[1] #36: A Leaping Faith

This year had been a long list of firsts in my life thanks to the adventurous challenge of The Shovel, but last week I claimed a "first" not only for myself, but for the entire province of Ontario. 

I didn't really understand what I was getting into when Ben popped his head into the kitchen after dinner. "Do you guys want to go on the zipline?" he asked with a misleading nonchalance. I took one look at Jo, fellow cook and great friend, and knew our answer would be the same. "Um, Yes!?" we replied, blissfully naive of the commitment we had just made. And that was that: verbal waver signed. 

About an hour later I met Jo and her towel outside of the Staff House, my adopted springtime abode. Our one minute walk to the tower was a giddy one, but excited giggles turned into nervous laughter when I stepped into the shadow of this foreboding edifice. Oh, biceps... we have a little training to do. After a few tries and a little slipping of the fingers I managed to pass the fifteen-second test that determined whether or not I would be able to save my own life. The second fifteen-second test, whether or not I would be able to force my trembling body up the thin metal ladder to the high platform from which I would soon have to jump, took a more determined swallowing of fear. 

The guys were encouraging but a little vague. "Wrist in here," said Stu after practically bolting himself into place. "When I open the gate, just run." Wires, wrists and fists... a system that did not scream total security, but the engineers that thought it up and put it together are a trustworthy set, so with an eventual deep breath and a squeak of escaping internal protest, my feet leapt.

Then my heart leapt. 

I'm the type to fear the climb and love the drop. It's the classic roller coaster dilemma, but as with many that share the adrenaline addiction brought on by the physical thrill of being rushed towards the earth at a rhinocerosly rapid speed, I work through the terror of that first ride and cue by cue, build up my bravery. By the end of the day, all you feel is awesome and fearless. This is like that... but maybe a little cooler.

The zip at Mini-Yo-We is the only licensed line that lands in the water - and this year, I was the first to ride down. Bottom line: I make history. No big deal.

[1] #2: Training for Barnum and Bailey

There is a bewildering percentage of the North American population that suffers from a fear of circus clowns.  Irrational though it may seem to those of us whose personal interaction with the cheerfully clad actors of buffoonery and jest have been pleasant and calm, I understand that in the world of dark film there has been a twist in the expressions of these characters -- a perversion of their charm into something cruel and cold. This need not be the legacy of the professional jokester. Can we please bring it back to pie-in-the-faceing and the squirting floral boutonnieres of ages past? Here's you're balloon of ridiculous length.

Thanks to YouTube, my good friend Messa and I spent an afternoon learning how to inflate these balloon-animal-baloons with nothing but the hot air of out own lungs (and a little "Karate!" which, in this context, means a body-shuddering umph). Unfortunately, we listened to this guy and never saw this guy's video at all. (Gotta love contradicting advice?) Ahh well.

By the end of the time, both of us had twisted two colourful quadrupeds and caused a few fatalities. Lessons learned: there are ways to half-cheat at this if you need to, both of us are very easily amused, and a hole in one leg of a balloon animal plays out more like amputation than explosion if you've twisted it right. I will also add that Willow (the thirteen-year-old girl I was working with at the time) was very impressed with my new skills, and commissioned a latex Barbie house and a hoop-target for them to jump through.

Now, that wasn't so scary, was it? But then, the make up I was wearing was fairly conservative. Perhaps for our week of celebrations at Camp this summer, I will don a more dramatic look and play the birthday-clown for a day. I will need a little more practice for that role though... and let's be honest, an air pump.

[1] #31: From the Rooftops

The view from my window this morning doesn't feel like the city I have become so accustomed to. There is a low-hanging fog blanket snuggling up to the lake and doing its best to white out the sky and erase the horizon. I can see only shadows of a tree line across the bay, grey on softer grey layers of a storybook silhouette. It is raining gently, misting everything with a melancholic wash, just heavy enough that certain spots on my bannister have collected enough water to drip. Drip. Not often, not when I'm looking, but from the corner of my eye as I write. I slept with my windows open last night so I could listen to the city and the smell of the rain has rolled inside to my bed.

I can hear the birds, now. It doesn't last long here, this peace; in an hour the pigeons will wake up and bully the songbirds to hush, but for this moment they have the stage. I want to join them. I soon will.

Because in one more day I will be leaving this place. 

And there are certain things I must do before I go.

So I went to my room and riffled through a package of papers I have kept since High School. I shouldn't still have them, but I do. I find the one I am looking for, return to my balcony and open the door to this costal scene before me. It is exactly what I imagine the east coast to feel like in the mornings. Reminiscent of Ireland, with its muted greys and crisp greens. 

"Cai dil gu la laddie, la laddie, sleep the stars away."

And sleep the moon, and sleep the dark. I usually reserve this piece for tall stairwells when the echos fill the space and magnify my melody like a choir, but this morning it was an obvious choice. Maybe my sixth-floor apartment wasn't the rooftop I once envisioned, but as I sang out, full and loud, I watched over my little North End neighbourhood as it stretched itself awake with a yawn. So many rooftops, so many homes, so many families, so many lives.

I hope I have touched a few.

[1] #22: Conquering Candy Land

Deciding to start a load of laundry after midnight does come with a morning-after tax on both body and brain, but having a few key tricks up your proverbial sleeve can make the experience surprisingly enjoyable. Bare necessities: clothing to launder, detergent with which to clean said clothing, a Best friend, half tub of the highest quality President's Choice ice cream that $3.50 can buy, two large sofa cushions and Candy Land... Juniour.


The rules of this game are classic: pull a card, move your pieces. The "bad guy" in the game is identified as Lord Liquorice, who can force you to miss a turn by gluing your little gingerbread-feet to the square (Muaaahahaha!), but it quickly became obvious that the real power in the game is wielded by the oh-so-innocent appearing pink cards, each printed with a different confectionary treat. Oh how you learn to long for the chocolate truffle! Oh how we feared the dreaded cupcake card! Even with these potential stalls lurking in the deck, there was little challenge to this "Ages three and up" game (both of us lapping Hasbro's invited players by a double-decade). In fact, Wiki puts it this way:

"Due to the design of the game, there is no strategy involved - players are never required to make choices, just follow directions. A "winner" is predetermined only by the shuffle of the cards."

A game without strategy?! Perish the thought! We invented some.

Advanced Rules for the (Much) Older Child

1. Ending the game must be played out like the game Sorry: (your piece must land exactly on the green square before proceeding to the Candy Castle, otherwise you must play in reverse from the ending and go backwards back down the Jolly Rancher trail); once a character is securely across the rainbow drawbridge, it remains there safely - impervious to Lord Licorice's sticky threats or the dreaded cupcake card.

2. You must always play with two characters, and must always draw two cards; if required you can substitute in Monopoly pieces, dice, pennies or actual gingerbread men for more characters (as long as they are small). Cards can use together on one piece or split between two, like backgammon.

3. You must win as a character TEAM: successful crossings over into the Castle have to be back to back, without the other player getting one of their guys in. If it's a "draw" (I get one in then Jaleesa, then I do again), you have to start the whole thing over… but, if someone does achieve a double victory (I get two in right away, or I get one then Jae, then Jae again), happy dancing is wholeheartedly encouraged.

It was everything I had hoped it to be

.

[1] #4: Silencio, Por Favor!

If you treat the visual consumption of motion picture film as an opportunity to multiply your productivity (*cough*Mom*cough*), this game would probably kill you.

As with most of the goals set out on my list, I decided on this one with little forethought and a strangely dogged determination to complete it. Half way through "Tomates Verdes Fritos," my brain almost gave up trying to watch, read and translate without the audio aide. Though I took three years of Spanish in high school, I haven't been keeping up with it properly and I think my functional vocabulary could probably fit into one of the 1930's frying pans so prevalent in this flick.

I have yet to re-watch it with the sound up, so I'm still looking forward to finding out if I missed any big plot points. As I understand it though, here's a little synopsis:

A sugar-loving middle-aged lady (Evelyn) sets off to visit some grouch in the hospital and ends up meeting a very cheerful elderly woman (Ninny) and they fall into conversation. The older woman recounts the beginning of a story that anchors on the relationship between two girls (one just a child at the first, and one maybe 10 years older and set to get married to the younger's brother?). Both girls (Idgie and Ruth) are witness to the death of this would-be-groom. The story is developed through a series of similar hospital visits, and we watch the two older women grow in friendship as an echo of the two younger ones in the recounted tale. Ruth ends up marrying an abusive man, and it seems like there is some kind of "Earl's Gotta Die" theme for a bit that is somehow resolved in an apparently funny way (but I don't yet understand why it is). By the end of the movie, there are more direct hints that the woven tale is more autobiographical than Ninny originally let on - but it's a pretty classic twist I think you can see coming for a while.

Even with the "language barrier," there were a few moments that moved me to tears. It took much more effort to keep going than I expected and I had to take a break part way through, but it's an experiment I think I will repeat in the future, as I work on building my Spanish and lip-reading skills

[1] #46: Baking Soda Smile

"There is no minty freshness!"

I was reminded by a friend this weekend, that having begun my 77 Things in October and having accomplished "about four of them," I had better get cracking. Today, I cross another off my list and write a long-overdue update... but first, a little history lesson.

According to my research (in the culturally immortalized words of that 1990's fictional bookworm Dorothy Ann,) anthropological evidence for an attempt at dental hygiene can be found in many cultures as far back as Babylon. Everything from frayed sticks to pig hair bristles to strapped-together feathers have been used throughout the ages to scratch off that nasty plaque, assisted by a staggering variety of pastes and powders including but not limited to: pumice stones, egg-and-sea-shells, charcoal, chalk, salt and tree bark. Many of these pre-tubed options are less than desirably described and would tempt the applicant of them to just deal with the morning breath (ox hoof ash jumped out as one of these), but by the time we flip the global calendar form 1899 to 1900, the standard practice for pearling your whites was a healthy dose of baking soda - no oven required.

I got the idea for this one after watching a BBC show called "1900 House," conveniently hosted on YouTube (the practice is mentioned in "Part 06" and seen in "Part 08," for those of you Curious Georges), and after having tried it... well, let's say that I'm very happy with my 2012 Colgate and Scope! Baking Soda is a salty sort of bitter powder, for those of you who don't do much from-raw cookery. It is not an independently tasty ingredient. I spent a few sputtering minutes over the sink trying to "clean" my mouth, and eventually gave in to the more formally recognized mouthwash on my counter as a rinse of sorts. Even as I write I can still taste the soda on my lips, but I'm sure the flavour will fade sooner than the memory. 

More updates to come as I wade backwards through my list.

[1] #69: Blood Giving

As my final heroic act of 2011, I decided to give blood this past week.

Dad and I drove to town for our 4:20pm appointment to find a relatively quiet parking lot, a quick registration and lots of cookies awaiting our successful donation. For those of you curious about the process, here's a brief summary: you sign in, grab your number, pick up an informational booklet that you are supposed to read every visit, and grab a seat atwaiting space number one. If there's a line, actually read the book... if it's relatively quiet, just grab a seat with one of the pretty blood-specialist and hand over the requested appendage. One quick prick and an iron test later, you are sent to a table with voting-style booths set up to answer a series of health questions. If you pass this first test, you are sent to a second bank of waiting seating, and are interviewed briefly. Most of the questions posed are about where you have been and if you have recently had sex with someone in jail / in another country / that handles monkeys / might have HIV / etc. If you say your "yeses" and "nos" appropriately, then it's off to waiting bank three, and then, the chair.

I was greeted by Pina, a lovely woman from Honduras who told me all about her daughter's too-short visit home, the insanity of finding and/or keeping a job in Ontario, and how I wasnot a good bleeder. Later that evening I would have more than enough crimson-coloured bandages to prove her wrong, but at the time I listened patiently and did what I could to keep opening and clenching my fist. Fifteen minutes after we began it was all over, and I was given a (rather painfully applied) patch, wrap and usher over to the goodies. Happily I didn't pass out or cry, and I am on the schedule for a repeat visit come February's end.

I saved a potential three lives with my one pint of blood, you know. They can do this spinning thing (I've seen it on CSI or House or something) and separate the blood into its essential parts, and can deal each element out as needed. It's a pretty cool, and relatively painless process that I highly suggest you think about, and then act upon. After all, "It's in you to give."

...and if I was writing this at any other time of year, I might have left this piece here... but the thing is, I've been wrapped up in Leviticus and learning about sacrificial law, and with Christmas and New Years propaganda floating around, I feel compelled to think out loud a little longer.

I'll try to connect the dots and cut to the quick, without the lace of language I'm used to: when God wrapped himself in flesh and filled his body with human blood, He did so for a profound, humbling reason. His blood was in Him to give - but not to give pint by pint every few months - to give in its entirety, sacrificially, without reserve.

And the beauty of His blood is that it has the ability to save more than three lives... and more than burn victims and people with severe cuts can benefit from his donation. His blood rescues from heart attack, cancer and murder, and He, too, gave freely.

Honestly, the inside of my arm still hurts a bit around the now-scarring needle mark, but I will return in February for another round of bruised muscles and bandaged joints if only to be reminded of the debt to death I will not pay because of Christ who, quite literally, gave his blood for me.

And for you.

Look at your life. If you feel yourself bleeding out and need to talk, or want to know a little more about this offer and the post-resuscitation commitment in the fine print of Jesus, write me. I will write back.

It's a New Year: the hope of another 365 days on this planet, but not the promise of them.

Just give it some thought.