Wordless Wednesday

Rear Window

There are many reasons that I don't get to see very many movies at the theater these days. The tickets are expensive, the popcorn is expensive (and yes, I HAVE to have popcorn at the movies), the baby sitter is expensive, the selection isn't always worth the money.

Gee, I think there might be a theme here.



But another BIG reason that I wait for the DVDs to come out is because I have a slight hearing loss. It's not significant enough to need hearing aides (though Hilary might disagree with that). The range of sounds that I have the hardest time hearing just happen to be the range of most people's speaking voices. Add in back ground noise and music sound tracks and I miss 1/2 of what is going on. At home I can use Closed Captioning or the wonderful sub-titles that come with most DVDs.

So I skip seeing a lot of movies at the show, which really sucks, because Hilary and I love to go to the movies. Before Liam was born we could easily see 3 movies in 1 weekend, especially once the Oscar nominations were out.

This weekend however, Liam was going to a movie birthday party to see G-Force. The timing was right that Hilary and I could see Julie and Julia at the same time. Being a foodie family we have been looking forward to this movie for a while. My concern was that I wouldn't be able to hear well enough to be able to understand Meryl Streep's British accent.

Then we hit pay dirt! Hilary stumbled across "Rear-Window Captioning"

On the way into the theater, viewers pick up a reflective plastic panel mounted on a flexible stalk. The panel sits in a seat cup holder or on the floor adjacent to the seat. A large LED display is mounted on a rear wall that displays caption characters in mirror image. Viewers move the panels into position (usually below the movie screen) so they can read the reflected captions and watch the movie. It is sometimes necessary to sit in a certain area of the theater to obtain the best angle for reflecting the backward text emitted from the back of the theater on the panel while also being able to view the movie at the same time.

BRILLIANT! The only downfall is that they only have it for 1 of the screens at our local multi-screened theater. Luckily it happend that Julie and Julia was playing there so we got to test it out. It worked like a charm.

I need to save up my pennies because I'm back in business for seeing (and understanding) movies at the theater!

Friends re-visited

I mentioned in a post a few days ago about Liam's friend who had moved out west. We got a call out of the blue on Friday night that they were in town! We got to spend Saturday with them. Even though the boys hadn't seen each other in over a year, they picked right back up and were best buds once more!

Wordless Wednesday

Orphans treated so differently

I came across this letter to the editor of a major Canadian Newspaper. Juanita Lobo sums up this tragedy much better then I could.

Orphans treated so differently

Jul 26, 2009 04:30 AM

Two reports in Wednesday's Greater Toronto section provide an interesting perspective on our values.

Page 1 tells a sad tale of Fatima Desrosiers, a single mother awaiting deportation to a country she has no ties to after being in Canada for 22 years. As a victim of a flawed adoption system, her life is truly tragic. An orphan, she was a ward of the Crown from the age of 12. She was bounced from foster homes to group homes, she is illiterate and has lived in at least 27 different homes. No one bothered to register her as a permanent resident so our immigration officials are working on her deportation to Brazil.

Page 8 has a heartwarming story of Wiggles, an orphaned pig. This more fortunate orphan was offered a home by no less than 40 sanctuaries and individuals after undergoing knee and leg surgery. The Humane Society shortlisted 12 sanctuaries before selecting one that would provide the best home.

We seem to place significantly greater value on the life of an orphaned piglet than that of a human victim of uncaring adoption and child care agencies.

Juanita Lobo, Oakville

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Multi-Media

Liam has fulfilled his goal of being in 4 types of media!



First he was on TV with his class at school:








Then his adoption story was featured in a book (along with pictures of him which he was very excited to point out to the staff at the book store)













Then a story about the book ran in our local paper along with a half page colour picture of our family.















And on Friday he was selected to be on the radio.

101.3 The Bounce had a booth at the movie theater and Liam wandered over to check it out. The announcer asked him if would go on the air and tell everyone what movie he was there to see (Aliens in the Attic). He got to wear great big earphones and hold the microphone. (who knew that I should take my camera with me to the movies!)







Now he just needs to be in a major motion picture and he'll have done it all.

Lost Friends and New Friends

I lost my first friend when I was 9. She and her family moved to Montreal. I went to a very small school; there were 10 of us in my grade. 4 girls and 6 boys that all started together in kindergarten and pretty much stayed together until grade 8. There were a few changes over the years: Sonia moved away, Anne skipped a grade, a few new faces would join for a year or two. But for the most part we had a lot of stability in our group of friends. Outside of school I didn't have any friends unless they were the children of my parents friends. We lived in the country and there were no other children to be seen. So it was not surprising that I found it difficult to make new friends since the opportunities were few and far between.

Liam however has already "lost" 2 friends and is about to lose a 3rd. Life is much more nomadic and international today then it was when I was a kid. Liam's friend Aiden and his family are moving to Australia next month; his friend Timothy and family moved to Saskatchewan when the boys were 3 and Madison is now living in Cape Breton.

Up until about 6 months ago Liam was very shy around new kids. He would make me go up to them at the park to ask them to play with him. Last year summer camp was mostly an awful experience for him as he went to different places each week and the age ranges of the kids was HUGE (6-12 years old, way too big of a range, especially if you are the 6 year old).

This year we tried to cut down on the number of different camps he went to and found ones with better age ranges (7-9). He even did one week of camp at his school where he got to spend the week with buddies from his class. At the other camps he was coming home and telling us that he had made friends, but could never remember their names and didn't really seem all that keen on them. Until this week.

Monday he came home from his first day at "Super Spy Camp" and declared he had a new best friend named "C" and that "C" liked Mario and had a DS and loves Transformers and on and on and on. "C" sounded perfect! Then Tuesday we heard more about "C". Hilary and I were both intrigued as this was the first time that Liam seemed to be cultivating a friendship all on his own. But alas "Super Spy Camp" is only 4 days long so we were preparing for the disappointment of another lost friend.

Turns out that "C" had a lot more in common with Liam then just toys and games. He too has a lot of trouble making friends and had gone home each night nattering on about this boy named Liam who was his new best friend. So on the last day of camp the boys exchanged phone numbers and made sure that their mums met at the end of the day.

"C"'s mom was beyond ecstatic that he had made a friend. "C" has autism, on the high functioning end of the spectrum, but has never made or had a friend before. We don't know what clicked with Liam but they are 2 peas in a pod. They called us up last night and asked us to go to a movie with them. Liam bounced for a full hour before their arrival "Are they here yet? When will they be here?" Once we got to the theater "C" and Liam held hands to walk through the lot and were inseparable for the rest of the night. We all came back to our house after the movie and they boys just kept playing. I don't think I've ever seen Liam spend so much one on one time with another kid without there being at least one minor disagreement or rough spot.

Plans have been made for the next play date and thus a new friendship was born!