Birthday, Engagement, Sunflowers, A Powwow, The Queen, and Orange Shirt Day

I just passed my thirty third birthday. It wasn't very exciting, it's not a very pivotal year. It was on a Wednesday and I was working. I celebrated by eating a shawarma and Lee-Anne made chocolate peanut butter tarts.

When I was going over my birthday well-wishes on Facebook I noticed that I never updated my relationship status when we got engaged. When you update your status to "In a relationship", it sends a notice to the other person and waits for their approval before announcing it. So I thought that when I updated my status to being engaged, it would send a request to Lee-Anne.

But no, it not only updated my status, it also published on both my page and hers as an announcement. I was going to take it down since it was late at night and Lee-Anne was asleep, but I didn't know if it would make an additional announcement saying we broke off the engagement if I tried to edit it back. I was getting lots of support quickly, too, and I thought I was past the point of no return.

So Lee-Anne had a fun surprise in the morning with tons of congratulations pouring in. She was cool with it though.

We had EAFy Day recently. The past few years I've dedicated full posts to it, but this year I wasn't on the committee planning it. It was still pretty fun. We were in Cambridge and the theme was Extend-a-Family Feud. We rotated through different gameshow inspired activities throughout the morning. We had these fancy boxed lunches from a place called EVO, which I've mentioned before. I had the antipasto platter, which seemed exactly like the charcuterie board I ordered the last time. Oh well, it was still good.

We got two more tiny end-of-year sunflowers.

The top one grew out of one of the flowers that had their first blossom torn off. I made an attempt to save both of them, but only one survived. Despite having lost its flower, it grew another one! In the bottom image, we have a blossom that grew out of the tiny and slow-growing flower that survived getting its stem snapped in a storm earlier on. It seemed unlikely that it would bloom at all but it wound up making two flowers! So we wound up with five blossoms total, even though we lost two early.

We went to a Powwow held in Waterloo Park last weekend. It was cool because the different dance categories, which were Jingle, Grass, and Fancy were the same as the ones featured in a powwow that I went to in Chisasibi during the Katimavik program. The person hosting the event spoke a little on the background of each dance before they were performed, so I finally got a little clarity on the specifics between the genres. They also sold frybread tacos there, and Lee-Anne got to compare the real thing to the imitation I make at home. 

I should mention that Queen Elizabeth II passed. She was 96, having reigned for 70 years, which is longer than any other British monarch in history. This is significant to Canada, as we are technically part of the commonwealth and we use her image on all our money. Our Prime Minister called for a federal holiday for mourning. However, Ontario's Premier decided against this, so only government workers in my province got the day off.

I have to admit I wanted the day off, but if I'd got it I probably wouldn't spend the whole day mourning. I don't have anything against the queen, but I've always been a little confused about the purpose of the Royal Family in modern England, and Canada seems a step further removed.

Speaking of days that our Premier decided shouldn't be holidays, today is Orange Shirt Day, or the Day of Truth and Reconciliation. It is dedicated to reflection on the damaging influence of colonization on our Indigenous population, with a focus on the residential school system.

Lots of things have happened in September!