Band of Broads.

About 11 months ago I started taking djembe drumming classes. They were every Friday evening for 2 hours and it was one of the most entertaining and fun things I've ever taken part in. I don't look like the typical djembe playing person...I don't have dreads, I'm not a hippie and I don't have any African roots. I just love the sound of a bunch of djembe drums being played, the rumbling beat that moves through the ground and the happiness that everyone feels while listening to them. I figured I would give it a whirl, and I was right. I loved it.

I was the only girl in the circle with 9 guys. Ha! High five to me, I looked pretty awesome and courageous coming in for my first lesson with a bunch of people that had been there before. I was extremely nervous and the fact that the teacher is a beautiful, tall, beautiful, black, beautiful man from Guinea didn't help. He was intense too...no kidding around, although he did crack up when I told him I was in fact a diabetic wearing an insulin pump and not some kind of new cell phone as he thought. I did as he instructed, followed along as best I could, made my place in the circle and learned a hell of a lot. The sound of us all in unison gave me goosebumps and I was grinning ear to ear while tapping away on my drum. This went on for a few weeks and then I got a puppy. My friday night drumming lessons have been put on hold ever since.

While in the lunch room at work today, my little friend S told me that she was starting ukulele lessons. She's small and ukulele's are small, so I think it will be a match made in heaven. This got me thinking about my love of the djembe. I've decided that I'm going to pick it up again, and maybe even buy myself my own drum. I'm sure my roommate and neighbours will be thrilled. I'm going to get back into drumming and I'm going to get good at it. Good enough to join a drumming circle.

My friend S and I are then going to start a ukulele/djembe band. Oh, and her friend plays an instument too, so it will be a trio. Her friend is Korean and plays the electric guitar, my friend S is Jamaican and will be playing the ukulele, and I'm a plain Jane whitey who will be banging on the djembe. Maybe I'll wear some big beaded jewelry or some awesome, flowing, colourful clothing to make myself look a little more exotic, to fit in with the group and all. Don't worry, I won't be braiding my hair.

We're going to be the most eclectic music group around. It's pretty amazing when you decide to step forward and take part in something you've always been interested in but never had the courage to try. A brand new beautifully hand-crafted djembe will be my Christmas present to me. Cheers to trying something new!

Things Said and Done, Betes Style.

Being a person that has diabetes, I've discovered many things about myself that put me in a category of my own. These are a few things that I've experienced over the years that a non-diabetic would probably never see (or do) during their lifetime:

1) Watch your finger spray a line of blood across your best shirt (this is after taking a blood sugar of course, my fingers don't just spontaneously combust).

2) Chug a HUGE glass of water mixed with about a cup of sugar.

3) Out of nervousness, tell your skydiving teacher (just before jumping out of the plane) that you're diabetic and that your sugar may drop severely while in the air and expect him to be okay with it.

4) Eat everything in the fridge in the middle of the night due to a low blood sugar, while staying over at your friends parents' place.

5) Pee in your bed (and I mean really pee your bed, like a litre of pee) in the middle of the night due to a high blood sugar. I was 21 years old when this happened and my boyfriend at the time was sleeping soundly next to me. Let me tell you, it was mortifying.

6) Tell your dentist you have diabetes and that's probably the reason why you have a cavity (didn't get away with that one).

7) Use your diabetes to get out of an oral presentation in boarding school and then have to sleep in the infirmary for two days so the school nurse could keep an eye on you.

8) Argue with your university professor about his use of Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes terms in front of everyone during a lecture. He was actually embarassed, and I felt bad...after the fact.

9) Become acutely aware of the amount of carbs in a banana, a pancake, a bowl of pasta, a slice of pineapple, a Starbucks hot chocolate, a cube of fudge (changes depending on size of said cube), anything really. I'm a whiz at carb counting yet I failed grade 9 math. It's still a mystery to me.

10) And last but not least, karate kick a co-workers chair while yelling "NO FOOD!?!?" after having run across the office to a department that usually has some snacks on their filing cabinet. It was very inappropriate and I got a few grumbles after doing that. Sometimes I get a bit aggressive and mouthy when my sugar is low.

All this to say that my diabetes has added a dash of colour to my life. 18 years of having diabetes can get tiresome at times but I keep on trekking and karate chopping, and I'm just fine. There are many more things that I've said or done while under the influence of too much insulin or too much sugar, but the ones listed are some of my favourites.

And for all of you non-diabetics out there: the next time you ask me if I'm going to go into a 'diabetic coma' right before I bite into a lovely piece of 'Death By Chocolate' cake, please watch yourselves. My sugar may be low right in that very moment and I won't be able to refrain from calling you a dolt and then eating my piece of cake, and yours too.

My insulin pump has been wrongly identified as a beeper among other things, on more than one occasion.