Category: life

Categories
life

Santa is Just a Normal Guy

Santa Claus holding a bottle of Coca-Cola

My five-year-old came to me the other day with what sounded like breaking news.

“Santa is just a normal guy!” he exclaimed.

Frowning, I looked at him. I nodded and began wondering if I should have played up the jolly elf a little more.

“He’s just a normal guy who doesn’t even make the presents.”

Sadly, the Christmas magic is gone before it really even started. My thoughts wandered. Obviously the brand names and packaging are a dead giveaway. Good on him for figuring it out at five but he’s too young to be so cynical…

“He’s just a normal guy who doesn’t even make the presents — he just gets the elves to do all the work!”

Nevermind. The magic is alive and well.

Categories
life work

A Glimpse

After a not so great day teaching at a local high school I wondered about my choices that brought me here, a decade into my teaching career and back to subbing. I understood the irony in that if I just worked at that school more I would actually have better days but I couldn’t help but think I should just stick to the one school that I’ve really been loving this year even if it means not working every day.

I contemplated my day of students showing disrespect, constantly on their phones, and just plain refusing to even pretend to do the assignments as I walked out of the building. Though feeling sorry for myself, I noticed a student that I didn’t recognize chatting with a friend and said good afternoon to his friend. He looked up and said, “Hey, are you Jeff Milner?”

“Yes,” I said hesitantly, while wondering how in the world does he know my name.

His face lit up and he exclaimed, “You taught me how to draw, last year, in Eva’s class!” I remembered the class but I couldn’t believe I had made such an impression. After asking him to remind me his name, I headed out and thought, it’s moments like these why I actually do love teaching.

Categories
life swimming

Swimming

I tried signing up for a membership at the Lethbridge YMCA at the very last day of August to have my membership start in September. As I was about to sign up I learned that if I waited until September 1 I would get seven days free and not have to pay fees to reinstate my account. I also learned that the pool would be closed for the majority of the month making my membership that month basically worthless 2.

A month has passed, so after I skipped the bedtime routine with my kids I popped over to the Y today to sign up. The lady at the counter looked at me like I was crazy when I said I wanted the seven days free trial. I explained that I just called someone on the phone right before and they said I could get a prorated rate for October after the seven days are up. She responded that they don’t have a free trial for people that have already ever had a membership — they did have that exact promotion last month 3 but there wasn’t anything she could do for me. I was so irritated by the whole ordeal that I just thought I’ll do my swimming at the University, thank you very much, and I walked out of there.

When I arrived at the university I found their pool empty and undergoing maintenance that had no end date in sight 4. It’s looking more and more like a dryland training month for this swimmer. I wanted to exercise my body, instead all I got was an exercise in futility. At least I made it home in time to put the kids to bed.

  1. ie. the next day[↩]
  2. I only use it for swimming.[↩]
  3. ie. yesterday.[↩]
  4. It was supposed to be done on October 7th but they found more issues.[↩]
Categories
life

Work

Last year I took a leave of absence from my job teaching grade five. This year I quit outright. I was a little back and forth about the idea knowing that I was leaving a permanent contract but ultimately what sealed the deal was that my hours were fluctuating every year and over the past few years had been shrinking and were now down to half time. When I asked my principal if there was any hope for me at the school she gave the most telling answer possible. She said nothing. It was a kick in the face.

Will I land on my feet? I guess it doesn’t matter too much when before I was just crawling through the mud anyway. I’m enjoying the flexibility of subbing and although the paycheque is weak we are doing fine.

Categories
family life travel

The Claw

The kids played the claw machine today in downtown Whitehorse, Yukon. When I saw Andrea getting her $5 changed into tokens, I thought it was a total waste of money. Andrea’s $5 gave them each five tries to capture a stuffy. By some fluke of nature, my daughter Nesslin actually succeeded on her third try.

The two of them used up the rest of the tokens and, of course, Ian had nothing. He begged and cried for just one more go but we were insistent that there was no way we were dropping more cash on this thing. The kind little old lady who was running the machine volunteered one last token for Ian. I just shook my head thinking we’re only delaying the inevitable. I gave him a pep-talk that if he doesn’t win, that he’s going to accept the loss and move on.

Quite a few people had gathered around watching as Ian went for it, then a Christmas miracle happened. The crowd cheered as he dropped the exact stuffy he had been going for the whole time. The lady who gave him the token gave him a big hug and I have to admit, I was wrong: that $5 was money well spent.

Categories
family life

Oh, the Places They Go

Yesterday, our six year old daughter along with our four year old son went on an adventure they had arranged for themselves.

My wife had just given them an old digital camera and they shot a few selfies with it. They also got new backpacks which they were quite excited about.

Two young children sit on a sofa with a digital camera set up on self timer mode takes their photo.
My sneaky kids excited about their (new to them) digital camera just before they went AWOL.

As I was getting ready for work I noticed they were up to something by the way they were whispering to each other with their new backpacks on and then kept quiet as I passed by them. I told them whatever they were up to, to cut it out and I headed out the door. I got a text from Andrea about a 10 minutes later on my commute to work:

The kids are just wandering around the neighbourhood somewhere. I’m about to get on my bike to go find them. I caught them at the corner walking away from our house with their backpacks on and yelled at them to come home and have breakfast now and they just kept walking like I didn’t even say anything. And they heard me because they turned around and looked at me while I was saying come home right now for breakfast

After contacting friends and neighbours and talking to everyone she ran into looking for them she even contacted the police to keep an eye out for them. I was getting updates by text and it was pretty stressful — even my co-workers who I was keeping updated about the search were bothered. I got a text an hour and a half later that our friend Chelsea found Nesslin (still in her pajamas) walking alone heading back to the house about two blocks from home. It turns out they had decided Nesslin would walk Ian to preschool (about 2km away) without parent permission or notification. They knew the way from the many times that Andrea had taken them by bike in the Chariot bike wagon.

I was annoyed that the preschool didn’t call immediately when they arrived. Ian’s preschool teacher claims that when Ian arrived at school she asked him where his mom was to sign him in and he told her that she was in the parking lot and said you [the teacher] would sign him in yourself. Sounds pretty conniving and atypical of my son to say the least.

Ian claims that’s not what he said because he was actually excited to tell the teacher that they had walked by themselves. My co-worker thinks I’m silly to believe my son over his teacher but I know what he’s like and he was pretty annoyed that his story and her story didn’t line up. When I asked him if he had been worried about getting in trouble as he walked to school he said they talked about that but decided that their teacher would be proud of them for walking on their own. I don’t want to accuse they teacher of anything but I am still annoyed that I will probably never know for sure.

The kids knew that their mom would be mad but they were surprised at the lecture they got from me when I got home from work. We are strickly a no hitting family but I told them that a co-worker of mine suggested I give them each a spanking for what they did. I was relieved to see them take this suggestion really hard and as they both broke into tears, I felt like the message was well received.

Categories
humor life

Reason for the Season

My son was watching some iteration of a Mickey Mouse holiday special this morning and deciphering the message of the episode declared:

“Mom, it’s just like the book we read. Christmas is not about candy canes!”

“That’s right! What is it about?”

Without missing a beat he confidently declared, “Christmas is about presents!”

Categories
life religion

What Religion?

Yesterday in class I had a twelfth-grade student ask me if I was a christian? Taken aback by this loaded topic, I took a moment to reply.

I stammered — “No, I’m not a christian.”

“Then what religion are you?” he persisted.

I found myself recalling this quotation by Douglas Adams:

“I really do not believe that there is a god — in fact I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one. It’s easier to say that I am a radical Atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously.”

As regular readers know, I too have thought a great deal about it, and it’s an opinion I hold seriously, nevertheless instead of proudly declaring my radical atheism I quietly hedged, “I’m less religious,” (whatever that is suppose to mean).

Although I’m still surprised that he would actually ask such a personal question, I think I understand where it came from. The student interogator presented a distinctly muslim appearance and we had just watched a documentary about the Israeli / Palestinian conflict. The film, called Israel – Birth of a Nation, though balanced, covers the most heated conflict of the twentieth century and there is a heuristic convenience in knowing which religion those around you subscribe. I suspect he wanted to pre-determine my perspective on the conflict but my non-religious status defused any oncoming discussion in utero.

And that was it.

He dropped it and asked some other students what their beliefs were but as other students watched me, each doing their own mental analysis of the scene, I pondered why I couldn’t be the proud atheist role model I wanted to be? 1 It’s unusual to talk about ones beliefs in a public school setting but since it came up, I wanted students to know that the perfectly happy, healthy, well-adjusted non-believing teacher in front of them practices what he preaches with regard to the importance of critical thinking.

  1. I wonder if the recent stabbing of a teacher in France just five days ago by an Islamic terrorist had me feeling reticent. I feel silly admitting my thought process but the chilling effect of such ideological murders is real.[↩]
Categories
life

Lucky Chocolate

After picking up the kids from school on our bikes today, we stopped by the dollar store for some “mint breaths”1. It’s still surprises me how much of an adventure going to the dollar store is for our four and five-year-old.

Anyway, I stopped by the bakery and picked up some hamburger buns for supper and as I headed home I found a full sized chocolate bar lying on the sidewalk! I thought twice about it but a full sized unopened chocolate bar… who would resist?

I hadn’t actually ever heard of an Island Bar before, but it was basically just like a Mounds bar, shredded coconut covered in chocolate and divided into three pieces.

Not surprisingly, it turned out to be a big hit with everyone. Andrea just didn’t want me to go into specifics with the kids how I found it on the street.

  1. “Mint breaths“ are what our kids used to call Ice Breakers Mints — and the name stuck[↩]
Categories
family life

Camping

We went tent camping last weekend. Our friends Duane, Chelsea, and family were sleeping in their new (to them) trailer and our other friend Wren and her daughters slept in their car. Cold weather and a new air mattress that needed to be refilled once every two to three hours meant that our sleep was pretty disrupted. That morning Ian woke up crying… or more like whining. At the same time, Wren’s daughter Kate opened her car door which made a screeching noise exactly like the sound Ian was making. He stopped abruptly, yelled out angrily, “Stop copying me!” and looked around to see who was mocking him. I told him that was just the car door closing and Kate yelled out, “Sorry Ian.” Luckily he took it in stride and laughed along with all of us.

Later that morning we were talking about how we slept. Duane said, pointing to his trailer, you’ve got to get one of these, they’re great. I said sarcastically “Oh, were you not freezing cold all night?” referring to our own sleep in the tent. He said, “Actually, at one point it was almost too hot”.

I guess we still had fun because we’ve decided to do it again in a couple weeks.