New drugs a new baby and my girlfriend flips out and throws stuff

My girlfriend flipped out tonight, she was completely out of control, she threw our baby’s highchair across the kitchen, she was swearing and yelling at her six-year old son, but mostly at me, and accusing me of keeping our two-year old away from her.

I had just arrived at her home, to pick up Victor so he could stay at my place because my girlfriend has been sick and also because Monday and Wednesday nights Victor normally stays with me to give her a break.

As my girlfriend and I were getting Victor dressed, he screamed. He had seen his older brother touching one of his books, and Victor gets very possessive sometimes. So he screamed for less than a second. My girlfriend told Victor’s brother to back away from the book. I told her everything was fine, lets just get Victor dressed.

Victor screamed again, my girlfriend reacted by getting angry at her older son. Without looking back she told him, sternly, to get away from the book. I looked over, and he had already backed away. I told her again everything was fine, that Victor was just acting out, and that I could put Victor’s mittens on by myself.

Then she flipped out.

She immediately insisted her oldest go straight to his room, and straight to bed. Again, I tried to tell her everything was fine, that her oldest hadn’t done anything. And that’s when the swearing and yelling started. In less than ten seconds she must have said “fuck” twenty times. She was mostly yelling at me, but not about me. It was about how I didn’t understand what she was going through, about how people criticized her over how she was raising her oldest son.

About how people were blaming her over his behavioural problems. I tried to tell her her oldest had done nothing wrong, and that she was using profanity, and screaming right in front of him, and then it became about me. But about things I’ve never done. Like try to keep her away from our son.

I told her I was going to leave with Victor, and maybe he should stay with me for Tuesday (which had been an option before the freak out), and she escalated to the point where she was daring me to take both boys home with me.

After her oldest had run into his room, she locked herself in the bathroom for a few moments. Then she came roaring out, brushed by the highchair, turned, picked it up and tossed it across the kitchen where it slammed into the wall.

Which freaked me out, so I threw a mostly empty plastic Pepsi bottle I had in my hand across the hall and started yelling back. I was trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. Why was she verbally attacking me? Why was she verbally attacking her son? Who was telling her I wanted to keep her away from Victor? What the fuck was going on?

Her answer: when I had told her “everything is fine”, after she told her oldest to leave the book alone, I was questioning her authority as a parent, and criticizing her parenting skills.

She told me I had been avoiding her, not being close enough to her. But she, her oldest and Victor, had been with me overnight just this past Friday night, Saturday morning, overnight Saturday night and Sunday morning. Victor was with her and his brother all day Sunday, while I worked in my apartment, then Victor was with me Sunday night, Monday during the day, then with her for two hours Monday night, and now he’s here with me tonight.

When I tried to tell her I had no intention of ever keeping her away from Victor, she told me no one understands what she’s going through.

I had to leave. I tried to leave, but she kept accusing me of things. Mostly the same things. I kept trying to defend myself, and finally I just took Victor and walked away.

I’m still shaken up by what went on. I don’t react well when people suddenly start yelling at me. I was yelling back, but not making any threats or throwing insults (I do regret throwing the bottle, but in my defence it was not at her, or near her), again, I was just trying to figure out what was going on.

It’s irrational, outrageous, but not completely unexpected. In total the episode lasted a very long five minutes.

My girlfriend is three months into our second high risk pregnancy, and she’s had a couple of scares over the past ten days — some bleeding, an ER visit and some watery discharge.

And I have been a little distant over the past two weeks, because I’ve been dealing with my own health scare which may or may not be real.

I think some of it had to do with my being only able to stay long enough to pick up Victor and go. I think she had expected me to stay with her for the evening. But I couldn’t. I had eaten dinner with my mother, and forgot to take my new insulin prescription with me. So I felt like I had to rush home to take it.

As of last week I’m now on a second type of insulin. In addition to the slow release “Lantus” I’ve been taking at night, for the past few months, I’ve recently been prescribed “Humalog”, which I must take three times a day, ten minutes before I eat.

I’m taking the Humalog because a blood test I took in after my Lithium / insulin overdose last September showed my kidney functions are down to 37% of where they’re supposed to be. I just got the results two weeks ago. Which has freaked me out. But, according to my diabetes nurse, this was expected.

Nobody told me this, but a blood test last year showed my kidneys had slowed over several years to 42% efficiency. Allowing type-2 diabetes to go untreated for fifteen years will do that.

So the drop wasn’t unexpected, it was even in my file that if there was a drop I was to be taken off the Glyburide and put on the second insulin right away. But no one told me that either. So, until I could see my diabetes nurse, I panicked. I also became a little more self-absorbed than usual, a little more distant from my girlfriend than usual. Maybe a little more impatient.

But again, in my defence, I spent two weeks looking at my son and thinking “not only am I not going to see you graduate, I’m not going to see you potty trained”.

But apparently the second insulin, along with some blood pressure pills, will keep me going for a while longer. My blood sugar numbers have been entirely normal since I started taking the second needles — which is leaving me tired and a little irritable, so there’s that as well.

The pregnancy was mostly expected. It’s something my girlfriend and I had been discussing almost since we found out she was pregnant with Victor. We both wanted another, she wanted to try again sooner than I did. I would have preferred to wait another few years, to let her body heal and to find out how I could be as a father.

But she made the point of wanting to have her third child while she was still young. She’s thirty-four now. When ‘New One’ is ready for school my girlfriend will be thirty-eight (ish), and still young enough for school and / or a career.

So the due date is the first week of August.

And it is another “high risk pregnancy”, with all the unexpected hospital visits and surgical procedures and pain that goes along with it.

I am not exaggerating when I say her pregnancy with Victor pushed me, and her, very close to our physical and mental limits.

I made sure, during the summer, to repeat that over and over again. To make sure this was what she wanted, that she had to remember what had happened, to understand what was going to happen, and to be willing to go through it all again.

To be honest, when she did tell me in November that she was pregnant, I thought we were still kind of in the planning stage. She told me back in September-ish she had stopped using protection, but I was just coming down from a six week Lithium overdose where it made sense to me to stab myself 30+ times with a needle and give myself a third degree burn on my arm.

I wasn’t in a healthy state of mind.

I have, however, already come up with the coolest middle name ever.

Now I have to figure out where we stand after tonight.

…I called my girlfriend as I was finishing this, and we talked for a few minutes. The call ended with us telling the other that we love them. So that’s good.

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Tis the season for the reason

“Despite a commonly held myth that the Christmas season has the highest suicide rate of all the seasons, studies have proven that across North America, suicide rates are actually lower at that time of year. Studies suggest that while the holidays can bring up some very difficult emotions, they also tend to evoke feelings of familial bonds and these feelings may act as a buffer against suicide.”
The Canadian Mental Health Association

“Dear George; Remember: No man is a failure who has friends. Thanks for the wings! Love, Clarence.”
It’s A Wonderful Life (b/w 1946)

In a few hours I will wake up, drink a lot of orange juice, take my medications, turn on the TV, sit down and start to wrap the presents I bought yesterday.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever been so uninterested in Christmas. Maybe it’s age. Honestly, at the moment, I just want anyone interested in giving me a gift this year to just mail me a cheque.

This evening my girlfriend and I finalized the plans for the next four days. Her oldest son will be with his father for the afternoon of the 24th, plus one hour in the evening. In between those visits he’ll be with us for Christmas dinner.

Christmas morning we all have breakfast together and open gifts, then it’s off to my girlfriend’s parents for lunch and gifts for the kids. Christmas Eve the ex-husband takes his son for their dinner, while me, my girlfriend and our son, go to my parents for dinner.

Which will be the first time in almost two years that my son and my grandmother will be in the same room — it’s a long story, basically she’s evil and I don’t want her stink on my son.

There’s a big part of me that feels as though I’m caving in, that I’m going to allow my grandmother off the hook for the stupid, ignorant and malicious things she said — and still believes.

But, even if it was the right thing to do, boycotting last years Christmas, staying away from my family altogether, felt like a kick to the stomach.

I’m still not sure we’ll be going to dinner with my parents. I’ve told everyone “maybe”.

YouTube Alert.

I don’t know. My grandmother is sick and getting sicker. She’ll be ninety in a few weeks. She’s been abusive her entire life, and gotten away with it because no one was willing to stand up to her. At least not for long. My mother, after she found out my grandmother hit me, kept my brother and I away from her for a entire year.

My grandfather has spent years trying to distance himself from her. Finally, after 60+ years of marriage, he managed to convince her it’d be better to have separate rooms in the retirement home they live in.

Anyway. My grandmother was never very interested in Christmas either. When I was a kid, my father, who was a true believer in communism… it’s not that Christmas wasn’t allowed, or that he didn’t allow us all to celebrate Christmas, it’s that it wasn’t even considered.

After my mother escaped with us, Christmas — as a gift receiving experience — became a reality for my brother and I when I was eight-ish. But my grandmother — who grew up during, and in the middle of, the absolute worst parts of The Depression — never seemed to take it seriously.

It was always a family joke, my grandmother would wrap he gifts in a plastic bag with some masking tape, then make sure the price tag or receipt was in the bag.

I’m not, in any way, saying that was abusive. Just that it was like a constant drip from a tap you can’t fix. Everyone else taking the moment so seriously, wrapping everything, handing a gift solemnly to a loved one, and there’s someone in the back, smiling because they know it’s just bullshit. And here’s your socks wrapped in a grocery bag.

So I’m not sure how whatever Christmas spirit I’ve had has lasted this long.

A few years after we left him, my father settled down again and had two girls. With them Christmas was a reality. Christmas and birthdays, something else we missed out on, were always celebrated. Maybe not as a religious event, his common-law wife was one of the original Earth Momma’s, but they did all of the secular traditions — a tree, decorations, a supper, the gifts, the cards.

When we were finally on our own, my mother went through hoops like an acrobat (no alimony, no child support) to make sure my brother and I had presents under the tree. We usually spent Christmas with her parents, on my grandfathers hobby farm or, later at his cottage. But we usually had a little “Charlie Brown” Christmas tree in the living room, with some decorations and lights, in our home.

When I was eighteen we moved in with my mothers boyfriend, and his two young children. He has always been a Christmas maniac. Lots of gifts for everyone, a massive tree, games, lots of lights and decorations inside and out, huge meals and an annual street-hockey game with kids from around the neighbourhood.

It was pure culture shock. And I was right at that perfect age where anything new, everything better, was a reason to start a revolution. Christmas at home became something to resist.

…which is a common theme running through all of my Christmases. Resistance. I’ve always resisted the ‘group hug’ aspect to Christmas. I’ve always felt drawn to it all, but disappointed when I finally got there. Or something.

Thankfully this shit only happens once a year.

Now I get to have a few hours sleep before I help perpetuate the illusion that there are supernatural beings who watch our every move and judge us to be good or bad and worthy or unworthy of grocery bags full of socks, to a six-year old.

…speaking of which, I do use wrapping paper now. I went a long time wrapping gifts in newspapers, but after a few years I started to notice similarities between newspaper as a wrapping tool, and plastic bags. Kind of like I had become the person in the back of the room trying to show everyone it was a waste of time. Or something.

So… Merry Christmas. I hope you’ve got a reason for the season. Really.

YouTube Alert.

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A mostly rhetorical question regarding the sanctity of marriage

(b) Marriage is inherently a unique relationship between a man and a woman. As a matter of public policy, this state [Alabama] has a special interest in encouraging, supporting, and protecting this unique relationship in order to promote, among other goals, the stability and welfare of society and its children. A marriage contracted between individuals of the same sex is invalid in this state.
(c) Marriage is a sacred covenant, solemnized between a man and a woman, which, when the legal capacity and consent of both parties is present, establishes their relationship as husband and wife, and which is recognized by the state as a civil contract.
The Alabama Sanctity of Marriage Amendment (2006)

“Suppose a man marries a woman, has sexual relations with her, and then rejects her, accusing her of impropriety and defaming her reputation by saying, “I married this woman but when I had sexual relations with her I discovered she was not a virgin!” Then the father and mother of the young woman must produce the evidence of virginity for the elders of the city at the gate.
“The young woman’s father must say to the elders, “I gave my daughter to this man and he has rejected her. Moreover, he has raised accusations of impropriety by saying, ‘I discovered your daughter was not a virgin,’ but this is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity!” The cloth must then be spread out before the city’s elders.
The elders of that city must then seize the man and punish him. They will fine him one hundred shekels of silver and give them to the young woman’s father, for the man who made the accusation ruined the reputation of an Israelite virgin. She will then become his wife and he may never divorce her as long as he lives.
“But if the accusation is true and the young woman was not a virgin, the men of her city must bring the young woman to the door of her father’s house and stone her to death… In this way you will purge evil from among you.
Christian Old Testament / Jewish Torah: Deuteronomy 22:13-21

My question: If marriage is so sacred, why is divorce legal?

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Little Victor finally turns two

My son turned two years old today. It was about time.

It’s a strange thing. We had the family birthday party yesterday at his mom’s new home, all four of his grandparents were there, his brother, and great-grandmother (step), plus some of his mom’s friends. It was a great opportunity for everybody to see how far his development has come.

Everyone was impressed when he used a napkin to wipe cake residue from his mouth. At one point he walked into the living room, picked up a small paper plate, and proceeded to pile crackers and dip on it. Then he sat down in his little chair and munched away.

For most of the people watching, possibly including myself, it was akin to watching a monkey completing a Sudoku.

Or watching someone become a little human being.

Victor can spend long moments staring out windows, hands clasped behind his back, watching the world and appearing to write epic poetry to himself.

He also loves to dance.

And he can spend fifteen minutes at a time running around my apartment, dodging furniture, carrying random objects from one area to another area and stacking them on other random objects, laughing the whole time.

Laughing and smiling take up large parts of his day. One of his most favourite things is watching lights turn on and off. When I’m carrying him he’s always reaching out for light switches. When I bring him close enough he’ll flick the switch, then turn his head really fast, as if he wants to see the actual process of the light being activated. But he’s always just a touch slow.

Eventually, I believe, he’ll be quicker than light.

A few weeks ago he discovered the righteous power of “no”, which has become one of his favourite words. So now, when I reach for his bottle, he hides it behind his back, his forehead gets all furrowed, and he says “no-no no-no” until my arm goes away. Basically he has decided he’s had enough with this ‘people taking his stuff’ crap.

Which, over the past few months, has led to some confrontations with his older brother. Basically the only time Victor ever really freaks out is when the two of them are in the back seat of the car, and his older brother starts teasing him with his own toys.

I keep trying to explain to Victor’s older brother that, eventually, Victor will be much larger. But my girlfriend’s oldest son is only six-years old, and apparently they don’t teach kids in grade one about genetics.

But, back seat politics aside, they do love each other.

A few weeks ago Victor also started saying “hello” whenever the phone rang. Now he’s doing it when he really wants our attention, and he’s specific about it as well — “hello… momma” and “hello… daa-daa”.

So, two years ago, the water broke, and my girlfriend got to ride in an ambulance, and we both spent the weekend in the maternity ward of the Ottawa General Hospital, and Victor was born on 12 / 12 / 09, at 9:48pm. He cried a little, his eyes were open and active, and he kept sticking his tongue out, like he was tasting the air.

I cut his cord (with surgical scissors I later stole), he weighed 6lbs 9ozs, and because he was (slightly) premature he spent his first six hours of life in intensive care. I sat with him for two or three hours while he slept in the plastic box, all wrapped up in a tea towel sized blanket, and explained to him how awesome he was going to be.

And I was right.

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My son moves in with me and my editors think I’m the shizat

I have a new roommate. My girlfriend has some new duties at work, which means extra late nights, so my (our) son is now with me three to five nights a week in addition to the five days he has already been spending here.

My girlfriend and I still don’t live together, so up until now she’s been dropping him off at my place at 5am, then she drives to work. He has been staying with me for two nights a week for a few months now, we kind of started that to give my girlfriend a break — she has a newly six-year old son as well as a full time job lifting stuff.

But mostly I started the two-night-a-week thing so I could ease my way into full time parenting because, at some point, my girlfriend and I will be living together — either I’ll be well enough to get off disability, or the disability people will change the rules so the disabled can finally live with their families without having their income cut in half.

Even though it might be another few years yet, I’m betting it’ll be the former.

My fifth column will be published next week. The editors of the paper — it’s a 40-50 page weekly, tabloid style owned by MetroLand Media — have been tinkled pink about them all so far. I’ve spent some time reading the other papers in the city, and most of the other columnists are writing about their personal aggravations.

“Today I woke up, had a coffee and hit the same pothole on the way to work, I hate my husband’s cooking.” I’m paraphrasing all of them. So far mine have been very different. I’ve written about bullying; the relationship between me, my grandfather, and hockey; the stupidity of Steve Jobs and pseudo-science; something else and the latest one.

I’m not bragging… much, it’s just that mine are different.

Despite it being 2am and my son is crying because his bottle is warming up, and not in his hand, it has been a very peaceful couple of weeks*.

Which is a nice change from the bizarre chaos I’ve been living in since last February. I suddenly have a job I very much enjoy, albeit one that takes up about eight hours of my week and pays me not very much at all, and I have my son with me pretty much 24-hours a day, almost seven days a week.

My burn has turned into a scar, my bills are mostly paid, I’m pretty confident I’ll have enough money to last until my next cheque arrives, and my blood sugar numbers are awesome. And I get new glasses this week. It’ll be nice to see stuff again.

*…of course I could be delusional from lack of sleep, but as long as I don’t get a full nights sleep ever again I’ll never know the difference.

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Now virus free and twice as fast… that’s what she said

It has been a strange couple of weeks. After five years of almost constant use I forgot how to exist without my computer, so when it went away I felt confused and lost. Really.

I had a couple of viruses I couldn’t kill, and after uninstalling a printer there was an annoying Windows pop-up asking for a CD-ROM that I’ve never owned and, just for laughs, my Internet browsers and Windows Explorer mistook my photos for viruses.

So I carried my hard drive to a local computer repair shop some friends recommended. The guy behind the counter told me the job would take “two to four hours”. Ten business days later it’s back on my desk where it’s supposed to be.

In the five years I’ve had this computer I forgot how to watch television. Instead of having it on in the background while surfing the Web, listening to the TV as though it were a radio, for two weeks I had to sit on the couch with the remote and watch ten programs at once five seconds at a time.

Normally anytime I hear something interesting on TV — it happens — I could immediately Google it. Suddenly I was back to the stone age and using some kind of ink leaving device and the backs of old envelopes, hoping I could find them later on if my computer ever came back.

At the moment I’m writing this and listening to Willem Defoe and William Peterson in “To Live And Die In LA”. Everything feels right.

At one point, maybe on Day Three, I realized I haven’t played my PS3 in months. So GTA4 got me through a few hours. I think, mostly, I just walked around my apartment waiting for something to happen.

Something I did discover is looking after my son for 12-14 hours every day is a lot different without a computer around. More walks, more buggy rides, more playing with the Big Yellow Ball.

The repairs took so long because they had to reinstall Windows and backing up my files took two days. I have a lot of files — among other things: 3,000 photos and 8,000 mp3′s. Give or take. Nearly five years of basically constant use apparently left my Windows XP OS with a lot of broken panes.

The computer people also had a few other machines to work on. This is what they told me when I called them every day. I would have called them every hour, but my son and I were playing catch with the Big Yellow Ball.

It took me about a day to rebuild the directories and folders they moved. For a long, long time I thought I had lost every artist from Rev. Gary Davis to ZZ Top. But, thank God, the computer people had just divided my music folder into two.

I lost a lot of programs with the Windows installation, my Microsoft Office software is gone. I gave the disks to someone years ago, so now I have to use WordPerfect… which isn’t too much of a sacrifice I guess.

Getting the little things back to normal has been the most frustrating process. Like, somehow I’ve lost the “Hibernate” option when I’m turning off the computer. So now I have to use “Standby”. I guess that’s not a huge sacrifice either.

They also added a bunch of RAM. And now my computer is clear of viruses, it has been thoroughly cleaned on the inside, and it’s faster than light.

So, $180 later, I have my computer back on my desk and I’ll be eating soup for the rest of the month.

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