The Seated View

    I'm plotting a certain something related to The Book. Something that requires proper photographs as opposed to snapshots, so I sent out an email to the talented Raff, a friend of my sister's, who has her own production company . Did she know a photographer? Did she ever. She put me in touch with the equally talented and lovely Sophie Kinachtchouk - take a minute to do drool at her work. She also does amazing wedding photography . I cannot say enough good things about Sophie - she's easy to work with and if you're at all self-conscious in front of a camera, she makes you relax and have fun in no time. These are a few of the great shots she took.        We decided to wander out and about in the neighbourhood to find fun places to shoot - it was a lovely day. Halfway to the corner, I realized my funky new glasses are Transition lenses .So we pretended I was wearing contacts again. I have only very fuzzy mental images of Sophie ...

   On Friday, I will be here (click to embiggen) Why don't you join us? More information here .

I've been known to say that being Danish-Canadian gives me a double whammy of reticence and self effacement, so imagine I'm twisting myself into a pretzel as I'm writing thisl. However! I am apparently not self-effacing enough. I'm nominated for the 2010 Canadian Blog Awards in the Best Chronic Illness Blog category. Should you feel that I deserve your endorsement, please consider casting your vote. You can access the categories here and supposedly, I should be able to embed the category here so you can vote without having to click around.  You can vote once every 24 hours until October 26. It worked!  As they used to say in the Bartles and Jaymes commercials , thank you for your support.

Not having wee ones of my own, I had no idea. I received information about a new book dealing with pregnancy when you have RA and it looked like something we should review for MyRACentral. I interviewed the author - a lovely woman named Suzie from Perth , Australia - and found out that there is next to no information about pregnancy and RA. Aside from "then you go off the meds, wait until they're out of your system and get pregnant." It was completely stunning to me and yet another reminder of how little information there is available on how to actually live with this disease. And I could start a nice rant about this - or to be more accurate, as I seem to have already built up a nice head of steam, I could continue ranting - but the point of today's post is provide a link to a short review of Arthritis, Pregnancy and the Path to Parenthood and my interview with its author. You can read it here . Also, I'm featured in a special section on Joint & Bone Heal...

"Please shoot me," I said, like an arrogant snot, "if I ever get a Twitter account." I have a friend - who shall remain nameless to protect their dignity - who regularly sneers at television. Simply doesn't believe that there can be anything of value, artistic merit or non-trashy on the small screen. We all know that this snobbery is a cover for the fact that if you put said person in a room with a television that's on, they will never, ever leave, completely mesmerized by the flickering in the corner. I suspect my arrogance was rooted in something similar. Given my tendency towards immersing myself rather fully (which sounds so much better than the word obsessive ), Twitter has the potential for taking over my life. And then there's the fact that I doubted I could express myself in 140 characters (me? Verbose? Well, now that you mention it...). And then I got injured. Well, not the one I'm "enjoying" at the moment, but the one a couple o...

I got up before the crack of dawn to a rainy, blustery day and had built in some time before I left to allow for crying because it's just uncivilized to get up before the sun. I'm an Ahrtiste, dahlink and a night owl and it just wasn't pretty. The day started of promising. I'd booked Dignity - a sort of taxi - as I wasn't in the mood to rattle around on WheelTrans for hours and we went straight to Variety Village where I was meeting David who'd signed up for minion duties for the day. I got off the van and the driver told me it was going to be a certain amount. I mentioned that the office had said it was $10 less when I booked the ride and he got out the run sheet to prove it and…. showed it to David. Aside from the fact that the booking sheet showed that I was right, it was a moment of rather stunning stereotypical behaviour, so appropriate on this day. I was the one who booked the ride, I was the one in the van, I was the one paying the man and yet? David...

Who'd have thunk that these wee babies would four years later become these lovely kids? Sure, you expect them to grow, but never know how that growth is going to turn out. The Tinks are bright, creative, energetic, talkative (ok, that one's not so much a surprise given the rest of the family), loving kids who forever delight and challenge us all to find reserves of energy we didn't know we had and depths of love that's forever getting deeper. They are a joy. And today, they are four years old. Last weekend, we celebrated at a local restaurant, joined by longtime friends. Before everyone arrived, John/TinkPapa relaxed with (or was pinned down by) the kids When I asked what they wanted for their birthday. Morgan said "a red present" and Liam " a blue present". So I got them each a locomotive i the appropriate colours and may never be as brilliant in their eyes again Photo by Janne/TinkMama Photo by Janne/TinkMama As luck would have it, the restaura...

A couple of days ago, I watched this Momversation about the way children address adults, which contained an astounding number women at least a decade younger than I am, if not more holding forth about how kids addressing adults by their last name (e.g. Mrs. Smith, Mr. Jones) is an essential form of manners, of showing respect and something that they insist on from the kids’ friends, going so far as to link kids calling adults by their first names to not showing adults to respect they apparently deserve merely by the fact of being adult. And I am gobsmacked. I was born in 1962 and as a kid growing up, my generation called adults by first names and the familiar du instead of the more formal De (like French, German and many other languages, Danish has two versions of the word you), although there was a distinction made - people my grandparents age were addressed by Mrs. and Mr. last name and formal De, not necessarily because of their age, but because they grew up at a ti...

An Exhibit of Photographs From a Wheelchair Perspective Yorkville Public Library 22 Yorkville Avenue (Yonge & Bloor) October 5-31, 2009 This was supposed to happen in December, but on Wednesday night (September 30 and the reason I'm mentioning the date is coming up in a second) they called me and said renovations have been scheduled for December, so how would I feel about October instead? More that a little panicked, actually. Pulling this exhibit together in four days was a team effort and I would like to publicly shower appreciation on the following people (in alphabetical order): Mor (whose first name is Birthe, so it is too alphabetical) for all the conversations we've had over the years about art - her paintings and my photos (and other people's art) - and for the conversations we've had over the past week about the particulars of the show. David (a.k.a. DavidG) for saying "just tell me what you need," doing what I needed, thinking o...

In the grand tradition of the shameless self-promotion that happens in this space on this day, I'm going to be All About Me and announced that today is my birthday. Well, the beginnings of - today is the actual day, but celebrations will, as usual, be stretched out over a week or so. I'm not sure exactly when my circle of people switched from birthday to birthday weekend and then to birthday week, but I can highly recommend it. This year, my birthday present to myself is a three-day weekend of doing nothing that I don't want to do. As usual, Kathy Reichs has released her latest book in the last week of August and the usual, I'm more than half convinced that she's doing that especially for me (thanks, Kathy!). Today, that might be a lunch thing, the odd phone call or two with misc. international birthday songs, Reichs in the park and this weekend, there are no plans at all. Nothing. Nada. Just whatever floats my boat and I cannot tell you how much I am lo...