Healing From Chaos

If You Don't Heal Fast, Go Home
After my little incident last week things have been changing pretty fast for me and my life here in Waterton. I think now that's its been awhile I can actually process what happened and how lucky I am. I'm incredibly lucky. This is exactly why my blog is called narrowly averting chaos, and my email as well because seriously, in my life that's all I seem to do. Which is just fine with me. Obviously work was going to be difficult for me, and my doctor told me that it would probably be about a month before I was completely healed, so I was anticipating that some changes would have to occur in my duties as a housekeeper because I won't be able to do that kind of work. The day after my accident I was resting when the Front Desk Manager knocked at my door, she told me that she and the HR manager (who was down from Calgary for the day) had come up with plan for me, and asked me to come and meet with them. I thought I was being sent home, so I nervously got ready. When I arrived at the meeting they had decided to transfer me to Front Desk, so now I work Front Desk. I take bookings, and deal with guest now. Its great, I really like working Front Desk and I was able to get back to work the day after my accident. Obviously somebody is looking out for me, and I'm grateful.

Healing is Really More About Endurance
So now I'm hobbling all across the property and sitting behind a computer all day. I would much rather be outside hiking and stuff but for now thats not possible. It does suck because my buddy just got here and we had big plans for hiking and stuff this summer but those are temporally on hold. He calls my knee the "buzzkill" and I tell him he needs to stop looking at it with such disdain. I'm just glad that I will eventually heal, and I didn't have to go home. Waterton is home for now, and I don't want to leave. It's funny how that works. Anyway my best buddy (JT) (who signed a publicity clause mother) invited me to his parents cabin for Canada Day. So Tuesday night he picked me up and we went out to the cabin which is just past mountain view and Cardston, right on the U.S. border. To say that the cabin, is a cabin is ridiculous. Its really a house. It was originally a rangers cabin that his parents bought and moved to the land they bought. They have spent the last five years fixing up the cabin. Its a house that runs on a combination of solar power and a generator. It sits on a beautiful bluff of land and the side of the house is all window and faces Big Chief mountain. It's gorgeous. Since I've been out there last they've built a beautiful clear pond, begun building a huge shop, and this summer they are working on building a massive zip line. Its crazy. Anyway when we got there JT took me in the jeep up this road he build for their neighbour. It is literally carved out of the side of a mountain and its straight up. It was crazy driving up it, but so worth it when you get to the top because its the best view of Big Chief and there is some awesome crooked trees up there. Whenever my Internet access allows me, I'll upload pictures.

Canada Day
The next day was Canada Day so JT loaded me up for my first ever Raymond parade. If your Mormon then you know that Raymond is a small southern Alberta town settled by the first Mormon settlers. Ever year they do a huge parade (well for a small town). People come from all over to see, the town just explodes. His mom's family the Scovilles have lived in Raymond for 100 years so they have an unofficial designated spot. We watched the parade with his whole family and his little cousins. The Raymond parade is famous for throwing candy so it was really fun to see all these little kids racing after the candy. All of the floats were hand made. It was alot of fun not because it was a huge extravaganza but because it had small town appeal. There was a ton of beautifully restored cars, carriages, horses, and machinery. There was two high schools bands, the Raymond High School, and the Magrath school band. One of the floats was a concrete company that a concrete machine with a slider which they used to shoot salt water taffy at the kids. It was great. It was so fun to see all the floats and the work that went into making them. There was even a Raymond Third Ward float, and a Young Men's float. You defiantly won't see that in the Edmonton parade.

After the parade we went back to Jt's grandmother's house where we had a delicious lunch, but the best part was his grandmothers homemade root beet. He had been telling me about this root beer for awhile so I was pretty excited. I consider myself a root beer consignor so I was all excited to try it. It was amazing. I absolutely loved that stuff! After lunch we took the truck out with all the kids in the back and a garbage can full of water, to go find some kids to soak. It was hilarious driving down main street. Jt's sister was supposed to be watching them, but the kids were a little overenthusiastic so we were constantly yelling out the back, "no babies or old people!" It was a great time, those little kids were so fun. When we returned we went with his family to watch the dirt bike racing in the track just outside of town. It was pretty cool, they had full adults racing and then little kids (6-8) racing just like the adults. It was really impressive and so fun. When we got back to his grandmothers house they arranged some games with the little kids which were a blast to watch, as I couldn't participate due to my gimped stage. Jt was hilarious, especially when they blindfolded him. His mother personally tied his blindfold so he couldn't see, and his partner who was six, ditched him halfway through the obstacle course. After he ran into a pole, it was all downhill from there, he ended up crashing through the chairs were all the adults were sitting.

I'm Not A Thief, I Swear
So, JT's older cousin suggested halfway through the day that we go over to her house and bring the trampoline to the yard for the little kids. Apparently this cousin had lived just across the street so JT and I went to go drag the trampoline over. As we were in the process of dragging the trampoline over, his cousin yells "what the heck are you doing? I don't live there anymore! I meant my mom's house!" We had been dragging a complete strangers trampoline across the street. Luckily they weren't home so we pushed it back and then Jt ran back and I hobbled as fast as I could. It was hilarious.

At The End of The Day
We opted not to stay in Raymond till 11 for the fireworks so we drove back to the cabin and decided to hang out there. I paddled across the pond with his sisters for awhile while JT throw huge rocks in the water to splash us. It was alot of fun. Then we played a little pool and fossball which I totally lost. We concluded our night with a wii tournament which after a large lead I also lost. I just can't win. The next day, I got to witness the Pilling clan in action. I "supervised" JT changing the oil in his suburban and then watched as his family stretched out the cord for the zip line. They attached it to the high hoe, and the back hoe and stretched it out. It's crazy, when that zip line gets done it's almost 800 metres long, if not longer. Its crazy. Then it was time to head home as I had to work at 2:30. By far, these past few days have been my favourite this summer and I'm so glad I have a buddy now to hang out with even if I am gimped!

Genius is For Me
Itunes has genius playlists now, which let you select a song and then picks a bunch of songs that go with it. It's amazing I absolutely love it. Seriously, if you have itunes, enable your genius playlists, its totally worth it. My favourite playlist so far has been based off of a song called Still Alright by Adam Merrin. The playlist features some of my favourites like Somewhere A Clock is Ticking by Snow Patrol, Wedding Dress by Matt Nathanson, Sunday Best by Augustana, and Ripe by Ben Lee, not too mention all the other best songs. I love Genius!!

I'm Narrowly Avoiding Chaos Because Too Many People Love Me, and Pray for Me!!