Moving.

“When I moved from Ottawa to Toronto [in 1998] I had two bags of clothes, some books and a [10-year old] radio. Four or five years later, when I moved [back] I had two bags of clothes, a few more books, a 486 HP computer and the same radio. This, right here, is the longest I’ve ever lived in one place…”
‘The 52 Places I Can Remember Calling Home; October 31, 2007 , Me.

Diane and I will begin living together in October. The main difference in my life between now and four months from now… noise and responsibility. The two things I hate most in life: noise and responsibility.

It’s something we’ve been discussing, occasionally, over the past year… she asked last year and I’ve been putting it off.

The problem, for me, has always been money. I asked my ODSP worker last year what would happen if I moved in with my girlfriend and, through his thick, regional French accent, all I heard was “…you’re boned. Half your cheque is taken away, then we tie raw meat to your genitals and release the half-starved rats.”

I finally went back a few weeks ago and had someone at the ODSP office explain the process to me, very slowly and using diagrams. On a bureaucratic level it still makes no sense to me, but I understand the process better now.

Because bureaucracy is inherently evil, if (when) I move in with my girlfriend, the government will take $0.50 off my monthly cheque for every $1 she makes, net.

Does that make sense? Not to me. Why am I being punished for living with my girlfriend, and why is she being punished for living with me?

If we don’t live together, I receive $1,036 through my disability pension.

If we do live together, because she makes minimum wage, I’ll only receive $600 (+/-).

That means, either she’ll be paying my rent every month, or buying all the groceries. Either way, I’m a burden on my minimum wage income girlfriend.

But the Ontario government would be paying my $1,036 if we were never to live together. So the incentive, financially, is to not live together. In which case, the government pays me $1,036.

Does that make sense? That they’d create a system where it makes more financial sense for us to live separately?

They used to have the same system for two people on ODSP who moved in together — in that case both their cheques would be cut and, basically, the two people would receive one cheque. But, either last year or the year before, they stopped doing that.

So now, two disabled people can live together and receive two full incomes.

But, because my girlfriend works in a factory for minimum wage, we can’t.

However… from the minute we’re living together the ODSP system will consider us to be ‘common law’. Which means… from day one she, and the two boys, will be covered under my dental plan, under my drug plan and all of the other ‘perks’ of being disabled in Ontario.

Like a pair of free eyeglasses every two years.

We’ve already made appointments with the dentist for Diane and the boys. Diane needs a root canal done, which would cost $1,200 under her current ‘too poor to have any health insurance’ plan. Right now she’s treating it with Advil and antibiotics. But, with the two of us living together, she’ll be able to go to the dentist four times a year, and have all the fillings she desires — you get a filling, you get a filling, everybody gets a filling!

We’re pretty sure her oldest son is going to need braces. His huge front teeth are coming in, and they look crooked to me. So, living together, we can get the work done.

There are also little weird bonuses that we’d get. Like ODSP will give Diane $100 for having a minimum wage job (!?).

Basically, with the money taken off, and the bonuses applied, I’ll be receiving $860 (+/- but mostly -).

So, once I had all of that explained to me, it just made sense. So I asked Diane if it’s what she wanted, she said yes, and I gave my notice to my landlord last week.

I’ve never lived with a partner… roommates, yes — alcoholic ones, one that huffed aerosols, one that waved a carving knife in my face — but I’ve never asked a woman I was dating to move in with me.

This will be my 53rd address. It’s a nice little place, there are two full-sized bedrooms, then a little half-sized one that I’ll be using as an office. There’s a full, mostly finished basement, half of which is set up for the kids as a play area. The rest is for storage and laundry. There’s also a secluded backyard that turns into a thicket of trees.

The only condition I laid out was that Diane’s relationship with her oldest son had to improve. I actually made that a condition a few months ago, and they are getting along better.

Diane’s a great mother, but she has some behaviours she learned while being abused by her parents. She yells, but when I tell her she’s yelling, she automatically stops yelling and says “I’m not yelling”. To her it’s ‘talking loudly’. And she’s right, she’s not ‘yelling’ yelling, but her ‘talking loudly’ is aggressive and angry. Her father does the same thing… he yells, all the fucking time. But when I called him on it, he dropped it and said “I’m not yelling”.

She also gets aggressive when she’s pissed at her oldest son. Like, she’ll stand right in front of him while she’s telling him “it’s not nice” to do whatever. To a tiny 6-year old that’s like having God standing there, telling you there’s no Heaven for you.

But I explained all of that to her. And she has gotten better. Much better.

I am apprehensive about this, mostly because I’ve got a great apartment right now — the windows are falling out, there’s no insulation and the toilet runs constantly, but it’s cheaper than dirt, and I can see mountains and a river and trees and rooftops from my balcony. I can also kick everyone out on a whim and have an entire, quiet, apartment to myself for as long as I want.

Having never lived with a partner before, I’m assuming I won’t be allowed to that.

Plus, I’ve lived here for almost eight years. Before living here, the average time I’d ever lived anywhere was less than six months.

…shit just got real, y’all.

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Monday Mental Movie Night: Mary & Max

“[Mary & Max] deals with themes including childhood neglect, friendship, the obscurity of life, teasing, loneliness, autism (Asperger syndrome in particular), obesity, depression and anxiety.” — Wikipedia

A very odd, very unlikely animated film from Australia that manages to be sickly-cute, alarmingly grotesque, and right-on at the same time – often in the very same scene.
‘Mary & Max’ review; October 2010, The Guardian

I love movies. Specifically, I love really good movies. In fact, five years ago, I wrote five huge posts all about my favourite movies.

It’s something I should update, because I have seen some spectacular movies since then. Including one intimate, claymation movie called ‘Mary & Max’.

I tend to stay away from movies that market themselves as being about “mental illness”, because Hollywood generally takes mental illness far too seriously.

That might sound odd, but when you make a piece of art about the disease, it generally comes out entirely wrong because everyone’s reaction and recovery from disease is unique. The disease itself is generally uninteresting as art, it’s how we react to the diagnosis and how we fight against it that I find interesting.

A movie like ‘Prozac Nation’ for example, spends the entire ninety minutes explaining to us how bad off Christina Ricci is… here’s Christina fighting with her mother; here’s Christina behaving badly at school; here’s Christina losing another friend; hey look, here’s a totally gratuitous five minute long camera pan over Christina’s breasts.

It’s been forever plus a day since I saw ‘Prozac’, but I had been so excited to see it because, to be honest, back then there were very few movies available for people with a mental illness to connect with.

…it’s like, back in the day, teh gayz had to adopt non-gay characters in movies, because there were so very few overtly gay characters. Prozac Nation tries to depict someone who is depressed, not someone with manic depression, but I was willing to watch for my behaviours in the main character, and desperately wanted to see some solutions.

From Variety Magazine: “…[Prozac Nation] can’t really get inside her character’s head to meaningfully explore the condition upon which it lavishes so much attention, a malaise about which the filmmakers are far more fascinated than they are ever able to persuade the viewer to be.”

And I saw very little of myself in the movie. But again, I did get to see Christina’s boobs. So I guess that was cool.

‘Michael Clayton’, on the other hand, was fantastic. The secondary character, someone with manic depression who stopped taking their lithium, was played perfectly by Tom Wilkinson. I was more interested in Tom’s character than I was in George Clooney, although George played the exasperated friend perfectly in his scenes with Tom.

So… I found this weird little Australian claymation movie a few months ago, called ‘Mary & Max’ — it’s about a young Australian girl being raised by an absentee father and an alcoholic, abusive mother, and; her accidental pen pal — a much older, autistic, overweight, chronically depressed, anxiety ridden, chocoholic, New Yorker shut in.

And it’s brilliant… like a mirror.

Unlike most movies with mental illness as a theme, the main characters in ‘Mary & Max’ are easy for me to identify with because their behaviours (at least some of them) and the lives they lead (at least some parts of them) remind me of the things I’ve had to work through, and how difficult it all was.

This movie managed to show me pieces of my childhood through some of the experiences of Mary, and some of the long term results of those experiences through Max.

It’s narrated by Barry Humphries, the comedian who plays Dame Edna Everage, and stars the voices of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Toni Collette, Eric Bana and Bethany Whitmore. It’s written and directed by Adam Elliot and produced by Melanie Coombs.

Mary & Max won the Grand Prize for Best Animated Feature at the 2009 Ottawa International Animation Festival… which is kind of a really big deal.

…with all of the success of ‘Mary & Max’, I assume there’s a prequel in the works. Maybe something along the lines of ‘Max & Mr. Ravioli’ …which, once you see ‘Mary & Max’, you’ll know why a) the idea on its own is funny, and; b) why that’d be really, really fun to see.

3 Quotes from Mary & Max

1. Max: “When I was young, I invented an invisible friend called Mr Ravioli. My psychiatrist says I don’t need him anymore, so he just sits in the corner and reads.”

2. Narrator: Max hoped Mary would write again. He’d always wanted a friend. A friend that wasn’t invisible, a pet or rubber figurine.

3. Max: “I was born Jewish and used to believe in God but I’ve since read many books that have proven God is just a figment of my imagination. People like to believe in God ’cause it answers difficult questions, like where did the universe came from, do worms go to heaven and why do old ladies have blue hair. And even though I’m an atheist, I still wear my yarmulke as it keeps my brain warm.”

Rotten Tomatoes Rank: 94%

[YouTube Alert] Watch The Official Trailer Here:

Mary & Max Links:

1. Writer and director Adam Elliot and producer Melanie Coombs.
2. Melodrama Pictures
3. Legit ‘Mary & Max’ downloads: Netflix; Amazon; iTunes
4. Adam Elliot’s YouTube account
5. Adam Elliott and Melanie Coombs discuss Mary & Max at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival
6. The Official Mary & Max site
7. Toronto Star (Canada’s largest circulation daily newspaper) review.

My [original] Favourite Twenty-Five Movies
(because ten would be stupid and thirty would be fucking annoying) [posts]

The First Five: Bladerunner (Directors Cut) (1992) (Daryl Hannah, Rutger Hauer); Tora, Tora, Tora (1970); All The Presidents Men (1974) (Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman); Our Lady of The Assassins (2002); Se7en (1995) (Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt).

The Second Five: The Americanization of Emily (1964) b/w (James Garner, Julie Andrews); Giant (1956) (Rock Hudson, James Dean, Liz Taylor); The Prophecy (1995) (Christopher Walkin, Eric Stoltz); The Filth And The Fury (2002) (Sex Pistols — doc.); Network (1976) (Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway, Robert Duvall)

The Third Five: Pi (π) (1998) b/w (Sean Gullette, Mark Margolis); Apocalypse Now (Redux) (1979) (Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall); The Killing Fields (1984) (Sam Waterston, Haing S. Ngor, Spalding Gray); Cool Hand Luke (1967) (Paul Newman, George Kennedy); Lawrence of Arabia (1962) (Peter O’Toole, Omar Sharif).

The Fourth Five: Run Lola Run (1998) (Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu); Three Days of The Condor (1975) (Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway); City Of Ghosts (2002) (Matt Dillon, James Cahn); Touching The Void (2003) (Joe Simpson, Simon Yates); The Third Man (1949) b/w (Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton).

The Fifth Five: Once Were Warriors (1994) (Rena Owen, Temuera Morrison); The Great Dictator (1940) (Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard); The Devil’s Rejects (2005) (Bill Moseley, Sheri Moon); The Thing (1982) (Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley); Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) (Yun-Fat Chow, Michelle Yeoh).

…check the posts out, there are actual movie conversations on each one. Or we can start one here…

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Grandfather update plus another death in the family and it’s really hot (Updated 11pm)

My grandfather’s youngest brother died Friday morning. It wasn’t a surprise.

My granduncle had a stroke last week, which led to the heart attack on Friday. But he had been… ‘damaged’ for a couple of years. He lost most of his vision three years ago, his hearing went last fall, he could barely walk, there were other heart problems.

Their oldest sister died a few months ago. So that’s it, my grandfather has outlived the family he was born into.

He was sad to hear about his brother’s passing, but not really surprised. He and his brother had their final phone call a few days ago, and they knew it was probably their last. They talked about golf for about an hour… my grandfather did all of the talking because my granduncle couldn’t speak at the time, but his oldest daughter was on the line, translating.

They played golf together until they were both into their 80′s, five years ago the Ottawa CTV affiliate sent out a reporter to cover the story of the two retired +80-year old brothers who played golf two or three times a week from May until October.

They were in competition with each other their entire lives. When they were kids they played on the same hockey team, and alternated leading their leagues in scoring every year. My granduncle flew bombers over Germany during WW2, my grandfather — who initially resisted conscription — was training to be a tail gunner when the war ended.

When he retired from the military, my granduncle was a major in the air force, and went to work for the government. During the 70′s he was working (Associate Deputy Minister of Finance?) for Trudeau’s Minister of Finance (who, I think, was John Turner), and then went on to work with the IMF, the World Bank and CIDA.

My grandfather, meanwhile, went to work in the private sector and spent every year of his life thereafter hating the IMF, the World Bank and CIDA.

I didn’t get to visit with my granduncle very often, but we always had great conversations and, of all of the elders in my family, he laughed the most. He spent a lot of his time away from his family, due to is overseas work, but managed to raise five daughters who are all mostly sane and successful.

My grandfather walked around the hospital ward on Friday. He had my mother with him, and he was using a special walker, but he made it all the way around without stopping.

He’s getting healthier, he’s eating, laughing more, he’s less… morbid about his chances of survival. I think some of it has to do with the doctors promising there will be no more invasive testing.

The doctors have ruled out cancer, and they can’t find any growths or lesions or whatever. So this week they’ll be moving him to the “rehab wing” of the hospital, where he’ll continue to get physio for his legs and all the attention from the nurses that he can absorb.

The problem is, he’s still incontinent — and they don’t know why — and now there’s a catheter involved. Which means, because he needs nearly-constant help getting changed, or getting in and out of the bath, the retirement home can’t accept him back. The hospital will allow him to stay there for up to three months, but after that either he’s living with us, or he’s in a nursing home.

And there just aren’t many nursing home spots available anywhere.

My grandfather is making plans for his return to the retirement home. He really misses his special chair (it’s plush and it has a remote so it can lift you out of it), and his LCD TV. But the doctor doesn’t see any chance of that happening.

My little younger brother and his wife and child came up from Toronto for a day-visit on Thursday. My grandfather was excited to see all three of them, especially his youngest great-grandson, who is seven months younger than my son.

I’m going to see my grandfather tonight, hopefully the nurses will let my son in to see him. My grandfather really gets a kick out of being a great-grandfather. He keeps asking how long until the two great-grandkids start playing hockey.

Anyway… it’s really, really freaking hot. So I’m going to post this, head over to the splashpad and hang out with my girlfriend and our son. Maybe I’ll update it later.

We’ve been close to 40C (104F) everyday for a week now. It’s 37C right now… which is nuts.

So, if it’s hot where you are, and you’re taking Lithium, make sure you get your blood tested. Heat + Dehydration = increased risk for a Lithium overdose.

11pm UPDATE: My girlfriend and I took our son to visit my grandfather. My mother and grandmother were already there, so we didn’t stay long. Victor shared his chips with his great-grandfather — he just walked up to the bed, pulled out a chip, and held it out for my grandfather and said “…chip?”.

Which made my grandfather smile.

A few days ago, the president of the engineering firm my grandfather worked for showed up. They had been feuding since the company was sold for parts to a French firm back in the low 80′s. But his daughter, and my mother, conspired together to get the two of them in the same room together.

They spoke about the old days for a couple of hours.

My mother contacted the family of an engineer my grandfather hired back in the 70′s, and he showed up today. He brought some of his work books, which had photos of all my grandfathers friends and colleagues going back to the 1950′s.

That was in the morning, my grandfather was still crying when we got there this evening.

It was a good day for him.

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I waited forty-two years for someone to take this photo

I could stare at this photo for days. Maybe longer.

Last week my girlfriend and I got tired of being stuck in our little village. So, while her oldest son was with his father on their court-mandated visit, the two of us packed up Victor and headed for Ottawa for shawarma at Shawarma King on Bank Street.

It’s kind of our place. I introduced my girlfriend to the delights of a beef plate when we first started dating. Now she’s addicted to the garlic.

Before we got to the restaurant we walked up Bank Street to Parliament Hill. The four of us go for regular walks in our village, but there are only so many variations on ‘there and back again’ here. And we’ve pretty much done all of them twenty times over.

It was the first time she’d walked that far down / up Bank Street, which still seems weird to me. I lived in Ottawa for ten years before moving to Toronto, and then back here — with a few stops in between, so Bank Street between the Glebe and The Hill has been ‘the back of my hand’ familiar for most of my life.

There’s even a building on the corner of Bank and Something that my step-father (the architect) designed. So it was fun to play tour guide.

When we got to Parliament Hill we sat around the Centennial Flame — Victor managed to toss a few chicken McNuggets into the flame, which I thought was hilarious — and I took some photos of my girlfriend and our son sitting on the edge. Then she insisted on taking one of us, and this photo happened.

And I think it’s just… awesome.

I have a few other photos of the two of us, which my girlfriend also took, that I really like. Including one that I like almost as much as this one. But most of the shots of us are… not good. Either my gut’s in the way, or it looks like I haven’t washed in a week, or something’s just wrong.

But this one… that’s what the two of us look like all the time in my head.

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