Well, here we are and as per usual, our life is moving at 1000 miles per hour. With some pretty big news across the board:

Kathleen and Matthew –

have celebrated their first wedding anniversary and are still happily married.  Kathleen has just begun her second year of technology education training at BCIT and has taken apart and reassembled two motors – a 2-stroke and a 4-stroke motor in September alone, along with learning more advanced electronics, metalwork, and computer drafting.  Matthew continues to work on independent game coding for Peglin, while continuing his longer-term planning for his own foray into independent gaming.  Kathleen has one more year of school of her degree next September where she will be at UBC doing the more formal teacher training part of her adventure.

Martin and Zamira –

Following their trip to Nathan and Zoey’s wedding in Ottawa in May – they have decided that it is time to move out and they are both moving to Ottawa on October 19^th.  We will miss them, but we wish them the very best as they launch into the world on their own wings.  I will truly have an empty nest! The city seems ready and anxious to receive them, with Martin already having the promise of work when they get there!

Morgan –

Monday August 25^th, Morgan received an invitation to interview with SD 62 – Sooke School district to teach their adult graduation program. After receiving an invitation to an interview on Wednesday of that week for a full time position as program instructor and leader of the newly relaunched Fast Forward to Graduation Program  FF2Grad program – a 4 month, cross-curricular program where he would be teaching 5 courses worth 24 credits to a small group of adult students looking to earn their high school graduation diploma – they admitted in the interview that they were looking for a Unicorn. After interviewing a few other people, he was offered the job late morning on August 29^th with his first day of work being September 2^nd and his first day with students being September 8^th. Of course, he accepted. He’s been told that the commitment of his principals, the staff, and the program is to prioritize health first, then family, and then teaching.  Having never worked for a public school board in his entire career, he has had to learn a new set of ropes.  He is working out in Langford at the new John Horgan Campus of Royal Roads university which is a collaborative Westshore location with programming offered by Royal Roads University, Camosun College, UVic, and the Justice Institute of BC, along with the Sooke School district.  He is biking 31 kms round trip daily, mostly on trails which gives him time to prep his courses and debrief his day as well as providing him with regular exercise.  It is really wonderful to see him so happily engaged professionally.  His class is made up of 18 students ranging in age from 17 to 55 and it only took 3 school days for him to gain the buy-in from the students – many of whom have commented that the second week of classes was the only time in their lives they made it to school the full five days.  The program is tailored to  parents and the classes run from 9 a.m. to 2:30 Mon-Thurs and 9 to noon on Fridays so he is putting in an extra half hour at each end of the day and is balancing work and life quite nicely – I have known that since he stopped teaching he has felt as if a piece of himself was amputated – I can’t even begin to describe how lovely it is to see him whole again!

Carol Anne –

I am pretending to be a good housewife, cooking, cleaning and doing laundry – but really I am bored!  I am now the (metaphorical) amputee. So, I am initiating a gradual return to work! We are trying to make it successful, so we are not rushing it and it is my intention to do work differently – with less stress and to take it less personally. I hope this will be easier without a 13 cm tumour pushing my buttons in my head.    Yesterday, I met with my vocational occupational therapist who is helping me get the right accommodations for success.  I perhaps misspoke on Facebook a couple of weeks ago – I am not cancer-free – no one ever is and brain cancer has no cure.  The correct phraseology is that my cancer is not progressing – they won’t even say in remission for brain cancer.  I have my next MRI in early November and we are hopeful that the necrosis is diminishing.  I am really enjoying having three (almost four!) months between MRIs.  Nevertheless, I have not had a seizure since July 15^th and I recovered from that one much faster.  My memory is starting to come back to a place where I recognize it and I am looking forward to returning to work to continue the cognitive healing process – it is only through using my brain that it will develop new neuro networks which will hopefully overcome the impacts of the radio necrosis by training my brain to move all those things that the right frontal lobe does to another “undamaged location.” It turns out that although the New York Times puzzles and jigsaw puzzles help with this – they are not quite enough to fully engage my mind and properly “re-program” it.

Across the board –

We are still looking to sell this lovely home sometime this coming spring/summer and we are slowly working on cleaning up 17 years of stuff and living! We’re getting around to home projects which we never got to. The upstairs wall-to-wall carpeting is being replaced once Martin and Zamira’s belongings are loaded onto a truck.  We are dropping things at thrift stores and throwing out as much as we can.  We hope to have one more MaxSold auction (but it is taking longer to build the lots as we are trying not to miss anything.) This also has us soaking up the memories of the home and our lives together and trying to figure out what comes next.  It is possible that my very young husband can get 20 years into a pension before anyone tries to get him to retire! For the first time since early May, I am not upset that he has only just turned 50.   This is where the 7 year age difference pays off for me!  All in all – things are not any more quiet than usual around here which is part of the reason this update is so long in coming!