Leslie is....on Facebook

So, I've been on Facebook.

It's.....fun. However, I don't feel quite the same about it as a fellow blogger who wrote tongue in cheek, "She meets my needs", as an excuse for not blogging so much anymore. It is....fun. But....welll....

It's quite addictive. Everyone who's on says that. It's getting kind of tiresome to read, actually. Someone on just about everyone's wall says something about being addicted. For those not ON, it's not like you can just log in, check your messages, answer a few and log out. You could/can spend hours (as I have) scrolling through list after list of faces, looking for those you recognize. Hours and hours looking at hundreds of pictures of people you don't know, checking through groups to see if you fit in anywhere, updating your own profile info and pictures, so that everyone you've connected with can see how great you're doing.

It is fun. In almost 3 weeks, I've got a list of 'friends' around the 60 or 70 mark. Friends....hmmm.
People I haven't seen for 10 plus years. People I'm related to, people I go to church with, people I used to go to church with, people I work with, people, people, people. Here's a snapshot of a few things I've learned about this myriad of people:

• Pete Rainford is a really good photographer. Like, he should be in magazines.
• Pieter VanHiel is a really good writer. Witty, humorous, dry. Just the way I like it.
• Some people my age are divorced. Very sad.
• Some people haven't changed a bit. Very funny.
• Some people only have the same name; everything else is different.

And I've often mused how difficult it is to keep up with the people currently in my life.

But still, it's provided me a interesting glance into a few people's lives whom I was genuinely interested to discover what they've done with their lives. But then there's a few who haven't responded to a message sent, or a comment left on their wall. And so I ponder....'Are they too busy to respond? Do they not remember me? Perhaps they do remember me and don't like what they remember...'. A little paranoia, I suppose. I know I was annoying in elementary school, but I thought I had smoothed that out fairly well by highschool.

And the whole 'friend' thing....at first it was reminiscent of grade two...a note passed in class...'Will you be my friend? (check boxes, yes and no)
Would anyone actually say no? With every friend request has come a fleeting spark of 'feel-goodness'. Someone likes me. Someone wants to see how I'm doing. Someone remembers me and wants to reconnect.
But recently, that's been quickly followed with....'or maybe they just feel obligated because I poked them....'.

And then there's the paranoia that I might be offending someone by not issuing a friend request. I know they see my face on the screens of those we have in common, they might be people I went to school with, but didn't know terribly well. I, let's say, have decided that I don't want to take the chance that they don't remember me, or don't really care either way, so I just...ignore them. But what if I'm wrong? What if they're just waiting for a poke from me?--a little, 'hey, how's it going' message?

And then (how many paragraphs have I started with that...!) there's the information debate. How much do I include on this billboard of my life? How many people do I allow into my otherwise carefully guarded existence? I struggled with whether to leave the pictures of Hayden's gravestone, and his little handprints. Why should I put them there? So people can feel sorry for me? Well, no. Unfortunately, some might think that. But I put them there because I was posting pics of my family and he is my son. Even though he only lived a short time, people should know that he existed. That is his right.

I tried to blog on there. They have function for that. But it just wasn't the same. I felt compelled to return to my first love....;-) There's just something different about blogging my heart out with the vague knowledge that someone I know might read it. I click on publish and out my thoughts go, into the vast web world....
But on Facebook, the webby world seems much smaller. I know that once I click post, my thoughts are being directly deposited into the screens of 70 odd people, if I've got my privacy settings figured out right.
I tried importing this blog, so that I could just write once and have it in both places. But it imported ALLLL my posts, from the beginning. Who wants to read all that on my profile?!?

Through facebook, I've violated a cardinal rule for myself: never let the students see you sweat. In otherwords, even though I send my bloggy thoughts out for the world to see, I've been assuming that my choir kids likely would not find them. Why would they look?
I soon realized on Facebook, that I had opened myself up to the gathering of HCC and Allmen youths in my virtual backyard. So far, this is....ok, I think. I'm hoping I won't regret clicking confirm for those requests. I just couldn't say no and make them understand....I just want to maintain an air of professionalism and respect. That's why they call me Mrs. Kent, when only a few years ago, they were calling me Leslie.

So that's another reason why I return here to my Leslife-morelife. I have to guard what I write on Facebook because.....I don't know. I just do.

Besides, my home here is much prettier....

Our God is an Awesome God

I found out some GREAT news today.

My friend Karen received the results from her operation to remove the breast cancer. They got all of it out, and none of her lymph nodes were affected. This was a stage III carcinoma, the most aggressive type, but it had not spread to anywhere else on her.

How amazing is that!!!

She'll still have to have some treatment--chemo or radiation, but I think things are looking up!

Number four's the charm

What kind of delinquent auntie am I, that I go on for weeks about my SIL and then forget to post when the baby's born!?!?

A thousand apologies my lord.

Micah Grace arrived on the day I said she was going to pop (I think. Yeah, I'm a bad auntie). Everything was good, Rhonda's water broke at home but she made it to the hospital in the nick of time. There was a small issue with the baby's blood sugar, but it was resolved by morning, so they hustled home quickfast. Her three big brothers are quite thrilled. (OK, one's a little jealous)

I had an alarming phonecall today.

This is my friend Karen, her hubby John and their kiddies. Isaiah is the tall one with glasses, Noah is on the right, Reuben is in the middle and John is holding wee Hannah. I've been friends with Karen for a number of years; we used to teach together at the Stoney Creek Alliance school of Music. She studied voice at Redeemer. She's 29 years old.

And she has breast cancer.

She told me a few weeks ago that she was going in to have a lump checked out, but I don't think that she, nor I , or her doctor for that matter, thought anything would come of it. But it did. So please pray for this family as they deal with this. She'll be having surgery in 2 weeks and then the usual therapies to follow up.

Please pray hard.

Racism?!?!

I've been hearing about this story in Montreal the last week or so, about the young soccer player who was asked to remove her head scarf in order to play in a tournament. She refused, the coach pulled the team, and apparently 5 other teams pulled out as well, in response. Today I read this follow-up story:

Egypt calling Canada Racist

This is starting to annoy me now. First, let me say that I think there have been some really courageous people in this situation. The girl--quite young to be standing up for her religious beliefs, I applaud. The ref, who made a very difficult call, I also see as brave to have taken on this religiously coloured sporting issue. The coach, who chose to pull his team, and inspired 5 other coaches to do the same, is to be applauded for supporting his girl like that. (oops, assuming the coach is a man....)

What I'm annoyed about is how it's being viewed on the world screen. Canada racist!?! Look here Egypt, I've lived in the States where racism can be felt like a hot, wet blanket. I'm not going to naively assume that we've gotten away from the moral depravity of racism, but this is NOT an issue that illustrates what racism does exist in Canada.

Look at the last line of the article---there's your issue right there. The MUSLIM ref was concerned for that girls' safety on the field and I have to say I quite agree. It's unfortunate that this girl has to make a choice between displaying her faith and playing soccer, but I have to say this is the price one pays for being true to your religion. Sometimes you have to give something up.

So then, last night at choir, we were rehearsing a piece from our repertoire called "Down by the Riverside". As a community choir, we don't generally sing 'religious' pieces, but as part of our mandate to expose children to different styles, we will often look to Black Spirituals for good quality, meaningful musical expression. Part of the song had one part singing the word Hallelujah.

Having grown up in the Salvation Army, I was never familiar with the practice of Lent. My first real exposure was when an older sister of a guy I dated in highschool gave up chocolate for Lent. I realized that the SA schedules 'Self Denial' roughly around the time of Lent, so I guess that was Mr. Booths equivilent. However, I never realized how far some denominations go....

This little girl approached me after practice and said that she couldn't sing that part because it had the word Hallelujah, and she was not allowed to say that until after Easter.

!!!!

I was a) very impressed, b) newly educated and c) really proud of her. I told her to sing la-la-la until after Easter. Oh, the things I learn from my kids.....

What a Week

I'm glad it's over.

I think the stresses started a week ago today. We had gotten a flyer in the mail from Direct Energy. Now, those guys bug me. When we lived in Brantford, one of those idiots were knocking on our door, asking to "check" my gas bill every other week it seemed. We did look into their service, but James was always suspicious of them (anyone use them? I would like to know if anyone is finding an advantage using them).

But this flyer drew me in because it was advertising new furnaces with a 14 month deferment. We've been in our house about 8 months now, and we had an inspection done before we bought it. That gentlemen kindly informed us that the furnace was ORIGINAL to the house, which would make it about as old as ME. Holy shmoly.
We had wanted to replace it upon moving in, but the funds....disappeared. And the inspector assured us that even though the furnace was old, it was in good shape and would last us a few more years. Probably.
So upon spotting this flyer, I was tempted. And so I called-just to ask.
Heh, heh.

So last Friday, 'Jeff'' spends an hour or two at our dining room table and convinces us to buy a brand new-shiny-state-of-the-art-all-the-bells-and-whistles-last-us-a-million-years-furnace.

Well, he didn't quite convince us. We decided to think on it, and get another guy in for a second opinion.

Monday comes, and with it, 'Agostino' arrives an hour late at my front door. He spent half the time and offered us a furnace at half the cost with less than half the deferment time that Direct Energy did.
We still weren't completely convinced though. It's really hard to commit to laying out that kind of money when what you've got is technically still working. But the advantages--financially and other, to having a new furnace were a big draw. Still, we decided to pray and leave it overnight.

The next day, Tuesday, I got the kids up and out for pre-school. I had an ambitious morning planned--Jairus had a specialist appointment at 9:45, so I was going to drop Honour off at school for 9:15 , get to my aunt and uncles near Mac who let me park in their driveway for 9:30, walk to Mac, have the appointment, and get back in time to pick up Honour at 11:40.

The first problem was that Jairus just could not understand why he wasn't staying for school. I should have just left him and Verity in the van while I took Honour in, but for sure someone would call the CAS on me, so I didn't. And he got very upset and no amount of explaining was helping.
I got back out to the van, got littlest and biggest into their seats, pulled out of the church parking lot and promptly stalled in the middle of Stone Church Road. Traffic dove to the right and left to avoid me. I tried starting it a few more times, and the situation grew more grim. I soon realized that I had to get my children out of the middle of morning rush traffic on a busy street. So I got them out and we trooped back in to the preschool. Jairus was ecstatic. The teachers were confused. Verity started pulling her shy act. I started phoning people. OK, my dad.
I went back out and tried the van again, but now I was just getting clicking.

To make a long story short (TOO LATE!) me and Verity had a ride in a tow truck (no girly pictures in this one, mom!) over to Beech Tire, thankfully only 5 minutes down the road. They diagnosed a bad battery and we dug into our summer savings to take care of it....drat.

You can imagine what this did to our furnace plans. A sign from God?

Actually, no. We decided to go for it. Called Jeff. Signed our lives away.

So then, a stressful Wednesday with choir---In addition to my training choir rehearsal and boy's choir rehearsal, I was leading a rehearsal for a group of kids recently chosen to sing in Opera Ontario's production of 'Tosca'. I love that one. Actually, I was one of those kids...gulp...17 years ago. Holy cashmoly.

And this morning the kids had pre-school again. Again, we hustled out the door and over to the preschool.....took the older two in, got them settled, back out with plans to get to the nearest scrapbooking store....

I was out of gas. Right there in the parking lot.

So Verity and I had another bonding experience hiking over to the Esso where we paid a grotesque amount for a gas can and 5 litres of gas.

And to round the day off, our furnace stopped working.







(OK, I really wanted to end it like that just to be terribly ironic, but it's not entirely truthful. They came and cleaned our ducts ("Do they quack, Mommy?"--Honour) in preparation for the new furnace and the guy forgot to turn the furnace back on, which I didn't notice until our house was 18 degrees. OK 19. Point 6. It's working now)

Cow Crossing

So now, what would you think if you saw this headline?

Canadian cows crossing US border without proper papers

Border patrol: Excuse me, Mrs. Cow, can I see some ID?

Clarabell Cow: mmmmmmMMMRRRRRRrrrrrrrrr(dong, dong)

BP: Oh I see, you're going to school. Can I see your F1?

CC:MMMMMMMmmmmRRRRRrrrrrrrrrr (dong)

BP: No, I'm afraid your bell doesn't fit the requirements. Follow me please....

CC:MMMRRRR?

BP: (into radio) Can I get some back up for a possible illegal bovine immigrant , repeat illegal bovine....

Babies, Hayden and my other Kids

The twins are doing well. Rhonda called last week to say that they were going to send them home to Barrie, but ran into some problems....one being that when beds come free, they only come one at a time, and they obviously need two. Also, they do seem to be having some kind of difficulty with tolerating their ng-tube feeds, but I'm unsure of the details there. They are taking breastmilk fine, but only a certain way (either gravity or 'gavage' feeds, or with a pump, I'm not sure)
Speaking of babies, Rhonda herself could pop anytime. She's 37 weeks along right now and is due for induction next Wednesday. She was having some pretty serious labour on the weekend though and less I get too graphic, let's just say that things are ready for baby to come. I can't wait to see if the ultrasounds are right----a new girl cousin for my two girlies!

And finally, notice the new link on my sidebar. Since my posts about Hayden will soon move down and out of view, I wanted to gather them all and make a little spot for him permanently. It's not quite finished, as I plan to add some photos of the items in his memory box, but the posts are there. Thanks.

We've started homeschooling! It's fun. Well, it's preschool-homeschooling so of course it's fun! We sing, we dance, we act, we glue, we paint, we trace, we do lots of creative stuff from a great book I bought called 'Little Hands to Heaven'. We finished week 1 today!!
Still struggling with Jairus' therapy though. It's looking more and more like there's nothing available for him as a homeschooled special needs child. That really sucks.

Anyway, I have a new home schedule to keep us on track, and this is not my blogging time, so off I go!!