lazy and crazy

Just over a month into the new year and as always there's plenty to write about. After a big unpack at the start of the year, we kinda lost our mojo and have just been enjoying our new home...though those little things left to-do are starting to make me itch to get them done already. teehee.

here is Sasha enjoying our patio space. lots of dirt to dig in and rocks to pile all over the place. simple good times :)

we are not thrilled at the easy access to our patio though, having the case for our canopy go missing from our patio table one night. our initital thought was that someone had taken it just to be a jerk. afterall...who needs a carry case for a canopy without the canopy? Susan's insight was that it was likely someone who is homeless and needed it to protect their stuff. I was grateful for the new way of looking at it as I can let go of anger over it thinking that it will help someone who needs it. it will be a pain for us to transport the canopy for camping etc...but we also aren't on the streets in the cold wet of vancouver winter. And we'll put up a latice soon to block entry to our patio in the future.

so the cute picture of Sasha is above before you see the worst one yet. Over the past week or so she has developed a lazy eye. as you can see the look we're trying to adjust to is this one - cross-eyed!

I took her to the doctor on thursday to get a referral to a pediatric optomitrist. (a hellish experience because we were kept waiting waaaaaaaaaaay too long, so once again her patience was maxed before we saw the doctor. that, and I think she's now afraid of the doctor giving her needles. grrrr. a very fustrating morning!) She tells me the wait can be long but she'll try to get us bumped up the priority list. If it is simply some muscles going lazy in her right eye, one relatively effective and easy treatment, if caught soon enough, will be to use a patch to cover/ drops to blur the good eye to put the lazy one back to work. She could potentially be a bit far-sighted as it seems she is going cross-eyed when trying to focus on things long range. I'll update on this as soon as I am able.

Other things to update about in these crazy times include some fun experiences. Our evening out with Penny was a night of interesting new things for her. We had dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant just a few blocks away. Yum yum yum. The performance was not what we expected, but it was a good show. We thought the two orchestras would be doing some combined work, but overall enjoyable for our first exposure to modern orchestra music. Much gratitude to our hero Susan for babysitting that night!

In a couple of weeks we have a night out on the town with Dad & Liz too...still looking for a sitter that night. hint hint any takers in vancouver? ;)

Another good time was had last night at the Holly Day party held for our co-op. We got to meet another handful of families, and I gotta say I'm in heaven to be surrounded by so many folks who like to hug like I do! sweet! Here is one girl we're really happy to know. Lyndsay is going to be our mother's helper now and then in a little win-win for us both. She's almost 12 and trying to increase her experience as a babysitter, and I need another couple of hours in my week to work on writing and such. Sasha loves her, and Mark & I were actually able to spend time chatting with our new neighbours a bit, including Lyndsay's parents, as she was already being a big help in keeping an eye on our roving exporer girl. Yay!

I'm two weeks into my new work schedule now that the job share has begun. It will take my body clock a while to get used to being at work 'til 9pm a couple of nights a week (as it delays bedtime etc getting home later), but the stability of a set routine should help out. whenever we finally have that set routine organized that is...

Tomorrow Sasha is starting her first day at a child care! We found a really nice woman offering licensed care out of her home. It is affordable and only 8 blocks away. Sasha loved her and her home when we went to check it out. We signed an agreement with her for mon-wed so i can work on documentary stuff on the day i don't work. my mon and tues alternate which was making finding care just around my hours really complicated. As I'm always looking for writing time and interviews etc, I figured why juggle? Tanya recommended just looking for 3 days...d'uh! why didn't I think of it sooner?

Well, today she calls and says the 2 days I had originally asked for would work better as one of her other moms has decided that she needs the 3rd day. So now I am dealing with immense frustration at having to look for affordable, close to home care all over again! arrrgh! we have a month...so hopefully the stars align and something else really awesome comes together.

On the public education front I had a great time at the conference held last weekend on Equity & Inclusion. There is a weird synergy following me on education since I put it out there that I'm making a doc on the issue. For instance, I was thinking one day that I needed a contact in China. The next day, at the CPEN board meeting, we have a new board member who is fluent in 5 languages and active in the Chinese community. And she is super keen to help me translate and promote anything around the doc. Cool. but it gets better. the day after that, I'm working at Brit, and the former ED just happens to be touring with a delegation of community education people from...that's right...CHINA! Shanghai specifically. even cooler that they are from a district in China that believes so strongly in lifelong learning that they actually commit 60% of their budget to education.

the synergy continued around the conference. Tanya and I had received correspondence from someone suggesting two names we needed to talk to...and those two gentlemen just happened to be the keynote speakers for the friday night portion of the conference I was at a few days later. Another country I was thinking I needed a contact in was Cuba...and at the conference I reconnected with one of my mentors...who just happened to be leaving for Cuba soon! shut up! crazy...but i'm not gonna question it!

oh yeah...my friend, before heading to Cuba, sent me an invite to speak at a Tri-National conference (Mexico, Canada and USA) in defence of public education in April. They want me to speak about the Charter process and how teachers and communities can work together to create positive change using the Charter as a tool. The even craziest part of this all-expenses-paid trip is that it is in L.A.!!!! say wha? that's right...going to california! insane. I'm still giddy from the honour of it all.

Can't wait for the trip though. For so many reasons, including that Tanya and I will also do some filming while we're there so it will be a multi-purpose public education extravaganza! And maybe we'll get a night on the town in with my friend Javier.

Back to the present. What else is up in february you ask? I'm hoping we'll have our 100 votes by the 11th on my proposal at educateme.givemeaning.com so that we can actually post the doc as a project that people can make donations to. Would sooooooooo appreciate if you could vote for it if you haven't already. And to those in the 80 who have voted - huge mega hugs of thanks!!!!

The Vancouver Public Education Project (PEP) is hosting a forum on the 23rd on advocacy and leadership. That is also the day that we will actually begin filming for the doc! As the forum is at the Central branch of the library we're going to begin our 'man on the street' interviews before and after, as well as getting some footage from the PEP event.

gotta spend lotsa time writing to get proposal out on schedule...but as always i'll be back when there is something worth sharing. like cute pics of Sasha sleeping with a wonderful new quilt sent from her east coast Grammy Martha in New Brunswick. check out her quilt shop "The Covered Bridge Quiltery" if you're ever in Moncton or visit her site www.thequiltery.com