Goodbye, Pony

(Written Saturday, January 29th, 2005)

It is with a great deal of sadness and no small measure of grief today that we unexpectedly announce the untimely demise of our Ponydog.

Since late last summer Pony snapped twice at children who approached her unexpectedly when she was lying down, and once at me when I was wrestling with her on the floor. Until the first incident last August, we had been completely certain that she was flawlessly trustworthy with children and adults alike, and we'd taken her into the homes of friends who had children and encouraged kids in the park to pet and play with her if they showed an interest. We told people about the breed and that Pony was tolerant and good-natured (if a bit aloof in comparison to a Retriever or a Labrador), and they should have no qualms about approaching and touching her whenever they liked. When she barked and scratched at our friend's son last summer it was an enormous shock and completely rattled our foundation of trust in her. Subsequent to that first incident, we were told by every dog expert we approached (and we approached several) and dogloving friends alike that the startle reaction we'd seen in her was completely normal, and it was entirely within the realm of regular and expected dog behaviour. That a small child in an unfamiliar environment was probably seen as another dog infringing on her territory. That the old adage "let sleeping dogs lie" was true and we were naive to think otherwise or expect the breed to be "above" such things. These testimonials aside, we thought that even this isolated snapping tic was very incorrect for the English Setter breed and as such it was troubling to us on a number of levels. However, we were repeatedly assured that it could be expected from any dog, and so we took precautions and tried to mitigate against it by warning people not to approach her without calling her name, and by keeping her on-leash in other people's homes when children were around. As time passed the few incidents began to seem like isolated circumstances that wouldn't recur.

However, since the pregnancy became more advanced (at about the 5-6 mo. mark, with its attendant decrease in physical agility and noticeable size-of-tummy changes) we noticed instances of being given the hairy eyeball and some serious stubbornness on Pony's part. We explained it to ourselves as adjustment to the new at-home stability after our time away from Canada in November and the many new environments we'd taken her through all year. In preparation for the arrival of our first child in March, before Christmas we purchased an excellent book, How To Be Your Dog's Best Friend, written by American monks in upstate NY who raise German Shepherds. We began to implement a more rigorous routine of discipline and praise so that we could best prepare Pony for another small creature arriving in her midst in a few months, and to assure ourselves that we had as much possible control over, and trust in, her at any given time. We also joined an obedience class and Pony was the star of the show, partly because she would do anything for treats. Since official obedience training involves a food-as-motivation, Pony was a very quick study and came along in her discipline exceedingly well, and was a favourite of the training instructor. Here at home we re-instituted the box kennel and she was calling it home during meals and when she'd rest in the back hallway. She had completely acculturated to the dog bed we'd bought and she wasn't stealing things off the kitchen counter anymore. In short, things were going really well, and just two nights ago we were reflecting on the year and crowing to each other about what an incredibly successful adult-dog-adoption Pony had been, and how great she was fitting in to our lives, and about how wonderful she was, and how far she'd come since she arrived in November 2003 when she was shitting all over the carpet and barking for hours non-stop every time we left the house. Despite the few – and again, what we were told were normal and to-be-expected – startle-reaction outbursts over the last eight months, overall Pony was a sweet, lovely, funny, charming, loving and gentle dog. Just last night Pony clambered up onto the couch, burrowed in between us, and buried her head in my elbow and sighed with cartoonish contentment. We loved our dog Pony and she loved us.

Very unfortunately, it turns out that Pony wasn't, in the end, a good dog. Something, and we don't know what, but something wasn't quite right in her. Unfortunately, our earlier gut suspicions about the quirks in her temperment were correct. And, sadly, as a result, today we had to have her put down.

This morning as usual I got up, fed Pony and put her out, and then sat with her on the couch while I did my morning's email before heading out to Saturday prenatal fitness classes. A few hours later Turner got up. First thing, he went to greet Pony on the couch, as always. She was awake and saw him coming, thumping her tail, as usual, at his approach. As he put his face down to greet her and was rubbing her haunches, she suddenly snapped at him without warning. Turner pulled back, and pet her a few times along the belly, reassuring her, telling her that things were okay, hello, good morning, did I startle you? She seemed calm and unperturbed, and like he's done a hundred times in the past, he bent his head down to hug her.

With no warning, our dog exploded, attacking Turner without provocation: she went at his face, tearing apart his upper and lower lips, biting out a big chunk that we later took with us to the hospital. She scratched down his chest and left a weird deep bruise, which Turner doesn't remember getting, on his arm. He said it all happened very fast, that the attack was over before he even registered what was going on. Immediately Turner stepped up to discipline Pony as per our monk book instructions, but as soon as he could taste the blood, he knew that in those few crazed seconds, Pony's fate was decided. We'd talked about this hypothetical situation a few weeks ago: she was jittery at times for no reason and could possibly hurt someone with her startle-reaction scratches. What would it take to seal Pony's fate? One more snap? Two more? But this was worse, far far worse, than any small scare we'd anticipated based on past events – this was a violent and disfiguring assault. Period. Before the dust had even started to settle, Turner already knew Pony was gone.

After a look in the mirror assured him he'd definitely need to go to the hospital for stitches, Turner called my brother (who lives three doors down) and my father for help. Ten minutes later, I arrived home from my classes into a scene of blood and shock and disbelief, my brother in the doorway to hold things together (and, I think, to catch me had I fallen over at the sight of T's face) with my father pulling up in front of the house, on his cel phone, telling the on-call Rockyview Hospital Emerg docs that we were on our way.

Turner's face needed 40 stitches by a plastic surgeon, and in the end they couldn't use the chunk of Turner's mouth we brought to the hospital on ice. The doctors project that Turner's lip will start looking relatively normal within a few months, though right now he looks like he was in a car accident, or in a serious post-football-match-bar-brawl, or – well, as though he was attacked by a vicious dog. Overall however, he looks a lot better than we anticipated, given the state of his face before we went to the hospital. But he'll be taking everything he eats for the next week or so through a straw, and he earned some serious double-take stares from people when we were out getting T3s and an ice pack at the drugstore last night. He looks bad. But the hardest part started when we had to go home and face having to get rid of Pony.

The breed standard for the English Setter is mild mannered, polite, social, excellent with strangers and children, exceedingly gentle. We chose the English Setter breed specifically for its docility and compatibility with families; this breed is known to be the "gentlemen among dogs", and it is essentially unknown to hear of one being involved in an attack on people. However, although Pony was all the things on that breed standard list, it is clear that somehow she was also the purebred lightning strike of bad luck: an unpredictable and increasingly violent and dangerous animal.

To the end, we loved our shithead dog. We are grieving her departure. But we adopted her and fed her and walked her and played with her, and we took her across the country and bought her the good treats and nuzzled her and hummed with her in the mornings and before meals, we were fair and affectionate dog owners and we were careful to train her to be the best dog she could be to share our home and lives --- and I say without melodrama that she gravely betrayed us both. This afternoon I talked to the mother of the woman here who originally put us in touch with Pony's breeder, the mother herself a breeder of golden retrievers. She suggested that Pony was reacting to my pregnancy, and that she was displaying a protective testy response. Sure, me being pregnant might have been a factor. Like I said, we saw that she was having moments of weird edginess in the last while during which we didn't bug her to participate or heel, but in general she was a better, more obedient, happier dog since we settled in at home and started the new disciplines and routines following Christmas. The pregnancy was only one factor and it alone couldn't have caused our dog to attack and take a chunk out of Turner, of all people. Turner: her favourite person in the world, the person for whom she'd dance around and moan and wail when he'd come through the door after being out a few hours, the person for whom she'd come and sit and stay, the only person with whom she'd seriously tug-of-war, the person whose leg was the humping instrument of preference, the person who fed her dinner every day and walked her every day and sang to her every day. She'd snapped at me once, a month ago, but she savagely attacked and maimed Turner. It was not an accident. It was not a startle-reflex. She was not defending me, the pregnant person - I wasn't even home. It's heartbreaking, but our dog was not right, and today she went way, way too far.

It could have been something, an incident in her puppyhood or from prior to coming to us - we don't know. It could have been that her pedigree was simply too inbred and she was the last of a bad line. Again, we don't know. The breeder's telephone number has changed, the local contact woman's number has changed, and the mother I spoke to today was mostly preoccupied during our call with repeating that Pony was legally our dog and that neither she nor her daughter could be held responsible for an individual dog's behaviour - and sure, fair enough. They didn't breed Pony and they didn't raise or train her, and are not responsible in any way for the incident. But it wasn't the call we were expecting; I was trying to contact the local woman who helped me meet Pony because she'd made me sign a document when we adopted Pony guaranteeing first right of refusal if ever we wanted to give her away or have her destroyed for our own reasons. We thought that the breeder and her contacts would be alarmed and professionally interested in the anomaly of this part of their breed line as demonstrated in this incident with Pony; further, I thought I might be obligated to notify our contact woman here of our intention to have her put down. We're not thinking about legal action or anything like that – but we were desperately trying to make sure that we'd covered all our bases and had tried all avenues to prevent the inevitable before actually taking her to be put to sleep. If the breeder had wanted to take Pony back, and – we didn't know... place her on a farm? One that didn't have any children? Or... with a hunting operation? I don't know... but if she wanted her, we would have handed Pony over to the local contact as per the agreement. However, I was told that Pony was my dog and that I could do with her what I wished.

In part, we were lucky and prepared, insomuch as we knew exactly what needed to be done, and we were in total agreement about everything. But it was still pretty fucking hard. When we got home from the Rockyview, we called the 24-hour Animal Hospital and made the appointment to have Pony put down. We packed up all her stuff and hid it from ourselves in the basement so we wouldn't have to look at it once we got back from the clinic. When I thought about what Pony would ask for if she could have a last request, the answer could only be one thing. So we sat down at the kitchen table and methodically fed her treats, one after another after another, until she couldn't eat any more. (She'd always seemed insatiable, and we'd wondered aloud many times about her theoretical capacity for treats. It turns out that on an empty stomach, she went through two whole sausages of wet Rollover, about half a bag of marrowbones, at least a dozen chew sticks, and a big handful of smaller treats before she wouldn't take any more.) Then she sat on the back porch in the slanting late-afternoon January sunshine, looking off into the next yard while we got ready to leave. I think she knew, in some way, what was coming. We were wandering through the house, upset, hugging, breaking down, moving again, mainly staying away from her. Pony knew something was up, and it was clear she knew that she was the cause.

At the clinic they were excellent: we were crying as we arrived; they rushed us to a room; the nurse took Pony's stats. We had about three minutes' alone time to say goodbye. Then the doctor came in, put a leash on our Ponydog, and quietly lead her away. We turned and left, and broke down again in the parking lot. We stood out there by the car for a long time, sobbing into each other's shoulders.

There was no question in our minds about Pony and her fate, and we're sorry it took us this long to have to face what needed to be done. Emotionally, it would have been so much easier if this had happened before we loved her, before we knew her. All those "experts" and doglovers who gave us advice and told us her reactions were normal, well - we're sorry we listened to them. We should have had her put down last August after the first incident, because things obviously escalated despite our efforts and all our love. What initially seemed like a circumstantial reaction to unfamiliar surroundings was actually the beginning of something much worse. Slowly, quietly, Pony was becoming a dangerous animal capable of drawing blood and sending a person to hospital. All the while, we thought she was getting better and better, becoming more and more "our dog", adjusting and settling in, a lovely and beautiful dog who trusted and loved us.

In another six weeks we will have an infant in our home. This could have been a serious attack on our baby child. Pony badly scared two children this year when she scratched and barked at them. Both those incidents were rattling and deeply foreboding, and never should have happened in the first place. Upon reflecting on this final and terrible attack, we are facing the reality that however unlikely, Pony was unpredictable to the point where it could have been any of you - you who so kindly took care of our dog for the weekend or the evening or while we were away on the book tours, or who welcomed us and her into your home for a visit or for the night. I can't escape the sense that by bringing our friends and families into contact with a dog we thought was sweet tempered and harmless, we inadvertantly put them in harm's way and they could have been the victim of this assault. And I am – we are – so, so sorry.

In a terrible twist of irony, we just finished the final edits to a piece that will appear next month in 2 Magazine of Toronto about the joys of owning a dog - we co-wrote the article, which is very specific and laudatory about Pony and our lives and adventures with her over the last year and more. And now, this.

We know we did the right thing, the only responsible thing to do. But we are sad for all kinds of conflicting and mixing reasons tonight. We miss our Ponydog.

RIP Ponydog, April 13, 2001 - January 29, 2005

Categories: Pony

Comments [34]

Pony Would Like You To Know

...That she gives this whole pregnancy thing a big ppppphhtttt!

Categories: Pony | Pregnancy

Comments [0]

33 Week Checkup

Blood pressure check - 110 over 72 = normal.

Taking careful note of the ha-ha pregnancy poster: Third Trimester Empathy, thy name is Turner.

My favourite of the panels. It's funny because it's true...

Fetal heartbeat test with the schmancy Doppler thingee: Schmaltzywal's at 140bpm.

Categories: Pregnancy

Comments [2]

Epidural Terror

I fear the epidural. The needle in the spine and the bladder catheter: lord.

Turner, on the epidural: “You know, it's not me who'll go through this, but it does seem that women who have given birth all say the same thing about epidurals - 'They're so great! Get one! Why wouldn't you get one when you could get one?' And so on. There's this near-universal idea that epidurals are awesome and god's gift to childbirth. You aren't squeamish about the idea of an enema, or blood, or any of the rest of it. It's the pain management miracle that freaks you out. You do see how that doesn't really make a lot of sense, right?”

I guess.

But I still lie there in bed, thinking about the bladder catheter sometimes. Here, I'll even sick you out: think about it, try - a catheter that they shunt into your bladder. You can't tell me it isn't a chilling prospect.

Categories: Pregnancy

Comments [11]

Upsidedownwise

I haven't investigated the actual reason why this is - like, the actual physiological reasoning behind the phenomenon, but it sure is a truism that you can't bend over at this stage of pregnancy without totally losing your breath. I turn purple in the face whenever I try to tie my shoes, or change the kitchen garbage bag. And you can't get away from needing to do so, of course - because c'mon, life goes on and you have to get on with errands and such. So I bend for as long as I possibly can, trying to get the laces done or a carpet pulled straight or whatever it is I'm doing, listening to myself grunting through a few inhale-exhalations; and when I straighten up it feels like I've broken the surface after struggling up from the bottom of a lake and as though my eyes are going to pop out of my head. Can't wait for labour.  

Categories: Pregnancy

Comments [12]

Wurds: Incarcerably

Incarcerably: [in·car'cer·ab·ly, adv. (n-kärs-rbl)]  Able to be tried before an appropriate court and found qualified for incarceration.

(Contextual origin - discussing a wedding involving a couple obviously doomed to eventually break up on the grounds that the woman was crazy - “She's insane. Like, diagnosably. Incarcerably.”)

Categories: Vocabulary

Comments [11]

Undepressed

Scene: Twilight, a January Friday afternoon. Dad and Ashley are driving home from Trail Appliances, after buying the middle-of-the-line Bosch DX dishwasher in white.

Bruce: [using the concerned voice] ...What's wrong? You've been pensive. What are you thinking about there?

Ash: [breaking out of fuzzy reverie wherein watching the steam rise from the industrial chimneys en route was utterly fascinating] Huh? Oh. Absolutely nothing. ...Not a damn thing is going on inside my brain, not one synapse firing.

Bruce: You've been a bit down these days.

Ash: I'm not down. I'm pregnant. I'm totally exhausted in the afternoons these days, I told you. My mood is fine, but my brain isn't working. I think my IQ is down to single digits most of the time.

Bruce: I don't know...

Ash: Really. Turner leaned in to look in my ear last night and reported that he could see empty bookshelves, gathering dust.

Bruce: [laughing]

Ash: It's a phase. Apparently lots of pregnant women get brainless at this stage. At least half a dozen times a day I turn around and can't remember what the hell I'd been doing, or why.

Bruce: [laughing] Well kid, you're going to have to muster up some energy soon! [implying that once the baby's born she won't have time to be tired and fuzzy]

Ash: Yeah. Heh.

Bruce: ... I think there's a measure of endogenous depression at work, though. It gets you down. I've observed this in you.

Ash: Uh...

Bruce: I've been watching you, you're down lately, you're not doing much, you're sad.

Ash: [knowing she's not sad, but too pooped to fight this line of discussion too vehemently] Uh, I'm - uh, really, I'm not sad. I'm pregnant. I'm tired. I might agree with you if this was my regular, pre-pregnancy life, but as it is I'm knocked up. I just came off working for five months on the book tours and we just finished Christmas. I'm in the house arrest stage of the pregnancy. It's -26C and it's dark 18 hours a day.

Bruce: Your dad knows you. There's something about it, I see it, I've seen it in our family. The drag-your-ass-out-of-bed-and-go-to-work-every-day, heh-heh-heh [mimes jogging up a hill using the steering wheel], having to keep on keeping on, let's go, 'we can do it!' - that effort. I understand. It's hard.  

Ash: [giving up, perhaps conceding a measure of truth to what he's trying to convey, but still pretty certain that pregnancy is responsible for the bulk of the lethargy] ... Hehhhh. Okay.  

Later: Ashley is home from the ride with Dad, dragging around the kitchen making a drink of soda water with ice. It's taking a long time.

Turner: [emerging from his study after a few hours' of work, stretching, looking over at Ash, noticing something] ...What's wrong?

Ash: ...Huh? ...With me?

Turner: Yeah. Everything okay?

Ash: Yes. Fine. Everything's okay. You okay?

Turner: Yeah, yeah - but you look like something happened. Are you sad? Something wrong?

Ash: Dad said the same thing. I got told that I'm “endogenously depressed”. Nothing's wrong. I'm tired. I think my face looks tired. Things are fine. [Ash very slowly opens the freezer to get the ice cubes, very slowly puts them into the drink] I'm fine in the mornings. If you people want to see me with energy, you'll have to start paying attention in the mornings. Dad can come over here before work if he wants.

Turner: [laughing at Ash's lethargy with the ice and the attitude] Okay, okay.

Ash: [very slowly shutting the freezer] Like, I've got nothing, here. [shows palms, held out] Nothing. I got nothing at this point in the day. It's totally natural - I'm tired, and I can't work up the energy to care what the hell people think. I don't care about anyone except you, these days, and even you I don't care that much about.

Turner: Thaaat's nice.

Ash: [laughing] You know what I mean. It's a phase. We're on day three here of me being totally wiped out all the time. But c'mon. Seven months pregnant. It's cold outside. It's dark. There isn't anyone out there [pointing out the front window, at the citizens of Calgary en generale] who's at their most productive this week.

Turner: [abandoning this line of discussion] I loooove you...! [stepping forward to kiss Ash's forehead]

Ash: [standing dispondent, but sardonic-smiling] Yeah yeah.

Categories: Family | Married Life | Pregnancy

Comments [12]

Wurds: User-friendlyize

User-friendlyize: [us·er·friendly·ize, v. intr. (yzr-frndl-z)]  To make something user-friendly.

(Contextual origin: discussing a program found online that will pull your Yahoo mailbox into Outlook -- the downside being a prerequisite knowledge of Perl and some programming experience to get the damn thing to work, which obviously puts those of us unfamiliar with the hardcore geekery of computer work at a distinct crick-in-the-bumhole disadvantage. Hence the need to “user-friendlyize” said program.)

Categories: Vocabulary

Comments [0]

Maternity Benefits, Courtesy of the Government of Canada

So today I went down to HRDC, officially Human Resources and Development Canada but otherwise known as "The Unemployment Office". We're broke; Turner's writing pitches to everyone under the sun, Random House and Da Capo have made bags of money on Planet Simpson but none of that money has yet to trickle down to us, and I'm basically incapable of even tying my shoes or doing double-digit arithmetic after 11am at this stage in the pregnancy, so my earning power has basically dropped to zero. But then Sister Ains called a few days ago with a great idea that had been vaguely, guiltily banging around the back of my mind for a few weeks: unemployment insurance, or EI. She made a pretty great case - I paid it in, why not get it back out?

Now, we grew up with a mother who worked through our childhoods as the head nurse on the St. Boniface Hospital psych ward in Winnipeg. She went on to teach nursing at Mount Royal College and the Holy Cross Hospital in Calgary. In our teenage years Val became an aerobics instructor and at the height of her second career she was teaching twenty nine classes a week (do the math) and went to the Canadian Aerobics Instructors Championships. Twice. We heard a lot about how hard it was to raise “three little kids“. We got our clothes from the second-hand store for a long time, and we drank powdered skim milk. Our dad is a doctor and eventually made some substantial coin, but in our younger years all the money was spoken and accounted for. As I got older, I sat through a number of speeches about how our mum always paid in to unemployment insurance, and never once collected it, even when she needed it. It was a matter of pride. If you can make do without, you make do without. Period.  

The times have changed, haven't they? We came of age in the middle of the recession-paralyzed 1990s, when you were fricken lucky to get a summer job pulling gum off the floor of the Saddledome concourse for $4.65/hr. Lots of us have a ridiculous amount of education because it was safer to hide in school than get stomped on in the service industry, B.A (Hon)/M.Sc. in one hand, and tray of lattes in the other. And I know so many people who are now 30 and saddled with crazy debts from school and cars they needed because there was no affordable housing anywhere near the jobs, while their parents, whose education was paid for by the government (all 50+ nurses and teachers, please stand up), take golf vacations and sneer at how lazy and undisciplined are the kids these days. The government froze hiring for all of the 1990s, and cut medicare, and cut education funding, and basically handed Canadian Generation Xers the bill for balancing the budget at the end of the century. Greeaaaaat. That's great. Cheers.

Now it's 2005. Last year in June I quit my job with the government, after working with them for almost two years. And it was hard to quit, because I liked my clients and I believed in the bottom line and I was good at my work, but in the end I chose my long-term career and my marriage, and I left my job to follow my husband and work on the tour for his international bestseller.  

But all good things must come to an end, and now the tour is done. It was great, I learned everything I ever wanted to know about book publicity but was afraid to ask, and I have no regrets. It's all chronicled on the tour blog archives of www.planetsimpson.com and elsewhere in the site itself. But I can't deny that I am now unemployed. Sure, I'm ready to take in some proofreading and editing anytime you want to send work my way (I guarantee I can make anything you give me sound better, and at very reasonable rates!), but in terms of official employment, there's not so much. And as is abundantly documented on this site, I'm seven months pregnant, and like I say, the brain it just don't rev that well these days. About the only job I could do and do well would be my old job, since I knew it backwards already. Alas, they hired someone to replace me months and months ago.

So. Where does that leave Ashley and Turner? The Liberal government has posted yet another surplus year, and the Employment Insurance coffers are at an all-time high water mark. They keep bragging about this fact in Parliament. Turner and I have had a lot of talks about money lately - where it's coming from, which projects get priority. That a baby is expensive. Etcetera. And it's become increasingly clear that physically I'm basically out of commission from now until well after the kid is born. Much nailbiting and pacing ensued. A small anxiety attack in the car yesterday after the doctor's appointment.

But Sister Ains had called reminding me about government unemployment benefits, and I spent a few days thinking it over. It seemed to me that although I was raised with certain beliefs, and we're not actually starving to death, when it comes right down to it I am willing to allow myself to be assisted by the social safety net, particularly since getting money from employment insurance would let me buy that Swingomatic for the kid, and maybe even sign up for the Prenatal Yoga class on Thursdays. I worked all year, for the government and then for the book, and now I am unemployed. I am nine weeks away from my delivery date, and getting up and down the basement stairs to do laundry is a major accomplishment. (I do of course realize that there are many, many women who work right up until they give birth, and all the power to them. You could argue that they're better than me, I won't stand in your way.) I'll work from home, but I just can't see anyone in their right mind giving me a regular job at this point, knowing full well that in two months I'm going to quit.

So after much thinking and soul-searching and mournful glances at the bank account statements, I packed up all the necessary documents and info, swallowed my parentally-endowed pride, and today went hat in hand to ask the government for unemployment benefits.

In the end, after three and a half hours, two lost internet applications and the resulting crying jag, and a great deal of typing, I was all signed up. And not, after all that, for employment insurance. For maternity benefits. Something I'd never even thought of: 50 weeks of maternity and parental payments at 55% of my old salary. It turned out that I qualified for maternity a few weeks ago, when the pregnancy got to the six and a half months mark. I did the whole incredibly long and detailed unemployment insurance application, and was talking to the clerk at the end and it was she who suggested the maternity leave. Said that I didn't need to worry about the reporting, and the looking for work, and the mandatory counselling that is part and parcel of the unemployment benefits. In short [glancing pointedly at my tummy], maternity was clearly the category for me, and to that end she made a few notes on my online file, and that was it.

So all the to-ing and fro-ing and the weighing of moral dilemmas and should-I-be-a-burden-on-the-welfare-system? self-doubt, not to mention the two days of math to figure out how much I made working on the book tours plus coordinating everything with Turner and our respective tax returns, well, it turns out that it wasn't really necessary. Spiritual growth and resulting maturation aside, I'm about to have a kid, and from the government's point of view, it's all very straightforward. Maternity benefits. The sit-on-your-ass-for-15-weeks and then work-a-bit-if-you-feel-up-to-it-for-the-next-35-weeks kind.

Sure, I'm not being topped up to the 95% of my former salary (one of those perks of actually having a job to go back to), but hell, I'll for sure take the 55%, no moral dilemmas whatsoever. I paid that in, and I'll take it now. Same as EI, but somehow totally, totally different. Swingomatic yoga here we come! 

Categories: Pregnancy | Work work work

Comments [1]

Everything's Fine Here: Situation Normal... How Are You?

For those of you following these things, I can now announce the results of my aforementioned glucose tolerance test. We had an obstetrical appointment this morning, at which my nice-but-after-10,000-deliveries-not-so-enthralled-with-the-job doctor reported that my results came back totally normal.

Normal.

...Which means that all the blurry-visioned and hypoglycemic agonizing, and the lying around on the floor, and the wanting to ram telephones down the throats of otherwise competent lab workers last Wednesday was all for nothing. Or at least, was all for this: a normal result. I can't even imagine what that test would do to someone who had a bit of difficulty metabolizing glucose. Good christ.

Categories: Pregnancy

Comments [11]

Pony Would Like You To Know

...that it is only -12C outside today, and not -21C like yesterday. Also, that the snow is only falling gently from the sky and not whipping around horizontally at 60km/h like yesterday.

And, therefore, dammit, rather than yesterday's lame-ass round-the-block sprint, there should be a KICK-ASS walk coming her way today, by gum.

Later (6:04pm):

Pony would like you to know that despite the fact that we invited the next-door-neighbour's dog Bear along too, and despite the fact that Ashley punctured her leg squeezing her hippo-sized pregnant frame through the break in the fence near the river at Blackfoot Trail, and despite the fact that when we got home Pony nearly got hit by a car in front of the house because she wasn't listening to Ashley yell, “HEEL!” (a command that Pony would like you to know that she already knows) --- well, Pony would like you to know that the walk she got was, in the end, pretty kick-ass.

Our champion bloodline English Setter: Faster than the sporto-high-speed-shutter setting on the camera! It's... Ponydog!

Categories: Pony

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That Pregnancy Glucose Tolerance Test

Aside from the water retention, leg cramps, hormonal flooding and general fatigue, pregnancy is mainly okay. It sounds hokey but I've felt really plugged in to my biological purpose, which has been deeply fascinating.

But let me pause for a moment to complain heartily about something very specific: that fucking glucose-tolerance test they make you do around now. Here's what goes down: you fast for 10 hours and go to the clinic in the morning. They take a blood sample. Then, into your empty stomach they pour 750mL of nuclear-orange carbonated high-glucose beverage, served in a fancy medicalized bottle but otherwise indistinguishable from orange Fanta or Mirinda. Then they make you wait an hour, and they take another blood sample. Then you wait a second hour, and they take your blood again.

I'm not diabetic, but for sure I'm one of those kick-down-the-door people who arrives home from school or work and wants to eat the entire contents of a box of cereal. In our family we talk a lot about blood sugar crashes, because the phenomenon of same figures large in our day-to-day lives. We're not so good with eating on someone else's stupid European dinner-at-10pm schedule, and most of us in our adult lives have adapted to a many-snacks-and-smaller-meals routine that better fits with the whole hypoglycemic reality.

When I arrived at the clinic, it was fairly empty and my number was called right away. They took my first blood sample at 9:30am. Then I downed the pop, and started the wait. By 10:05am I was getting to the wiggy stage, jittery from so much sugar dumped into my body as the first bit of sustenance on this day. Usually I start off with a cup of decaffeinated tea, followed by a bowl of cereal, and a while later I'll have an orange or banana. Have you ever had pop first thing in the morning? (Hangover recovery strategies don't count.) We've all done it. Makes you feel kinda gross and sick, and most people realize their mistake and throw a piece of toast or cold pizza or something down the hatch to calm the digestive waters. In the glucose tolerance test, you're not allowed to leave the lab, and you're not allowed to eat anything else. You sit there having orange soda burps for two hours while dealing with this huge wallop of sugar pounding through your bloodstream. That's it. That's the joke.

At 10:32am when I hadn't been called yet for my second blood sample, I was ready to pull someone over the clinic counter to explain the definitions of incompetence and hypoglycemia. Over the hour the lab had steadily filled up with nervous east-Calgary ESL immigrants fingering worn requisition papers, and chestnut-brown-haired seventy-year-old ladies wearing ugly expensive jewelery sitting next to their deaf, overfed, wheezing husbands. The two other pregnant ladies and I eyed each other every time one of these guys hacked up a phlemy lump into a handkerchief. Our eyes said to each other, “Isn't there a cleaner, nicer, powder-scented place we could be doing this shitty pregnancy glucose test?“ Those looks gave me about five seconds' worth of soothing female bonding, but then it was right back to feeling angry and bitter and ready to, if necessary, elbow-check those other pregnant ladies out of the way to get myself to the front of the line.

I was finally called at 10:36am, and not a moment too soon. After the sample I headed to the bathroom and locked myself in there. Cried for about five minutes about nothing in particular, drank a lot of hot water, dried my hands under the fan. I went back into the waiting room, and lasted about another 25 minutes before that sick, woozy, clouded-vision hypoglycemia thing got me to my feet. I knew that if I called off the test today, I'd just have to do it again another time. So I went back to the bathroom and lay down on the floor, an old trick from my radiation therapy days. Not exactly comfortable, but this floor wasn't as bad as you'd expect for a public health laboratory. Nice and cold down there, quiet behind the locked door and away from the germy yucky people of the waiting room. (Suffice it to say, concern for my fellow man engender, this test did not.) The last twenty minutes of the test consisted of me staring sideways at the detailed instructions for giving a urine sample, glued to the wall beside the toilet (”...hold foreskin back while aiming for the bottom of the cup...”). At 11:30am I staggered back out to the front and they took the last sample of my blood and I got the hell out of there.

So it seems to me that the glucose tolerance test is essentially an attempt to provoke a hypoglycemic attack by flooding the pregnant lady with sugar and holding her hostage in a room full of coughing, aging baby boomers intent on bankrupting Canada's health care system. I promise I won't drink any more coke, and I'll only have a few cookies during the day. Besides, now that Christmas is over, there just isn't the constant supply of baking and sweets in range. I'll even switch to the sugar-free Tums (I'm sure those things are stuffed with sugar - Turner steals them daily, saying they taste like the old candy Bottle Caps. And they do). No problem. I can handle any kind of sugar management regime you throw at me, so long as I'm in charge of when I eat and the food options are realistic. In all the pregnancy books it tells to you to avoid blood sugar crashes at all costs because they're damaging to the fetus. I've been very careful, and haven't had a single serious crash this whole pregnancy. Until today, when the 'wisdom' of the glucose tolerance test was visited upon my person.

If the results of this test come back giving the doctor cause to nag about my ability to metabolize glucose, I'll be the first to shout, “NO SHIT, SHERLOCK!” And a long, detailed, crabby letter to the Alberta Medical Association will follow.

Categories: Pregnancy

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Happy Paper Anniversary

On our way home from Nakusp, we stopped in at Lake Louise to take an anniversary photo. If you get married in January in Canada, about all you can count on for your anniversary is that the day'll be freaking cold. Today it was beautiful, clear, and -21C here at lakeside just after the mountain-bound sunset.

And this flattering one was taken in the parking lot at Roger's Pass, earlier in the day (-25C at the summit):

This year couldn't have been better, more stuffed-full, more successful, more clapping-screeching-jumpingupanddown-holleringly good. Cheers! On January 3rd last year we were leaping off the stage together in Canmore - Happy One Year Anniversary Turner!

Categories: Married Life

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Oh, The Year in Review

January 2004   Got Married To Chris Turner, And Honeymooned In Cuba. My favourite detail about the wedding: hearing later about how great aunt Vera was scandalized by the lack of mashed potatoes at the buffet. Otherwise, it was basically 150 favourite people, 1400m above sea level in Canmore AB, -36C before the windchill, 22 table centrepieces made by Mom, and: 10 agonizing minutes of official photos before I snapped and called them off, 9 songs by the fiddle band, 8 cousins in tiaras, 7 packs of sparklers, six men in kilts, five kinds of cookies, 4 yee-haw/ya-hoo! cheers lead by Bruce Bristowe, 3 bagpipe tunes, 2 golden bangles, 1 English vicar... plus a pinata, a black forest cake, and a Simpsons quote in the vows.  

February 2004   Digging Out From Under Various Post-Wedding Debris Piles, We Finally Started Moving Into The House We Bought Last October. Also: Laser Surgery On My Left Eye. Talk about being a chicken-hearted fee-fee, I was terrified of the laser surgery. But I simultaneously simply couldn't stand having glasses anymore. Dad had given me the laser surgery as a birthday gift two years ago, and I'd procrastinated and wrung my hands and been paralysed with fear for months and months and months. But in February, I finally set my jaw and made the appointment. I cried and cried beforehand, terrified of the idea of someone cutting open my eyeball. They gave me a pill, which took a while to kick in, but finally I was just scared and not inconsolable. What finally helped me pull it together was the observing resident attending the surgery, a guy a couple of years younger than me, who asked if I needed to hold his hand. Alright, jesus Ashley, get a grip. Everything turned out A-OK in the end - a few days at home with a stinging eyeball, but then I could see perfectly with my left eye. It was a goddamn miracle.

March 2004   Started To Realize I Might Have To Quit My Job-Of-A-Lifetime In Order To Work With Turner On The Fall Launch Of Planet Simpson/Get Pregnant And Have A Maternity Leave (Not Available With The Aforementioned Best-Job-Ever)/Save My Soul. It started to become clear that I was probably going to have to quit my job in order to be part of the Planet Simpson publicity in the fall, and my position at work was renewed in the budget but stripped us of our accumulating seniority. Although 'retaining talent' and 'encouraging younger people to make their career with the government' are stated goals of the Public Service, well... the reality on the ground was a bit different.

April 2004   More Thinking About Probably Quitting My Superbo Job With The Guv'mint, Dealing With Resulting Ulcer. I asked for a Leave Of Absence to cover the time I wanted off to work on Planet Simpson, and was turned down flat. My boss started to realize that I was probaby going to quit, and there was some resulting tension surrounding that, because I think she basically didn't want to hire someone else to fill my position (a famously and ridiculously convoluted and complex process inside government). Also, Grampa suddenly got sick and landed in hospital, so it was off to Nakusp for Easter Weekend to make sure he didn't die. Ainsley was in from Ottawa, and John came from Calgary, so all us siblings were unexpectedly together for the holiday.

May 2004   Father-In-Law JT Comes Out From Nova Scotia To Help Us Build A Fence (and porch) For Ponydog. Also, Prolonged Agonizing About Quitting, Then The Actual Quitting, And Preparing to Leave The Fantastic Opportunity That Was That Job. Turner and his dad must've gone to Home Depot about 40 times in the two weeks of construction. We rented equipment, we burned up a whole whack of garbage and wood in our newly-dug backyard fire pit, we donned gloves and protective glasses and generally ran around destroying the yard until suddenly, one day, we had a fence and we had a porch, almost like magic. It should be said, however, that we didn't manage to get the damn fence painted and so the project drags on into 2005. On the work front, I was lectured twice about how stupid I was being to give up such a great job just to work with my husband on his upcoming international bestseller and travel around the world promoting the book. Finally I just bit the bullet and tendered my resignation. Also: got the other eye laser surgery'd. By the end of this month I had my 17-year-old perfect vision again and a healthy fear of diazapine prescriptions.

June 2004   Retiring From The Public Service, And Ashley Finally Organizes The 26,000 Photos That've Been Kicking Around In Piles Since 1988. I think organizing those photos did more for my general peace of mind than any project I've undertaken, perhaps ever. It also solidified my resolve that I'd finally come to the point where purchasing a digital camera was no longer optional. I did the math and now that I was no longer earning a regular paycheque, I was quickly going to bankrupt us on my film and developing purchases (camera finally actually purchased in October). This month also contained a great deal of dental work, getting it in under the wire before my old work benefits expired.

July 2004   Turner, Ponydog and I Drive Across Canada From Calgary To Nova Scotia, For The McConnell Family Reunion In Antigonish, And Our PEI Vacation With The Niedzwieckis. Along The Way, I Discovered I Was Pregnant. Rest Of Month Spent Nausious And Anti-Social On Friends' Couches In The T-Dot. Cheers to Kali Pearson and Ian Connacher who bravely and unconditionally (and in retrospect, possibly rashly) opened their homes to us for weeks and weeks at a time. And never held it against me that I couldn't help with a fricken thing, and spent most of my time sleeping off the walloping exhaustion of early pregnancy.

August 2004   Off To England And Scotland For Train Rides, Edinburgh Festival Fun, And Ongoing First Trimester Misery (including the most impressive sinus migraines on record). Then, Deans' And Jenny's Wedding In Toronto, And Up to Owen Sound For Much Sleeping And Eating In The Countryside. And Finally, We Drove All The Way Home Again To Calgary, Riggy Jig Jig. I was supposed to do the trip to the UK last year, in 2003, but my car died and the resulting emergency need to buy a new car (I defy anyone to live in Douglasdale with no car and remain sane) ate up the savings I'd put away for the trip. The beloved Escort's obituary can be seen here. So I put the trip off, and was determined to get to Scotland this year in particular, since Sean and Keitha had been living there for three years and were about to move home to Canada. And damned if I wasn't gunna get there to visit before they left!

September 2004   Building The Website For Planet Simpson (www.planetsimpson.com), And Preparing For The Upcoming Worldwide Publicity Binge. This was the biggest and most professionally 'legit' reason for having Changed My Career Direction back in the spring. I'd hired a few flaky young programmers to do the initial design and programming over the summer, but eventually Brother John lost patience with their lazy work and general fumble-bumbling and took over, thank god. The site went live early in the month, and the learning curve shot vertical from there. I spent most of this month redesigning and reworking the website, and then cajoling Brother John to put in the changes and teach me what the fuck I should be doing with this and that. Suddenly, I'm a blogger. I'd had this here ashleybristowe.com site for half a year and more by that point, but it was the planetsimpson.com site that really forced me to figure things out. Turns out I've got the gift of obsession for online work, talent or competence notwithstanding.

October 2004   Off To Ontario & Quebec For The Eastern Canada Leg Of The Book's Publicity, And Then Calgary Publicity, Plus The Respective Launch Parties. Also, Ainsypants Gets Married To Mr. JDS. Much of this month was chronicled in detail on planetsimpson.com and can be found in its archives under October 2004. Overall, I chased around after Turner, taking photos and learning the ropes of book publicity management, and carving out my place in the process. Oh, and spending every other waking moment on the website. I was finally over the nausea portion of the pregnancy, but I was still mobile and lithe enough to go-go-go all day long, and really made the most of every day of the tours. 

November 2004   Planet Simpson Takes Us To Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, And Malaysia. Really Starting To Look Pregnant, At This Point. Again, this month is chronicled on planetsimpson.com. It was a huge boo-hiss to have a mere three days in New Zealand and only six in Australia, when clearly one could spend months and years exploring these great countries. Really, it was a lot to pack in to so little time. But the Malaysia leg was awesome, where we got to sit on our asses and eat ourselves into a stupor, hanging out with Thab, Phet, and Ji, our trip very luckily overlapping on Ji's third birthday. Plus we got most of our Christmas shopping out of the way, which was a huge bonus.

December 2004   The Western Canadian Publicity Engine Takes Us To Vancouver. Lots Of This Month Blissfully Spent Recouperating From The Book Tour In Nakusp, And Once Again We Put A Great Deal Of Time Into Contemplating Buying Some Property Here And Moving To The Slocan. There's this one place we went to see that would be Just Awesome. A big log cabin house on 14 acres, with three springs and a pond, bordering on crown land, with a view of the lake, and with two big, liveable outbuildings (one of which could easily be made into Turner's studio), only 2.5km by the crow's flight from Strawberry Hill. $239,000. Take a look on MLS®: 105001. But... the house needs a lot of work. And the driveway is too steep to use in the winter, which means a ten-minute hike in to the house up a driveway covered in two feet of snow for three or four months a year. Plus - and this is the kicker - no high-speed internet. They have it in the town of Nakusp, a mere 1.5km away. But that last mile, it's a bitch. So the dream died, but we go drive past the place every so often, just to look.

Fun to come: more lazing about on house arrest in Nakusp and Calgary in the next few months, and then the kid's due in March (“the confinement”, as it's known). Around then we expect all hell to break loose and the crystal ball seems to be on the fritz, so we're in a “wait an' see” holding pattern. At some point in the summer we hope to get to Toronto and Antigonish, and perhaps to Bangkok late in the year. But again, we dunno. Happy New Year!

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