I'm going to share something personal now. I've been so busy with work that family has taken a bit of a backseat for the past year and a half.
Well, things have finally started to settle down and I decided to plan an excursion. The little guy deserves it and so does everybody else. It's been a tough year for us, trying to make it all work.
So, we re-arranged everything and managed to be there for a day I can't imagine not having been there for and then had a bit of a late start but trucked off to St. Thomas for a ride on Thomas the Tank Engine. What fun. Yet another fantastic effort by yet another service club.
There were many little surprises and great memories formed and all of a sudden I resolved that it is time to play mommy again, the way it's meant to be done. So, a birthday (a little belated) was celebrated at a great Chinese buffet (King's Buffet). Hey, if you are ever looking for a great meal around St. Thomas, go there.
The little guy had no idea we'd be singing happy birthday and the look of surprise and watching him clap along with everybody else as the entire place rejoiced in his efforts to blow out the little candle was worth a sixteen hour drive, let alone a two hour one.
We took the scenic route back that drove right past a home with the Ghost Busters station wagon in the drive way. I promise I did the exact right thing and honest to goodness tried to ring the doorbell before taking pictures but nobody was home and surely the thing is in the driveway for that very reason.
Earlier on in the day we took a ride on Thomas, himself. Well, on Thomas' caboose but it was hooked up right to the cheeky little blue engine. The lady who was working that section of the train came complete with a spray bottle to cool off passengers. The heat of the day was enough to fry eggs on the backs of the revelers.
Her name is Shela. I couldn't resist but to ask because the last name was a lot more generic.
Turns out that when her mother had given birth the nurse was either illiterate or had an attitude worthy of the CN Tower and so did Shela's mother. The nurse wanted to know what to put on the birth certificate and Marleen said: "Sheila". The nurse said: "How do you spell that?" and the poor lady, who was too sick to deal with it because she had just given birth (and Shela is not a small lady so she likely wasn't a small baby), says: "She... La!". The belligerent nurse continued to ask "and the mother's name?" to which Marlene answered: "Mar... Leen!"... and that's what she got on the birth certificate.
So now, post 9-11, poor Shela can't travel because her name looks ethnic even though she looks very small town Canadian, and all because the nurse couldn't care less and her mother never bothered checking the paper, just assuming that any person in their right mind would know how to spell 'Sheila.'
Now here is a part of the story that I really couldn't get, at all. To help mitigate some of the damage, our friend Shela went to her lawyer, who spent a ton of time and money drafting a letter that she now has to carry on her person any time she needs to sign an important travel document, etc., saying that she is the same person as Sheila_M so that the diligent and dedicated security staff at the airport will let her get on the plane. However, she still won't travel because she can't be sure if they'll let her back into the country, even with her legally authorized piece of paper.
My poor little head started to spin a bit because I couldn't understand why she couldn't just go and get her name legally changed. In Canada you don't even have to get paperwork done if you don't absolutely want to.
Nice lady, though.
Nice town, too. The train rides through St. Thomas and past an assortment of community centres, parks, and the fronts or backs of seniors residences (there's a whole bunch of them in St. Thomas), and everybody drops what they are doing and waves to all the kids as the train goes by and make sure to not stop waving until every little kid on the train got to feel like a V.I.P. Such fun!
They have a little hay stack maze, magicians, entertainers, Sir Topham Hat, a balloon making clown, and a petting zoo complete with a zebu, a donkey and a yak (also the sheet, goats, geese, etc.). They also have a bubble area where you can dip ropes into soapy buckets for huge bubble fun. All this to make it worth the drive and to keep the kiddies busy while they wait for their turn on a train all decked out to look like Thomas. It's awesome!
So, that's what we did on Sunday. What did you do?
