PATTINSON TIMES, CHRISTMAS 2021

 

PATTINSON TIMES, CHRISTMAS 2021

Happy Holidays to our family and friends around the planet.  We hope that this season finds you healthy, happy and fully vexed  vaxed.

We begin every year with Grace's birthday - a January 1 baby - and 2021 was the year she became a teen in every way imaginable!  Birthday parties during covid lockdown have their limitations, but we did manage to provide an excess of carbohydrate complete with a laundry list of gifts (thanks to amazon) and a virtual "house party" meeting with her friends. It looks like 2022 might be more of the same.

Home schooling remained the norm for Lil and Grace, supervised primarily by Oliver and Sophie as Tony and I continued working throughout this mess of a health care crisis.  He and I managed to get our first covid immunizations early in the year but held our breath until the kids could get their shots as the Delta variant started kicking some serious butt.  Now both kids are back to real school with some general grumbling about clothing and hygiene that is appropriate in a peer setting.  To date, we have all stayed healthy despite numerous exposures and are feeling a little more confident in our hopes to see this thing through!

Undeterred by the closure of our favourite gym, we scavenged amazon and local shops to build a work out room in the basement.  While the experience was different (no fellow lifters to talk to) we changed our workout routines to adapt.  The kids and Tony managed to put on some serious muscle, while I've had 10 pounds of muscle fall off, but metabolism and gravity is not always fair. We've also had a few drywall and floor repairs after over- exuberant workouts  - usually followed by a crash and a series of potty words - but our little gym has become a very well loved space in our home.

                                                 Not bad for an old guy!

Core day for Lil

Ollie the personal trainer

Mom tries to keep up

This May, our family matriarch and Tony's Mum, Maria passed away.  Spending the last couple of years in long term care was difficult for her and the family but she passed on her own terms the day after her 95th birthday.  We could never have imagined a life where we could not be present when a family member passes on, nor have the opportunity to attend a memorial.  But technology rose to the occasion, and we were able to participate in saying goodbye via zoom along with other members of the family across the planet.  She was a force of a lady and will be missed forever.

2021 was full of important decisions for Lil.  Home schooling seemed to work for her and she was getting great marks in grade 12.  Her college and university applications for 5 different programs were all accepted and she finally decided on paramedicine at our local college with a lure of running with the cross country team.  She was one of the "lucky" athletes who was able to continue training through the lockdown because the only equipment she needed was a pair of running shoes and a sidewalk!

I was pretty excited about her choice of college programs because the old ER nurse in me thought it would be so much fun to refresh my long forgotten skills.  That was until I tried to lift one of her 1200 page textbooks!  Suffice it to say, Tony and I are a little over our heads in helping her with homework, but when she gets to obstetrics we will be all over that!  A gym membership and some leg day with us helped her pass her 220 pound patient lift and carry this week, with no slipped discs to show for it.  Joking aside this is one pretty tough course and we are hoping she's got what it takes to complete it because I'm not sure I would.  Tony and I can barely pass our ACLS every two years without accidentally defibrillating each other.

Turning 18 and getting her drivers license launched her into adulthood leaving me "vanless".  We thought we could survive her first year of college with a bus pass but once I realized that I was going to find myself on a city bus, I went on a mission to find her a car.  We managed to purchase a used honda civic apparently previously driven by a very quiet little old lady.  Lil seems to be a careful driver and her newfound independence has been good for all of us.  

Grace had a year of travel and trauma.  When our local pool closed in 2020, it stayed closed until late September of this year.   In order to get board time, Grace spent several months travelling to various provinces, staying in hotels and other accommodations as we juggled to make arrangements for her and her coach.  Despite only a few months of training she won gold at nationals, and went on to qualify for the Pan Am Games.  Grace is a beautiful intuitive diver and has serious grit when she decides to tackle something.  However, after being away from home and living in difficult situations, she returned to us emotionally broken, fearful, and depressed.  Having not been witness to her deteriorating relationship with her coach, we had missed some important signs in her declining spirit and had to make some tough decisions with her to improve her life.  At the end of the day, she had a choice between moving to a larger centre to access appropriate training while sacrificing some academic success and home life, or staying put and trying to heal.  The value of 5 minutes of fame became insignificant in examining the big plans she has for her life and she walked away from diving.

As is typical of kids, this is all in her rearview mirror.  We're back to enjoying her wonderful nerdiness, appreciating the straight A's at school, and she recently was excited to make the school's volleyball team despite being a titch under 5 feet tall because she's got great jumping legs!  She's traded the medals around her neck for a mass of stainless steel in her mouth as her braces went on this month.  And because she is a little too smart for her own good, she's applied for the IB program in high school next September.

Every gardening year provides a new learning opportunity, and this year the trees in our garden were ravaged by gypsy moth caterpillars.  For several weeks this summer, I could be found with the pressure sprayer and a bottle of dish soap trying to keep the critters from eating my spruce trees.  A truce was called at some point but I will be ready for them this year.  I've moved my bird feeders into the spruce trees, in the hopes the birds have an appetite for caterpillars when they appear. Working with mother nature can be a full time job.

The garden was otherwise glorious with a healthy bounty of tomatoes, peppers, parsnips and kale - some of which is still growing given our mild temps this fall.  I had a peek at Santa's list recently and I believe that a greenhouse may be in my future.  This is Santa's clever strategy to distract me from the idea of getting another schnauzer or a backhoe to help me with some DIY around the place.  So far I'm letting him think that his strategy is working.

It was also the second year of our butterfly garden and we attracted a healthy number of various butterflies and bees to the garden.  We added a bat house to the wildness that is our yard in the hopes that they take down our mosquito population.  In a few weeks, I'll drag out the seeds I saved all summer, and start my little plantings again in this wonderful life cycle

This was an especially good week for my yard as we had the swim spa removed.  When the spa was installed 6 years ago, it was the intention that the kids would practice swimming and we could sit in the jet seats and enjoy a glass of wine now and then.  We did enjoy the occasional beverage but the kids out swam the current the first time they tried it.  We also discovered that this beast leaked water chronically, requiring continuous maintenance, and it gradually became more work than a 2 year old kid.  

What we are left with is a 7X12 foot, 3 foot deep crater to figure out what to do with over the winter to protect the dogs, squirrels, me and other wildlife from falling in.  I would consider filling it with 20 yards of compost in hopes of expanding my tomato operation next year...but that would require a back hoe to get the job done. Hmmm.  

Christmas arrived early this year when my sister Annie and her partner Stew came for a visit.  It was the first time we had seen each other since February 2020 as she lives on the wrong side of the border!  She and Stew retired this year and are having way too much fun so that got Tony and I thinking about it.

When the pandemic descended, we decided that we weren't cowards and we were going to work through it until it disappeared as all good viruses should.  Although we now suspect that  covid is here for the long run, people have been given the tools to save themselves so we're feeling a little less invested in working 60 hours a week and a little more interested in having some fun.  So this year, Tony is coming off the call schedule for OB and we are going to return to our roots seeing and treating infertility patients, some in office gynaecology and take more time off to walk the dogs. 

This has been met with mixed reviews, and some guilt on our part, but freedom fifty-five and sixty-five slipped by us a while back, and it just may be time for us to act our age...whatever that might look like...we'll make it up as we go.  We truly hope that you all have a wonderful and fun-filled 2022 and if you see an old lady driving a backhoe with 3 schnauzers riding shotgun you'll know we're taking our own advice.

Happy New Year!

Tony, Mary, Lily, Grace, Sophie, Ollie