Category Archives: Fun

Snow Shoeing in Winterland

Posted in Canada, Fun, Life by

If you haven’t noticed, exercise is a big thing in terms of health. Everyone needs exercise no matter what your weight, no matter what your medical history, and no matter what your ‘lazy’ levels. Even walking around the house when there’s no strength left is good exercise. (That’s an extreme example, but I’ve been there with chemo and know others who have as well. My mother once had chronic fatigue, and just getting out of bed was a struggle . . .)

Right, so Dr Canada once told me to ‘burn off that estrogen’. Forget about fat or calories. I’m burning estrogen.

What my husband is burning, I have no idea. He’s six foot five with a slim build. But maybe we could say he’s building up the muscle? Burning on that muscle! And improving circulation, too.

All this to say that we’ve found a new way to exercise, which I’d like to recommend to you  today. What is it? Snowshoeing!

Yesterday afternoon we drove out to a quiet spot in the Ottawa Greenbelt just off the highway, and tried on our (my parent’s) snowshoes for the very first time. Unlike the experiment with cross country skiing (which was, by the way, disastrous) there was no trouble getting into the shoes, and no trouble keeping balance.

[Side note: Zsolt has this impression that Canada equals animals. But where are all the animals? We see squirrels, birds, chipmunks . . . but what about the bear, moose, elk, wolves, and deer? He’s not the only one expecting the suburbs to overflow with wildlife. I do believe that nearly anyone visiting from outside the country expects to step off the plane and spot a moose. It’s not their fault, it’s ours. Canada has injected the world with giant-animal propaganda, what with the stories of polar bears and seals and moose and wolf packs, and grizzly bears. Anyhow, I’m just saying – if Ottawa is a tourist destination, maybe we should import some elk or something?]

So we begin to walk into the bush, and we’re determined to find some animals. There are tracks everywhere. Some two-hoofed and spaced, others tiny and very close, a few that are quite dog-like (or wolf-like!), and others remarkably human. But that’s all we see – tracks.

Maybe twenty minutes later we’re crawling through the branches of some thick patch of spiky trees (the best bit of nature walking) and come across a train line. Fan-freaking-tastic, a nice smooth path. Obviously animals and people walk along this line – we can see by the tracks, and obviously no train uses this thing because it’s totally snowed over.

Safe to walk on? Of course!

So we start walking. Beautiful day, the sky is so blue, the trees have that glisten of a past ice storm . . . and we are stomp, stomp, stomping along till we reach this ‘thing’ I don’t know the proper name for. It’s a light for the train, as though there were once two train lines here, as opposed to one (because the actual lights points off into the forest – i.e. to nowhere and no one, not sure how a train on the main track would even see it.) and at the bottom of this thing is a pile of old seeds. And chickadees. Little tiny, black, grey and yellow chickadees, hopping around and picking at the food. Zsolt pulls out the camera and one of the birds flies onto his camera.

We became excited.

Next Zsolt passes me the camera, and I film him picking up a few stray seeds and holding them up in his hand. A little bird arrives and hops around his palm, pecking at the seeds and hopping about some more. Charming or what? It was like a scene from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty with all the little birds. (And since Zsolt is such a great beauty.)

We get this on film. And then I decide to try.

Holding up my hand and waiting, the birds seem less certain to land on my palm. But I keep waiting with my hand held out – until Zsolt says,

“There’s a plow!”

And I say,

“Oh shit!”

Roaring down the ‘apparently-not-abandoned’ train track, is a giant plow throwing snow into the air like little waterfalls off its side blades.

Well hey, we weren’t going to argue with its progress. Scrambling to pick up our poles, and our mitts, and my dropped scarf, Zsolt then says,

“Jump across the creek!”

Because this train line is quite, hmm, narrow? With dips on each side – one side goes quite steeply down into the trees, the other rises quite steeply up in to the trees . . . the stream is on the ‘up side’.

So in my snow shoes, I run and take a flying,  big-footed leap to safety. (Though the snow was sliding, and that stream looked really deep just next to my heels.)

What does Zsolt do? Does he follow his panicked wife?

Oh, no, he doesn’t. He’s suddenly struck with reason, and simply steps to the side of the maybe-wider-than-I-realized path, and the plow slows down to pass.

There I am, clinging to the side of this hill as the plow man looks at me and gives an uncertain wave. . . and they carry on.

Leaping across a stream is easy when you’re panicked. Getting back off that steep incline is more tricky. With help from Zsolt’s reaching arms, I managed to jump back across that stream (onto the upward incline of the train line) and back to safety.

Anyhow, by the time we walked back to the car, we were both totally knackered. However, in terms of exercise and reclaiming your health (Cause, really, that’s the bottom line despite all the extra life-threatening fun.), I couldn’t recommend it more. Crazy adventure with snow shoeing, and good health to boot. Totally worth the price of the equipment. And maybe, maybe, next time, we’ll spot a moose.                         

Live with Kelly!

Posted in After treatment, Bumpboobs, Fun by

Just hopped off the elliptical, and thought I’d write this down. Every weekday morning I take a twenty minute (sometimes more) run on the elliptical. While running (or ellipsing?) Live with Kelly is on the television, entertaining me with its opening 20 minute commercial free chatting.

Anyhow – I speak the truth: the better Kelly’s co-host, the easier it is to exercise. Just this morning Kim Kardashian was on the television (and it is a secret fixation of mine to watch all things Kardashian . . . ) talking about her divorce with that basketball fellow, Kris Humphries. So there I am sweating and running more quickly than ever and with a stupid smile plastered across my face. (This happens occasionally, I watch television and start making facial expressions . . . today I kept realizing that I was smiling like an idiot over Live with Kelly.)

You may or may not watch this morning show. After Regis left it was certainly a little sad, but nevertheless I really enjoy Kelly. She’s been ripping through new co-hosts day after day, and I’ll tell you this – many famous actors who appear very charming and wonderful on screen are actually awkward or boring or too self-focused in ‘real life’ (i.e. reality television).  My best workouts have been to the entertaining mixture of Kelly and Neil Patrick Harris, Kelly and Josh Groben, Kelly and Michael Buble, and now Kelly and Kim Kardashian.

And as I ran lap after lap, this realization dawned:  good co-hosts equals good exercise.

So Kelly, hurry up and choose Neil Patrick Harris already for your co-host. It’ll be better for my health.

A winter-night blackout

Posted in Finding Home, Fun, Life, Love by

Last night, as I sat in bed and began reading the pages of my latest Terry Pratchett (and when I say latest, I mean most-lately-picked-off-the-shelf, but likely read at least five times before), the power went out. Blackness. It flicked back on for a moment (hope!) and then again, gone. Dark.

And this was the beginning of our evening. Turns out the entire street had lost power, which – while my mother may debate me – happens often enough in this area, like once every few months, and more so in the winter. Then again, it’s often a fuse blown in the house when the space heaters are turned on . . . but nevertheless, blackouts happen frequently enough that my family has an unspoken protocol.

First, turn on the flashlight. There’s always a flashlight. By my bed is a light so bright, it illuminates entire rooms. I flicked this on and headed for the basement room where my husband had been on his computer. He had his tiny flashlight going as well (just this weak orange light) and we proceeded to head upstairs. On the way up, we came across my brother leaving his room with a candle lit. Something about him with this long white candle reminded me of a Dickens novel.

Ready with our lighting of choice, we proceeded to the second step: Go upstairs to the living room.

I think darkness has a sort of magnetism. It brings people together, you know? Before the blackout my parents were upstairs watching NCIS, my brother was in his room watching Netflix, Zsolt was playing card games online, and I was in my room reading. After the blackout we instinctually gravitate to the living room and each other’s company.

There’s a gas fireplace in the living room, which offers a nice amount of light and heat. With a bit of searching for the matches (at which point my brother passes me his candle, which is easier than searching for the matches in the dark), we light up some more candles and group them on the coffee table.

Here the third step of blackouts came into play: Entertainment. Zsolt and I played some card games (like real, card in hand games. No computer involved), Daniel whipped out his ipod and he and my parents collectively played angry birds. Later we decided to look outside and slide on the ice rain. And eventually we all settled into conversation.

I love blackouts. I love those dark nights with candles spent with my family. They’re a special time, so long as the lack of power doesn’t extend into an actual emergency. In Canada there is a national holiday called “Family Day”. Maybe we need to have a national, monthly blackout called, “Family Night.” That or we could just turn off our computers and televisions occasionally. Sometimes it feels like there’s so much ‘on the screen’ that we forget how much the real world offers.

Once the lights were restored that dark-night magic vanished and everyone went their separate ways. But at least we had that lovely hour by the fire. It’s almost a shame that the lights hadn’t stayed off all night. . . or at least until the house began to turn cold.

Almost a shame. Though I have to say, I do also love reading my Terry Pratchett in bed.