Crina and Dan get married

Happy birthday to my friend Reid today!



Went to my cousin's wedding yesterday. You may recall my post about participating in Relay For Life last year with my cousin Dan and his now-wife Crina. They got engaged since then and...(drum roll)... are now husband and wife. :-)



It was a wonderful wedding. The ceremony took place at the top of the Sutton Place Hotel, with a scenic view of Toronto all around. The ushers and bridesmaids danced down the aisle instead of the usual march, and the bride came down the aisle on the arm of her father as friends and family held flowers overhead.



I wished my Aunt Agnes could have been there; she died from breast cancer eight years ago. A small bowl of roses was placed near the front in her memory.



In lieu of wedding favours, Dan and Crina made a donation to the Canadian Cancer Society. Crina and her mother are both cancer survivors, by the way.



One of my personal highlights from the wedding were the speeches. The speeches are always one of my favourite parts of weddings because it's a time when you can usually get more of an insight about the friends or family who are getting married; it's a time of sharing and reminiscing, of tribute and caring. It doesn't matter if the people making the speeches are professional speakers or not as long as what they're saying is from the heart.



Many congratulations to Dan and Crina! And a special thanks to my Uncle John, who asked me for a dance. :-)



You can see more pictures from Saturday in my Flickr set.

Happy birthday to my sister

Photo by Allison

A very happy birthday to my sister Ruth today.

I'm lucky to have the coolest sister in the world. Here are 20 Things I Love About My Sister.



She won't be at Toronto's Word On The Street this weekend, as she has been in past years. Instead, she'll be presenting at Kitchener's Word On The Street, at 12 pm in the Children's Reading Tent.

Time Travelling In Windsor

So Jeff and I spent the weekend in Windsor with his brother and family. Case and Debbie have two boys and a girl, and we don't get to see them as often as we'd like because of geography and schedules.



Because of this, I feel a little time traveller-ish whenever we do see them, watching our niece and nephews grow up at fast-forward speeds. My niece, for example, is teetering on the brink of adolescence. When did that happen?!? She's way more confident and together than I ever was at her age.



We played games on the Wii, attended one of our nephew's hockey practices (Case is an assistant coach), watched Camp Rock, ate Debbie's wonderful cooking, and browsed Somerset Mall.



Jeff and I both bought stuff at the Apple Store in the mall. He bought a car kit that works with his iPhone. I bought an Incase Slider Case for my iPhone as well as Altec Lansing UHS307 Earclip-S In-Ear Headphones. I've never been able to keep the regular Apple earbuds from falling out of my ears (I must have deformed ears or something) so have been looking for in-ear headphones that also have a microphone.



The photo at the top of this post is of the youngest boy, who really REALLY likes his DS. He'd become so absorbed in his games that he wasn't aware of his physical position. I walked into the living room one morning to find him playing in the position below, for instance. :-)



Anyway, many thanks to Debbie and Case for being such wonderful hosts. :-) The photos today are from our visit this past weekend, posted here with permission from Deb and Case.





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Something's living under our house

Mock orange blossoms. One of my favourite fragrances.

Update on my Dad. He was discharged from the hospital yesterday, and is back home; he'll be seeing more specialists in the upcoming weeks. He's feeling much better, though the doctors still weren't able to figure out exactly what happened. We're going to visit with him later today.

Thanks so much for all the advice and support, everyone. It's much appreciated.



So it looks as if something's excavating a home under our house. The hole above was made in the past couple of days, and had a big pile of earth beside it. The hole goes in pretty far. We hadn't noticed until just recently because we've been distracted this past week.

Any ideas? Jeff thinks it might be a rabbit. My theory: a monster-sized squirrel, out for revenge. Anyway, Jeff's put a board over the hole; we'll see what happens now.


SLF = Squirrel Liberation Front.


Speaking of squirrels, I continue to find holes dug in my planters. The photo below doesn't show it very well, but I found a big hole in my peppermint planter, with one of the plants flung cruelly to one side.



It's been raining so much lately that the cayenne pepper has been washing away, leaving my plants vulnerable to the evil vandalistic squirrel-fiends in our neighbourhood.

The squirrels have left my Thai basil alone so far, though:



The ripped leaf is my fault; I tore off a little piece because I wanted to see what it smelled/tasted like.

Very cool to see all kinds of plants I've grown by seed reaching maturity. Now I just have to find some recipes that use Thai basil. :-)



I used some of my garden herbs when I made kisir recently, a salad consisting of bulgur, chopped walnuts, hazelnuts, spring onions, green and red pepper, fresh parsley, mint & dill, dried crush chillies, paprika, cumin, white pepper, olive oil, lemon juice and tomato juice. The recipe is from the Sofra Cookbook: Modern Turkish and Middle Eastern Cookery by Hüseyin Özer, which I discovered through my friend Justin's mother.

I served the kisir on pieces of lettuce, but you can also serve it on pita as well. Yum.

It's been a bit of a stressful week, and I've been finding sewing a therapeutic activity and hugely relaxing. Yesterday I re-threaded my serger just for practice and for the relaxation aspect. I know, I'm weird.

For those with serger fear: I've discovered that the main trick to threading sergers from scratch is to make sure that the lower looper thread is -above- the upper looper thread, else everything gets tangled up and the lower looper thread breaks. It can be frustrating, but I'm finding that the more often I do it, the easier it gets.



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Update

Thanks SO much for all the good wishes, everyone. My dad's in the hospital but is doing fine. He's supposed to have an MRI later today and (hopefully) an echocardiogram. After both tests are done and if he's still feeling okay, Ruth and I can take him home.

I took the photo at the top of the page a couple of hours before I heard about Dad's stroke; I was doing a photo shoot of our friends' baby (SO cute!). You can see additional photos from the shoot in this Flickr set.



After dinner, Ruth called to let me know what happened. Jeff drove me to the hospital so I could keep Dad company in the waiting room. Apparently he had been in the mall earlier in the day when he suddenly got dizzy. He went to see a doctor, who sent him to Emerg after Dad had problems during a cerebellar function test ("touch my finger then your nose, then repeat as fast as you can")...he had no problems with one arm, but did with the other.

I'm not sure what the Emergency ward in U.S. hospitals is like, but here's what basically happened to my Dad:

- Arrived at around 7 pm and after being briefly questioned at Triage, was told wait in the main waiting room, which was packed with unhappy people, some of whom had been waiting 10 hours or more. One fellow in handcuffs arrived with two police escorts; he was whisked in.

- 9 pm: Dad's name was called and he registered, was given a white plastic bracelet with his name and other registration info, asked to go back to the main waiting room.

- 2:45 am (yes, nearly 6 hours later), his name was called again. He was taken to a smaller waiting room.

- 3 am (approx): He was taken into an examination room, where he lay on a stretcher and had his vitals taken. Blood pressure was fine, according to a nurse, and said that a doctor would be coming. I told Dad he should try to get some sleep, so he did. I sat in a nearby chair.

- 4:20 am: The doctor came, looking somewhat harried; apparently he was the only one on the Emergency floor that night. He asked Dad some questions and also had Dad stand up and try walking; Dad had trouble keeping his balance. The doctor told Dad to lie down again and said he wanted to do some more tests.

- ?? (forgot to write the time down): Dad was given an electrocardiogram and take by wheelchair to get a CT Scan. The technician let me sit in the booth while it was being done and I have to admit that despite my worry about Dad, it was VERY COOL to see the procedure and watch as a series of x-rays of Dad's brain appeared on the screen. I was so tempted to take out my camera and get some photos because I knew Dad would love to see them later (I still had my camera because of the baby shoot mentioned earlier) but I was worried that the technician would kick me out; he had already hesitated before letting me come in.



- ??: Dad was wheeled to yet another waiting room, this one smaller than the last. We were both incredibly exhausted by this time, but there was no place to lie down. I was also (once again) wish desperately for reading material. All I had with me when I arrived at the hospital: (1) Small serger handbook, already read several times, and (2) A Drowned Maiden's Hair: A Melodrama by Laura Amy Schlitz, which I had just finished on the subway before going to the photo shoot. I gave the latter book to my Dad, and read and reread and rereread the serger handbook in the various waiting rooms. I also found a child's colouring book in the play corner and kept myself awake by making my own contributions:



- ??: I finally got so desperate for reading material that I started grabbing brochures about the hospital, visitor information leaflets, ANYTHING NEW TO READ. I remember thinking longingly of my huge "to read" pile back at home. I got in the wheelchair and wheeled myself around the small room while Dad dozed off, still holding the book in his lap. I had never tried a wheelchair before; it was far easier to manipulate than I expected. Fortunately no hospital staff came by while I was playing with their equipment.



- 6 am: I assumed that the cafeteria was open and went to get breakfast for Dad and me. By this time, Dad had been in hospital waiting rooms for almost 12 hours, and he hadn't had a meal since lunch the previous day. In my hurry to get back, I didn't read the text on the milk carton closely and when we went to pour milk in the insta-cereal boxes back in the waiting room, I was horrified to see BLUE MILK come out. Turns out I had bought Blue Raspberry Milk! Ugh. We still used it, and it wasn't as bad as we expected. But still. BLUE MILK?

- 6:30 am: Doctor came by and said that although the tests all looked clean, he was concerned by Dad's lack of balance earlier on so wanted the x-ray checked out by a specialist. Unfortunately this meant we would have to wait until the morning staff came in.

- 8:30 am: I called Ruth to let her know what was going on, and she was horrified that Dad and I had been up all night. She arrived soon after to take over my shift so I could go home and get some sleep. I took a GO bus back to Toronto; unfortunately Jeff's car was in the shop so he couldn't come pick me up. Thanks to my dad-in-law for picking me up at the station and buying lunch!

Dad ended up basically waiting in the hospital for at least 16 hours after arriving at Emergency. Even when it was determined he needed to be admitted to the hospital, he had to wait around until a bed was free since all the rooms were booked.

This whole system sounds a bit screwed up to me. It's not the staff's fault; the doctor and nurses I saw were all working as hard as they could...there just weren't enough of them.

What's happening now...

The specialist told us that Dad probably had a small stroke or a series of mini-strokes. Dad's still in the hospital (in a shared room), and has an MRI scheduled for this afternoon. He also needs to get an echocardiogram...hopefully this can also be scheduled for today, so he can come home. Fingers crossed!

And again, THANK YOU so much for all your e-mails and good wishes.



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