The Expedition

Maren has said things in the past couple of days that have made it hard for me to keep a straight face. For example:

“I prefer not to get dressed right now because I’m making trains.” (Said while making trains out of LEGOs)

After I explained that I was putting an ice pack on my face to cool down: “That’s not a thing. You just made that up.”

It’s not that the things she saying are particularly funny, just that they are so funny to hear, said with all seriousness, out of the mouth of a child who is not yet three years old.

She has also been singing a ton. She was singing in the bath today, and I tried to capture what I was hearing, but somehow she knew I was there and started singing more quietly and carefully after I started recording. So this video is really not that great compared to what we were hearing:

But I would like to draw your attention to the phrase “the expedition can pick you up, pick you up, pick you up!“

Camping, take 2

We returned today from a two night camping trip at Good Spirit Lake Provincial Park. It is a 2 1/2 hour drive, which took us quite a bit longer with a lunch stop on the way there, and construction on the way back. It is lovely and quiet there. The campsites are quite close together, and the first night the campground was full, so it felt a bit crowded. But last night the campground was almost empty - we had no neighbors at least two sites in every direction, so it was incredibly quiet and private.  The first night and next morning it also rained hard for a long time, but then the weather was lovely for the afternoon and evening. However, last night and this morning it was unexpectedly cold, so much of our trip was fairly physically uncomfortable. 

Yesterday morning we went for a short hike with my trike. We didn’t get very far before the terrain was too sandy for my trike to go forward, but it was still nice to get out. 

Then in the afternoon we went to the beach. The lake has a beautiful sandy beach, and the water is incredibly shallow for a very long way. Perfect for little kids. Unfortunately bad for me -  wading is something that messes with my balance pretty terribly. The movement of the water on my legs (in this case only part of my legs) tends to knock me over, so I need to either be all the way in the water or all the way out. So I watched from shore. 

Last night Maren couldn’t get to sleep before dark, and woke up with the sun. The daylight hours are long in Saskatchewan this time of year, which meant that Maren slept about 5 hours less than normal. Needless to say she had a very difficult day, as did we. Also our air mattress got a hole in it yesterday, and we thought we fixed it but we didn’t, so we all slept terribly. All in all I am ambivalent about this trip - sort of good, but sort of awful. Definitely our last tent camping trip of the summer 😊

Camping

Earlier this week we went camping. We stayed at a provincial park less than an hour drive from here, in a permanent tent structure with cots to sleep on. The park, the campground, and the campsite were all nice.



We had our first foray into reading chapter books with Maren - Winnie the Pooh.



We even went on a short hike with my trike.

Unfortunately, some of our camp neighbors were loud and inconsiderate, keeping us up with their drunken loud ramblings until about 1:30am, when the sun woke Maren around 5am. We were all tired, and I think a little cranky.

After some consultation with friends with young kids, we are heading to a different campground next weekend, this one a little farther out of town and very family-oriented. We are hoping for better luck there!

Backyard fun

Yesterday we had some fun times in the backyard, with popsicles and the sprinkler.

Pre-Canada day

Yesterday we went to a pow wow in solidarity with protesters who have been camped out in front of our provincial legislature for the past four months; the Tespassers Pow Wow at the Justice for our Stolen Children camp. About 16% of the population of Saskatchewan identifies as Indigenous, while over 90% of boys and 98% of girls detained in the youth justice system are Indigenous. Between 66% and 89% (depending on where you get your stats) of kids in foster care in this province are Indigenous. Indigenous children are separated from their parents at alarmingly high rates. Institutional and individual racism, and a lack of understanding of the unfairness and inequality that a history of colonialism has created, are a huge part of the problem.

Grasping the magnitude of this problem breaks my heart. Canadians like to think of racism as more of an American problem than a Canadian one, but what I have seen is a huge unwillingness on the part of many White Canadians to acknowledge and address the issue. Particularly with respect to Indigenous peoples. 

So yesterday we celebrated “pre-Canada,” at an event highlighting the cultures of peoples who were here before settlers arrived. Maren was enthralled by the music and dancing, and danced along as much as she could. I hope that racism will be less of a problem in her generation, but the cycle is far from being broken.

A beautiful photo of the camp, taken by a friend.

 Meeting up with friends at the powwow, pretending to be cats.

Maren listening to music, with the teepees in the distant background.

And then today we celebrated Canada Day. I had mixed feelings about participating in the Canada Day festivities, but being completely comfortable, and completely consistent, is not really the point. And the particular way we celebrated was important to me.

Jeff, Maren, and I entered a 5K walk. For the first time, I entered a road race with my tricycle. I finished the walk in about 55 minutes,  and I was tired, but not wiped out for the rest of the day. It was 100% a success.



I have been working with volunteers from an organization called Tetra Society. They pair volunteers with knowledge about mechanics and making things, with people with disabilities who need adaptive equipment that is not commercially available. The volunteers have been working with me over the past several months to try to help me figure out a mobility aid that will work for me. Walkers, crutches, and manual wheelchairs don’t work well for me for various reasons - anything that requires me to use balance or certain kinds of coordination tires me out too quickly, my legs are stronger than my arms, and there are some major functional and safety issues with manual wheelchairs due to my lack of sensation on my right side. Power scooters work, but I don’t get any exercise. I wanted something that I could take in the car, could use indoors and outdoors, was seated, and provided a similar amount of exercise as walking. No commercially available options fit the bill.

We had meetings, brainstorming sessions, and I told them about all the things I have tried, and the problems with them. First they made a seated 3-wheeled kick scooter (adapted from a knee walker/scooter like people use after foot surgery), and I had super high hopes. But it didn’t work for me. I won’t go into the details of why it didn’t work for me, but it was an interaction between my limitations and the limitations of the device, and I was devastated. But the volunteers were unfazed. More meetings, more bainstorming, more fabricating and welding, and a second failure (I won’t go into detail on this either, but basically it was an attempt at making a walker with a seat kind of like bike seat). Then I took a step back, and thought about my trike, which almost worked in many ways, but not quite. What I thought were insurmountable problems with the trike, the volunteers had ideas for solutions to pretty quickly. They made some modifications and voila - I had a functional mobility device.

It has been pretty amazing. I can go for “walks” around the neighborhood, either independently or with other people. I can use it at work. And today I did a 5K, and Jeff was more tired out than me, which is how things used to be when we would go for long walks. It isn’t perfect, but it allows me to do things (with adaptations) that I used to enjoy, so I’ll take it :)