Month: September 2009

Flotsam and jetsam – a “cleaning out my inbox” post

A few tidbits that have dribbled out of my inbox lately, worth a mention but not quite an entire post…

Remember when I blogged about the MoonJars? I just received their newsletter, and now you can enter to win a set of 25 standard MoonJars for your child’s classroom. Follow this link for details. (The contest is aimed at classrooms or community groups for Grades K-3. Entries should be submitted on behalf of classes/groups through their teachers or parents.)

I won my first-ever auction on eBay this weekend! I’ve bought stuff before, and I’ve bid and lost things, but I’ve never actually won an auction. I’m so stoked! The item was shipped from Mississauga yesterday, and I’ve been using Canada Post’s tracking feature to watch it migrate across the province. Did you know you can get e-mail tracking updates? How cool is that? I’m ridiculously excited to watch its progress across the province. It arrived in Ottawa at 6:36 this morning — with any luck, it will be waiting for me at home tonight. Yippee! (You’ll have to wait to see what I got, but it has to do with the 365. Fun!)

There’s a kids’ consignment sale happening on Sunday, October 18 called My Kid’s Funky Closet . According to the e-mail I received, ” It has been happening for 4 years now at The Glebe Community Center in Ottawa. The Ottawa Police provide their child finger printing service and Little Rays Reptiles put on a show. They collect for the food bank and snowsuit fund as well. They have consignors who make money selling their gently used children’s items and maternity wear and people at the show have an opportunity to dress their children at a fraction of the cost of buying new. There are toys, games, bikes, strollers, baby equipment, clothing, maternity wear and vendor booths to visit as well.”

Those of you with daughters might be interested in this one.

Plan Canada just released the 2009 edition of their ground breaking series of reports Because I Am A Girl (BIAAG). These reports highlight the plight of girls around the world and the unique role they play in the fight against global poverty.

Plan Canada in support of the 2009 BIAAG report is filming a documentary across Canada and will be in Ottawa from October 2nd to the 5th filming at locations across the city. This documentary is aimed at capturing the experiences of teens, tweens and their inspirations. These experiences will be captured and replayed as a documentary to be released in Spring 2010.

If you think your teen or tween might be interested in participating in the documentary, the latest filming schedule will have them at the Rideau Centre downtown on Saturday, October 3 from 12 pm to 2 pm.

If people are unable to attend the events they can still support the campaign by visiting www.becauseiamagirl.ca and find more ways to get involved. You can also follow the documentary crew as they blog about traveling across Canada and talking to girls who are helping to achieve positive social change around the world.

And finally, I’ve been chatting with one of the producers for All in a Day on CBC Radio. They’re thinking of doing a sort of parenting panel debate on when is the right time to let kids walk to school by themselves. We’ve had a lot of similar discussions here, so I said I’d ask y’all to see if anyone is interested. Even though I’m still shepherding Tristan back and forth at age seven, I think I’m pretty close to letting him walk by himself — assuming he’s ready for it.

I’m a little conflicted on the subject, but want to subscribe to the “free range kids” kind of ideals and believe that it is just as safe now as it was when I was a kid for kids to be roaming the neighbourhood. If you want to debate the issue, and especially if you’d argue a more conservative approach, let me know and I’ll pass your information along to Sarah at the CBC.

Five things that are making me cranky

It’s Monday and I’m feeling peevish. Consider yourself warned. When I’m finally and properly annointed Queen of the Universe, here’s the first five things I’m going to fix.

1. Twitter and Internet Explorer 6.

For the last couple of weeks, Twitter has been on a campaign to kill IE6. In fact, it’s not just Twitter, it’s Internet-wide, but Twitter is being particularly annoying about it. I didn’t mind the constant message box at the top of my screen saying “There’s a better way to surf” but now they’ve moved the icon pictures over top of the text, so that the leftmost 20 per cent or so of the text is blocked. Dear Twitter, I *know* Firefox is better than IE, but my IT department disagrees. Please let me read my tweets in peace. I promise, we’ll upgrade sometime in the next decade. We’re on it!

2. Trying to leave a comment on Blogger.com blogs

Once upon a time I had a blogspot blog, but in 2007 I made the leap to WordPress and haven’t looked back since. Is it me or are blogspot/blogger.com blogs actually trying to make it as difficult as possible to comment? Blogger.com users, is there some way you can simplify your comment process? It’s so annoying that even if you’re one of my favourite bloggers, I’m not likely to bother leaving a comment if you’re on a blogger.com blog. It never remembers my info, I have to go through a ridiculous number of screens with captchas that only show up about half the time, and it’s an entirely far too convoluted process. And that’s for the ones where I don’t have to invoke my OpenID or worse, revert to my old Blogger.com ID because the blog is not open to non-google-account comments. Really? Life’s too short.

3. The new “coffee shelf” system at Tim Hortons

This one has been around a while, but seems to be spreading like H1N1. Now at Tim Hortons, instead of the clerk simply handing you your coffee at the cash register, you have to move two feet down the counter and pick up your coffee on the little coffee shelf. While I get that the intention is to keep the line moving along, if I’m still standing there fishing coins out of the bottom of my purse would it kill you to hand me my coffee where I’m standing? Do either of us really benefit from you walking down the counter to place it up on the shelf and me walking down the counter to retrieve it, and then me walking back to the cash where you’re already serving the next customer and double-checking “This is the one with three milks, right?” because you only have to walk all the way back to your office ONCE with somebody else’s double-double to make sure it never happens again.

4. Homework for five- and seven-year olds during the arsenic hours

Okay, so I’ve already whined about being on my own with all three boys three nights a week this semester, trying to cram in dinner and lunch-making and baby-herding and all the other joys that have to happen daily between when I get home from work and when Beloved gets home from work. I was just getting the hang of it all when suddenly it’s all out of control again, because we’ve added nightly homework to the mix. Because keeping Lucas off Tristan’s homework and keeping Tristan focused on his task and keeping Simon engaged in his task and keeping Lucas off Simon’s homework all while making dinner and empyting school bags and getting things organized for the next day? Every single night? Is going to make my head explode. Likely this week. It’s not even the homework I mind so much, as the fact that it’s interactive, parent-participatory homework. Sure, I’m all over staying involved in my kids’ education, but not to the tune of 20 minutes a night during the most horrific part of the day. Save me!

5. Loblaws

I really think they’re just existing to piss me off lately. I’ve been a loyal Loblaws shopper for years, but I really think it’s time to find another grocery store. I’m so sick of having my favourite products suddenly disappear, never to be seen again. And then, three or four weeks ago, they completely rearranged the inside of the Barrhaven store and I swear to god, I have not been able to find anything since. For someone who blazes through the grocery store as quickly as possible, using the store layout as a mnenomic device in lieu of a shopping list, usually with a cranky 19-month-old passenger throwing things out of the cart as fast as I’m putting them in, rearranging the store is about the most cruel thing you could possibly do. And then, I just read this weekend that the delicious SunTech tomatoes that are grown in Manotick, at most 10 km or so from my house, are now trucked to Loblaws via Ajax, outside of Toronto. Yes, they are shipped 350 kms to the west, to the main distribution centre for Loblaws, only to be trucked 350 kms BACK to Ottawa. And Loblaws still has the temerity to blithely label them “Grown Close to Home!” Gah!

That’s what’s twisting my knickers these days. What’s making you cranky today?

Greeting cards, free shipping and 50 per cent to charity on Mothership Photo!

I‘ve got all kinds of neat stuff going on over at my Etsy shop for Mothership Photography! I finalized my first sale this week — cool, eh? To celebrate, I’ve got new products and a couple of special deals.

First, in addition to fine art prints, I’ve also created greeting cards for sale now, made from some of my favourite flower images from this summer. Right now, I’m offering sets of four 5×7 matte cards and sets of six 3.5×5 mini cards, all blank inside,
and a set of five thank you cards made from one of my favourite baby-toes images. Check ’em out — I’ll wait here until you get back!

setof4cardsminicards

As a part of my grand opening special, I’m offering free shipping worldwide for my first 25 sales.

And, last but certainly not least, as many of you know October is breast cancer awareness month. Breast cancer seems to be haunting many corners of my life these days: two sweet friends have recently conquered it, one colleague is fighting it, a few friends of mine have lost their mothers to it, and one of my best friends may lose his sister to it. Cancer terrifies me; I lost my Granda to colon cancer when I was nine. So while it’s not much, from now until the end of October, I’ll be donating 50 per cent of my profits from all of my Etsy sales to the Canadian Cancer Society.

Let me know what you think — you guys have given me some great feedback so far, and I appreciate it! Stay tuned, there’s more to come!

Project 365: Gunslingers and Hitchhikers and other silliness

A year is a really. long. time. And 365 pictures? A LOT of pictures. There’s only so much wandering around, camera gripped expectantly in one hand, that a girl can do in search of the perfect photo opportunity. Sometimes, you have to get a little silly.

There’s a group on Flickr called Theme of the Week (TOTW) that I’ve been following for months now, but only recently started playing along. The people who post there are really quite clever and creative — but have WAY more time on their hands than I seem to! The theme this week was “Literary Genius” and I couldn’t resist playing along.

You know I’m a Stephen King fan from way back, and I think the first line to the first novel of his Dark Tower series is perhaps one of the best opening lines of all time: “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

246:365 The Gunslinger

(You like the cracked desert texture on that? The background is actually a beige plush blanket, but I layered the image with a photo of a cracked and rusted yellow pipe I drove past and stopped to photograph the day before. I didn’t end up using the pipe picture, but it sure adds a bit of desert character, doesn’t it? Have I mentioned how much I love photoshop? And Stephen King? And, erm, George Lucas?)

And then there’s this one, inspired by Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

There is a theory which states that if anybody ever discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

Yesterday, I had TOTW and Douglas Adams in mind when a woman walked past me pushing her dog in a stroller.

247:365 ...something even more bizarre and inexplicable

I swear, I stopped dead in my tracks four steps past her, debated it for a nano-second, and turned around and asked the woman if I could take a photograph. It’s a stroller. for. dogs. If that’s not bizarre and inexplicable, I don’t know what is!

The silliness has been with me for quite some days now. The TOTW last week was “Lyrically Inspired.” I’ve walked past this stump near my house maybe three million times and have never been inspired by it — and then in a flash last Friday on the way home from work, it leapt out and smacked me with both a stinky pun AND a TOTW idea. I called it (*snicker, chortle*) “I’m stumped!” I crack me up!

241:365 I'm stumped!

And the lyrical inspiration? Why, Rush’s “The Trees”, of course!

There is unrest in the forest
There is trouble with the trees
For the maples want more sunlight
And the oaks ignore their pleas

The trouble with the maples
(And they’re quite convinced they’re right)
They say the oaks are just too lofty
And they grab up all the light
But the oaks can’t help their feelings
If they like the way they’re made
And they wonder why the maples
Can’t be happy in their shade

There is trouble in the forest
And the creatures all have fled
As the maples scream ‘Oppression!’
And the oaks just shake their heads

So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights
‘The oaks are just too greedy
We will make them give us light’
Now there’s no more oak oppression
For they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe and saw

(I was ridiculously pleased with myself for this stunning combination of spot-on theme adaptation, excellent musical taste and wretched punniness, and was quite disappointed when Beloved only rolled his eyes at my obvious self-delight and the photo garned a measly two comments on Flickr. Sheesh, tough crowd!)

Moving right along, there were some less silly things that I photographed this week as well. Well, this one has an inherent silliness about him, but that’s along with a whole bunch of other good stuff and not the entire reason I photographed him! I love the sparkle of mischief and personality in his eyes — pure Tristan.

242:365 Tristan

Much as I love the boys’ adorable faces, I like their other parts, too! (This one had to be judiciously edited to remove a curve of rather adorable bathtime bum cheek to make it safe for Internet consumption but take my word for it, the version I kept for myself is even *more* adorable than this one!)

245:365 Bathtime toes

(Simon long ago coined the term “fancy” to mean the way your fingers and toes get all pruney in the bath. When your digits get fancy, it means it’s time to get out of the tub!)

And although, or perhaps because, it is now officially autumn, Mother Nature still has many colourful gifts to share.

243:365 Seed pod

I figure with all the google traffic I get searching for various sorts of “postcards”, I’d put this up to give the searchers their money’s worth:

244b:365 Postcard Parliament

This one wins the prize as the most vexatious photo of the week. I really liked it, and apparently so did lots of other people. It has tonnes of comments, and plenty of people have “favourited” it — but it stubbornly refuses to jump into Explore even though other pictures of mine with half the number of comments and faves are in Explore right now. Very strange.

244:365 Maple leaf

Oh well, it’s still a pretty picture, and that’s the whole point, right?

Parental validation at meet-the-teacher night

It was meet-the-teacher night at the boys’ school last week. Since Simon has the same two teachers he had last year (and that Tristan had as well) I’m pretty comfortable with that relationship. I was looking forward to meeting Tristan’s new teacher though.

I sat in Tristan’s desk in the back row and looked around, full of awe and wonder that he’s in Grade Two but I clearly remember Grade Two. The kids left stuff out on their desks for us to look through, and there were heaps of administrivia, much of it relating to First Communion later this year. They have two class Webkinzes and lots of affection from the teacher and 20 minutes of homework a night, which seems a little steep to me, but it looks like it’s going to be a good year.

One of the handouts on the desk was a booklet was called “Diary of a Second Grader.” It was filled with photocopied worksheets they had completed like, “My favourite recess activity is…” and “The thing I am good at is….” I was enjoying reading it, knowing most of the answers before I finished reading the question but happy to have this sweet insight into the mind of my occasionally stoic seven-year-old.

One page said across the top: “My mom says there are three things that I need to remember when I go out into the world.” These were Tristan’s answers:

  1. Do not stand on the fernitur (sic)
  2. Be polite at somebody else’s house
  3. I will always love you.

Isn’t that the best? One of the three primary messages that my son carries out into the world is that I will always love him. I am a good mother!

Excuse me while I go take my shiny bauble of parental affirmation and frame it on the wall, for reference the other 99 per cent of the time when I feel like I’m making things up as I go along and really have no clue as to what I’m doing.

“I will always love you.” Sigh….

No strollers allowed

Following our apple-picking adventure on Saturday, we popped into nearby Merrickville for some browsing. The place is riddled with fun and funky boutiques, many filled with the wares of local artisans, with not a chain store to be found. I love the ecclectic character of the place, and that you’ll never know what you’ll find from one place to the next.

There was one store that looked particularly interesting, and I was just bending down to lift our compact stroller (and its passenger) up the stone step and into the store when an elderly gentleman stopped us.

“Sorry, no strollers allowed,” he said, blocking the door.

I was so surprised that for a minute I only gazed up at him, openmouthed. “Are you serious?” I finally asked, thinking maybe he was having a bit of fun with me and unable to imagine that he was actually denying me (and my baby) entrance to the store.

He replied in the affirmative, and started to say something about safety, but I wasn’t really interested in the rest of his answer. Beloved, standing behind me with the big boys, offered to take the stroller up the street a bit while I went into the shop, but there was no way I was going to give that merchant my business.

We wandered further down the street, and browsed a few other stores, but the experience of being denied entry had tainted my enjoyment of something to which I’d been looking quite forward. There were many other shops with breakables and other finery that did not bar our entrance, and quite a few where I had to bend down and boost the stroller up a step or two. I’ve never, in all these years, been denied access to any sort of establishment because of a stroller.

I’ve been puzzling over this for a couple of days now. I wish I’d listened to see exactly what the safety issue of concern would be with a stroller. I mean, are wheelchairs barred, too? That would be unimaginable. And yet, they’re a lot bigger than my little travel stroller. Or is it a matter of babies with grabby hands? Lucas on the loose, should I have chosen to leave the stroller at the curb, is far more of a menace to finery than he is belted securely into his stroller.

It’s not that I feel like my rights have been violated, that it’s worth making a stink over, but it does seem to me to be an issue worth discussing. I don’t want retribution or compensation or even to “out” the store in question, but I am curious as to your thoughts. Should my stroller and I have unfettered access to any public establishment? Would you have fought for your ‘right’ to enter the store? Am I missing a very good reason why we should have been denied access? Would it have mattered if I were pushing one of those SUV-type strollers that people so love to hate instead of a compact little Maclaren travel stroller? Have you ever been denied access anywhere because of a stroller? Is there a time or place when strollers should be prohibited?

What say ye, bloggy peeps?

Apple picking 2009

Apple picking is one of my favourite fall traditions. We’d never been before 2005, but now I can’t imagine going a year without a trip to the orchard. This year, we headed back to our first favourite, Kilmarnock Orchard. It’s the better part of an hour’s drive from Ottawa, but the drive is beautiful on a bright blue autumn morning, and if you make a stop at nearby Merrickville on your way home, it’s a lovely way to spend a day together.

Brothers

This tree is not indicative of the size of tree you’ll find at Kilmarnock, but I was charmed by it. It’s a Charlie Brown Apple Tree!

Charlie Brown apple tree

Lucas was even more adorable than usual. He loves apples, and calls any round-ish fruit an “abble” — nectarines, peaches, and tomatoes are all “abbles”. He was beyond excited to see not only the tractor-pulled “train” that took us out to the orchard, but the fact that there were apples as far as his eye could see. If he said “Abble!!” (you can actually hear the exclamation points) once, he said it five dozen times.

Lucas eating apple again

Why should you pick the apples way up there on those branches, when there are tonnes of apples just lying around in the grass, waiting to be collected?

Ground apples

(I’d like to assure you that in the picture above, he’s actually eating an apple I picked for him instead of one of the ground apples, but the odds are only about 50/50. *shrugs*)

I love the apples, I love the chance to get outside, I love to watch them enjoying themselves, I love to notice how much they’ve grown in the year since we last went apple picking. But what I really love? The chance to spend time with my menfolk.

Family portrait

(It’s not the best portrait, but I love the matching expressions on Lucas’s and Tristan’s face!)

I had better success with individual portraits. The orchard light in September is lovely!

My menfolk

(Lucas is in B&W because his skin tone was really uneven in colour, reflecting the red and green of the tractor we were in, and I haven’t figured out how to fix that in Photoshop yet! Besides, I like portraits in B&W.)

It was well after lunch time by the time we’d picked our fill, meandered the length of the orchard, gone for an extra train run, and picked up a home-made apple-caramel pie, so we scooted up to Merrickville for a bite to eat and a wander down the main strip.

fries and ketchup

Merrickville is a picturesque little town right on the Rideau Canal, a haven for the artistic sorts. These are just a few of the things we enjoyed.

Merrickville mosaic

So now we have three heaping serving bowls of apples, mostly Lobos and Macs. (I’m disappointed, my faves are Empires but because of the cruddy summer they’re slow in ripening this year.) Do you have any good apple recipes to share? I’m particularly looking for an easy apple crisp recipe. Mmmmm, abbles!

Perfect apple

(There are even more photos on Flickr! And about 150 on the computer that I didn’t post but don’t have the heart to delete…)

Project 365: dying flowers and magic places

Well, either it was a particularly beautiful week in the universe, or I’m actually getting good at this 365 thing, because I liked the pictures from this week a lot. A couple of days, I had a hard time choosing from very disparate shots (let alone the 16 shots I took of each composition!) to select a single picture of the day.

Of the week’s photos, I’m least fond of this one of the Laurier Avenue Bridge over the Rideau Canal. It’s okay, but I love this bridge and I didn’t manage to capture what I wanted to capture — the beauty of those iron supports, the grace of the structure. That’s why I put it in b&w, to emphasize the form. I think I might have liked it better if I could have taken it square on, but that would have meant taking a swim to the middle of the Canal, and I’m not *that* obsessed. Yet.

234:365 Laurier Avenue Bridge

I have always loved the quality of the light in September. The sun is lower in the sky, so the light is more indirect and often dappled through the trees. It’s a golden, flattering light. And of course, the early changing leaves are spectacular in their brilliant colours. But even beyond that, there’s an incredible amount of beauty in the autumn that I never noticed before.

These grow in my back yard. I’m not sure what its called, but it turns the most gorgeous shades of purple, red and yellow as the season fades.

235b:365 Purples and greens

I’m pretty sure this is the last of the coneflower pictures for this season. Even mostly dead, though, they’re still pretty! (Suddenly, I’m having a Monty Python moment over here. “I’m not dead yet. Feeling much better, actually…”)

235:365 Last of the coneflowers

This sunflower still has lots of life left in her! Do you see how the colour is a little less than natural in this one, sort of a blue tone to it? I set the white balance to “fluorescent” in the RAW editor by accident, and loved how it looked. From there I desaturated it just a bit. I really like the effect. Of course, a happy yellow sunflower against a red maple background and a blue sky doesn’t necessarily *need* my mucking about with it, but I think it makes it look just a little bit different… not necessarily a bad thing?

236b:365 Autumn sunflower

On the other hand, I did nothing to enhance the colour on this sunrise. I swear, it really was this colour! (Well, I had to adjust the colour once I uploaded it to Flickr, because I’m having a weird problem with Flickr desaturating my photos this week, so I had to tweak it to get it back up to the level of vibrancy it had straight out of the camera. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m shooting this week RAW and Flickr can’t handle the colours or what, but it’s really annoying!)

238:365 Sunrise in primary colours

This is another shot of the same sunrise. I love the pink striations and that hint of crescent moon!

Sunrise and the moon

Sometimes, taking the colour out of a colourful thing gives it a new kind of beauty. These mums were a vivid yellow, but I processed them in black and white. They look almost like they’re glowing, don’t they?

237:365 Mums

And sometimes, there just isn’t much colour to capture. I like the earthy tones of this garlic. (Annie from PhD In Parenting sent me a tweet one day after lunch, asking me if I’d been photographic garlic in the Market. I was! I wish she’d’ve spoken up, I’d’ve liked to meet her!)

Vampires beware!

I think this one is one of my favourite pictures this week. Something about the texture of the bricks, the peeling paint, that pop of purple against the red bricks… I love it! (And I had to adjust the colour again after I uploaded it to Flickr — I really wish I knew what was causing that!)

240:365 What's the story?

The same morning glory, closer to the ground. I desaturated this one for effect. It works, no?

240b:365 Morning glory

Note to self: always, always, ALWAYS carry your camera with you. You never know when you’ll need it. This is the roof of the grocery store!

Birds on a roof

I’ve driven past this house on Fallowfield dozens of times, but it took my breath away when I glanced at it with the morning light streaming down on it. Doesn’t that porch seem like a magical kind of place? It stirs my imagination every time I look at it. There’s an entire novel that wants to be written about the magical things that happened around this porch, with the glowing light on one side and the wizened, dying shrub on the other.

239:365 Perfect porch

And speaking of magical places, check out this curio shop. I swear I’ve covered every block in the Byward Market, looking for photo opportunities, but I’ve never noticed this shop on York Street before. I could spend hours just poking about, looking at stuff and taking pictures/ I was chatting with the curator, and she said she’d be happy to keep an eye open for antique cameras for my through-the-viewfinder project for me. I love how this shot turned out — if you look closely, you can see her reflected in the mirror on the table.

Curio shop

Last, but certainly not least… we were at the park with friends on the weekend. Six boys with a run of the playground, and this is where I found Tristan. This is not a set up. He climbed the tree, as he is wont to do, and then sent Simon to fetch his book for him. A little quirky, occasionally overcome by antisocial tendencies, a lover of books — that’s my boy!

236:365 Tristan in the tree

As of today, 240 days down and only 125 days to go. Next Wednesday, I’m two-thirds of the way done…

In which my vexatious breast get a check-up

I‘ve been meaning to blog about my mammogram appointment for a while now, but I kept forgetting how many Ms were in mmamogram. In case you missed it, at my annual check-up this year my doctor pronounced me ridiculously healthy, at the lowest possible risk score for my age, except she found a “nodule” in my left breast. Talk about good news-bad news!

There isn’t any breast cancer in my family, but it seems to be rampant in my life right now. I have two close friends who have recently conquered it, a colleague who is battling it, more than one friend who has lost her mother to it, and one dear friend who will inevitably lose his sister to it — mother of two small children no less. So when the doctor found that nodule I locked the information into a tiny little box deep in my subconscious and decided not to even think about it until I had to. I decided I wasn’t even going to tell my Mom — definitely a first! — until after the mamogramm, lest I worry her for nothing. (And then, in typical fashion, I forgot that I had decided not to tell her and blogged about it, albeit obliquely, the day before the mmammogramm, resulting in a rather uncomfortable phone conversation. Sorry Mom!)

I didn’t know a lot about mamograms going in to the appointment, but my only-barely-supressed anxiety was ratcheted up another couple of notches by the fact that I had the mmamogram and an ultrasound on my breasts scheduled back-to-back, which seemed uncommon.

My appointment was for eight in the morning one sunny day at the end of last month. I thought I’d been all over the campus of the Civic hospital, between walking the labours of my first two babies, various and sundry appointments and visits over the years, and about a million appointments at the Parkdale Clinic fertility centre, but there’s a whole bunch of buildings on the east side to which I’d never been. The Women’s Breast Health Centre is in the Grimes building, which seems like a standalone clinic from the outside but has all the fixtures of the larger hospital campus.

Walking into the breast health centre, I was struck by their efforts to make the clinic a gentle, hushed sort of place. A far cry from the usual moulded plastic and harsh fluorescent lighting of most clinics, here the light is rather dimmed and provided by lamps with a French country sort of feel to them, the chairs are done in flowery upholstery and the colour scheme runs to salmon and teal. It struck me as about fifteen years out of date, almost humourously so in a charming sort of way, but still a nice attempt to soften the place up.

As I sat and waited for my turn, I flipped through the informational brochures about the mmamogram and breast ultrasound. (It’s a testament to the depth of my head-in-the-sand reaction that I did not seek any kind of information about the procedures, or the possibilities they might diagnose, before my appointment. La la la, I can’t hear you, this isn’t happening if I don’t acknowledge it…) As I took a long pull from the extra-large Tim’s coffee I’d brought with me, I read “you should refrain from drinking caffeine before your appointment because it may make your breasts more tender or lumpy.” Oops.

After a not-very-long wait, I was called in for the mamogramm itself. I stripped to the waist, and a very kind technician explained exactly what would be happening that day: I’d have the mmammogramm followed by an ultrasound of my breasts, and then I’d meet with someone to discuss the findings. My doctor would have the results within seven days. I asked for clarification: so, would I have an indication of what, if anything, they found that morning? Yes, she explained, they would discuss the findings and schedule a biopsy or discuss other next steps right away. Although I was highly impressed by the immediacy — I’m so used to the standard “Sorry, we can’t discuss anything with you, your doctor will inform you if there is anything you need to know” — I felt the first icy stab of fear at that moment. Biopsy? For just a moment, I felt a vertiginous sense of falling through space as the yawing possibilities opened up before me and hundreds of uncomprehensibly terrifying scenarios played out. This is not a joke, this is not a game, this is real and this is my life. It must have played across my face, too, because the technician reached out and gently touched my shoulder. She didn’t say a word, but her warm fingertip grounded me again as I reeled the panic in and the moment passed.

The mammogramm itself was not at all what I was expecting. You stand up against a rather intimidating machine, and the technician arranges your breast across a tablet adjusted to your height. Your breasts get squashed, one at a time, between two glass plates in a manner that made me think of the hamburger-patty maker my mother bought from a tupperware party in the 1970s. It doesn’t hurt, per se, so much as it’s uncomfortable and awkward. Apparently, they stretch and compress your breast this way so the x-ray for a mmamogramm requires much less radiation than a standard x-ray.

After ten or 15 minutes, I went into a second room and had my left breast, the one where the doctor thought she detected the nodule, examined by ultrasound. Between the fertility treatments, the miscarriages and three babies, I’ve had more ultrasounds than I can count — but never on my breast. She scanned the breast thoroughly, while I craned my neck to see the monitor (I think a part of my brain is forever hardwired to search an ultrasound monitor for that gorgeous flickering heartbeat of a nine-week old fetus) as if I had the faintest idea what I was looking for. As she stepped out of the room to compare her results with the radiologist, she reassured me that she could find no trace of a nodule anywhere near where the doctor had indicated on the requisition — but that didn’t stop me from getting up after she left to closely inspect the image left up on the monitor of my vexatious left breast. My professional worrier’s eye couldn’t find anything of note either, despite going cross-eyed in the pixellular analysis.

I’d settled back on the exam table, but still not taken my eyes off the monitor in some sort of talismanic trance, by the time she returned. She told me that they could find nothing even remotely of concern, so much so that I didn’t even have to bother with the post-mammogram consultation. I was good to go, but I should consider coming back regularly, every couple of years.

As I walked back to my car, I felt another hint of that vertiginous sense of fear, of disaster narrowly averted. It was the same breathless feeling that kept me up nights for a couple of weeks after the accident this summer, my brain swirling with all the things that could have happened but didn’t, thanks to the grace of God and dumb luck.

It was, and is, a beautiful morning.