Bush Cook

I love this song and the video is just comically grand.

Artist: Basia Bulat
Song Title: In the Night
Album: Oh My Darling

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My name is Sarah, and I have FOMO. As defined by my friend Nic, FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) is a non-life threatening, although exhausting disorder, whereby one finds it nearly impossible to say no to social outings, adventures, and various other commitments.

I don’t have it nearly as bad as some people do, but even the minor case I have developed is rather surprising at this stage in my life. I went through 4 years of college without once having a bout of FOMO. I said no to lots of fun things, and didn’t really regret it. But all of a sudden I find myself in the course of a week driving to Whitecourt, spending the night in Edmonton, coming back to Three Hills to hang out with my cool cousin for a couple of days. Getting up at 5 am to drive to Banff and ski for a day, coming home to watch a movie with my brother and our friend Valerie, working for two days, going for supper, going to youth group, playing basketball, painting a travel trailer, driving to Saskatchewan for two days, painting the trailer some more, going to watch another movie with friends, getting up early to teach Sunday School, going to church, inviting 20 people over to my house for a pancake potluck, going to youth group again and finally coming home and having the first spat of quite time to myself in what feels like forever.

I think going to work for a whole week will be restful.

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I had this moment last week where I felt like I’d crossed over a sacred threshhold of Three Hills-dom. Don’t ask me exactly what I mean by that, just follow along.

Last Saturday night I played Norbo ball for the first time. What is Norbo ball, you ask? Well, on the surface it’s just pick-up basketball with a few house rules, but in Three Hills, it’s more like an institution. It’s unofficialness and rather simple appearance in no way detract from the fact that it is a central pillar of all things athletic in this town. It has a standing reservation at the college sports complex and it’s spawned a Christmas invitational basketball tournament.

Norbo ball is named for its patriarch, Steve Norbo, a gentleman of a genuinely indeterminable age. I’m quite serious about this fact. I would say he’s older than 40 and younger than 69 and after that, your guess is as good as mine. Mr. Norbo, who’s hook shot is reknowned in this town, has been organizing basketball since at least when I was in junior high, but perhaps longer. College kids, junior and senior high school kids, and various other members of the community get together weekly and Steve numbers them off into teams.

While I played basketball in high school, I was never the star of the team, and being a bit self-conscious about my athletic abilities, I never went out to a Norbo ball night. Now, more than a few years since those games I spent warming the bench, I would’ve been even less likely to show up, if had not been for an auspicious invite. A few weeks as I was watching practices at the sports centre, Steve walked by and said hi to me (we go to the same church). He said he remembered me being a good player in high school (erm, yeah right, Steve) and that I should come play ball with them on Saturday.

Well, it’s hard to turn down an invite to Norbo ball, from Mr. Norbo, himself. So, Saturday night I nervously drove up to the gym and looked around to see if I recognized any cars in the parking lot (to my relief, I didn’t). Inside the gym I laced up my shoes and was walking towards the bench when Mr. Norbo intercepted me with a bounce pass. I turned toward the net, shot the ball, and mercy sakes, it went in! We warmed up for a bit and then lined up, shortest to tallest, for the requisite numbering off. I ended up on Jack’s team. Jack is like the vice-president of Norbo ball. If Steve were to leave us, I have no doubt that Jack would carry on the traditions.

Two hours later, I was sweaty and tired and dishevelled, but I’d had a great time. I still wasn’t a star, by any stretch, but I had got a few baskets and best of all, no one warms the bench in Norbo ball.

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So, I started this blog before I left to cook for a bunch of hungry treeplanters last summer, but you wouldn’t know that if you’ve only signed on lately. Actually, you would hardly know that I wasn’t comatose if you only signed on lately, because I post so irregulary. However, I have paid another $100-odd big ones to keep the domain all my own (did you know I’m actually the only “Sarah Weigum” on the internet), so I thought I should make use of it, and my ever-fruitful dream world provided me with fodder last night.

When I started cooking last summer I was plagued by nightmares about screwing up mass quantities of food for 50 rabidly hungry people armed with pointy shovels. My midday nap was usually the worst time for my little subconscious, which kicked into over-anxious gear during those lighter sleeping hours. Once I dreamt that I made a stew and forgot to put basically all the ingredients in it. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize this until I had served everyone and when I told all the planters that I would make some more food they just looked at me with this extremely disgusted expressiion and asked for some cereal. It was devastating. And heart-attack inducing.

While the intensity of these dreams waned as I got used to the job, it wasn’t until the season was over and I was hundreds of kilometres from the forests of northern Alberta and British Columbia that my dreams finally lightened up. My sleeping hours in late summer and fall were filled with tree planting dreams in which it was always day off and we were always going swimming or taking fun drives up steep mountain roads. Then, I basically stopped dreaming about the bush.

Until last night. I signed on for another season about a month ago, but apparently my neurotic subconscious just got the memo last night. It was no nightmare by any stretch, but it did involved having the wrong truck and poor communications and general frustration on my part, which isn’t all that far off from reality some days in the world of tree planting. So, I’ve got just over three months until I head out, and I’m gearing up for some super panic attacks.

Come along!

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My wonderful, hard-working, world-travelling Grandmother decided to take her four kids, and all their kids, and all their kids (okay, so there’s only one in the last category) to Banff for Christmas. So, for the first three days of 2009 I skied, played cards, hot-tubbed, water-slided and overindulged in Christmas baking with 20 people that I love dearly.

One night as a bunch of us were sitting in the hot tub, I looked around and thought about how cool it was that we were all together for the first time in a few years and that basically all of my Grandma’s direct descendants live in the same zip code at this particular moment in history. A couple cousins are off to college, but they still call Three Hills home and make frequent sojourns here on the weekend.

All of a sudden, my quaint, small-town reverie was interrupted by Grandma’s announcement that she was going to go down the water-slide. I believe her rationalization for undertaking such a daring act at the charming age of 74 was, “It’s not very often that a Grandma gets to ride down a water-slide with her great-grandson.” Well, that is quite true and since we are a family that doesn’t tend to take life sitting down, pretty much everyone who was there decided that if Grandma was going to take on the water-slide, who were we to be sitting on our butts in the hot tub.

Twelve of us climbed up to the top of the slide and cousin Kevin advises Grandma, “If you want to go slow, stay sitting. If you want to go faster, lie down.” Well, Grandma said she was going to stay upright, but one of the twists (or was it a turn) knocked her on her back and she went rocketing down on her back.

I followed Grandma down the slide, and boy am I glad that some people went before her, because by the time I got to the bottom, my mom, and a couple cousins were steadying a very topsy-turvey, spluttering and soaking wet Grandma. Apparently, she had gone completely under the water when she exited the slide and when she didn’t pop up right away, people got a bit panicky. Cousin Adeleen stuck her hand under the water and grabbed the first part of Grandma she found. Unfortunately it was an ankle. An ankle!! Grandma was eventually righted and returned to the world of oxygen - a lot of which was being used up by cousins and aunts and boyfriends freaking out and blaming one another for Grandma’s upset.

That was Grandma’s last slide ride of the weekend. I can’t say I blame her, but I sure am proud of her for taking the plunge.

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