What a summer we’ve had in eastern Canada—one of the hottest on record. The best way to beat the heat is to hit the beach with your favourite floating toy.
This year on the July long weekend, my brother and his wife brought the kids the latest installment in our collection of exotic beach toys: a big yellow banana. Yes, riding the Big Banana has taken on a whole new meaning in the Swinton household this summer.
There have been epic noodle fights, rodeo rides and spectacular spills on that banana, especially the time Dave tried to ride it. I can’t help but wonder what the cottagers across the lake think when they look across and see The Big Yellow Banana.
Beach toys are a part of summer. We have a raft of old beach toys crumpled up in a deflated pile in our barn. Oh the memories. There was Homer Simpson, who one year we found floating at the other end of the lake in early spring. The Montreal Canadiens life raft—symbolic I think. And too many floating chairs to mention now sunk in the graveyard of water toys in our barn.
This week’s #HappyAct is to keep cool with a cool beach toy–whatever floats your boat. Ours just happens to be a big yellow banana.
Ed. note: As a kid cottaging on Lake Simcoe, I remember we used to dive off huge inner tubes that came from military truck tires. There was a guy in Port Credit who used to sell those inner tubes. They’re fantastic for jumping and diving, and rafting. If anyone knows where you can get inner tubes, post a comment.
Tim rocking out at our company’s Summer Celebration
Special guest blog by Tim Aylesworth
Laurie asked me to be a guest blogger a few months ago to cover while she is away on vacation and I eagerly said yes because:
I am a ‘Happy Act’ follower and have been since she started her blog.
She is my boss. (Ok, I would have done it anyway even if she wasn’t my boss).
Then I completely forgot about it until in late June when I was vacationing in North Carolina visiting my brother-in-law and family and I received a message from Laurie asking if I was still interested in writing a post. I’m no dummy so I said ‘of course’!
I had no idea what to write about. As a musician, playing music makes me happy but that was just a little too obvious and not everyone is cut out to play an instrument.
While in North Carolina, we decided to try Karaoke and it hit me. Everyone can sing and singing makes you happy! I had my topic. Maybe you only sing loudly and badly, but you can sing. And the perfect opportunity to be loud and bad is Karaoke! You might not want to inflict your singing voice on the unsuspecting public but you can Karaoke in the comfort of your home. Just fire up YouTube and there are tons of Karaoke versions of songs just waiting to be massacred.
And talk about laughs! We each took turns picking the next song. The teenage girls picked Bruno Mars ‘Uptown Funk’ which is a really fun song – I really got into it. The same teenage girls were then horrified watching their parents sing Meat Loaf’s ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light’ (all eight and a half minutes of it). We split the boys and girls up for ‘Summer Lovin’ from ‘Grease’ and we were surprisingly good.
My brother-in-law Dan picked ‘I’m Too Sexy’ by one-hit wonder Right Said Fred (he seemed to know all the words without looking). The teenage girls eyes were rolling again when Uncle Tim started ‘shaking his little tush on the catwalk’. There is video evidence of this that I hope never sees the light of day.
I’m usually a pretty good singer but I got really bad in hurry and I loved it. It was liberating just to belt it out with worrying about being in tune or even getting the words right.
So my #HappyAct advice to you is the next time you are at a party and or a family gathering and things are a little dull, go to YouTube and make your guests sing Karaoke for their supper. They might protest at first but soon everyone’s sides will be hurting from laughing so hard.
A word of warning. You might want to confiscate everyone’s phone first or you might become an unwilling YouTube star yourself.
Tim Aylesworth is a communicator and singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist who just released his fourth CD “Sending Out Waves”. Tim records his music in Rushin’ Draggin’ studio, his small but mighty home studio.
Ed. note: We are all HUGE fans of Tim’s music at work. He is such a talented musician. Be sure to check out his songs and support him!
What a summer we’ve had in eastern Canada—one of the hottest on record. The best way to beat the heat is to hit the beach with your favourite floating toy.
Happy Act 