In my travels today I twisted my ankle a it bothers me a bit. I mentioned (read complained) about this to my wife and told her that “it is twisted a bit, not too bad, just enough to be annoying.” Her response was “oh, it is just like the rest of you then.” Sigh. I have to be more careful when looking for sympathy.
I want to share the funniest thing I have ever heard while in the presence of my wife giving birth. There are many dangers in repeating said funny thing. The number of women who use the word “funny” in relation to childbirth (without an impressive stream of surrounding negatives) is very small indeed. The amount of breathing exercises, birthing classes, coaches, and pain-numbing drugs are a testament to the decidedly non-funny nature of giving birth … at least for women.
The great gift about being a sensitive supporting husband is being able to find the humour in any situation. I use this great power to rewrite history (and childbirth comes with some built-in amnesia; that is why women have more than one child, I am told) and turn any event I please into a rollicking laugh festival. Actually, maybe my great gift is my wife’s tolerance for that trait.
Here is the situation: the contractions are coming fast and furious; there is no time for an epidural; pain relief comes only from a cocktail of inhaled happy gas; and the doctor is standing in the room wearing black and red rubber boots. There is pushing. There is breathing. There are nurses looking impotent and hopeful. There is my hand with rapidly bluing fingers locked in my wife’s right hand. Her left hand holds the gas mask with a passion I could only envy. And the air is filled with the most impressively creative and horrifyingly obscene swearing I have ever heard–ever.
I may be overstating the hopefulness in the nurses but their impotence can not be overstated. Two of them just stood look at each other wondering what form of assistance they could offer. It is a tricky balance because (apparently, according to them, and I believed their sincerity or desperation) while the gas relieves pain it discourages pushing and the pushing bit is quite important. The benefit of the gas was a respite from the increasingly more profane swearing. They were torn; I could tell.
They finally accepted that they would have to reduce the gas to get the kid and (after attempting to remove the mask from an impressive left-handed grip) they reduced the gas and encouraged pushing. The implication that my wife was not doing enough was dangerous for them to make at this point but, fortunately for them, she was otherwise occupied. My hand was long numb. The swearing was now bridging multiple religions and sexual practises with surprisingly little repetition and some wonderfully inventive juxtapositions.
Then one of the nurses said something that pretty much halted everything: “you know, you can’t push when you are yelling and swearing.” I burst out laughing and even Jan took a break from agony to look over at me (I had been little more than a human stress ball to this point) with an expression that made me laugh harder and fear for the lives of both the nurse and myself.
I am reminded of this because it turns out that the nurse was wrong. It turns out that cursing can help cut pain. I now understand how a relatively calm, quiet, and non-swearing expectant mother was able to channel the entire stage show of the longshoreman’s amateur comedy and insult night with free beer provided. It was all pain relief. The deep-rooted, evolutionary response to pain is swearing loudly. I am now planning a program of birthing lessons (for a very reasonable fee) to take advantage of this newfound knowledge. And the best part is that I am pretty sure that fathers can join right in to help ease the pain.
I got a piece of news a couple of days ago that I was surprised has not been decried and denied in the local media: Charlottetown was ranked 29th out of 31 cities surveyed by MacLeans magazine to determine Canada’s best and worst run cities. Oh, and the two other cities that might have been number 30 and 31 could not be ranked because of incomplete data.
The most interesting part of the article is the companion bit entitled ““And now the bad news”” that explains that Charlottetown has some wonderful qualities but “[c]learly, Charlottetown’s future lies beyond Anne Shirley’s pigtails.”
The survey was not entirely negative on Charlottetown as the positive aspects (and the aspects I feel are exceptionally important) are mentioned:
Charlottetown is the safest city in the country. The city of 32,000 has governance and finance indicators that are near peerless in the country, and it is one of the more environmentally healthy cities among the 31 surveyed. Translation: it’s a great place to live if safety, governance and environment are your thing.
However, the survey focused on the manner in which the city is run and in those measures Charlottetown did not fare so well …
It is much more difficult to start a business in Charlottetown, however. Or get bang for your bucks paid in municipal taxes, or to find a park—or anyone who takes the bus, for that matter. … Charlottetown had the highest per capita economic development and infrastructure costs in the country. Quite simply, it isn’t a great place to germinate ideas, says Ken Gillis, a former manager of a Royal Bank in Charlottetown. “If people want to do something business-wise that is a little different, they have to jump through city hall hoops to get anything done.”
Ouch.
Charlottetown has relatively low population growth, perhaps because it has trouble attracting newcomers. … [Charlottetown] earns an F for new immigrants per 1,000 population. The effect of the lack of immigrants, often regarded as a city’s small business engine, is clearly visible: there are 45 vacant buildings in Charlottetown’s downtown core. (Notwithstanding its setting, the city also has few square metres of outdoor space per square kilometre, earning it an F in the AIMS survey category.)
That is enough of the negative side of Charlottetown. I like Charlottetown. But, as with many things with which we are comfortable and have come to love, it never hurts to have a little reflection. And it often takes an outside source to spur the reflection; they can see us without being blinded by the sheen of affection and comfort that insiders develop.
The problem is that no matter how important the reflection and how sincere the criticism it can still sting. Charlottetown is worth defending and “Charlottetowners are quick to rise to the defence of their city–particularly Charlottetown Mayor Clifford Lee, who took exception to the AIMS survey results, saying it is unfair to compare it with larger, more diverse cities like Halifax and St. John’s.” That is just the sting talking. It is embarrassing to be told that you are not as good as somebody else. It is also important to recognize the validity of the comparison (I am not as good a golfer as Tiger Woods but I am still a good person … right? … RIGHT?).
So, instead of decrying the survey as unfair, why not look at what was surveyed and see if the comparison is important. In some ways it is not. I am happy to sacrifice some aspects of city efficiency for safety, cleanliness, and governance; those are good things. However, let’s also consider the parts of the comparison that mention how Charlottetown can improve. Everybody around here knows that the city is littered with vacant buildings (please feel free to rant at me how that is all changing now and that we already know that and people have already complained about those buildings and isn’t that a Starbucks going in on University Ave …).
In fact, the biggest reason that the article stings is the realization that other people can see the same things we can see but they have the audacity to point it out to … us.
Charlottetown is a good city for the reasons above and more. It also has drawbacks (and the article even said that snow removal was a positive aspect of the city–go figure). If you take a look at the numbers there is a lot of good to be found, just do not look at economic development or transportation (effectiveness). Things look a little rough in taxation and recreation and culture as well.
Time to accept that everybody can see our warts and yet may still love us all the same. They may go to Halifax or Toronto to start new businesses but that is because those cities are better suited. I said it, other cities are better for business. We are better at a lot of things that other cities would love to have (like governance). Charlottetown can get more people on the bus, fill some downtown buildings, and encourage business development outside of tourism. These are things we should be doing. We should not be denying the truth, no matter how much it stings.
I do not think I have done many things more difficult than sending my daughter off to camp for a week in the Magdalen Islands (Le centre nautique de l’Istorlet on Havre-Aubert). It is difficult to let somebody you have been protecting and guarding go off out of protective range and left to her own devices … for a week … without any contact. I am not trying to compare myself to “America’s worst mom” , but it was tough enough to send her away with adult supervision for a week to an island (well, archipelago is probably more accurate) and not hear from her for a week.
The picture (above and to the left) of her leaving for camp shows a couple of things: she has already made a friend and is leaving hand-in-hand with her new friend; and she is not even slightly hesitant or showing any desire to look back once she took the first step toward the boat. I now have a more perfect understanding of what it means to have an experience be bittersweet. I could not be more proud of her being able to go off by herself to a place where she will speak nothing but French for a week, but would it have been too much for a father to ask to have even a brief backward glance? Just a little glance would have been okay.
So off she went. As much as we could do to research the camp (we went to the information session and talked to other parents who had children attend) it was still traumatic. As you can tell, it was a far bigger deal for mom and dad than it was for daughter.
Nonetheless, we survived and I was gratified to see her come back happy, tanned, and full of stories. She even managed to run the last few metres to greet me. I managed to maintain my cool just long enough to take a picture (on the right) and then dropped all pretence of cool and gave her a big hug. I continue to wrap myself in the comfortable knowledge that this was a great experience blah blah blah … she is more self sufficient blah blah blah … she learned a lot blah blah blah … and so on.
The truth is that all of these reasons are spot on the mark. She did many (nautical) activities she had not tried before and had fun. We had a great time spending some “alone” time with our other daughter. I am filled with a newfound (and possibly illusionary, but I do not care) feeling of being a good father. And, best of all, we are back to “normal” with the exception of the girls’ bedrooms; they have been torn asunder to improve them and paint them pink. Life is good.
I finally finished a bottle of Bushmills ten-year-old single-malt Irish whiskey that I carried back from a trip to Ireland that Jan and I took a while ago. I am not a particularly heavy drinker. Well, check that; I am indeed a drinker (a little) and according to dubious science I am indeed heavy, so I guess the previous statement is not strictly true. But around the ole household a bottle tends to last quite a while. The aforementioned Bushmills has lasted more than fifteen years.
When I had the bottle’s lifetime pointed out to me I realized how many people have taken a drink from that particular bottle (via a glass mind you), I had more than a touch of melancholy. A lot of good people (certainly as far as I am concerned) have bent an elbow holding a glass of that whiskey (including my father who reached for it rather than a more common Canadian variety beside it when he desired a base for his drink with ginger ale). Some of the melancholy likely came from the funeral scene in Waking Ned Devine which was playing as I finished my glass.
So, in keeping with he end of the movie and the history and heritage of the bottle, I toast the friends that shared it with me and the fond memories of those times, Sláinte.
I have always been obese. Well, probably not really, I was probably within statistical norms for a few minutes after birth. And when I say that I am obese and have been for the last twenty years (which is closer to accurate) it is based on the body mass index.
I would also like to point out that at various periods during this time I was
My point being that I am a big guy and have been for a long time. I was fortunate enough to have a bicycle built for me by Gilles Bertrand at one time and I wanted a particular frame. I was told in no uncertain terms that for such a bike I would have to weigh less than 200 lbs or I would greatly lessen the life of the bike. I was a “gram weenie” far more than was healthy for a guy my size. I am far better described as torque-enabled or gravity-enhanced than as a mountain goat. I suffered up every hill that my more svelte friends ascended with (what appeared to me to be) the greatest of ease. My only revenge was the downhill where gravity and a tuck were my friends.
So, back to being big–I was and am. My BMI has always been high. To be fair, I just checked the scale and when I got down low enough to buy the bicycle I was only “overweight” on the BMI scale. I biked over 2500km that year around Ottawa.
I have come to hate the BMI. I hate being classified as being so overweight. “[Because of its] ease of measurement and calculation, it is the most widely used diagnostic tool to identify weight problem within a population” (Wikipedia). And there is nothing more comforting than a simple number when making a diagnosis, especially when the number is the result of a mathematical formula. Those things are great.
When I came across a NPR article called “Top 10 Reasons Why The BMI Is Bogus” I could not have been happier. I read it three times just to cheer myself up. Hey, I am still a big guy. I am bigger than I should be given my current lifestyle and physical ability but I would appreciate not having people rely on an abstract number that assumes uniform body composition across all members of a population and uses poor mathematics and statistics (as well as an early 19th century understanding of physiology) to classify individual fatness–particularly when the inventor explicitly said it was not suitable for that purpose. For the record, here is the top ten list in abbreviated form:
- The person who dreamed up the BMI said explicitly that it could not and should not be used to indicate the level of fatness in an individual.
- It is scientifically nonsensical.
- It is physiologically wrong.
- It gets the logic wrong.
- It’s bad statistics.
- It is lying by scientific authority.
- It suggests there are distinct categories of underweight, ideal, overweight and obese, with sharp boundaries that hinge on a decimal place.
- It makes the more cynical members of society suspect that the medical insurance industry lobbies for the continued use of the BMI to keep their profits high.
- Continued reliance on the BMI means doctors don’t feel the need to use one of the more scientifically sound methods that are available to measure obesity levels.
- It embarrasses the U.S.
(from NPR)
Aside from the conspiracy theory tilt of the last three points I couldn’t agree more. There are lots of fat people and there is little argument that we (Westerners) are becoming fatter. I am a big believer that the reasons centre around eating too much and exercising too little. I know, that is the kind of rocket science that you just cannot believe I am giving away for free, but there it is: more calories come in than go out so we get fat. Our diet has increased in sugars and fats so the calories go up. We are more sedentary so we are burning off fewer calories. These problems are serious enough without confusing the issue with poorly constructed formulae and statistics to prove the point.
It is almost quaint to hear an automated voice on a telephone call instructing the caller to insert more coins to continue a call. I got a call from my mother-in-law on June 30th telling me to gather my family and make sure we were at the Sun-N-Shade campground in Borden-Carleton on Canada Day. As this campground is owned by my family I had no problem with the request although I wondered why it was coming from my mother-in-law; she has no connection to the campground. I agreed (I am working to maintain my acceptable son-in-law status). I started to ask some questions regarding the reason we should trundle off to the campground and what time would be appropriate but the aforementioned automated voice interrupted to request more money. My mother-in-law was out of change so all I got was a “I have to go. I will see you tomorrow at the show.”
Ah ha … a clue.
It turns out that my parents (and several others) were putting on an evening performance of music and entertainment (a common happening at the Sun-N-Shade) that evening and they had been pressed into service for a bus tour at the last minute. My mother-in-law, her sister, and a number of her friends were on the tour and would be rolling in to the campground to see the show.
There were a few performers that began the show and then a longer set by the Dunromin Duo (the picture above is of them playing–and yes, there are three of them). They are (from left to right) Harold Noye, Vans Bryant, and Marnie Noye (the silent bass player). If you are a Last.FM person you can listen to their album. Jericho Road (Harold and Marnie Noye and Vans and Emily Bryant) came on after a break to finish the show.
The show was very good … really. The opening performers played traditional Maritime tunes (conspicuously evenly balanced between the provinces) and a couple of country songs. Dunromin Duo concentrated on duets (typically the “brothers” songs of the 1930s to the 1960s) and chose songs featuring close harmony including a version of “Kentucky” by the Louvin Brothers that ran close to eight minutes. The lyrics are below. As it works out to just slightly less than a minute for each line you can understand my amazement that I enjoyed the song as much as I did.
Kentucky you are the dearest land outside of Heaven to me
Kentucky your laurels and your red bud trees
When I die I want to rest upon your graceful mountain so high
Kentucky that is where God will look for meKentucky I miss the voices singing in the silvery moonlight
Kentucky I miss the hound dog chasing coon
I know that my mother dad & sweetheart all are waiting for me
Kentucky I will be coming soonKentucky you are the dearest land outside of Heaven to me
Kentucky I will be coming soon
Without disparaging the earlier acts, the evening was more enjoyable as it progressed. Jericho Road’s bluegrass and gospel music was an excellent capstone to the evening and the people I spoke with at the end of the evening echoed my sentiments. This Canada Day was far from typical for us; we usually see fireworks and sometimes outdoor concerts. I was expecting simple and homey and familiar. I got all of that–I was surprised by how much I truly enjoyed it.
