End of Summer

The milestones of life …

My mother stayed in hospital from last October to June 2008. After health care advocacy by my sisters, a surgeon assessed the prolapse and performed a procedure that retracted it. This removed a health risk, and gave her better control of bowel function. In June, we were offered a care home placement at Calvary Place. The call came the day I arrived in Winnipeg for a holiday. Dad was anxious about the decision, but made it. The change has allowed more appropriate care, without the noise and distractions of a hospital ward. Dad visits daily. My brothers, sisters and their spouses are heroic in supporting his visits. Dad has multiple health issues. He has given up driving, which restricts his self-sufficiency but keeps him safer.
Jan has become my ex-wife. After a prolonged exercise in living a delicious life by imagining a career in alternative employment, she got a job. She had a web site at http://www.abundanceofchoice.net/home/ last year but its gone. Her name shows up in a blog post on a site about self-help and inspirational books about persistence and wishful thinking to attract wealth, friends and happiness. She finally got a real job – accepting some adversity in her life. She signed a separation agreement in May and applied for a divorce judgment which was signed by a judge on August 11, 2008.
Claire graduated with the Gold medal in her Honours program at the University of Winnipeg. She has just moved to Toronto to start her MA program in Social Anthropology at York University, and she has a SSHRC scholarship to start. She visited Victoria in June. I learned that she had been doing some wall climbing and still likes to climb trees, and that she was experimenting with a low maintenance hair style.

David is in Halifax. We are friends on Facebook. He updates intermittently. He is working steadily, but may be frustrated with many of the routines of his working life. He likes to party and be with his friends.
I have put on some weight over the winter. I have not been cycling as much as I thought when I moved here, and Victoria has brew pubs and micro-breweries, so there a lot of yummy beer within easy reach I am going to have to work out regularly, work out those anxieties with exercise instead of beer, wine, snacks and books.
My dragon boat team reorganized itself and carried on this year. We had three racing festivals in Victoria this year. Some of us are going to a festival in Portland in September – which pushed me to finally get a passport. My teammates have caught me in pictures where I am looking tanned and drunk or relaxed.