The Perpetual Weblog

Yes, my father has been diagnosed with cancer. However, I WILL not let myself believe that it’s a done deal – game over. Far from it. Yes, the following months are going to be hard, especially for him and my mother, but it can be beaten and nobody’s purposes are served by being negative about it. The real question is: how far along is it? The outlook is better the earlier it’s detected…we have to wait for these kinds of answers…Yes, it’s uncharacteristically optimistic of me, but that’s how I’m dealing with it. It IS pissing me off that I feel like I should be DOING something.

I’m a little concerned about the kids. They don’t know (and don’t read the blog) and we’re not sure when we’ll tell them. It’s just been such a crappy spring/summer for them. Outwardly they SEEM okay, but I know inside it’s building up a bit.

We were at Shelley’s family reunion at Fairmont Hot Springs last weekend, and drove the kids to camp, near Halkirk, ALberta (east of Stettler). That was a long drive. Along the way, we found out that a school chum of Quinn’s (not a good friend, but a recess kind of friend) was killed by his uncle. It SEEMS that his uncle had stopped taking his medication, and drown the boy, but they really haven’t figured out what happened yet.

Anyway, we DIDN’T tell Quinn, as we couldn’t tell him then leave him at camp alone for a week, so we told him last night after we got him home. It was not easy. An accident is one thing, but having to explain that he was killed is another.

Today was the funeral, Quinn and another friend didn’t want to go, so we spent some time at our church and had a little memorial the kids could be a part of. Shelley did a REALLY good job getting it together and running it “like a real funeral”. The kids got to light some candles. The parents all cried. You know…

Scott and I went together and bought Dad a little Garmin eTrex Legend GPS unit. I’m not sure how I managed to go this long without a little recreational GPS. Anyway, we gave it to Dad, but since he’s been feeling under the weather and not able to use it, he gave it back to me to “play with” until he can get out and about.

Tonight, Dylan, Quinn and I went looking for a geocache in Fish Creek Park. The basic idea is that someone hides a little cache of goodies (keychains, pogs, whatever…) and records the latitude and longitude of the hiding place. Then other people go find it, like we did. Usually you leave a little something and take something else, but we weren’t really prepared for that tonight, so we just signed the guest book and left. The mosquitoes were ravinous despite the massive amount of “Off” we applied, so I would suggest NOT going tramping through bush at twilight in mosquito country!

Another thing we learned was: don’t necessarily park and head STRAIGHT for the cache. By the time we found it we discovered we would have been a lot better off following a path as close as we could, THEN charging into the brush. Ah well, next time. So, rack up a “find” for cache “GCFEED“. Yes, I’m “Iggybung” on that one.

…by herself (with Quinn) for a couple days. What do I get back? This. Here’s a close up. She’s fine, probably should have gotten stitches, but she didn’t, so we will likely have a “get the scar fixed” issue to deal with.

As promised! Click the picture to get a larger (80kB) picture of “The Axeman”:

And of course the obligatory team picture (80kB):