Ontario’s new online organ donor registry is live!

In 2005, I wrote a post about organ donation, and I wrote one in 2006, and in 2007, too. (You’ll see why organ donation is dear to my heart later in this post.) Yesterday, I heard that Ontario has finally set up an online organ donation registry: beadonor.ca

According to Ontario’s health minister, more than 1,500 people are currently on waiting lists for such transplants. More than 80 per cent of Canadians say they would like to donate their organs, but less than 20 per cent of those eligible have registered to do so.

Did you know that a single organ donor can save up to eight lives?

Here’s the story of one life that was saved through organ donation: my father’s. This is the first blog post I wrote about organ donation, back in 2005:

In late October of 2001, I was just about five months pregnant with our first son. I had been over at the grocery store buying Halloween candy for us — er, I mean, the neighbourhood kids. When I came in the door, before I could even get my coat off, Beloved approached me with tears in his eyes. “Your mom called,” he said, and the world stopped turning for the briefest instant. Thankfully, it was not what I was expecting, what I had been gradually bracing myself for through the long and awful course of my father’s illness.

“They got the call. Your dad is getting his liver transplant.”

My dad got Hepatitis C from a blood transfusion in the early 1980s. We didn’t find out he was sick until much later. Aside from becoming increasingly weak and frail, one of the most disturbing and debilitating results of my dad’s cirrhosis was how it affected his cognitive processes. The gist of it is that the liver filters toxins like ammonia out of your blood, and when it isn’t working properly, the toxins can build up, leading to serious cognitive impairment. It really messes with your memory, your moods, and your mental stamina, among other things. In a lot of ways, it is similar to Alzheimer’s disease. It made me so very sad to see him struggling, because my father is one of the smartest people I know, and I aspired as a child to be as funny, as charming and as quick of wit as him.

We have been blessed. After the transplant, it wasn’t long before I had my ‘old’ dad back. Every time I see him interact with Tristan and Simon (ed: and now Lucas!), my heart soars. Simon especially has a thing for his “Papa Lou” and even as I type this, I am grinning as I imagine how his face lights up when my dad catches his eye.

I don’t have the words to express how the pain of some family’s loss can be so intimately bound to our family’s joy. I wish I could let them know what a difference their donation has made in our lives.

Within about 18 months of receiving his transplant, my parents moved across the province to live in the same city as us. Some days, when my dad is out and about, he calls me and offers me a ride home from work. They live just a few blocks from us, and when I was home on maternity leave, he would sometimes wander over in midafternoon while taking the dog for an extended walk.

It’s these tiny moments that are the gift we’ve received from an organ donation. How do you say thank you for the joy of a happy life with someone you love? How do you thank someone for the look in a baby’s eyes as his face lights up with excited recognition?

If it weren’t for an organ donor, this would never have happened:

157:365 Happy Birthday Papa Lou!

What are you waiting for? With one click, you could save eight lives. It may be the most important thing you do today. beadonor.ca

Around the corner

It continues to amaze me that the most remarkable milestones in the boys’ social and emotional development seem to happen unpredictably and completely without precursor and, even more astonishingly, with pretty much no intention or intervention on my part.

It’s early Saturday afternoon and I’ve just returned from my weekly grocery adventure. I’m unpacking cereal and pickles and red peppers when Simon asks if I can call A’s parents to to ask if A can come over. A is Simon’s school chum, and lives down the block and around the corner.

Because I’m concentrating more on the task of fitting an 11-inch long bunch of celery into a 10-inch crisper, and because we have had this conversation many times before, I don’t give Simon my full attention. “Not now, Simon,” I begin, ready to put off yet again the coordination of a playdate. “We still don’t have A’s phone number, and I don’t know what their plans are today…”

Then I stop, and think. We know kids in the neighbourhood but not on the street, and I’m vaguely annoyed on an ongoing basis that I have to act as social coordinator any time the kids want to play with a friend by setting up play dates in advance via telephone or e-mail with the parents. Why am I doing this? When I was a kid, if I wanted to go out and play with a friend, I’m pretty sure my mom never called ahead to arrange things. I just went. I knocked on the door, and if the friend couldn’t come out, I’d wander off and find something else to do, maybe try another friend or maybe play on my own. The only thing even remotely resembling a scheduled play date was either when friends who had moved out of the neighbourhood got together, or when we visited my parents’ friends who happened to have kids, and then we all played together while the parents drank and played cards discussed important parenting issues.

I take a long look at Simon, who is looking at me and my derailed train of thought with curiousity. I don’t consult with Beloved in advance, but he’s sitting right there listening and I know he’ll speak up if he’s concerned.

“Do you want to go ask A if he wants to come over to play?” I ask Simon, and he lights up like a pinball machine.

“Oh yes!” he exclaims, dropping the video game controller in his hand.

“Tristan, will you walk with Simon down to A’s house and walk back with them?” There is safety in numbers. It’s only about 10 houses, maybe less, and one very quiet residential street to cross, but I feel better if they’re together. It’s only a little bit further than our community mail box, to which Tristan regularly walks alone. Tristan, always up for any perceived gains in independence and who also likes A, is amenable to the idea.

I figure it’s vaguely more polite to invite A back to our house than for both boys to show up uninvited expecting an invitation in, even though that’s exactly what I would have done at age seven. I look at Beloved, but he seems fine with the idea. I briefly talk them through any potential pitfalls in the plan: if A is not home, they are to come straight back. If they get invited in, call home to let me know. No talking to any other grown-ups on the way, no stopping, no wandering.

They scamper off across the lawn and I watch them go. I’m smiling and anxious at the same time. They deserve this freedom, I know, and I truly believe it’s important. Still, I can’t help but worry. I wander back inside after they disappear from view, and ask Beloved if it’s wrong that I’m more concerned about my mother’s reaction to this abdication of parental responsibility than I am about the risk of child abduction or other unspeakably remote horrors.

Enough time lapses that I have put away the groceries and kindled a small flame of anxiety wondering why I haven’t heard from them when they come rambling back up the street with A, A’s older sister who happens to be in Tristan’s grade, and their father in tow. Waiting on the porch as they round the driveway, I feel the tiniest flicker of something that is not quite embarrassment, not quite shame, wondering if A’s parents are agog that I’ve let the boys venture out unshepherded like this. He seems content enough to leave the kids to my care, though, and after a few hours I lead a rag-tag parade of all four kids, plus Lucas and the dog, on the expedition to return A and his sister home.

The boys are seven and nine, and this is the first time they’ve ever simply walked over to a friend’s house and knocked on the door. I’m proud of them, but a little bit sad, too. How did we get to a place where this is a milestone achieved so late in the kids’ lives? I clearly remember running in a pack of neighbourhood kids that included an unsupervised three-year-old, bane of the existence of us older kids. I know this isn’t the 1970s anymore, but really, is the world so different?

Crazy garbage-picking wife

That’s what Beloved called me last week when I returned from errands with yet another car-load of other people’s junk, rescued from the curbside. “I’m going to start calling you ‘crazy garbage-picking wife,'” he said, while helping me pull the old, probably antique desk out of the car and carry it down to Simon’s room. I shrugged and said that was fine with me, I’ve been called crazy over worse things.

Last weekend was the spring giveaway weekend in Ottawa (I’m only mildly perturbed that they’ve repurposed my “Ottawa’s hidden treasures” phrase) and treasures is exactly what we found. The aforementioned desk, for example. It’s a kid-sized version of an old secretary’s desk, with two wooden drawers and a pull-out typewriter table. You can tell by the dove-tail joints and lack of particle board that it’s a vintage item, probably older than me at minimum. It also happens to have itty-bitty tole flowers painted on it, but it’s nothing that some sandpaper and a good coat of clean paint won’t cover. And Simon loves it, flowers and all.

We also got a couple of nice green reclining patio chairs complete with pads, one of which is rocker, and a matching umbrella. The green and white in the umbrella and pads bring the pieces together nicely with the white extendable patio table complete with removable leaf I also filched from the end of someone’s driveway a couple of weeks ago as I walked the boys home from school. (I was glad to have Tristan around to help me carry it home, and I’m sure we only looked a little strange walking down the street carrying it.) And just yesterday, I found a set of four green stacking patio chairs to complete the ensemble. All free!

And that’s not even the best deal I got in free outdoor furniture this season. One day I noticed a gorgeous wicker settee, chair and table at the curb and immediately pulled over. There was an elderly gentleman in the open garage as I stepped out to inspect them, and I asked how much he wanted, sure he’d say $50 or even $100 for this lovely, sturdy set absolutely oozing with character and in near-perfect condition. “Help yourself,” he told me with a smile, and laughed at my whoop of joy. When they wouldn’t all fit in my car, he even pulled the table and chair back away from the curb so I could make a second run and come back for the rest of the set. It’s like they were made for my porch, don’t you think?

170:365 My happy place

Beloved thinks it’s a little bit redneck of me to stop and collect other people’s junk with such unbridled glee, but I can’t help myself. Other than completely tricking out my porch and back patio this year, I’ve also scored a basketball and on a separate occasion, a Little Tykes basketball net, and a set of a dozen or so hockey sticks of various sizes. (Sadly, the snow plow crushed our hockey net — also a curbside treasure! — this winter, but maybe I’ll be able to find another one!) I’ve also found an adorable kid-sized wicker chair that is just crying out to be a photo prop. Through the years, I’ve also collected bookcases and shelving units (I simply cannot leave those behind, one can ALWAYS use more shelves in life), fireplace tools, flower pots, books, and outdoor toys.

Right now, four driveways down, there’s a really quirky metal CD stand in the shape of fishbones that I am trying hard to resist. At least, I think it’s a CD stand. Either that, or a really weird sculpture. What is it about found treasures that make them so appealing? I would never look twice at this thing if I saw it in a store. Regardless, I’m having a hard time not putting on my shoes and going to see if it’s still there.

And to tell the truth? It’s not just on giveaway day that I’ll stop to check out the discards. I have been known to peruse the curb on the morning of garbage day, scanning for treasures.

So, I’m okay if Beloved thinks I’m crazy. Erm, crazier. Crazy like a fox, I say. A garbage-picking, thrifty fox. When you see me on that TV show about compulsive hoarders, you can say you saw it here first.

Are you a crazy garbage picker too? What’s the best thing you’ve ever collected from the curb?

Project 365: Story telling

I still haven’t figured out if I have a personal style in my photography or what it might be, but I do realize now that I have two primary goals: telling stories and celebrating beauty. Both compulsions come from within; the sheer volume of the blog speaks to my need to tell stories, the magpie in me is invariably drawn to pretty, shiny things, and the optimist in me wants to celebrate all that loveliness. When I can cram all that into a single frame, I will love the results.

Even though I’ve used collages many times before, I’ve really started to enjoy using storyboards to illustrate stories or capture highlights of events. Sometimes there’s a kind of synergy in a set of pictures that captures what a single picture lacks. For instance, this set of pictures shows the dedication of a new play structure at the boys’ school BBQ this week. None of the pictures is particularly compelling, but they do tell a story that’s meaningful to the participants better than any single picture might.

165:365 School BBQ

And there was this one at the community pool, just before that wicked storm broke the heat on Wednesday.

166:365 Ready! Set! Dunk!

This was more fun from last weekend’s Dickinson Days, this time from Pioneer Day at Watson’s Mill. Not the best photograph ever since most of them have their backs to me, but the boys had an amazing morning trying stilts here and a pogo stick further down at My Toy Shoppe — a perfect day of activities for busy boys.

163:365 Dickinson Days Fun

I have to admit, I was having trouble finding my muse this week with the camera. This is one of those pictures that ends up being a last-minute answer to walking around the house with my camera at the end of the day thinking, “What can I photograph for today?” Thank goodness for the garden.

167:365 Clematis

There are abandoned houses like this here and there throughout Manotick, and they fascinate me. What happened? Where are the families who used to live there? What do they look like inside? (As my friend Valerie said, “Maybe they’re still there and the lawnmower is broken!”)

168:365 Overgrown

Like I said, my favourite pictures are where story and beauty meet. What this one is little lacking in story, he makes up for in cuteness, no?

163:365 Lucas on the porch

And if you look a little deeper, you can see the story from his perspective — or at least, in his eyes.

164:365 In his eyes

Fantastic Summer Camp Giveaway from our newest sponsor, Starr Gymnastics

You know I’m fairly selective about the companies that I endorse, and even more so for the ones that I accept as sponsors for the blog. That’s why I’m extra excited today to be able to tell you about our latest sponsor, an amazing Ottawa company that I’ve been appreciating for years. And! They’re offering up an amazing giveaway to boot!

Welcome to our newest bloggy sponsor, Starr Gymnastics! Look, there’s the new ad over on the sidebar —>>>

Awesome, eh?

I’ve mentioned before how much our family loves Starr Gymnastics. We’ve had several birthday parties there, and both big boys have been registered in their excellent gymnastics programs for a few years running. We’ve even done a week-long summer camp, back in the day. (It’s funny for me to read that summer camp post — seems like yesterday, but it was 2007 when Simon is the age Lucas is now!)

I’ve always found Starr Gymnastics to have high-quality, well-supervised programs and have never hesitated to recommend their programs to anyone. Recently, the folks at Starr got in touch to say thanks for my enthusiastic recommendations, and together we cooked up this great summer camp giveaway for you!

Starr Gymnastics offers three types of Summer Camp programs: half-day, full-day in-house and full-day outdoor adventure camps. Here’s the description for the full-day indoor program:

The In-House camp will be a week full of amazing gymnastics activities, cooperative games, theme day surprises and the introduction of our Starr Bouncy Castles! For a whole afternoon, the athletes will be learning real circus tricks and jumping all over the place. On other days, their time is filled with Arts and Crafts, learning proper gymnastics skills, and preparing for the BIG SHOW TIME where parents are invited to watch their athlete(s) fly through the air in a special demo! It’s the most fun you can have under one roof!

And this is the outdoor adventure camp description:

For those athletes who want to see everything the summer has to offer, Starr has created its very own outings camp which will take you to the moon and back! The week will have the same great gymnastics component as always, along with the favourites like Theme Days and BIG SHOW TIME demonstrations! We have added swim time out of the centre and a major outing that will take the entire day on Thursdays! The athletes will taste the fresh air whether it’s a trip to the park for some organized games, outdoor theme activities, splashing around the pool or even sailing their own pirate ship with real pirates! The Starr Outdoor Adventure Camp is going to be a blast with memories that will last a lifetime!

You can read more about the programs, including weekly themes and daily schedules, on the Starr Gymnastic summer camp page.

Doesn’t that sound like fun? And the awesome peeps at Starr Gymnastics are offering you the chance to win one full week of summer camp at any of their three Ottawa locations (1140 Morrison Drive, 2766 Lancaster Road or 520 Lacolle Way). Here’s the details:

  1. To enter, leave a comment on this post describing one of your favourite summer memories.
  2. One entry per person.
  3. The prize is a one-week registration for one child at the Starr Gymnastics summer camp of your choice during the summer 2011 season, with a value of up to $250.
  4. Camps run weekly from July 4 through August 29, 2011 for ages 3 and up (half-day camp) or ages 5 – 14 (full-day camp). There are more details on the Starr Gymnastics website.
  5. Contest opens today, June 9 and runs through Thursday June 16, 2011.
  6. One winner will be chosen via random.org and announced on Friday, June 17, 2011.

A huge thank you and welcome aboard to Starr Gymnastics, and good luck to all entrants!

Crowdsourcing: Recommendations for online backup?

Hey bloggy peeps, I need your advice.

Beloved and I have been discussing online backup of our computers for a while, but haven’t yet got around to it. I happened to say this weekend that I really, really want to get around to this before it’s too late — and today, my 1TB back-up drive with I can’t even tell you how many photos, including a good chunk of my professional work and most of my first 365, stopped working. I’m still holding out faint hope even as I’m sick with the possible loss — but at least it wasn’t *everything*.

At least I have whatever is on the laptop, which is 80% of the digital negatives from the last year or so, and most but not all of my other documents. Silver lining, I suppose. Beloved has downloaded some diagnotic tools, so maybe all is not yet lost.

So anyway, do you do online backups and if so, with what company? I’ve heard good things about Carbonite, and Rogers Online Protection would be an easy choice as we already use them for cable and Internet. We have an HP laptop running Windows, for whatever that’s worth. Any opinions or advice are most welcome, thanks!

IHF Weekly Challenge: From a distance

I had so much fun with the I Heart Faces weekly photo challenge the first time I played that I wanted to try again.

This week’s challenge is “From a Distance” and I thought this capture from last summer would be perfect. This is the statue of Samuel de Champlain, one of the first Europeans to explore the Ottawa region in the first decades of the 1600s. The statue of Champlain holding his astrolabe sits on Nepean Point, just behind Ottawa’s Parliament Buildings. (Ironically, the sculptor who created the statue showed Champlain holding his astrolabe – an ancient astronomical navigational tool – upside down!)

469:1000 Nepean Point silhouette

Just last month, the National Capital Commission announced that it would be tearing out the small open-air theatre at Champlain’s feet. That’s unfortunate, but at least the statue will remain. It’s a wonderful spot with gorgeous views and well-loved by local photographers of all sorts, as you can see by the silhouettes I caught in the setting sun one warm June evening.

Project 365: Festivals and other family fun

It’s been a long week. I have to admit, I kinda ran out of steam with the picture-taking, and a lot of other stuff, this week. I still managed to take a picture each day, but there were a few days that I was doing it more out of obligation than joy. Funny, last time I did the 365 project, I wrote post after post saying “wah, this is so hard” and to be honest, I’m nearly half way through my second attempt and I think this is the first time I’ve really felt like I was slogging through.

Anyway, that was part of the inspiration behind this photo, which I called “Looking for the silver lining.” I took it at about 6:30 one morning on the way to work, and I was thinking that even when it’s stormy, the clouds will eventually part and the sun will break through.

161:365 Looking for the silver lining

This is one of my favourite pictures of the week, and a rare one of Papa Lou with the boys. He’s reading one of the four hand-made birthday cards he received on is birthday last Sunday. My dad inspires me, and seeing him and the boys together never fails to make me happy.

157:365 Happy Birthday Papa Lou!

I passed these bleeding hearts peeking out between a picket fence near the Mill quite a few times and each time wished I had the time to stop and take a picture, until one day I finally made a special trip to do just that. Something about the picket fence and the bleeding hearts together speaks to warm sunny days and cold glasses of fresh lemonade, don’t you think?

158:365 Bleeding hearts

Boys at play – always the ‘low hanging fruit’ of my photographic day. 🙂

159:365 Monkeys on the bars

Boys at play, redux. (And? Those compression-based water shooters? Are wicked fun!!)

160:365 Water play

As I may have mentioned (ahem) this was Dickinson Days here in Manotick this weekend. I knew it was the village’s annual summer festival, and I knew there were lots of fun events planned. Even so, I have to tell you I was more than a little bit surprised (and delighted!) when we left the house on Friday evening to head toward Main Street for the parade and found ourselves joining a flowing stream of neighbourhood families all doing the same thing. It felt like a small-scale version of Canada Day on the Hill — Beloved and I couldn’t help but laugh.

We chose a spot on the curb pretty much at random — and based on the quickly-disappearing available space. I have to admit, I did have the position of the setting sun in mind, but other than that, it was total fluke that we ended up right in front of the Mill Tavern, which happens to have a second-level patio that was, unbeknownst to us, serving as the viewing deck for the parade announcers Sandy Sharkey and Wendy Daniels from BOB FM and The Bear.

The parade was also a lot bigger than I’d expected, and reminded me of the Christmas parades of my childhood — floats and marching bands and double-handfuls of candy thrown at the excited kids. I keep coming back to the word “delightful,” the best possible description of the evening. I’ve been playing with Lightroom’s print capabilities, and I thought the contact sheet print made for a good storyboard of some of the parade highlights.

162:365 Dickinson Days Parade

You might have seen this picture earlier in the week, but it’s one of my favourites so worth repeating. My Beloved, man enough to win the big prize at Skeeball but not so manly that he doesn’t mind carrying all the stuffies while the boys go on rides together.

156:365 Beloved

From the day we met, he’s been the man of my dreams.

Photo credit!

Photo credit! by Dani_Girl
Photo credit!, a photo by Dani_Girl on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
My first print photo credit appeared this week in our community newspaper, the Manotick Messenger! I was expecting a quarter-page ad, and was delighted to see the ad was a half-page, so my collage took up a whole quarter of the page. 🙂

(I’m particularly tickled that the story that runs above my photograph is that of poor Ann Currie, the ghost of Watson’s Mill — I told that story in a blog post just a few months ago!)

If you’re looking for something to do this weekend and live in the Ottawa area, Manotick’s Dickinson Days promises to be some great family fun with a parade, midway rides, tours of the Mill, a pancake breakfast, a crafter’s market, kids’ fishing derby and more. See you there!

Fisher-Price Tough Trikes to celebrate springing into summer

Lucas and I happened to be on the porch when the delivery truck arrived, which in itself is a pretty exciting occasion for a three-year-old. When the delivery man rolled up the back of the truck, Lucas was spellbound and when he pulled out a box and grinned at Lucas and said, “I’m guessing this is for you” while holding a primary-coloured box with Thomas the Tank Engine on it, I’m pretty sure Lucas’s head nearly exploded.

My kind friends at Fisher-Price had sent us a Thomas & Friends Tough Trike for him to try out. Boys, bikes and trains — how can you go wrong with a combination like that? And so, of course, we had to drop everything and put it together.

FP trike 1

That’s one of the things I’ve always liked about Fisher-Price toys: they’re fairly easy to assemble. This is actually one of the more complex ones I’ve put together, but it was a breeze even with my “helper”.

The trike itself is great. It’s solid and sturdy, and I don’t think you could tip it over while sitting on it if you tried (a problem we have with our traditional tricycle — it’s a little tippy.) The handle bars are set a bit forward from the pedals, so his knees won’t bump them as he grows. It’s light and easy to pedal, although I do find that the front wheel slips a bit in the gravel – I may add a strip of tape or something around the front wheel just to give it a wee bit more grip.

And one of Lucas’s favourite features is the fact that the seat lifts up to reveal a hidey-hole for storing treasure. Ours happens to be filled with quickly-wilting dandelions; your mileage may vary.

FP trike 2

My only regret is that we didn’t have this fun trike two boys ago!

We’re not the only family who will be enjoying a new trike this summer courtesy of Fisher-Price — congratulations to “Windex”, winner of the Spring into Summer Barbie Trike giveaway! I’ll send you an e-mail — congratulations!

Thank you to Mom Central and Fisher-Price Canada, both for the Barbie Tough Trike to give away and the Thomas and Friends Tough Trike for Lucas. 🙂

Disclosure: I’m part of the Fisher-Price Play Panel and I receive special perks as part of my affiliation with this group. The opinions on this blog are ALWAYS my own.