo in action or that they just didn't understand they did not have to be in pain. I started speaking on their behalf by telling the nurses what they had done (or sounded like) when I was there. Each time the nurse would say "you should ask for pain medication when that happens it will help the healing."

I've always tried to be proactive in avoiding pain, I won't go as far as stretching before doing something strenuous but I will take some medication afterwards if I start to feel something. The brochures say taking something on the onset of pain is good as well as it won't let the pain progress. Now don't go too far and over medicate as that is not good either but if you follow the dosage guidelines you should be fine.

The mental part of pain is probably the most difficult to deal with. Those feelings inside you that say something is wrong even though you know what the pain is from and that things are going well. You still wonder if that pain is right. You get a hightened awareness of your body. Things you felt before are now weird even though you've had them all along. "Why can't I feel my ass?"
"Wait, I think it's numb from sitting on it too long"

One of the charts the hospitals use has what look like emoticons on it so that patients can point to the one that best fits the pain they are feeling. I'm sure this was out before the internet but it's funny how some things are just universal. Whether you can read or not you could point to a picture of how you feel.

Angela's Room

We got to paint Angela's room. The colours are similar to her old room but she has some new accessories that match quite nicely now.

Angela's 7th part 2

As you probably saw from a previous post Angela's Birthday was a few month back but due to her bing in a new school we gave it a few months before we had a party so she could invite some new friends along with the old. It went quite well.

Halloween

At the old house we always gave out candies from the garage. Given it gets quite cold this time of year hanging out in the garage makes it alot warmer. We can also display all our Halloween items in one place. So we continued with the tradition here at the new house. It was colder this year than the last few so it was a good to have the garage as a shelter. We anticipated alot of kids given all the new houses but we didn't get that many (all the more candy for us now). I think because we are on a crescent the kids avoided the street. I can understand as you want to be efficient in your trick or treating. Streets that are straight are faster and therefore more candy.