Critical Thinking 101

This should be required viewing for all kids, every year. And adults. There's just not enough critical thinking in this world.

Here be Dragons

Home Sweet Home

June 29, Ontario

We're still camping, but now it's in our own home. We arrived Thursday night, the 26th, after nine days travel. The family welcomes us with such generosity and I'm overwhelmed by happiness and gratitude. The garden is now like a jungle,

and now that the house is empty, I notice so many little annoying details of shoddy workmanship that I have to consciously direct my mind from seeking them out and spoiling the whole effect. Because really, this is the perfect house for us. Only four minutes drive from my sister's and mom's house, and a five minute walk from a park and a conservation area. The park leads into a municipal trail that is 14.5 km. long. It takes us to the library in 20 minutes, and we can bike from one end of the city to the other if we like. We're 2 minutes from a major highway that will take us into the city in 30 minutes (if the traffic co-operates), yet we're in a quiet 30-year-old subdivision, close to shopping. The house is huge. After 19 years of always being near enough to carry on a conversation with someone at the other end of the apartment, we're constantly losing each other in here. And my knees, after 9 days of sitting in the van, are protesting the number of stairs in a big back-split like this. 26 steps from my bedroom to the laundry room. 16 stairs just to get from the car to the kitchen.

Dan the mover arrived yesterday morning with our stuff and we spent 4 hours trying in vain to check off all the boxes and items from Dan's master list. I think we've got it all, but only time will tell. In the meantime, we're still using our camping gear and and wandering around the house in a daze, full of ideas, and dreams for the future, trying to take it all in. This is going to be a big adjustment for us all.

Nine Days, 4736 miles

June 22, Swift Current, Saskatchewan

My skin's turned pink and freckled and my hair has that dandelion-gone-to-seed apearance, but finally I have found my camping groove. My camp kitchen is organized and I have my minions trained to set up and break camp in an orderly manner. And when I get up off that cold, hard ground in the mornings, I no longer feel battered. With his golf cart battery and inverter, Mr. D*S grinds the coffee beans fresh every morning and declares he could go on like this forever.

No so Panda. For her, the only saving grace is WiFi access in the campground here in Swift Current.

Departure was chaotic. That day we packed like fiends, racing against Dan the mover and his boys as they loaded over 144 boxes, our piano and furniture into the semi-trailer. It was rush hour before we said our farewells and made the last drop-off to the Sally Ann and the library. By the time we had set up our tent by Lake Osoyoos it was midnight. The wind howled over the water like a thousand demons, flinging sand in our eyes and whipping the tent out of our hands at every opportunity. Exhausted but stressed to the max, I tried to sleep, but Lindt chocolate, screaming winds, nagging doubts and a severe lack of padding under my sleeping bag, conspired to keep me tossing and turning for hours. At 3:30 I woke Mr. D*S to ask if he thought the wind might blow the van over on top of us. He gave me that WTF look and I burst into tears, then laughed, then cried again. I conked out shortly after.

Since then, every day has been better than the last, and we're enjoying the experience. I always protested that this tent was too big for me to set up by myself, but here's Panda doing it all by herself in Lundbreck Falls, Alberta.


Lundbreck Falls also had the lumpiest ground of any I've slept on, and here's the little varmint who was responsible.



Camping has changed in the last 25 years. I don't remember ever seeing signs on the water taps warning you to boil the water for 5 minutes, but so far that's been the case. Nor to I remember so many fancy RVs. I've been reading Starting Out in the Afternoon by Jill Frayne, who describes them so well:

...freighted with the comforts of home: campers that puff up into livingrooms sprouting awnings and Astroturf steps, motorhomes equipped with generators to power microwaves, TVs and hot water tanks.... Outside are scooters and bikes, lawn chairs arranged under tarps, twelve-by-sixteen mesh tents rigged over picnic tables. Sheltered under these contrivances are rotisserie barbecues, propane lamps, camp stoves, coolers the size of doghouses, twenty-litre water barrels. Motorboats squeezed ingeniously into the sites, bristle with fishing gear. I notice a practice of keeping a leaping campfire going at all times, even if everyone's inside.

And were there always so many trucks on the road? At least half of all traffic seems to be freight trucks. I'm so glad Mr. D*S is such a confident and capable driver.

We are fascinated by the wind farms in Alberta, and heartened.

June 24, Nipigon, Ontario

We are deep in DEET country, and it's a particularly nightmarish place to be. If you ever must camp on the North Shore of Lake Superior, I suggest you give the Silver Birch Campground a wide berth. Imagine setting up a tent, doing your laundry, eating dinner, all the time all the time one-handed, while you use the other to wave away the mosquitoes. All night long the trucks roar down the highway, but it's really a minor annoyance compared to the bugs. Panda claims 60 bites and some of them are quite swollen.

At first, Ontario is sweet relief from the dry flat prairies and reminds us all of Vancouver Island. By Kenora, we're crabby and getting on each other's nerves, but it all evaporates when we get to our campsite at Rushing River. We're right on Dogtooth Lake, very private with an incredible view. This is the first campsite where I could image staying for a few days. The water does NOT have a warning! I see my first beaver, paddling up the lake with just his head out. The dog next door sees him too, and Mr. Beaver slaps the water with his tail and disappears. Panda sees her first chipmunk, cute as any 13-year-old could wish. What a relief it all is. Across the lake are stacks of canoes and there's a sign warning that wakes are prohibited. We eat salad and hot dogs and corn on the cob, grapes and roasted mashmallows. Too bad this place is 3 day's drive from our new home and we're on such a tight schedule.


Two days before, stopped at a Tourist Information Centre just inside the Manitoba border, Mr. D*S spied a Great Canadian Van Lines truck racing east. "There's our stuff!" he cried, and we hopped back into the van to give chase. It took a good 5 minutes to catch him, but sure enough, it was Dan the mover at the wheel. "Want your stuff?" he called. Unable to maintain his 120+ km/h speed, we let him go.

Eye Evolution

As part of the Expelled Exposed site, there are a series of educational videos to counter creationist claims. They're short, simple, and easy to understand.

The search for a home is over!

After almost 4 weeks of traipsing through a wide variety of houses, we've finally found our new home in Ontario. It's a 5-level backsplit, with 4 bedrooms, 2 bath, air conditioning, fireplace, full basement and single garage. Quite a departure from the little 2-bedroom apartment we've spent the last 19 years in.

I think I was so overwhelmed by the huge size and great condition of the interior of the house that I didn't see the yard very clearly until I got home and showed the pictures to Mr. D*S. So this is what we'll be working on this summer: trying to make something out of this space before we tackle anything else.


Good grief, it makes you wonder, what were these people thinking? Or did they just sit under their grape arbour and shut out the rest of the yard?

Any design ideas, any advice, gratefully accepted. We may yet save up our pennies and get professional help, because this is truly way beyond a novice gardener's scope. The drainage seems quite crucial, with the way the yard slopes up at the back, and slants down at the sides to direct water away from the house. As is common in Southern Ontario, the soil is dense clay. It actually looks like very little has been done since the builder laid some sod over the clay 30 years ago.

I so want to be able to enjoy my little back yard. After all these years in one of the most beautiful city neighbourhoods in Vancouver--or the country for that matter--we want to make a green oasis for ourselves in this deeply suburban community. Vancouver nights are quite cool, so I'm looking forward to being able to sit outside late into the evening again.

A Sure Sign of Procrastination

When the bookkeeping is piling up, what do I choose to do with my time?

Here is a sample of what I'm doing today: No Knead Bread, whole wheat and walnut version. I thought you'd like to see it before I nibble those scrumptious walnuts off the top.

5 Years Ago

The significance of this photo doesn't immediately jump out at you.

What a darling at 7, with her hair up on top of her head, and that little green cotton jumper. But look a little closer, at the whiteboard in the background, where it says EEG, June 18 @ 9 am. Underneath that it says midnight–5 am. That was all the sleep Panda (and Mom) were allowed the night before the big event, so that she (and Mom) would be as tired and off her game as possible.

It all started at the dining room table, during our school time. Panda would suddenly stop what she was doing, or reading, or saying, and just stare off into the air. Only for 10 seconds or so, but it was plain that she could neither see or hear me when it happened. She had absolutely no awareness that she was doing it. Sometimes she would repeat a syllable over and over. Twice it happened in the middle of a piano lesson, with her hands poised over the keys, totally blank.

At first I thought she was just a spacey little kid, but then the words "petit mal" flashed into my brain like a neon sign. And sure enough, that's what it was, a form of epilepsy officially known as absence seizures. Panda spent two years on anti-seizure medication. The weeks before, waiting for a diagnosis, watching her so carefully, keeping off her bike, and after, as we tapered her dosage and watched again for symptoms, were some of the worst in my life. How often Panda longed to be just like every other little girl. Or barring that, to have a friend right next door who was also adopted from China, homeschooled, with a medic alert bracelet that said Peanut Allergy, Absence Seizures. Being different is the hardest thing when you're 7.

Now I seldom think of that time, over 5 years ago—until I read Kimberly Geswein's blog entries about her little Katie. They are in Beijing today, while Katie has her first EEG. Everyone here in the Deeply Suburban is rooting for you and sending you our very best wishes, Kimberly and Katie.