Hello Internet,
How are things with you? I imagine you’re awfully busy this time of year with all the uses buying their Christmas presents online and booking shipping on the different sites! Whatever did we do without you!
I must admit that this year is much less like Christmas around Ireland compared to last year, this year there is still no snow and this is a great thing!
As much as it’s nice to have snow at home in Canada for Christmas, it’s expected there and they are prepared and they have the necessary equipment and expertise so as to deal well with snow and ice and slippery surfaces. Ireland…. Not so much!
We only just made it home for Christmas last year, with Paris, Amsterdam and London airports all closed we only just made it on a flight to New York and so this year we’re going direct to North America and heading to Montreal via Philadelphia. Hopefully this route will me much less eventful than last year. Although I have to say, Air France has excellent customer service in the Airport in Dublin!
Anyhow, there is that feeling in the air – not just a feeling of cold but a festive feeling and as of lunch time today my shopping is complete so I can think about relaxing a little bit.
With only 5 working days left until we leave it’s certainly feeling like holiday season!
Hope you’re not on the naughty list!
Alison
Friday, 9 December 2011
Friday, 18 November 2011
Where the H-E-double hockey sticks have you been?
Dear Internet,
I’ve been finding it difficult to write here for the last 10 weeks – yes 10 weeks pretty much exactly!
Shortly after we returned home from the cruise holiday in early September I knew something just wasn’t right with me. Actually I had figured that something was ‘off’ while we were away. I was just hoping that whatever it was would stay away long enough for us to return to Ireland. There was one night when I was in the bathroom of our cabin praying that whatever it was it wouldn’t get any worse.
I can’t explain how I felt other than to say I just wasn’t myself, in some ways I was sure I was sick and it wasn’t going to be good news. The whole trip all I wanted to do was sit by the pool and go to sleep at 8pm. Derek was annoyed, he wanted to have fun, to say out late, to drink lots. I just wanted to go to bed. Something wasn’t right.
When we returned home I went back to work on the Monday – again feeling sure that I just wasn’t me. On Tuesday morning I took a pregnancy test and then I felt even worse.
I really don’t want to go into too much personal detail here but just know that I wasn’t sure what to believe anymore and there was no movie like moment of yeah – we’re pregnant!!
Instead on Tuesday there was a day at the Hospital, another on Thursday and a few scans since then.
Looking back now it’s been a long road but we’re still on it. Just shy of 15 weeks we’ll be expecting a new addition to the family in mid-May – the cat has no idea what’s going to happen.
It’s going to be brilliant!
Hope that helps you understand where I’ve been hiding. I’ll be around more now. :)
Alison
I’ve been finding it difficult to write here for the last 10 weeks – yes 10 weeks pretty much exactly!
Shortly after we returned home from the cruise holiday in early September I knew something just wasn’t right with me. Actually I had figured that something was ‘off’ while we were away. I was just hoping that whatever it was would stay away long enough for us to return to Ireland. There was one night when I was in the bathroom of our cabin praying that whatever it was it wouldn’t get any worse.
I can’t explain how I felt other than to say I just wasn’t myself, in some ways I was sure I was sick and it wasn’t going to be good news. The whole trip all I wanted to do was sit by the pool and go to sleep at 8pm. Derek was annoyed, he wanted to have fun, to say out late, to drink lots. I just wanted to go to bed. Something wasn’t right.
When we returned home I went back to work on the Monday – again feeling sure that I just wasn’t me. On Tuesday morning I took a pregnancy test and then I felt even worse.
I really don’t want to go into too much personal detail here but just know that I wasn’t sure what to believe anymore and there was no movie like moment of yeah – we’re pregnant!!
Instead on Tuesday there was a day at the Hospital, another on Thursday and a few scans since then.
Looking back now it’s been a long road but we’re still on it. Just shy of 15 weeks we’ll be expecting a new addition to the family in mid-May – the cat has no idea what’s going to happen.
It’s going to be brilliant!
Hope that helps you understand where I’ve been hiding. I’ll be around more now. :)
Alison
Thursday, 10 November 2011
Poppy: my symbol of remembrance
Every year, for as long as I can remember I have proudly wore a poppy on my coat from Halloween to November 11th. For me, the poppy is a symbol of what so many young men and women gave up for the life that I have today.
When I was little and in elementary school I can remember lining up in the main hallway at 11:11 on the 11th of November, proudly wearing my poppy on my clothes and observing a minute of silence. It really didn’t mean very much at that age.
In High School it got a little more formal, there was a assembly in the auditorium and there would be a sole trumpeter and a line of Veterans, I’m sure lead by Mr. McLean one of the most senior teachers in the school.
I think the fact that by the time I graduated from High School I was the same age of many of the men who had given their lives at war – whether they wanted to or not was starting to make me appreciate our veterans and develop a new respect for the date as well.
After High School, through University and working in the hospital I continued to purchase my poppy from the Veteran on the corner, at the grocery store or in the shop – normally several times a season because I often lost them or left it on another coat. The opportunity to look into the eyes of someone who had witnessed horror that I couldn’t imagine and say thank you – whether for simply the poppy or what they had given up to stand there that day, it was important enough to keep buying them.
And then the depictions of the various war situations started to become popular in the cinema, Saving Private Ryan and the opening sequence which left me nauseous and in tears was hard to fathom, television series like Band of Brothers brought you inside the lives of the young men and their experiences. It was hard from then to think of Remembrance Day and not see a few of those images and imagine what they had witnessed.
To this day, I wear my poppy, even here in Ireland. Granted I don’t have the same yearly experience of buying my poppy over and over, instead I keep it safe and pull it out at Halloween every year. I have a spare – somewhere and have added a small Canadian flag as the pin to make it that little more secure. This way I have less chance of losing it as it would be much harder to replace.
I wear my poppy with pride, with the memory of the very young men – now younger than myself –who stepped up when they may not have wanted to, did not understand what they were to experience and gave so very much for the people of today. My pride is not political, it’s neither pro-war or propaganda, it’s a recognition to men and women, young and old that what they went through means something to me every day, but especially on November 11th.
When I was little and in elementary school I can remember lining up in the main hallway at 11:11 on the 11th of November, proudly wearing my poppy on my clothes and observing a minute of silence. It really didn’t mean very much at that age.
In High School it got a little more formal, there was a assembly in the auditorium and there would be a sole trumpeter and a line of Veterans, I’m sure lead by Mr. McLean one of the most senior teachers in the school.
I think the fact that by the time I graduated from High School I was the same age of many of the men who had given their lives at war – whether they wanted to or not was starting to make me appreciate our veterans and develop a new respect for the date as well.
After High School, through University and working in the hospital I continued to purchase my poppy from the Veteran on the corner, at the grocery store or in the shop – normally several times a season because I often lost them or left it on another coat. The opportunity to look into the eyes of someone who had witnessed horror that I couldn’t imagine and say thank you – whether for simply the poppy or what they had given up to stand there that day, it was important enough to keep buying them.
And then the depictions of the various war situations started to become popular in the cinema, Saving Private Ryan and the opening sequence which left me nauseous and in tears was hard to fathom, television series like Band of Brothers brought you inside the lives of the young men and their experiences. It was hard from then to think of Remembrance Day and not see a few of those images and imagine what they had witnessed.
To this day, I wear my poppy, even here in Ireland. Granted I don’t have the same yearly experience of buying my poppy over and over, instead I keep it safe and pull it out at Halloween every year. I have a spare – somewhere and have added a small Canadian flag as the pin to make it that little more secure. This way I have less chance of losing it as it would be much harder to replace.
I wear my poppy with pride, with the memory of the very young men – now younger than myself –who stepped up when they may not have wanted to, did not understand what they were to experience and gave so very much for the people of today. My pride is not political, it’s neither pro-war or propaganda, it’s a recognition to men and women, young and old that what they went through means something to me every day, but especially on November 11th.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
-John McCrae
Thursday, 6 October 2011
RIP Steve Jobs - it's time for our turn to take up the fight.
Dear Internet,
It’s not easy to understand when someone dies. Someone young, who transformed the world that we know today, a true visionary.
You lost a friend yesterday.
When I think about Steve Job’s death I cannot help but think that this man died of Pancreatic Cancer, a man worth over 5.5 billion still could not beat this terrible disease.
Alwyn, my lovely, kind, funny and unique brother in law died just over a year ago, he too of Pancreatic Cancer and when you do a bit of research – or as you do in this day and age Googling – you find a shocking number of tremendous people who have also died of this disease… Patrick Swayze, Dizzy Gillespie, Luciano Pavarotti, Michael Landon, and the list goes on and on.
The real shame is that very little has changed in the scope of diagnosis and treatment, even someone like Steve Jobs and his immense wealth and links to technology couldn’t beat the disease.
Again it makes me wonder - when will something be done to start fighting against this disease rather than letting it win?
It’s a terrible, aggressive, unknown, late diagnosed disease and often kills within a short time, you’re lucky to get the kind of time that Steve did, Alwyn didn’t.
I knew very little about the disease until mostly after Alwyn’s death and by reading information, and connecting with the Canadian Pancreatic Cancer Foundation (http://www.pancreaticcancercanada.ca/)
Perhaps now is the time for people to stand up and start fighting, putting more money, time and effort into researching, learning about and seeing what can be done to bring awareness to the disease, push for early diagnosis and perhaps improve the lives of people diagnosed. I have done what I can to donate, support and encourage this cause, with statistic like this who can afford not to?
According to the American Cancer Society’s website (http://www.cancer.org/):
The American Cancer Society's most recent estimates for pancreatic cancer in the United States are for 2011:
• About 44,030 people (22,050 men and 21,980 women) will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
• About 37,660 people (19,360 men and 18,300 women) will die of pancreatic cancer
Over the past 15 to 25 years, rates of pancreatic cancer have dropped slightly in men and women. Still, pancreatic cancer remains the fourth leading cause of cancer death overall.
The lifetime risk of developing pancreatic cancer is about 1 in 71 (1.41%). This is about the same for both men and women.
Let this be the time to stand up and fight back!
Alison
It’s not easy to understand when someone dies. Someone young, who transformed the world that we know today, a true visionary.
You lost a friend yesterday.
When I think about Steve Job’s death I cannot help but think that this man died of Pancreatic Cancer, a man worth over 5.5 billion still could not beat this terrible disease.
Alwyn, my lovely, kind, funny and unique brother in law died just over a year ago, he too of Pancreatic Cancer and when you do a bit of research – or as you do in this day and age Googling – you find a shocking number of tremendous people who have also died of this disease… Patrick Swayze, Dizzy Gillespie, Luciano Pavarotti, Michael Landon, and the list goes on and on.
The real shame is that very little has changed in the scope of diagnosis and treatment, even someone like Steve Jobs and his immense wealth and links to technology couldn’t beat the disease.
Again it makes me wonder - when will something be done to start fighting against this disease rather than letting it win?
It’s a terrible, aggressive, unknown, late diagnosed disease and often kills within a short time, you’re lucky to get the kind of time that Steve did, Alwyn didn’t.
I knew very little about the disease until mostly after Alwyn’s death and by reading information, and connecting with the Canadian Pancreatic Cancer Foundation (http://www.pancreaticcancercanada.ca/)
Perhaps now is the time for people to stand up and start fighting, putting more money, time and effort into researching, learning about and seeing what can be done to bring awareness to the disease, push for early diagnosis and perhaps improve the lives of people diagnosed. I have done what I can to donate, support and encourage this cause, with statistic like this who can afford not to?
According to the American Cancer Society’s website (http://www.cancer.org/):
The American Cancer Society's most recent estimates for pancreatic cancer in the United States are for 2011:
• About 44,030 people (22,050 men and 21,980 women) will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
• About 37,660 people (19,360 men and 18,300 women) will die of pancreatic cancer
Over the past 15 to 25 years, rates of pancreatic cancer have dropped slightly in men and women. Still, pancreatic cancer remains the fourth leading cause of cancer death overall.
The lifetime risk of developing pancreatic cancer is about 1 in 71 (1.41%). This is about the same for both men and women.
Let this be the time to stand up and fight back!
Alison
Saturday, 1 October 2011
Monday, 12 September 2011
10th Anniversary
Ten years is a long time, often when I look back on a moment, a day, a memory is feels like yesterday. For September 11th 2001 it feels like years and years ago. However I think like other life changing moments in my life I can still remember the thoughts, feelings and reactions that I had that day.
It was like any other fall Tuesday and I was off to class. I was finished University and moved back home briefly with my parents while I worked full time, went to school part time and paid off my student loan. It was a very middle time in my life where I had lived on my own and been completely independent and self sufficient and then returned back to my childhood bedroom.
That morning I had class at 11 downtown so I didn’t have to wake early but I did and I was getting ready for class pottering around my room with the television on watching Good Morning America (I’m pretty sure it was this and not the Today show) when they cut in to announce that a plan had hit the WDC tower, I sat at the end of the bed and watched, but I remember thinking that was weird, not shock or disbelief. There was confusion on the news, what size plane no one was quite sure what happened and they chatted about it for several minutes when I remember watching a life feed when the second plane hit the second tower.
I then called my dad at work, explaining what had happened he didn’t believe me. As someone who works in shipping he deals with a number of companies in the World Trade Centre as the Port Authority is (was) based there. He didn’t believe me and I kept saying that he needed to go on the internet – which was nothing like that of today – or to find a television. He was due to leave for New York for business either that afternoon or certainly for a meeting the following day. He wasn’t going.
Mostly I remember the confusion that day, from the beginnings on television, trying to understand what was happening in different places in the United States and reaching a level of uncertainty – do I go to class in one of the taller buildings in Montreal, will there still be class, so I went into Montreal and there was a sense of stillness in a busy city on a business day.
What I also remember the most is the sense of loss, I working at a children’s hospital at the time, I in the Emergency and my Mother in the Operating Room. There were discussions on whether there should be a Code Orange called for staff, whether we would be needed to provide support, care, help or assistance. But there was no one that needed these as the news changed from devastation and injuries to death.
The following days still break my heart – the images of the thousands of posters across NY city of people searching for loved ones, pleading for help, news and slowly losing hope.
I chose not to watch television yesterday, I remembered my own 10 years ago and the little memories that I have in my mind.
The feeling for today....
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now forever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind.
Be now forever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind.
William Wordsworth
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