Lise's Ramblings

 Agnes clings to her adoptive dad Gru in "Despicable Me" (image cropped from movie by Universal Studios)  Someone enters a room and spots you at a distance. When your eyes meet, the other person lights up and bounds across the room to you. Now that's a great sensation. This week has shown me that the only way to improve on that is if the person is very young, measures less than two feet in height, staggers while barrelling across the room, shrieks and giggles uncontrollably, then wraps arms tightly around your knees.       AWESOME!

Ever since 1999, January 27 th has marked Family Literacy Day in Canada . Family literacy is meant to help bring children and adults together to develop and maintain language skills. Families have many options available to them; they can choose to read books aloud, sing songs, play board or online word games, write letters or cards, type text messages or emails, visit library programs, and take part in other formal or informal activities to support listening, comprehension and literacy.   During the past few weeks, I’ve seen my sister, brother-in-law and mom reading English and French stories to my 18-month-old niece. She counts along, mimics sounds, anticipates parts of her favourite books, bonds, wiggles, giggles, touches, etc. According to non-profit group Literacy BC, kiddos are likely to enter grade school “with several thousand hours of one-to-one pre-reading experience behind them” if they’ve been raised by literate families and caregivers.   So ...

Health scares can take many forms and strike at different stages of life. Think of: children as they imagine mysterious ailments when a beloved adult's physical appearance changes; that teenage girl who pees on a stick and prays it doesn't turn blue; a couple eager to hear back about fertility tests; anxious parents who await their child's xray images; colleagues who queue up for access to an MRI; or friends and spouses who count down the days for biopsy results.  Most of us have seen loved ones struck by disease and experienced our own share of health scares, so everyone can appreciate how it feels to get news that confirms someone you care about is in the clear. The relief is beyond        AWESOME!!!

Earlier this week, as I sat idling in bumper-to-bumper traffic, I was pleasantly surprised to smell grilled steak. (I was rewarded twice over, because it also confirmed that my frost-bitten nose still functioned.) When in a car, you expect to smell exhaust, damp shoes, tar from construction projects and other nasty odours, so food scents are most welcome. On the Island, we get to smell hash browns and fries whenever we pass a Cavendish Farms plant. And if you've ever driven by a strawberry field in mid- to late-June, then you know exactly how inviting it is to have food scents blowing in through car vents.       AWESOME!!!

During the next three months, hundreds of thousands of Canucks will flee long, dark days and snowstorms to seek out sunshine and warmer locales. Aside from the weather, one of the best benefits of visiting the tropics has to be the fish. I don’t mean fish as an entrée, but rather as a fascinating diversion. Snorkelling and scuba diving open up the underwater world to us. I dare anyone to try to forget that first time spotting a school of hundreds or thousands of colourful fish switching direction in a synchronized and swift motion. It’s like swimming inside an episode of a nature documentary…            AWESOME!!!  I'm not anywhere warm, so these are tropical fish I spotted in the Mahogany Salon & Spa's aquarium.

Wet snow sticks to every surface. All is quiet. None of that squeaky, it’s-minus-freakin’-thirtysomething-degrees-Celsius nonsense. Your white carpeted surroundings carve out a silent zone to buffer you from the rest of the world. Yes, snow that muffles sounds is          AWE Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh OME. 

The only thing better than nieces wearing pyjamas ― the ones with feet... Flipper Slippers over top of said PJs.       Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhwesome!