CaptainOrange

  Special Thanks to Anwyn for the prophetic dubbing of our family year as "Winds of Change." Library A grand Quest. I quit my job. It was a frightening prospect. I'm not good a preparing for such things (even though Wendy knew that I should be preparing), so instead I just quit. Let's back up a second... 2007 Casual In 2007, I was done running Diakuw Dayhome and had driven Leora and Anwyn's school bus for a couple of years. I was ready to move on and started working as a casual at The Saskatoon Public Library. I didn't really think it was my dream job, but I wasn't sure what else to do. 2010 Program Associate By 2010, I had moved from working as a 'casual' employee to working part-time on the service desk, to working as a 'program associate' in Pooh Corner and The Children's Department. It was here that I rediscovered my love of performance AND the fact that I wasn't born to do Shakespeare, but rather to fall down for children.  Thi...

While on one of my regular visits to the Royal University Hospital’s Paediatric Ward, I was asked by the recreational therapist, Kelsey, if I would do a storytime for a child named “H.” Of course I would. That’s the entire purpose of being there, after all. All smiles  and sitting up in bed, H is a bright child of six. Her hand (which has recently been shattered) is wrapped in gauze and held in a splint reaching to her elbow. I’ve been doing visits like this for quite a while now and I quickly go into my usual routine. I’m silly and disarming. We wear finger puppets (H can only wear them on one hand), sing songs and read some pop-up books. I make a lot of “mistakes” while reading and H quickly corrects me. I fall over constantly. I’m afraid of all the beeping noises in her room and all of the scary things in the books. H laughs at me for being afraid—especially of the lion finger puppet. She is interested and engaged—one of the easiest story times I’ve had in weeks. Then the nu...

If you don’t mind spoilers (the photo stream is a day or two ahead of the blog posts), don’t forget that you can find better quality versions of all these photos elsewhere . Except for my awesome drawings, that is. They are one of a kind ;) 

The Preamble I've just spent what could have been a nothing-to-do weekend at a work-sponsored class on storytelling. Having known about it for a month or so, I have been living in anticipatory dread the entire time. I didn't really know what I thought was going to happen. On reflection, it was a problem I have been dancing around all year. I'm scared to let myself down. If I don't blow away expectations, I feel like a failure. No pressure there. To combat this problem, my usual solution is to lower expectations so that it is easy to surpass them. That is likely familiar to some of you. Perhaps you are someone who eats expectations for breakfast. I'm working on it. For right now, I lost not a few nights of sleep worrying about what story I might do and thinking more than once about giving a co-worker, Jim, my spot in the workshop. I'm sure he wishes he could have taken part. Having managed to go, in the end, I wouldn't trade it for anything. And I didn...