Archive for the Category ◊ Family ◊
This is the traditional dress for my father’s region in the Philippines, taken recently at a Filipino cultural gathering up at SFU near Vancouver. My brothers took loads of photos, too, which I’ll link to later.
Chelsea, 3 months. I shot this in Vancouver two months ago, she doesn’t look like this anymore!
Today’s random thoughts while editing: whoever coined the phrase ‘sleep like a baby’ either didn’t have a baby or had a nursery rhyme baby that went magically to sleep at the sound of a music box and woke up exactly eight hours later. If we all slept like babies we’d be waking up every few hours to eat and maybe check for messages, then fall asleep again in a pram pushed by someone else after the umpteenth feeding of the day. Imagine how our days (and nights) would change!
I may sleep less than the average person due to my nutty schedule but at least all the slumber I do get is top-quality and I’m generally not cranky when I’m tired. I just get a bit punch-drunk (or slap-happy, as one person told me). I’d rather be the Sleepy dwarf than the Grumpy dwarf.
Miss Maddy at Earls Cove (Sunshine Coast, BC). The top shot is mine, the bottom shot is Allan‘s.
Madeleine is now eight and a half years old, and is the middle child, like me. There are all sorts of theories about a supposed middle child syndrome, for being the middle of three (I couldn’t seem to find an example of being the middle of five), and also for when the middle children become adults. There are also those who don’t believe this syndrome exists. I think a few of the characteristics ring quite true (articles say the middle children turn out to be quite creative), but I don’t know if there is really a behaviour pattern between the middle children I know.
In any case, it is interesting to watch happy-go-lucky Maddy grow up and show her personality in front of a camera. She is such a character!
In the spring of 1985 while moving to BC from Winnipeg, three of us in my family were in a single-vehicle accident along the Trans-Canada Highway, near the Alberta/Saskatchewan border.
It was the middle of the night. My dad was driving our beloved Volkswagen campervan when it blew a tire and rolled on the highway. I was fast asleep in the bed at the back and got tossed around like a sock in a dryer. Alvin was wearing a seat belt and asleep under a blanket in the passenger seat, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t adjusted for him but for my mother, which is how he ended up in the ditch.
Our belongings were strewn all over the highway. A semi truck drove by without stopping to help us, crushing our things before continuing along its way. I was not yet 13 years old but I remember the scene quite clearly, how angry I was at that truck. Then another truck came but this one stopped, and the driver helped my dad bring Alvin from the ditch to the cab. Alvin’s thigh was swollen like a balloon and they had to cut his jeans to release the pressure. A Greyhound bus filled with sleepy passengers came next and took us to the nearest hospital, which was too small to handle our situation. An ambulance then took us all the way to Regina General Hospital, where my dad was bleeding profusely from his head but was in too much shock to notice.
No major injuries, but Dad needed stitches in his head/ear, and Alvin broke his femur and needed stitches in his chin. The most I got was bruising and my glasses broke. Alvin ended up spending a month in traction, and I was bored and blind (no glasses!). The good people at the hospital let me make crafts (see the clothespin wishing wells?) and paint cartoons on the walls. I remember painting Garfield and Transformers. Even back then I was very myopic, painting wasn’t easy! But I had time.
Everyone was super-friendly, and Alvin had a great nurse — a really funny guy whose name escapes me. He shared a room with a kid about the same age who was hit by a car while riding his bicycle and in much worse shape than Alvin — he was lucky to be alive! The two boys were both strung up by wires and cables; they entertained each other during their long stay.
Alvin spent his 10th birthday in the hospital, so I believe the accident was early April 1985. After a month in traction, he came home to Winnipeg and spent a month in a body cast!
Even after a rather traumatic episode, I remember Regina and the hospital and the staff with fond memories. They took an awful situation and made it more than bearable.
Thanks, Regina!
I love getting stuff from the Ms (my nieces and nephew), whether it’s a drawing or two or three or four — usually five. Today it was a Christmas card that smelled like gingerbread and some magnets of the kids’ school pictures. Melissa, who’s now 10 (!), phoned me and we talked about our cats and how crazy they are. What a cute conversation, filled with grown-up-sounding words from Melissa like “cautiously” — oooh, adverb! — and lots of giggles.
The wrapped gift wasn’t part of the mail, though, it was from a Christmas party I attended this evening, hosted by the agency that found me the part-time job at The Firm. I wasn’t feeling 100%, but I wanted to introduce a couple of friends to the agency, and thank the consultant for helping me land this position. It’s a perfect fit and I’m very grateful to her for the matchmaking! If you live in Toronto and are searching for a personnel agency to represent you, send me a gmail [gailatlarge] and I’ll put you in touch with her, she’s great!
Oh, and it’s time for some music, like I promised:
My (only) nephew, Michael, turns NINE years old today! I wish I were in BC to celebrate with him in person, but alas, I’m thousands of kilometres away and not as mobile as last year…
A bunch of my favourite M2 pictures:
Two years old, at Laity Farm in Mapleridge, BC.
Nearly seven, at Mace’s on the Sunshine Coast, BC.
Aged seven and a half, with Kermit in BC, Spring 2008.
And my favourite cameraphone photos of us back in 2007 just before his seventh birthday:
My blog is seven years old today! The above is a cameraphone pic of a cake I shot in New York City, December 20, 2006. It’s very “Gail at Large”, wouldn’t you say?
This blog has benefited me in many ways, not the least of which has been to connect me with many interesting people who I’d never have met otherwise. A recent example of this is from my Ottawa road trip the other weekend when I met up with two well-travelled people through totally different channels: Zhu, a multilingual expat blogger from France, and Lisa, an Ottawa native who was referred to my blog by someone else and works in the aviation industry. Who knew when I started writing in this space that in seven years it would morph from a working university student blogspot templated rant to a mostly pictorial account of my ever-evolving life filled with cameras, airplanes, cats, code-tweaking, and blurry cameraphone shots of food? Certainly not me!
Speaking of travel, I got a very cute postcard today from my nephew, I’ll scan it after I get home later… which I’m sharing with you because it brought a big smile to my face and if it doesn’t bring one to yours I’ll be a monkey’s uncle (auntie?):
Aww, poor Kermit, he’s probably got heatstroke!
Michael and I had a funny conversation on the phone a couple of days before their road trip. (Bear in mind he’s a little over a month away from turning nine years old.) Here’s a snippet:
Me: “Have all my postcards arrived yet?”
Michael: “We got one from Bra… Brats… Brat-sylvia.”
Me (chuckling): “You mean Bra-ti-sla-va. Do you know where that is?”
Michael: “No. Where is it?”
Me: “Slovakia. Do you know where Austria is?”
Michael: “That’s where Beethoven is from. But I don’t know where Austria is. I’m only in Grade 3, Auntie Gail, Geography is in Grade 5.”
Earlier in July, when I phoned Melissa for her 10th birthday, she told me they got my postcard from Rome.
Me: “Do you know where Rome is?”
Melissa: “I’ve heard of it.”
Me: “Have you heard of the Pope?”
Melissa: “Yes, he lives at church.”
Maddy (nearly eight) was too busy plotting world dominance playing to stop and talk to me. The twins (age five) are talking like crazy and say funny things, but they don’t like to talk on the phone… yet, anyway. Once they do, I’ll be sure to post the gems.
I was looking for a particular video to upload for Flashback Friday and found this little gem. Oh my goodness, the cuteness kills me! I’ll see if I can dig up the other video I had in mind later.
The 3Ms Sing Happy Birthday from Gail Edwin-Fielding on Vimeo.
July 2004 — it was their mama’s birthday. I love the hiccough partway through.
Melissa just turned 5, Michael was 3, Maddy was 2.
[my father and aunties]
The month is well past halfway over, but I’m finally getting around to posting this. From the Canadian Cancer Society website:
Did you know?
Screening is an important way to prevent and detect colorectal cancer because:
- Colorectal cancer usually develops over a long time without causing any signs or symptoms.
- Screening can detect cancer and pre-cancerous polyps before any symptoms appear.
- When symptoms do start they are often vague and easily mistaken for more common illnesses.
- Regular physical activity and eating a healthy diet may help reduce your risk of colorectal cancer.
Statistics
Currently, colorectal cancer is the fourth most commonly diagnosed cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death in Canada.
In 2008, it was estimated that about 21,500 Canadians were diagnosed with colorectal cancer and about 8,900 died from the disease.
On average, 413 Canadians will be diagnosed with colorectal cancer every week and 171 Canadians will die of colorectal cancer every week.
Colorectal cancer mortality rates continue to decline in both men and women and are likely the result of improvements in treatment, specifically chemotherapy.
For more on education and screening for colorectal cancer (especially if you are over 50), and to read a survivor’s story, click here.
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