Walking, Waves, Water Foul and Wildflowers

Posted on July 2, 2013 by Mama Cormier

…..I got up early enough to join my husband and Frances for our daily 5k walk

As you can see I’m not at the cottage. I decided to go see my doctor yesterday (yes, he was working on Canada Day) and get the results from my blood work. I’m happy to report that all the major things were in the good range (cholesterol, sugar levels, etc.). So why am I not on my way to cottage today, you may ask?

Last night my friend, D, called my from Christian Island and told me that she and her husband were coming home today and going back next weekend. I decided that there was no big hurry to get up to the cottage, seeing that I would be mostly alone, so instead I’m going into school today to clean up my library/art office. I was going to go in next week but I think I’m going to be too busy getting ready for our trip to Ireland.

After a quick cup of coffee, the three of us headed out on our walk. I almost always take my camera with me and today was no exception. I love the macro function on the camera and it came in handy today as I got down nice and close to the tiny wildflowers that we pass on our walk. Part of my walk turned in a run today because every time I stopped to take a picture I had to run to catch up to K and Frances.

The morning started out a bit overcast and there was a slight wind. If you saw the waves on the lake you might have thought there were gail force winds but not so. A few metres inland the pond was as still as ice.

This last shot is my favourite. As I zoomed into the these mini thistles I didn’t notice the blur of activity that was taking place on the stems of these plants.

I’d better get to school before the morning completely disappears. Till later!

The Month of June in Photos

Posted on June 26, 2013 by Mama Cormier

Saturday, June 1st – Fun Fair

: Our principal taunting the boys and girls

: Professional griller

: Inflatable slide

: What a good sport!

Saturday, June 8th – High School Reunion

Sunday, June 9th – Girls on the Run 5k

Wed, June 12th – West Conference Girls’ Soccer Finals

Thursday, June 13th – Forest of Reading Celebration

: Finished accordion journals

: …. Luke’s journal

: Drama workshop

: Lunch…..pizza

: Thanks for being expert readers

Saturday, June 15th – Opening the Cottage

: View of the island from the dock

: Enjoying first breakfast at the cottage

: Taking a break after opening the cottage

: View of the cottage from the lane

Wednesday, June 19th – Spring Concert

: Folk Dancing

: Line Dancing

: Shaking those hips

: Modern Dance based on a story that students chose to tell through movement

: Grade 1/2 choir

: ‘Modern Ruins’ dance

: The Junior Choir

The report cards were printed, proofread, reprinted, copied, signed and sent home today. The grade 5s had their farewell ceremony yesterday and today were away for their fun activity day. Today the rest of the school had their Fun Day and a colleague and I spent the morning clearing out the computer lab so that construction crews can come during the summer to remove the wall and enlarge the library.

I’ve returned 90% of all the artwork that students produced in my art classes and students have returned most of the books that they took out of the library. I’ve started removing the books from the shelves that will be moved during construction. Only one more day with the children and then the staff party, followed by one more day of meetings and closing down our classrooms for the summer.

…….busy,busy and only a few things left on my to do list. Phew it’s almost over and then I can start planning for our trip to Ireland.

Girls on the Run 5k

Posted on June 9, 2013 by Mama Cormier

….today was the day

I woke up early, 6:07 to be exact. I put on my running clothes and made my way downstairs to make coffee. I checked my emails as I enjoyed my Crema and protein bar. It was lovely and quiet in the house, just what I needed before heading out to meet my fellow coaches, L and C.

We had decided ahead of time to meet at L’s house and go together in one car. There was very little traffic at 7:30 on a Sunday morning so we made good time getting to the race venue. The race this year was being held at the Vaughn Mills mall. When we got there, there was already a sea of pink t-shirts.

Our school was assigned a flag where our girls had to meet us. We handed out their numbers and safety pins and the moms and dads pitched in pinning the numbers to the fronts of their shirts.

It was great seeing so many parents get involved, not just by being there but also registering for the run so that they could run with their daughters.

There weren’t as many pre-race activities as last year but some of the moms had brought along coloured hair spray so that the girls could have racing stripes put into their hair. Even some of their teachers got into the spirit.

I’m not sure how many times I’m going to have to wash my hair to remove the pink dye. One mom, who’s a hairdresser, said that it might take three or more washes. Hmmmm!!!!!

Two hours after arriving at the mall, the race finally started and about 1000 little girls and their coaches and parents started on the 5k run.

I had set a goal for myself to run the 5k without stopping and try to do it in 45 minutes or less. Last year I think it took me about 55 minutes and I walked at least half of it. It was very warm and humid today. Before I left my husband asked me not to overdo it and to be careful not to get caught up in the excitement of the race. I know that the recent heart attack of a very close friend who lives out west was leaving him feeling a little apprehensive about me running today. I have to admit that the our friend’s heart attack was also in the back of my mind. The attack was a mild one and she’s doing much better but she’s the last person we would ever have suspected of having a heart condition.

I set a very reasonable pace for myself and was able to run the first half without stopping to walk. When I did stop it was at the water station but I started to run again almost immediately. The heat did bother me and I walked a couple more times but never for more than a minute. In the end I finished in a time of 47:27, 2 1/2 minutes slower than I hoped for but this year I felt so much better than I did last year. I didn’t experience those moments of dread like I did last year and I wasn’t as emotional….no tears.

Now that I have an official time I can work on getting that number down. I should plan to do another 5k sometime this summer. It’s good to have a goal.

Time to work on my art piece.

Cheers!

Free University Courses

Posted on June 8, 2013 by Mama Cormier

….. just signed up for a 7 week course in art

Like I’m not busy enough as it is, I signed up for an intense course yesterday that involves reading, taking quizzes and painting. I’ve already done all the reading for last week and taken the quiz but I haven’t started the painting. It’s due tomorrow night. I still have to run a 5k tomorrow morning and I have to finish my report cards.

One of the problems is that the course started last week so I’m already a week behind. When I get this first painting assignment done I’ll be caught up. I’m actually very excited about doing this. The program is called Coursera and it offers hundreds of free courses that are taught by certified professors from dozens of universities, worldwide. Check out the courses here.

What did I learn this week? Well the program is designed for beginning artists so the basics taught this last week were a good refresher lesson for me. This week the focus is on Fantasy art and I learned a lot about Independent Fantasists, such as Rousseau and Chagall, Dadaism, Automatism and Abstract Expressionism. I was also introduced to some Fantasists that I was not familiar with, such as Giorgio de Chirico, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray.

Man Ray http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/Man_Ray_1934.jpg

Marcel Duchamp http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e2/Marcel_Duchamp_01.jpg/128px-Marcel_Duchamp_01.jpg

Giorgio de Chirico http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Giorgio_de_Chirico_%28portrait%29.jpg

My assignment this week is to come up with my own Fantasy painting using any medium and technique I’m comfortable with. I also have to create an artist statement. Wish me luck. Well I’d better get to those report cards. It’s going to be a busy day tomorrow.

Cheers!

Planning for the Summer

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Mama Cormier

…..opening the cottage and buying tickets for flights to Europe

It all seems so surreal. We haven’t done either of the above yet. It’s almost the end of May and my focus has been on school and it continues to be my focus.

On Friday we will be hosting our Jump Rope for Heart activity and then I’ll be collecting and counting the donations and filling in the paperwork in the week to follow. Next Tuesday the girls’ soccer team will be playing at the Esther Shiner Stadium for the West Conference Finals. One more practice tomorrow morning.

Also next week we have two more sessions for Girls on the Run and then on Sunday June 9 we head up to Vaughn Mills for the actual 5k race. On Friday, next week, we have a report card writing day which is city wide. Hopefully we won’t have the usual problems when more than 11 000 teachers try to get on the system at the same time. Two of us are the report card administrators at my school we are in charge of making sure that there are no glitches in the system at the school level. Unfortunately there are always glitches but they are usually easily fixable.

The following week I have to print all the report cards for the staff. Not a difficult task but somewhat time consuming because again every school in the board prints at the same time and everything comes through cyberspace. The following day I have my physical. That reminds me, I have to check what time my appointment is. I can’t remember if I managed a time after school or if I have to take time off.

On the 13th my Forest of Reading student book club is having their big celebration day. Plans are underway and so far we’ve prepared a book making activity and one of my colleagues has confirmed that we have an artist coming in to do a drama workshop with the students. A pizza lunch has yet to be organized and prizes have to be obtained.

Tonight I spoke with my oldest daughter and we’ve set a potential date to open the cottage. It looks like it may be the Father’s Day weekend. I have to contact my friend D and see if she wants to go up the same weekend.

The week following, the school will be preparing for the spring concert. I promised my friend L, who is the music teacher, that I would help her with the organization. There is also a possibility that somewhere in the middle of all of this that the girls’ soccer team could advance to the city finals but I guess I shouldn’t count my chickens before they hatch.

In the last week of school the grade 5 students have their farewell assembly and a special activity day. This will be the first year since I started at Rosethorn that I won’t be directly involved with these activities. That means, however, that I will probably be in charge of an activity for the school wide fun day instead.

Somewhere I have to find time to pack up a wall of library books before we leave for summer vacation. During the summer, construction workers will be coming in to remove the wall between the library and the computer lab.

My husband has applied for his new passport and he’s been in touch with family overseas. He’s going to look into booking tickets for our flights in the next week or two and then we’ll sit down and make plans for our accommodations and planning our itinerary. We’re hoping to meet up with our son and his girlfriend when they go to Dublin for a conference. We’d like him to meet the Irish cousins and hopefully we can plan a short trip to the west coast with him.

I know people who plan months in advance for a trip like this. I’m a little nervous that we’ve left it so late but with my husband’s health issues we can’t plan too far in advance. Even at this stage we’re still waiting for one more appointment before we can make definite plans.

In the end it will all work out. If Europe doesn’t pan out, I still have the cottage and my little paradise in the sun and I will see my son in the fall.

My Missing Husband

Posted on May 28, 2013 by Mama Cormier

….I imagined the worst

The school day had barely begun. I was in the library getting ready for my first class when AM paged me from the office. My neighbour was on the phone and had our dog, Frances, in her house. K was nowhere to be found. I had the call transferred to my office and spoke directly to N. Apparently she found Frances sitting on the front lawn and she was quite upset.

My neighbour on the north side of my house, L, got into her car and drove around the neighbourhood looking for my husband. While I was talking to N (my neighbour on the south side of my house) L returned and hadn’t found my husband. I described K’s normal walking/running route to N and how she could get Frances into our house. I got off the phone and waited for her to call me back. I waited and waited and waited.

It seemed like forever but in reality it was only 15 minutes. My colleagues encouraged me to drive home to find out what was happening. When I got in the car and started on the short trip home (15minutes) I started to think the worst. What if he’d fallen down the rocky edge by the lake? Maybe he’d suffered a heart attack and was lying on a path less travelled. I didn’t know what to expect when I got home.

Half way home my phone rang. It was my husband. He was fine, just a little shaken up for having lost Frances. He let her off the leash while he ran along the lake and normally she runs along side him and occasionally checks out a path here and there but always pops back up and joins him.

For some reason, today Frances lost track of K and when she didn’t see him she ran home. K thought that she had passed him at some point so he turned around and ran back to where the path ended. He found some other dog walkers and they tried to help him find Frances. When he couldn’t find her he was beside himself with worry. He finally decided to run home.

As he got closer to the house he could hear her barking. He found my two neighbours outside the house and Frances was already inside. Needless to say K was very relieved. The problem was that at this moment in time I didn’t know that he was okay.

Did he call me right away to let me know he was home? No! He went back to the park to let others know that the dog was safe and sound at home. When he got back home the second time he called the school but I had already left. He told me later, very apologetically, that it had never occurred to him that I would be worried about him. Hmmmm! What can I say? I love him and I’m relieved that he’s okay.

A Day of Soccer, Girls on the Run and School Council Meeting

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Mama Cormier

….this one’s for you Michele

It was after 9:00 pm when I got home tonight.

It started to pour last night and the lightning kept flashing through my bedroom window. The forecast for our soccer tournament looked grim. The only reason for cancelling a game would be the onset of lightning.

Luckily the rain, thunder or lightning never did appear and we were able to play all four games. The girls were amazing and won every game. We’re moving on to the West Conference finals in June.

At the end of the tournament the skies darkened and I was sure that Girls on the Run would be rained out. Again the rain stayed away and the girls were able to get out and run their laps in preparation for their 5k run. Being out in the sun all day and walking back and forth between the two soccer fields, making numerous trips from the fields to the office and other rooms of the school and doing recess duty and bus duty at the end of the day, left me exhausted. I didn’t run tonight.

After Girls on the Run I ended up staying at school because we had a school council meeting and I am the teacher representative. Michele ordered dinner in for both of us….chicken and salad. Perfect. The meeting started at 7:00 and ended at 8:30. It was pretty uneventful but people sure had a lot to say. Even when the meeting was over discussions continued in the hallway and a couple of parents came down to the library and had numerous questions for me about the upcoming renovation. With a little encouragement from our fearless leader we finally made our way to the parking lot.

I thought I could come and home and relax but M insisted that I had to write something for my blog tonight. This one’s for you Michele.

Cheers!

Time to Get Serious

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Mama Cormier

….3 weeks to go before the Girls on the Run 5k

No more excuses. The back feels better, no more colds, the ground has dried up and the weather’s been great.

Today I set a personal best in training for the upcoming 5k run. My husband and I started on our usual walk to the park and when we got to the rugby pitch we both started running around the 500 m field. I ran six laps without stopping for a total running distance of 3k. My husband ran farther and faster but he does intervals where he alternates between running and walking. My total travel distance this morning was 5.6k.

My goal is to drop another 5 to 10 pounds in the next 3 weeks and continue to lengthen the distance that I run before I stop to walk. I’m not too concerned about my time but I would be happy if I completed the 5k in 45 minutes. That may seem slow to some of you but it’s a step in the right direction for me.

I’ll keep you up to date on my progress.

Cheers!

Frances’ Perfect Day

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Mama Cormier

…..a lot of running, a little swimming and wrestling with her buddy Lucy

Yesterday was a cool but sunny day…. a perfect day to walk the dogs down by the lake.

Earlier in the day we picked up our daughter, G, and her basset hound, Lucy. G’s husband was away on a business trip. She needed some help buying plants and she was hoping to see her older sister who was coming home from her three week vacation in Argentina.

After buying the plants we had some time on our hands before we had to pick up A and J from the airport. We got the dogs ready for a nice long walk and headed out for Colonel Samuel Smith Park.

Both dogs love to play with each other and run. The biggest difference between the two of them is that Frances loves the water and Lucy hates it. I’m sure it has something to do with the fact that Basset hounds have short legs and long ears. After a long exhausting run, even though she was surrounded by water, Lucy would not drink from the lake. She came close but changed her mind as she approached the water.

Frances on the other hand would live in the water if we let her. She dives right in. The following pictures of her clearly show off her joy as the waves roll onto the shoreline.

We took a few detours off the main path today and when we got home we discovered that our walk was 5k long. The dogs of course probably doubled that distance with all the running they did, back and forth through the grassy knolls and up and down the rocks.

Today Frances was very quiet. Every time we looked for her she was off somewhere sleeping. What a life!

Frances, yawning.

Frances, sleeping again.

Busy Day

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Mama Cormier

…..a quick update

The day started with soccer practice at 7:40 to 8:20. After the announcements my principal and I drove across town, through rush hour to check out some used furniture and fixtures for our school. We put our names on pieces that were on the wish lists of the staff. Now we have to wait and see which pieces we’ll be gifted.

When we got back to school I ordered books and supplies that a few more staff members had requested.

Lunch

Art class to my 3/4 class. Worked through recess.

Library class and then prepared for Girls on the Run

3:00 to 4:30 – Girls on the Run. My back was still bothering me today so I didn’t run but I did walk quickly around the course. I did 4 laps for a total of 2k. We have a few girls who need a little extra motivation to keep running so I kept sneaking up on them and bellowing at them to run. It was a lot of fun and it was the most running these girls have done since we started 6 weeks ago.

5:00 drove to Costco to pick up a cake for a baby shower at school tomorrow. Also picked up some chicken and salad for tonight’s dinner.

5:45 prepared dinner and washed up dishes

6:30 drove to book club. We had our meeting at the library where the author, Nancy Richler talked about her book The Imposter Bride. More on that in my next post.

8:00 went for coffee with the girls from the book club. Really enjoyed tonight’s talk.

9:30 drove home

10:00 – checked my emails and watched So You Think You Can Dance

11:50 – should be in bed but decided to quickly post about my day

12:15 – finished this post and plan to head to bed

Good Night!