HOW TO RATE YOUR PARENTING SKILLS.

          You know, there’s no instruction manual for raising a child. Sure, there are thousands of resources now but even back thirty years ago, when my wife and I were experiencing parenting for the first time, the resources were somewhat limited compared to today’s computer age with the internet and everything and whole TV channels devoted to parenting. We used our parents’ behaviour and tactics as our guideline, like so many generations before us, and tried to keep the good stuff and discard the bad, or as it may be termed…“flying by the seat of our pants”.

There was Dr. Benjamin Spock, of course, not to be confused with Star Trek’s Mr. Spock or you’d really be raising a weirdo, who, along with his wife Jane Cheney, (Doctor Spock’s wife that is), penned the 1946 book, Dr. Spock's Baby & Child Care. The book has sold 50 million copies in 49 countries and if you Google “#1 Child Rearing Doctor”, Dr. Benjamin Spock’s name still comes up first.

Then again, with a brand new baby in the house who had time to read a book anyway? What with the feeding and the diaper changes, and to start with we used cloth ones if you can possibly imagine, and bathing and dressing and undressing and feeding and diaper changes and bathing and rocking and walking them to sleep…then along comes baby number two and then number three and years and years go by and we’re like… “where’d that book go? You know the one…the Mr. Spock book or whatever it’s called…the one that tells you how to do this stuff.”

And time, as it is wont to do, passes by so quickly and the children are graduating high school already and none of them has done jail time, or anything, so maybe you didn’t do such a bad job anyway and you continue on your merry way because what’s the sense in looking up how to raise a child now that you’re almost done. But…you’re never done. You are always a parent and they are always a child…your child.

So what’s the litmus test? What are the indicators that you have performed the task properly? The above mentioned jail time could be considered an indicator. How they care for their own children is another indicator. Of course, they won’t do it as good as you did it but neither did you to your parents, if you know what I mean. School marks, extracurricular activities, interaction with others, maturity, ethics, (work and otherwise) are all clear indicators of how well your parenting skills are.

Without breaking my arm patting myself on the back I think Debbie and I did a pretty good job with our parenting. None of our three children have been to jail…too long…just kidding…and they are hard-working, well-adjusted, civilized adults with two out of our three children raising their children and improving on the parenting they were, and are, subjected to.

But you don’t have to believe me. If there was ever a doubt that we were worthy of our parenting skills it was cast aside last week when we toured Casino Regina with our youngest daughter, Emily, who has been employed there as a Marketing Analyst for the past three-and-a-half years and will be leaving her job and her Casino family at the end of August to further her education. The interaction with her fellow employees and their true affection and respect for her was quite evident. They impressed upon us time and again how she will be terribly missed and what a “wonderful young woman you’ve raised there”. That…was all the litmus we needed.

“If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do matters very much.”-Jackie Kennedy. (1929-1994).

RAIN, RAIN,RAIN!!

            Say…does anyone know a decent Ark builder? Nobody local comes to mind? It’s a little too late anyhow. Maybe? Yikes! Can you believe this stuff? Me neither.

            My apologies for appearing flippant while so many people are suffering in ways that I can only imagine but sometimes levity may also provide a bit of relief. I hope the above comment will make you smile just a wee bit despite the devastation of the flooding that has been so widespread across our region and our neighbouring province to the East.

            In comparison to the loss of property, houses, complete cottages, roads, crops, majestic trees, vehicles, etc etc our house was hardly inconvenienced at all. We are very, very lucky. The little bit of leakage coming in our basement was easily handled by a few ShopVac-fulls of water. We also lost a few bean plants because of the flooding, (I know…big deal), but other than that we came away virtually unscathed. I don’t know why it missed us but it did and we are thankful.

            We have good friends that have had unbelievable losses and the stories that are being told could be the stuff of a Stephen King novel. Especially the stories from the Crooked and Round Lake areas where we know a number of home and cottage owners.

Many of those owners worked tirelessly for days building dikes and taking belongings to higher ground and were just beginning to feel somewhat safe until the Saturday evening’s nasty thunderstorm/tornado put an end to any hope that many of the lake-front properties were going to be able to hold off the flood waters. Until that storm hit some of the property owners were feeling confident that the damage had been minimalized. And then, just like a Stephen King novel, right when you think you are the safest…the worst was yet to come.

            Before all this crazy rain I had had a conversation with an older couple from Roche Percee who had lost their house in the big flood of 2011 and they are still feeling the effects of the loss of property, community and their way of life three years after the fact. That’s the reality of devastation like this. You might be able to repair, rebuild, or relocate but it’s so very difficult to rebound completely from so great a loss. Thankfully, and touch wood, I can only imagine.

            At times like these, though, other stories come out about bravery and selflessness and compassion and giving and sacrifice. So many people rush to the aid of their friends, neighbours and complete strangers with a solidarity rarely seen in everyday life. It’s takes an event, or events, like this to bring out the best of humankind it seems.

            As we move along with our regular, daily lives the floods’ damage is still being felt in many, many communities. There were 87 communities that declared a State of Emergency in Saskatchewan and Manitoba since the rain started on the July long weekend and so many are still in need of help.

The Canadian Red Cross is there to help in situations just like this but even they have limits to their resources. If you want to help those in need one of the best ways is to contact The Canadian Red Cross at http://www.redcross.ca or for General or Donation Inquiries: email-WeCare@redcross.ca or 1-800-418-1111. Any amount and all donations we be gratefully accepted.

“Compassion brings us to a stop, and for a moment we rise above ourselves.”-Mason Cooley-(1927-2002).

THE ENDOSCOPY DEPARTMENT BLUES

I’m a pretty superstitious guy so I took it as an omen when I got assigned to bed #13 in the pre-op area prior to my scheduled gastroscopy and colonoscopy procedures recently at the General Hospital in Regina. I didn’t know exactly what the process would entail, and, like almost everyone else in the world, I was a little unnerved going into the tests anyway but the #13 thingy added a little more stress to the situation for me.

Humans’ greatest fear is the fear of the unknown and I was heading into unknown territory. I don’t think the procedures are exactly dangerous or risky, per se, but anytime they’re putting you in a hospital gown and feeding you the real good drugs the chances increase that anything could happen…good, bad or otherwise.

            It could be classified as either good or bad luck, depending on your point of view, to have both procedures scheduled on the same day. On one hand it saved us a second trip into the city and another go-round through the healthcare system but on the other hand I was going to be probed from both ends nearly at the same time and I wasn’t exactly thrilled by that prospect at all. 

             I think I’ll pass on the details of the liquid/low residue diet that you’re forced to be on the day before the tests or the mandatory laxative cocktail, and its ensuing effects, that one has to take the night before and the morning of the procedures, but suffice to say that the industrial strength colon cleanser is most effective. ‘Nuff said.

            I went to admitting as scheduled at 11:00AM hoping that the laxative’s effects were completely over but thinking it and knowing it are two different things so my forehead was a little beaded over with sweat as my stomach gurgled and I debated running to the john one more time or waiting it out for #61 to be called out while #59 was lit up in the red led lights above the Admitting desk. Ding went the bell and the lights went to #60 so my decision was made for me. There’s no way I was going to give up my place in line unless absolutely necessary. Fortunately I made it through Admitting without soiling myself. Whew.

            I then went to the next waiting room in the Endoscopy Department and nearly every chair was taken but half of the people in the waiting room were the patient’s rides so the wait wasn’t very long there. But the next station was a completely different story.

            That’s when I got led to bed #13 where my assigned nurse greeted me with all the necessary items, gown, robe, paper booties, plastic bag for my stuff and I was directed to one of three dressing room/bathrooms at the far end of the room. I glanced at the #13 light above my assigned bed and my stomach did a tiny flip. I don’t like this; I thought to myself, something’ll happen.

            I went across the room and picked the door in the middle and opened it up to a bare-naked man who was “door-lock challenged”, apparently, but his nurse standing outside the door, clipboard in hand, pointed up at the OCCUPIED sign and then said, “That one over there is unoccupied. The one that DOESN’T have a sign saying ‘occupied’.” Thankfully, she didn’t laugh too loudly at my embarrassment. Choosing the wrong door…bad luck? Or just stupidity?

            I got changed and processed without further incident by 11:30. As the procedures and the time schedule were described to me I was thinking that I’ll be out of here in a couple of hours for sure. Shouldn’t have thought it. Jinxed myself. I should have known better. Bad luck or stupid? There seemed to be a theme developing.

            For the next two-and-a-half hours I lay on bed #13 staring at the ceiling and watching the clock tick away as other patients came and went. No book, no magazine, no cell phone, no radio, no music…just me on the bed listening to Nurse Ratched, or whoever, answering the phone and badgering the callers on the other end of the line, the interaction of the staff with each other and the other patients and finding patterns and faces in the ceiling tile. For TWO-AND-A-HALF hours. Was that John Lennon or Jesus? Hard to tell…hmmm. There’s a teddy bear and a ball glove and a…

            Again, I will not bore you with the gory details of the uncomfortable test procedures or the loss of dignity in the “Flatulence Room”, (about the only place I know of where breaking wind is actually encouraged), but they sent me home with pictures, (ewwww), from the camera shots they took in both orifices and with any luck, “touch wood”, I’ll be given a clean bill of health when the final results come back.

“My feeling about fears is, if you voice your fears, they may come true. I’m superstitious enough to believe that.” Meryl Streep (1949-).

LOUD MOUTH SCHNOOK SHOOTIN' OFF

           I waited and waited to see if there might be another loudmouth schnook among the 500+ mailboxes in Kipling representing approximately 1500 men, women and children who would, like this loudmouth schnook, take exception to the message delivered by the Kipling AND DISTRICT Health Foundation in the June 6^th edition of The Citizen in the “It’s Rally Time” article. As no one else has come forward, at least not in this publication in the form of a Letter to the Editor, or anything, I will offer up my opinion and reaction to the article submitted by the KDHF. I am not speaking on behalf of any of the above residents cited but I am confident that I won’t be alone in the opinion I am sharing.

            First off, though, I would like to offer my congratulations and express my deepest gratitude to all of the current and former members of the Kipling and District Health Foundation for their hard work, dedication and commitment in their efforts to have a new integrated health care facility constructed in the Town of Kipling.

That said, as a resident of the Town of Kipling the wording and the tone of the “It’s Rally Time” article more than rankled my feathers a little. I take exception to the statement that singles out and defines “Community” as persons with a mail box at the Kipling Post Office. Where’s the AND DISTRICT in that? Is the Health Foundation’s definition of “Community” restricted to residents of the Town of Kipling and the closest two Rural Municipalities only? Was this the deal from the get-go? That the “Community’s” share of $7.1 million dollars was to come from the occupants of THIS post office address alone?

Listen to this: “Funding to complete the project has progressed well because of several generous contributions from a FEW individuals and a FEW corporate businesses. Unfortunately, the general local population and the local business interests have NOT been supportive to date”.

Excuse me? Have NOT been supportive to date? According to the Kipling and District Health Foundation’s statistics-to date the “Community” has raised $6.8 million dollars out of the $7.1 million dollar objective falling .042253521% short of that target. All of these funds have been raised by a FEW individuals and a FEW corporate citizens? Really? All of it?

If the KDHF is stating that “Community” individuals haven’t taken out their personal or business cheque-books and stroked a cash donation directly to the “Community’s” share of the fund say that but stating that, “the general local population and the local business interests have NOT been supportive to date” cannot be further from the truth.

Stroking a personal cheque may be their definition of support but it sure isn’t mine. How about the funds that have been raised through municipal taxes since 1998? Every taxable dwelling, office, store, service center etc. has contributed to this fund for over 15 years…no exceptions.

How about fund-raiser after fund-raiser after fund-raiser using local businesses’ discounted or free services and supplies and donations? Or the exorbitant, inflated amounts of money that so many businesses and residents spent on auction items time and time again to raise funds for the cause. Only a few? I think not.

How about the hundreds of hours of personal time that have been given as well? How many volunteer hours does it take to make it a worthwhile contribution? Not enough is the answer, I guess.

I am reminded of the spoiled child who stamps their feet and cries and cries because they didn’t get the tenth gift, all the while forgetting about the previous nine that are stacked around them!

            The KDHF comments in the article also insinuate that the Town of Kipling alone stands to reap the benefits of such a facility within the confines of its town limits. It says nothing about the mail boxes in other jurisdictions that receive a pay-cheque from the hospital, care home and medical clinic. How many other goods and services are supplied to this facility from vendors outside the “Community”? Who benefits from that? It’s safe to say that the residents of the Town of Kipling and its immediate area will benefit the most from the building of this new facility but they definitely won’t be the only ones.

            I do not expect a rebuttal or an apology. It’s too late anyhow. The damage is done. The insult delivered. Good thing guilting the “Community” members into contributing more personal funds wasn’t the marketing strategy from the start or there’d be no need for this article at all.

The cursory and obligatory “KDHF greatly appreciates the contributions made to date” at the end of the article does little to erase the earlier statement that “local population and business interests have not been supportive to date”. Which is it?

I have gone beyond being angry about the statements that were made despite what you’ve just read. I’m merely disappointed that despite the extent of the “Community’s” efforts, apparently, it will never be enough.

“An ungrateful man is like a hog under a tree eating acorns, but never looking up to see where they come from.”-Timothy Dexter ( 1748-1806)

               

THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF D-DAY!

In the past I have mentioned that it is sometimes difficult to submit columns to a weekly newspaper and be time-appropriate with the subject matter every week. So many times when I sit down to peck out an article for the paper I forget to look at a calendar so I end up missing some important date in history or a local event or something.

            Case in point: the June 6^th edition of The Citizen where I’m yammering on about priorities and everything and it just happens to be the 70^th Anniversary of D-Day! Are you kidding me? Where the heck were my priorities? One of the most famous days in the history of Canada and the world and I let it slip by? Tsk, tsk, tsk.

            From Wikipedia: “The Normandy Landings, codenamed Operation Neptune, were the landing operations on 6 June 1944 (termed D-Day) of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. The largest seaborne invasion in history, the operation began the invasion of German-occupied Western Europe, led to the restoration of the French Republic and contributed to an Allied victory in the war.”

            As time marches on and the survivors become fewer and fewer and the memories of the event grow dimmer we need a reminder of just how important that day in history is. Our country grew up that day. A lot of sacrifice was required for that to happen and we need to remember that.

            In a world where women are kidnapped for receiving an education and citizens are persecuted for sharing their thoughts and violence and oppression are standard operating procedures we need to know what we have in this country. Many of us do…so many more don’t.

             I had the great fortune of being able to talk to a veteran who had been wounded storming the beach that day. Many of the former soldiers who saw the kind of action that he had didn’t often talk about their war years but so many years removed from the carnage I think he was finally happy to share his experiences.

            As detailed as his tales were I cannot for the life of me put myself in his place at that time. It is impossible. I’ve seen my share of war movies and documentaries but there can be no substitute for the real thing.

            He told me he lay in an army hospital tent for days as shells flew over and around him and he said he wondered when the next whistling bomb would explode in his tent. Can you imagine? He was eventually transferred to a hospital in London where he recovered and then went back into action instead of heading home, which had been an option.

I asked him why he went back into combat instead of going home and he nonchalantly stated, “Well, that’s just what you did. You couldn’t let the boys down” and, he says, “I’m one of the lucky ones. I did come home.”

It’s easy to become complacent. It’s easy to think that living in this country is a right not a privilege. Every now and then we need a reset. It is becoming harder and harder to sit down and share these kinds of experiences with World War II veterans but read a book, watch a documentary or talk to one of today’s soldiers who’ve seen some action and maybe your perspective will change. Maybe, even for just a little while, you will appreciate the country that you live in today and remember the ultimate sacrifices that have been made on your behalf.

“The patriot volunteer, fighting for country and his rights, makes the most reliable soldier on Earth.”- General Stonewall Jackson (1824-1863).

PRIORITIZATION?

            What to do first? Build the deck? Cut out those bloody caraganas? Watch more hockey? Finish the staining on the staircase? Play some baseball? Fix or replace the front steps? Decisions, decisions, decisions. Therein lies the dilemma. What to prioritize.

            I’m fairly certain that regular readers of this column would be able to guess which of the above questions would be priority #’s 1 and 2 to me. I am also confident that you, Dear Reader, would be able to guess which of the above items would be priority #’s 1, 2, 3 and 4 to my wife. Numbers 5 and 6, (that’d be the hockey and baseball for all you bad guessers out there), wouldn’t even make the ol’ To-Do List to start with. Anyway, there’s that old wants and needs thing rearing its ugly head again, eh? I know what I WANT to do but I also know what I NEED to do.

            Now don’t confuse prioritizing with production, okay? That’s why we make priority lists. Just because we have determined which order things SHOULD be done doesn’t necessarily mean that’s WHEN they’ll get done. There are just too many variables to determine the actual finishing date of any given project. There are weather considerations, financial considerations, product availability considerations, ambition considerations, health considerations, (which may or may not be confused with the “ambition” considerations), as in… “I can’t possibly start that thing today I’ve got…um…something…uh…I’m hurt…yes, that’s it, I’m hurt. No, no it’s not because game six is on…no, no, you got it all wrong, I’ve got this…this…thing…and…it…uh…it…hurts.”

            Okay, I may have used a bit of literary license there but things sometimes get put off for various reasonable reasons, (some say excuses), but at least I know the order of importance of the things that I am putting off.        

            According to my dictionary

: pri-or-i-tize; verb/: to organize (things) so that the most important thing is done or dealt with first.

: to make (something) the most important thing in a group.

            You see, there are different kinds of prioritization. My To-Do list is part of the first part of the definition--identifying the first thing that most needs to be done…and try to do it first.

Things like…say…government spending fall into the second category of the definition--identifying the most important needs of our rate-payers…and then waste the funding somewhere else.

            Take health care for instance. I recently drove by the hospital that is being constructed in Kipling right now and I’m a bit confused by the structure. First off, I want to say that I am extremely happy that we are now getting this facility built in Kipling but if someone had had their priorities in order I thing we could have skipped the fancy schmancy roof lines and Star Trekky look for a plain-looking functional health care facility. Just saying.

            Thankfully it hasn’t been too often but I have had the unfortunate experience of being in a hospital in a lot of pain and I couldn’t have given a red-rat’s derriere as to the roof line or the “architect’s signature” or how appealing the exterior plaza is as long as my ailment was being looked after. What we need is function over form and performance over aesthetics.

            Then we’ve got the STARS Ambulance Lotteries and the Hospitals of Saskatchewan Lotteries and the Children’s Hospital Foundation Parade of Homes Lottery and bake sales and bingos and bottle-drives…to provide HEALTH CARE!! In the meantime CEO’s and managers and consultants and contractors are making zillions of dollars.

            Yes, yes, yes…go ahead and roll out your overpaid government accountant to do their scritcha-scritcha number crunching and tell me that the tax dollars returned to the public coffers via taxation of the upper-level executives who also pour their money into investments which fund the companies that employ the multitudes…blah, blah, blah…Explain it away. Justify it as you must. I don’t care how many numbers you throw at me…my opinion will not waver. In my humble opinion…our priorities are very clearly…out of sync.

“It is not an arrogant government that chooses priorities; it is an irresponsible government that fails to choose.”-Tony Blair (1953-).

FROM THE JETSONS TO CRACKBERRYS

Over fifty years ago, in 1962 to be exact, Hanna-Barbera Productions released a cartoon show called “The Jetsons”. Hanna-Barbera was an American animation studio that dominated American television animation for nearly four decades in the mid-to-late 20^th century creating such iconic cartoon shows as The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Scooby-Doo and many, many others.

The Jetsons were a space-aged family living in the 2062. Father George, his wife Jane and their two children, Judy and Elroy lived in Orbit City with their dog Astro and cleaning robot Rosie. Hard to believe as it is, the Jetsons only lasted one season with 24 episodes and while it was revived briefly in the 1980’s, it was the original 1962-63 season that has made the term “Jetsons” synonymous with “the future” to this day.

There were a lot of futuristic devices in the show that seemed pretty far-fetched to the early 1960’s viewers but in retrospect so many of the things that were marvelled at back then seem to have come to fruition.

Take the very first episode where Jane is at home working out to an in-home exercise video on her futuristic large 3D flat-screen television or how about George sitting in his easy chair reading his evening paper on a computer screen? Sound familiar?

In other episodes George has to fix something called a “computer virus” at work and everyone on the show uses video phones. A tanning bed, which wasn’t introduced to North America until 1979, was used in one show with tanning settings that included “Miami” and “Riviera”. And while flying space cars have yet to land in our lives, the Jetsons show had moving sidewalks, like we now have in airports, treadmills, that didn't hit the consumer market until 1969, and their repairman had a piece of technology called...Mac. Hmmm.

Although it’s not 2062, yet, we are now living in the 21^st Century and the amount of change brought to our lives, thus far, is staggering. The changes in computer technology, the Internet, Smart phones, e-readers, e-cigarettes, social media-(i.e. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube et al), and reality television are all products and services that weren’t available prior to 1999; or if they were offered before the turn of the century they would have been in their infancy.

So much change in so little time. I can recall living in the little hamlet of Marquis in 1969 and our telephone number was 26 and the phone came complete with a hand crank on the side that you rang to get an operator who then placed your call for you.

Now, I’m holding my Crackberry and it’s a phone and a camera and I can get the internet and emails on it and I can text with it and I have a library of photos on it and it’s a video and voice recorder and a flashlight and a weather forecaster and calculator and a clock and a calendar and a filing cabinet…oh, how far old Alexander Graham Bell’s invention has come.

At this rapid pace of change, your guess is a good as mine as to what we might be seeing in technological advances in the very near future. Suffice to say that if we are as forward thinking as the writers of the Jetsons show were back in the 60’s then the sky is, literally, the limit.

“The Only Thing That Is Constant Is Change”-Heraclitus, (534BCE-474BCE).