A strange and scary yet oddly exciting day

Time for one of those strangely personal blog posts about what's happening in my life. You might recall if you've been reading my blog for any length of time that I had a lot of problems with my youngest daughter. Well back in September she reached the deadline and had to move out. We were not going to enable her any longer no job, not in school. It was time that she had a taste of the real world. So she moved out and stayed with a friend while she kept looking for work and a place of her own.

Our phone number was still being used as the contact number for resumes. Every so often we'd get a call requesting an interview, so we knew she was still looking. We didn't see her all that often during this period but when we did things were alright. Over the past month or so things have gotten better in this respect and we've enjoy a few dinners and over night visits. So the big scary news is that earlier this week she found herself a place in a rooming house.

This afternoon she is coming over, and along with the help of her sister and us. We are transporting her stuff to her new place and she will now be living on her own and making her own way in the world. I have no doubt there will be as much support as we can possibly give but it is still pretty different knowing that when she falls asleep each night there won't be someone else there with her to help her if she should need it.

Fingers crossed, candles lit, and my the God and Goddess watch over her in all their forms.

Life Update

For those of you who have been reading my blog long enough you might remember some of the challenges that my wife and I faced with our youngest daughter. She turned 18 a year ago this December and graduated a year ago this past June. This past year and a half has been a bit of an adventure in parenting. We realized that there is a little bit of time after graduating when you need to find yourself and discouver what you need to be doing but at the same time you do need to accept certain responsibilities.

Over the course of the year we have been told a lot of things, discouvered a lot of lies, and at times seen some amazing growth on the part of our daughter. After one year of being largely jobless apart from 29 days when she worked at a local daycare and a 2 month period when she took a paid job finding program, she has been without work. We decided that enough was enough and told her in June that she had until September to find a job or she would no longer be able to live with us. She has not found a job, and this past Friday she moved out. At this point she is couch surfing with various friends and keeping in lose contact with us.

Our hope is that this will be an incentive to find her own way and grow up in some of the ways that she really needs to. So fingers crossed, and candles lit that it works out the way we hope for her.

Quiet so very quiet

Sorry I've been quiet these past couple of weeks. As you may remember from an earlier update my mom was in the hospital to have her Gall Bladder removed. They let her out three days later. Two days after that they readmitted her. She was at home and was having trouble breathing. Apparently her legs had swallow and had cast off blood clots which made their way in to her lungs. She spent the next five days back in the hospital and has only been released as of yesterday. So my free time has been spent writing,working and visiting my mom.

The good news is she is home and doing really well. They have arranged for home nurse to stop by on a daily basis to give her the injection she needs. All in all it is a good situation for her to be in, since she hates hospitals as much as I do.

You may have noticed a couple of updates on the blog as well, I've added a twitter that shows some of the comments and tweets from people I follow. I'd love to know how people feel about that and if it is working alright for you. I do also have a number of Wordless Wednesdays scheduled to pop out each Wednesday so you will continue to get to enjoy those. I even updated the books am reading list.

Finally I've gotten an exciting new project in the works that I am only going to hint at right now. I want to make sure it is all up and working before opening it to the public to read.

My Mom

So I had an e-mail waiting for me when I got home on Friday night from my aunt. I don't generally get alot of e-mails from her so I knew something important was going on when I saw her name in the from field. I opened it right away to give it a read. Here is the basics of it my mom was in the hospital with a gall bladder attack.

It had started off the night before when she had less then 10 minutes of sleep due to a seriously upset stomach or so she thought. Like a trooper she toughed it out and went to work on Friday and needless to say she didn't make it through the day. At some point she decided she was in to much pain and left going to a near by walk in clinic. They looked her over and sent to the nearby Urgent care centre at the Misericordia Hospitial. There they took a few X-rays and checked her over again. I guess that they decided that they were not equipped to handle her situation so they sent to her to St. Boniface Hospital where she spent the night and still will be until likely monday or tuesday at this point.

This evening I swung by for a visit, she was mostly asleep and fairly drugged up I would say at a guess. But she seemed glad to have seen me. We talked for about five or ten minutes before she started to get too sleepy to really continue the discussion. As of tomorrow she will be going in for emergancy surgery to have her Gall Bladder removed. So tomorrow my thoughts and my prayers will be the hands of her doctors will be guides by the Gods and Goddesses themselves.

Blessed be

14 years

14 years ago today my world legally changed, The change had really taken place a number of months before hand when I met my wife. Either way today is the day that we celebrate it and the day that we mark on the calender. This morning we woke up and headed out the door to run a few errands down town, and spend some time alone together. I'll share some of the details in case anyone is interested.

The morning was spent doing the real errands that need to be taken care of, after that we went out and had a nice lunch together at Montana's Cook House. We have always enjoyed the food and the service at the Polo Park location. It was also convient for the rest of the plans we had for after lunch. I had a pretty good burger, sad to say she wasn't to impressed by the food she got this time around.

From there it was off to crawl the mall. With Yule over and done our rush and sense of urgency that surrounds the season for so many people is completely gone for us. It has long been a tradition of mine to take some time and just wander the mall afterwards. I've found it puts the whole season in to perspective. The hustle and the rush of the mall when you don't have a care in the world. It slows down the world view of the holidays in my own mind. In the end we spent most of the time wandering about the book store, finding a number of interesting books that I'm excited to read.

This one day always brings me a great joy, spending time with my lovely wife and knowing that we have been through so much together and can achieve anything we put our minds too. When we first got married so many people didn't think we would last, even the orginal two people who were supposed to witness for us decided not to both since it "wouldn't last" Well we did it and we keep on doing it day in and day out.

love you my wife.

Blessed Yule

As I write this I'm also watching the sun slowly raise up through the cold air. It is a wonderful sight, and everything is glittering like diamonds.

I had fully intended to write something yesterday, but as is often the case on Yule day life and the universe was a little busy. Let me invite every in and spend a couple minutes describing the Yule traditions of my family. They start on Yule eve when we open the traditional movie gift from my mother. Then while the house is being cleaned and things are being prepared for the next day we watch a couple of movies. This year the selections included 'What a girl wants' and 'Four Christmases'

By the time the movies end it is just my wife and I left in the room and we take the time to get the stuff done that couldn't be done with others around. This year we got sucked into '8 Crazy night' by 1 am the movie was over and we were confident that things were ready enough. So it was off to bed. Staying up late the night before Yule makes it so much easier for me to go to sleep in the end. Otherwise I'd end up awake all night

Morning comes far to quickly for us with our eldest daughter her husband and our grandson arriving at 8 in the morning to start the day with presents and a big breakfast. The rest of the afternoon is spent playing around with new things. This year we played a new board game my son-in-law got called Heroscape, it was an interesting little game, then watched a few more movies as well, while preparing for dinner that night and having a good time as a family.

For the past 17 plus years my wife has hosted the annual Yule Dinner Pot luck. Over the years it has been everything from a small intimiate dinner with 10 people to a forty person monster sized event. The latter was standing room only and we had people using the stairs to the second floor has chairs it was a strange sight to see 6 people lined up in a row eating dinner that way. This year it was about average in size and had about 25 people out or so. A couple of first timers as well. I always find it a little entertaining to watch them as more and more people arrive. Most people are not expecting anything that size.


The alter is lit and so is the Yule log ushering in Peace, love and wealth into the new year. A feast is server (I have left overs for days) presents are opened (We do a secret Yule King exchange) and much fun and conversation is had by all. Until the group slowly shrinks down in size with people gradually heading out. It is a wonderful evening with friends, and family



I hope you all had as an exciting an evening as I did.

Blessed Yule Everyone.

Hard to believe

It is hard for me to believe that as I type this in less then 10 minutes now my youngest daughter will be 18. It gives a parent an almost odd sense of completion, granted it is far from being complete but thats still the best description I can think of for it.

Final update

Well tonight we met with our daughter as well two guys from the mobile crisis team. It was a really good meeting and she really opened up with them there. The also offered a number of follow up resources and suggestions that we plan try with her.

If anyone from winnipeg has any extra winter stuff they don't need the Mcdonald Youth Service shelter could use them. We'll be happy to try and arrange pick up or something. As a service they were wonderful and very helpful.

Family Update

Here is a quick update on the current situation, more details will be posted later.

Our daughter was found in the trizac building downtown last night by security around 1130ish. We guess she went in to stay warm. They contacted the police who called us to arrange for her return. We told them we couldn't take her back at the time, so she was brought to Mcdonald Youth Service for the night. They called us a couple of time during the night to ask questions and try and arrange to return her to the home. In the end she spent the night there and they got her off to her course this morning.

I have contact Child and Family Service to try and some type of help or assistance throught he situation. They have told me that since she will be turning 18 in a month there is nothing they can do. By the time they got a worker assigned to the case it would be to late and she would be over 18.

So only the Goddess and God knows what will come next. On the plus side she is at her Course and she is safe

Parenting

I've had a really shitty night. For details of please read my wife's blog A Crafty Witch

costumed pic

I know its not wordless wednesday but I was going through some pictures late last night and came across this and wanted to post it. Also Pagan Soccer mom is having a contest about costume photos.

A little update

Only two scenes left until am finished the rough draft of 'Horror frost' a modern day tale of possession in the frozen north. Am excited about this and really under a massive deadline if I want to submit it. I will make it and I will get it in by the dead line. This year's NANO project is already simmering in the back of my mind I just need to find the time to do the research in advance. Because I don't want to be having to do it in November I'll need all the time I can get for writing.

A bit of a life update as well. Things are continueing along the same path we sent them down with my daughter. She is still living with us, and has been told and reminded that the option to live with us requires her following the rules of the house and by staying with us she is agreeing to follow them. Some days are better then others but I doubt anything massive will happen to change things.

Last two bits for around the house my lovely wife has for years been excited about going back to school and taking courses. She is one of those types who likes to get educated and last night was the first night of her course. Glowing is only word I could use to describe her when she came home it was a beautiful thing. In addition to that she has also started her own blog as well which can be found at http://acraftywitch.blogspot.com/ so swing by comment and share the bloggy love

Birthday List

So my birthday is in October and I've had a few people asking me what I want. So I figured I would post a list to my blog.

- Bass Guitar
I've been playing so much Rock band as of late I want to learn to play a real instrument
- Sun Pendant
My own Sun pendant was recently broken I've felt naked without it. One of my readers pointed this one out to me and I love it.
- X Box Points
You can never have enough of these
- Honour Harrington Books
This is such a good series
- Evolution Kills T-shirt
I laugh every time I see this shirt.
- Music from the Folk Fest Store
Music is great
- Membership in the Manitoba Writer's Guild
- NANOWrimo 10 shirt

The shirt should be a minimum of XXXL but XXXXL is prefered.

I hope this helps folks..

Parental Support

So a few things have been going on these past few months that I have looked to groups like Child and Family services for support and I have been shocked and dismayed by my experiences . I'm not going to go in to the details of what's happened those who know me in person likely already know and those who don't know me in person well feel free to ask me off the blog what happened. I have no wish to post a permenant record of it on the Internet. This post is more about the lack of support I experienced, and just how alone it left me feeling as a parent. Also am writing about my own feelings on this and am fairly certain they were shared by my wife but in the end her feelings are not mine to share.

Things had gotten difficult, bad enough that I would turn to outside help. It was seven or eight o'clock and I looked up the number for Child and Family Service and wait. The wait time wasn't all that bad by comparision to what I would get if I was calling for tech support or to change the channels on my TV but it felt worse at the time. The woman I spoke with at first was pleasent enough and did her best to reassure me that I was doing the right. Well let me tell that that its hardly reassuring to know your doing the right thing and still be in a situation where you have to call Child and family.

We asked if there were other suggestions she could offer or steps we could take. She politely told me that things like that had to come from a social worker and that they were all out on call at the moment and someone could call me back. Her other suggestion was that I call the Mobile Crisis service and provided me the phone number. I thanked her and asked her to have to have someone call me, Note know one ever did.

So I called the second number was told pretty much the same thing and also learned that they handle things in almost a triage like style the worst case get the attention first. Also learned that CFS(Child and Family Services) does much the same thing. They did offer me numbers for some other organzation including CFS.

I called the next number The Family Group ( I believe that was the name) and after a few minutes of back and forth with the receptionist I was put through to a councilor. At last I thought and was excited at the idea of speaking with someone and hopefully getting the help and support I was looking for. Instead I got put through to a councilor who listened to what I had to say reassured me I was doing the right thing. Then when I mention that we had been to family counciling, she suddenlyu switched tracks and started talking to be about her practice and her price of $80 an hour was much her reasonable.

The moral of the story is that if you are a parent and are having a hard time and looking for support or someone to talk too. Your have a better chance of finding someone if your child was threating you with a knife or threatening you life. That seems to be the only way you will get any help.

Folk Fest Day 2

Here are a couple more photos from the past couple of days at folk fest...

Supper it was called a Potatoe Tornado with a bit of Potato

A shot from main stage of the crowd and the sky.

Wordless Wednesday

A nice memory

National Celebration or Side walk sale

Ok yeah I know I’ve been quiet and hardly writing anything here, and to my readers I say am sorry. It is something I am going to be working on improving over the next couple of weeks. A few things in life have been keeping me busy, mainly learning a new department at work and working on a couple of new stories that have grabbed my attention.

On to the subject at hand National Celebrations, in Canada we have Canada Day on July 1st and in the US they Independence Day. So you can imagine it is something of a big deal around here for a lot of people or at least that was what I thought until this past Canada Day…

The day started off pretty quiet my wife had to work so my daughter and I hung out at the house and got a few things done. We really didn’t have any intention of going to any of the 3 big celebrations happening around town. Tamile my wife got off work decided to swing by and pick us up and that we should head down to the village and check things out and enjoy the celebration. Now for those of you who don’t know the village is a shopping district in Winnipeg that has traditionally held more of a counter culture feel to it. It was for a very long time felt to be a trendy and hip place to hang out.

On Canada day they would shut down the whole street to cars and use the whole area for a big celebration. They would have clowns, shows, music, face painters, a beer garden, more music and a few little stalls of things selling things that we in some way related to Canada Day. That was how it once was now it’s changed. This year it felt like I was walking through a big market or side walk sale. The only way I knew it was a Canada day Celebration and not just a side walk sale, was when the crowd cheered as a trumpet player blared out Oh Canada before his band started playing. Beyond that it felt like it was just a great big sidewalk sale. Nothing beats shilling out crappy products while pretending to do it in the name of our country.

Valedictorian Address from last night

So as part of the address last night the Valedictorian she quoted the soon to be Ex-President Bush.

Commencement Address Yale University

Most important, congratulations to the class of 2001. (Applause.) To those of
you who received honors, awards, and distinctions, I say, well done. And to the
C students I say, you, too, can be President of the United States.

The whole quote is.

Most important, congratulations to the class of 2001. To those of you who
received honors, awards, and distinctions, I say, well done. And to the C
students I say, you, too, can be President of the United States. A Yale degree
is worth a lot, as I often remind Dick Cheney who studied here, but left a
little early. So now we know -- if you graduate from Yale, you become President.
If you drop out, you get to be Vice President.

Here is the source for the whole speech

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/05/20010521-2.html

It is well worth the read.

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen Things about My Daughters Grad 1.... Daughter and Grandson 2.... Mom and Daughter 3.... Daughter and Friends 4.... Daughter and another friend 5.... Daughter and me 6.... Daughter and TA who has been with her since grade 7. 7.... Daughter and Best friend 8.... 4 Generations together 9.... The Proud Parents with the daughter who has had to many pictures taken. 10.. Three Generations 11.. Just a bit of pointing. 12.. Daughter and more friends 13.. The proud and happy girl.

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others' comments. It’s easy, and fun! Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
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PRIDE

Tonight was a wonderful night very memorable. I couldn't be prouder of my Daughter at this moment...