Hoppy Burpday To Yoooooo

Happy 31st Birthday to Mean Old Thaba!

Categories: Friends

Comments [15]

Sloane's Pictoral Week In Review: 19.0

Ooooooooooh Alberta - where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain...

Sloane is showing a natural affinity for showtunes, much to my delight (and Turner's horror - he's had her on a steady musical diet of the Flaming Lips and Wilco since day one, so this is a real blow).  

Categories: Sloane

Comments [0]

RIP Mortimer: 2005 - 2005

Well, talk about a fast turnaround. Turner's new fish is dead. And I guess I killed it.

Over the years of high school and university, I'd been the successful custodian of a number of goldfish who all lived to the outer ranges of their life expectancy. And in every case I cleaned the bowl water by putting it under the kitchen tap and firing in a stream of lukewarm water, overflowing the bowl until all the floaty bits of feces and old food were washed away. Once in a while I'd scrub the bowl itself, with my fish-of-the-time watching from a nearby water glass. In general, I treated my fish well, but I was pretty casual with them - I took them on the airplane (in my carry-on baggage) when I travelled between Kingston and Calgary, and I left them for the weekend without a babysitter if I was going away; I didn't get tense about them. Because really, I know you can't put a price on life, but at 39 cents each and the estimated memory span of 4-5 seconds, who are we kidding - fish are replaceable.

As a younger teenager I'd kept mice, and through a fluke of pet store worker's inexpertise in the matter of mouse anatomy, I ended up with two females and one male. I'm sure you can picture what happened. To make matters worse, my school caught a field mouse in the gym and since it was known that I kept mice I was given this wild mouse to take home. It interbred with the domestic mice and in the end the teeming, squirming mass of mice split between two fish tanks in my bedroom closet were all interbred - they were very large, and very very fast. I give a great deal of credit to my parents on the matter of my in-house animal husbandry... because lord knows I will certainly not put up with six dozen mice in my house when Sloane is in junior high, no sir. Smelly? Yep. Noctural and running on a squeaky wheel in shifts all night long? Yes indeedy. Periodically escaping and living in the heating ducts until flinging themselves unexpectedly into kitchen sinks full of dirty dishwater? You betcha. Eventually even I, their beloved keeper, had had enough. I took them to Fish Creek Provincial Park and set the whole zoo free, with not a glance over my shoulder. Never again was I tempted to keep rodents of any description. I bet the hawks and owls had a banner day.

Anyway, a few years later I got a goldfish and knew I'd found a superior type of pet. Low maintenance (no need for a heater, water filter, or one of those fancy up-and-down floating scuba divers), quiet, and colourful. The only training you can possibly accomplish involves tapping on the glass twice before feeding them, which will teach them to come to the top of the bowl whenever you tap on the glass. My grandfather has always been an advocate of fish because, as he'll tell you, "They're good! If you need to go away on vacation, you just flush 'em down the toilet. Goodbye, Charlie." (It should be said that Grampa calls all fish Charlie, regardless of their assigned monikers.)

Turner had been making noise about wanting an aquarium full of fish for a few years, now. And having never been a fish owner, I knew he didn't have a good handle on how much work a serious aquarium can be. So for his birthday I thought it would be a good first step to get him a goldfish, to see how he liked the ichthyological pet world. He was very pleased with the goldfish, and as we all know, he named him Mortimer ("Morty" for short).

After a few days, the bowl water looked decidedly in need of being changed. I watched Morty gulping. Unbidden, the image of those old turtles Turner had when I first met him leapt to mind. Their water was naaaaasty. I decided to take matters into my own hands and change the water immediately - this was late yesterday afternoon. Turner had read the little pamphlet on Caring For Goldfish that'd come with the bowl, and it said not to get water directly from the tap, and he mentioned this a few times as I made for the sink and started running the water. "Meh," I said. "I had fish for years and I always did it this way - in residence, at Brock Street, at my parents' house - and my fish always lived long, happy, healthy lives." So I went ahead and did it my way.

But lo and behold, this morning Morty was no more. I found him floating at the top of his bowl, dead - we knew Carla's suggestion of the crushed-up pea really wouldn't do any good at this advanced stage of floaty-ness. I fished him out of there (ha?) and wrapped him in a paper towel, and put him in the trash. And Turner really got to stand around making me feel guilty, and saying he'd told me so.

Heh. Yep, I done wrong, I guess. I don't know what I'd done differently in university versus yesterday, but the fish was dead and the only variable in his environment between the two days had been my intervention with the cleaning-of-the-water. Thus, I am to blame, and I accept said blame.

So anyway, like I mentioned above, fish are replaceable. I roared down to Petcetera on Bonaventure Drive and purchased two new fish to ease Turner's grief, plus some schmancy gravel for the bottom of the bowl (as per T's request). And I've since been banned from cleaning their water, which is okay by me.  

The new residents of the birthday bowl, as yet unnamed.

Categories:

Comments [6]

Snatched From My Clutches

Yesterday a great thing happened: our hot water tank exploded down the basement. Well, it leaked all over the floor, and there was a faint smell in the air. Mom discovered the mess during her morning laundry storm. Val came upstairs and said, "I think you should know that your hot water tank is leaking. All over the floor." I was about to get into my morning shower, so Turner went downstairs to take a look. He returned, saying that he thought it was probably just an overflow from the floor of the bathroom coming through the basement ceiling, so I had my shower. Then I went downstairs to suss the situation myself. And I dunno what Turner saw when he was down there poking around, but based on the scene before me it was clear that the end of the hot water heater was finally nigh.

Now then - our hot water tank, a Simpsons-Sears special, was installed in 1978. A hot water tank has an average lifespan of 12 to 14 years, so at the ripe old age of twenty seven, our tank was a serious senior citizen. It'd had its day. So it was no surprise that it had finally died.

When I first moved into this house in October of 2003, I noticed right away that I was being forced into having short showers by the lack of hot water. Coming off a long stint in Douglasdale, the land of 100 gallon hot water tanks, I was shamefully, woefully unprepared for the real world in which a twenty minute shower is a true luxury, if not downright indulgent. It wasn't long before I started campaigning for the installation of a new hot water tank at this house. It seemed to me to be only humane that both Turner and I be able to shower in the morning - and since the tub is one a' them narrow cast-iron soaker jobbies, we usually go one at a time. I take long showers; Turner takes short showers. If I'm first, Turner has to wait a little while for a bit of hot water to come back. And if Turner's first, I really have to wait a long while so the whole tank can refill.

It's a 33.3 gallon tank, which should produce enough hot water for two good morning showers (or one reeeeeeeally long one for me, after which Turner could wait a bit, I guess). Which hasn't been the case, as I've explained. We checked the temperature setting and put it up at the hottest part of the dial, which helped a little bit, but not much (and produced burnt hands whilst doing dishes in the kitchen, on occasion).  It was then proposed that the tank had probably never been drained or cleaned by either the little old lady who owned the house for 40 years, or by the punk band that rented this place prior to our arrival. All manner of crud and calcification was probably plugging up the tank, reducing the water volume inside. Well, we couldn't afford the diagnostic, so we didn't figure that one out for sure. And Turner put his foot down about a brand new hot water heater, what with our wedding right around the corner. And since then a variety of precidence-taking financial priorities have continued to thwart my long-shower dreams.

So I turned to my next option, trying to wile a new hot water heater out of Mom, under the guise of a "Gee, if you're interested in giving me a pregnancy/Christmas/birthday present that I would REALLY appreciate, how about fronting us a new hot water tank?" tactic. Which didn't go very far (although I was offered a washer-drier install on the main floor, the idea being that it would make it easier for me to do laundry if I didn't have to traverse the stairs. We declined that kind offer). Then I suggested to Dad that a new hot water heater would make his darling daughter's life oh-so-very-much-happier... whereupon he decided to renovate his own bathroom, to the tune of approximately eighty zillion dollars (though I hear that the steam/rain/jets combo is simply awesome), and had no money left over to lavish on frivolous expenditures like a hot water heater for Ash.

...Listen, I can't help it, I love the shower, and I admit it, I'm a devoted fan. Ask anyone who has had me as a house guest, and they'll have noticed that I like a good shower. Really, how could you not notice, when I'll march into the bathroom, use up all the hot water and emerge flanked by steam, bellowing, "AHHHHH!" As only Turner knows, I'll get out of the shower and do a little dance right there in the kitchen, most days. I shower at least daily, if not twice and sometimes even thrice. If I had my druthers (and could handle the water bill) I'd shower in the morning and in the evening every single day, with a few more showers interspersed throughout the afternoon. Half the reason I have a season's membership to Lindsay Park is for the endless showers at the hands of their industrial boiler. I don my flipflops, tuck Sloane under one arm, and in we go! Bliss. Three cheers to Margo and John, who apparently had a special tub put into their new house in Antigonish, with the specific notion of how much I love my time in the shower. I plan to test it out often when we get to Nova Scotia in August.

So what's the point? The point is shure, we is po' these days, but HOT DIGGITY a broken hot water tank is a broken hot water tank fair and square, and you just can't live in Canada without hot running water in the house. It was going to cost us $800 we didn't have (though that's why you have a line of credit), but oh boy, a new hot water tank was now gunna be mine! And Turner even suggested that we might as well go for the 'big' 50 gallon tank, just because he knows how much I like a good shower - if we're going to drop a whop of cash, might as well pay a little bit more and go for the gusto. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I married the right man.

So after 24 hours of no hot water, the eagerly-anticipated hot water heater fixer/installer people came to our house this morning in their little truck and two guys went down the basement to figure what was what. The puddle had dried by then, and the valves were closed. They hee'd and haw'd, rocked back and forth, tapped things with a pen, peered inside small metal hatches with little flashlights. They switched on the gas and the water to the tank, and stood around knocking on the tank barrell like a melon, and twisting upside down to monitor the water reuptake process. They took their time, and were very thorough. ...And to my thunderous disappointment, their final diagnosis was that the hot water heater was still operational; that yes, there'd been a small overflow leak, and sure, the tank was old and would probably explode for real, soon, but as it stood this morning, it didn't need to be replaced.

Do you hear me, world? That means NO NEW HOT WATER HEATER. Just when I thought the 50 gallon bastard was mine. Yes, we're glad we didn't have to suddenly drop hundreds of dollars on household infrastructure. But I came so close, the taste is now on my tongue. I warned Turner he's going to find me in the basement with a baseball bat one of these days, innocently bashing in that calcified old drum: Die! Die! Die! ...Huh? Oh, hullo dear, just bashing in the hot water heater here. Sorry, did I wake you?  

Categories: House

Comments [12]

Turner's 32nd Birthday

Happy birthday lovie!!

His present loot included a maroon and green striped dress shirt, goldfish + bowl (now named Mortimer), a saucepan, some underwear, a sushi lunch, a book (The Man Who Ate Everything, by Jeffrey Steingarten), long underwear top, a Calgary folk fest tshirt, babysitting from Val and John so we could go out for dinner, a fish knife, and a hockey stick. Whoo!

Dana and Noel came by with a belated cake on Wednesday!

(Birthday greetings also go out to cousin Jay, and to Anne Sam!)

Categories: Turner

Comments [8]

The Internet Speaks

...and now we dance!

Val does a little happy jig in honour of hearing from the people of the 'net. (Sloane "Two Spoons" Turner is also pleased.)

Categories: Family

Comments [12]

Sloane's Pictoral Week In Review: 18.0

The baby of the future is smarter, sleeker, and comes with its own keyboard.

Categories: Sloane

Comments [2]

Val's Picks: Best Of The Blogosphere

A year ago Mum was still at the stage of claiming that the computer was against her and would erase her emails on purpose. Even now, if Brother John wasn't on call 24/7 I'm sure the happy Mac freeze bomb would stump Mum into total apoplexy, and the computer would unceremoniously end up on the driveway in short order. But to be fair, Mum and Mike are on dialup internet service - so really, it's a demonstration of her persistence and patience that she learned to use the internet at all, at her age. (I'm getting kicked in the leg as I type. Ow. OW!)

I think the breakthrough came when Mum's job connected her work computer to their high-speed connection. Suddenly I was getting excited calls from Val in the middle of the day, saying, "Have you been to StandingRoomOnly? Good god - do you know this man? He's a lunatic!" Etcetera. (As a mental health professional, I'm sure her online tours are purely research-oriented and serve to inform her work.) I think Mum thinks the blogosphere is made up of a bunch of pals who all know each other. Ashley has a blog - she must know these other online people, right?

In any case, I dunno how she found these, but Mum has a very developed opinion on what she likes online, and visits a number of sites regularly to gawk and point. Here are her favourites: 

Dr. Omed's Tent Show Revival

Tagline: Featuring Dr. Omed's Patented Oil of Prosody and the dancing Elders of the Seventh Day Atheist Aztec Baptist Synod. Fair and Balanced since 8/14/03 00:12AM GMT

Val sez: "Put a star beside that one. That one - it's my favourite. This guy must stay up day and night to write his blog. He must not even get up to go to the bathroom. I love him. He's this aging hippie and he's perfect - he has exactly the same politics as me, exactly."

Standing Room Only

Tagline: Love in the middle of war

Val sez: "This guy is certifiable. He's absolutely nuts, serious, but light and friendly. I like that in a blog."

And: "He points you to all sorts of stuff that is truly funny. Like, who finds a tombstone funny? This guy. This guy and me. This is the kind of goofy shit that appeals to me - the clacking false teeth, the tinfoil hat, the tombstone - it tickles my funny bone. I know the fact that I find this stuff funny is an indication of my twisted sense of humour, but I don't care. Maybe it means I'm certifiable. I don't care. Mr. Standing Room Only and I can share a room at the institution."

Fiona

Tagline: Spirited digressions 

Val on Fi: "I love this girl. She's very intelligent. I enjoy her politics. She's very articulate, and brave. She's like Paul Simon - she knows what she knows. And I think she has a dog."

Ash and Val, putting up this post. About this shot, Turner sez, 'This is your Woodward and Bernstein photo.'

Ash: ...Didn't they do "South Pacific?"

Turner: No.

Val: That was Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Ash: Oh.

Categories: Family

Comments [7]

Jeff Tweedy, Love Genius

Turner loves Wilco. And in some small measure, Turner credits Jeff Tweedy for getting us back together. I think he was listening to a lot of Wilco in those dark winter days of early 2003 in Toronto when we were broken up and had 6500km between us. He said he found something in those lyrics that lit the fire to come out to Calgary and win me back. Damn, that's powerful music.

Now, I don't really like live music. That is, I kind of get bored. If it's a band I like, I'd usually enjoy listening to the cd more. In concert people go off key, they wank on the guitar, the gonad in front of you is too tall and you can't see anything - it's all a big pain in the ass. In the comfort of my own livingroom I can dance around in my socks, knowing which song is next and with the freedom to hit the pause button if I need to pee or answer the phone. If you think this disqualifies me as a "true" music lover, so be it. It's been said before. I'm not claiming to be a music geek - that's Turner's job in this partnership. (Unconstrained by such labels, I am free to put on the Moxy Fruvous at top volume and run around the kitchen poking Turner and yelling, "Once I was the king of Spain! Now I eat humble pie!!")

We knew the end of this month would be busy - Turner has three stories on the go and I'm editing book chapters, plus there's Sloane and the constantness of being parents of a four-month-old and all that - and we're sort of out of money (damn them taxes), so we had put ourselves on a house arrest austerity program. We haven't done much. Spent some time at home, is all. Grew the tomatoes out back, watched the Stampede fireworks at close range, moved the crib, had some lovely visitors. But not much actual going out in the world, socializing-like.

Then Turner saw the Calgary Folk Fest lineup. And there it was, Thursday night, the headliner: Jeff Tweedy of Wilco. ...So I guess we know what we're doing that night, we said.

Now okay, for the record, I like Wilco too. Not as much as Turner, sure. Like, I don't know all the lyrics, and I'm not signed up on their website to receive tour updates, and I can't name any of the other guys in the band besides Jeff Tweedy. But it was Wilco that I was listening to in the discman as I paced our back lane during the early stages of my labour with Sloane. And yeah, I don't much like live music, but I always enjoy myself at the Folk Fest (the people watching is the mostest). Though really, more than anything, I do acknowledge Wilco's contribution to my marriage and I'm certainly willing to pay homage to that. So tickets were procured and Jeff Tweedy went on the calendar.

Jeff Tweedy always seems to look like he drank too much last night.

At the Folk Fest, we were those people. You know, "those people". The people with the blanket and the collapsed stroller, and the cooler with the fried chicken and the BC apricots and the chilled cans of caffeine-free pop. The people with the baby, sitting close, arms around each other, swaying to the music and singing along. That was us. I'd seen people like that before, at outdoor concerts. They always looked so settled and organized and domesticated. I don't know if all that describes us, but we sure were those people last night. It was great. And it was hilarious to be faced with what it is to suddenly grow up. Those moments when your old, pre-kid pre-marriage life experiences fold over and just touch your new being-a-parent happily-married sitting-on-a-blanket-eating-cold-chicken-and-dancing-with-our-daughter reality. You see that you're not so different now, than you were then. Even though back in the 'then' it sure looked a long way from there to here, it wasn't, really. ...But it was, too. Both.  

Turner danced Sloane around and we sat watching the jumbotron screen and faraway stage in the gathering dusk. Of course, it's nice to hear the songs you know, live, and Jeff Tweedy was perfect last night in that regard. It was lovely to hear "Remember The Mountain Bed", a song Turner and I put on our wedding cd, because of how it reminds us of Shimla. The end goes,

My loneliness healed, my emptiness filled, I walk above all pain/Back to the breast of my woman and child to scatter my seeds again

I pointed out to Turner that me and Sloane are his woman and child. I think he liked that. (Meanwhile back at home, my Women's Studies degree spontaneously combusted on the wall.)

Categories: Married Life

Comments [0]

Sloane's Pictoral Week In Review: 17.0

A tad late to post, but here she is, Mlle. Le Sloanester at Week 17:

Y'all narrowly escaped a Stampedish photo of the child. Cowboy hat, pancake breakfast, the midway we took her to - it was shocking. Shocking, I say. Bad enough that she's actually a native Calgarian, born here an' all. But with the rodeo and the branding and the agricultural displays... we're going to have to watch it that she doesn't get snagged into the Round Up Band or The Young Canadians, only two of the many insidious cults that worship at the altar of Stampede.

Instead, a nice photo of Sloane and Gramps. Aww.

Categories: Sloane

Comments [13]

Twas Always Thus

We moved Sloane's crib into our bedroom three nights ago. Previously utilized only for naps in the nursery, the crib suddenly became the sleep platform of choice last week. The Sloaner used to sleep in a moses basket, which lived beside our bed and in which she slept every night since she was born. But all of a sudden last week our lovely daughter learned how to turn over. As such the basket was now absolutely nonworkable because it thwarted Sloane's attempts to roll, which led to a lot of yelps, and angry crying, and arching of the back, and shoving her face into the bunting around the sides making us scared of suffocation, and so on. Since we believe in sleeping in the same room as our kid, it was obviously time to move the crib out of the nursery and into our bedroom. And as could be expected, the predictable test of our marriage - as per all moving-items events and put-item-together situations, the crib relocation involving both these scenarios - ensued.

It goes like this: Turner gets very mad at the inanimate object in question and ends up breaking it somehow because he forces a bolt or shoves something the wrong way, and I make things worse because I know I could do it better and I tell him how to do it better, but he's already broken the thing by the time I get there so I just look like an asshole know-it-all.

So we both end up mad. Him, because the universe is against him, the item in question was (inevitably) poorly constructed and/or came with shitty/incorrect directions, and because now it is broken and he wants to kick the ass of the person who designed it and the person who sold it to him. And me, because Turner gets mad at the inanimate object (just the getting-mad, which seems ridiculous beyond understanding, to me), because he breaks it, and because he won't let me step in to save the day until it's too late and he's already sweating and pissed off. And then I also get mad at myself because I am a bossypants and I know I'm making things worse by standing there being the bossypants. But I always have to come up with the final solution because Turner will throw down the tools and sit there swearing at the thing until it gets dark, and if I don't figure things out it will stay broken and/or un-re-assembled. 

There is generally a lot of apologizing later on.

In this case the crib is now held together on one side with a plastic wall anchor with a screw inside (my idea), because the bolt that came with the crib was irreperably damaged when Turner lunged at it with a hammer when it was half-stuck in the hole in the putting-back-together stage. Um, yeah.

But it's stable, which is what we want, I guess.

Categories: Married Life

Comments [14]

Big Business vs. The Community: Calgary Smackdown

   vs.    

Ramsay has been all in a lather over our neighbourhood chicken plant for some time.

As you may know, as a company, Lilydale processes chicken. Aaaaand… ‘round these parts, the factory isn’t the best neighbour. The main issue here is that the plant stinks like mad at irregular intervals, and the smell actually causes many people to be physically ill when they’re outside in it.

But aside from the stench, they’re heavy-handed with the community, they refuse to pave the road that borders their factory, there are humungous trucks full of live chickens blocking up the intersection and regularly denting parked cars. You don’t even have to be remotely crunchy to feel a bit squeamish about a truck full of panic-eyed factory-farm chickens stacked fifteen cages high rolling through the community. Sure, okay, we should all be aware of where our food comes from, and I’m not claiming any kind of holier-than-thou vegan lifestyle here; I eat meat. But I defy even the most stoic of human omnivores among us to remain impassive while four hundred chickens roll, smelly and clucking, past your kid’s soccer field (mid-game), on their way to slaughter. Riiiiight. See? Not so nice.  

People really don’t like the chicken plant. And this is one of those funk-ifying inner-city communities where people actually take action on stuff, band together. A telling sight: today there was a huge tent erected in the soccer field across the street from the plant. There was a great deal of food and pop out on tables. It was a picnic, presumably held in the spirit of Stampede, for the community. There was a sea of empty chairs, with three lonely Lilydale people sitting to one side. …No one came. No one from the community came to that free barbeque. Despite politicized convictions, people in general don’t usually turn down free food. Yeah. The residents of Ramsay really don’t like that chicken factory.

Now, earlier this year, Lilydale decided they needed to expand their operations a bit. In conjunction with the city planning department, there were some community meetings. Lilydale representatives showed up in plush leather jackets, the Calgary businessman’s fashion shorthand for “richer than you and unrepentant”. (With oil up at $60 a barrel, there are a lot of uninsightful jackasses in beautiful leather coats walking the streets of this city.) At the meeting we attended, one guy talked. They other guy sat around, ostensibly in charge of the video projector, though he couldn’t get it past the start screen (someone came out of the crowd to fix it). They didn’t want to talk about the smell from the plant, which was just about the only thing on the minds of all the assembled community residents. The Lilydale guys just wanted the community’s blessing for their expansion request, and kept demanding that the meeting “stay on topic”. People got bent out of shape. The Lilydale guys threatened to leave, and said they’d go ahead with the expansion with or without the consent of the residents of Ramsay. It wasn’t the most amicable community forum I’d ever seen, for sure.

So it was no surprise when, finally, a land use rezoning notice showed up. But what was interesting was where it was placed – nearly three blocks from the plant itself, at one of the busiest intersections in the community, right out front of the 7-11. I was impressed that the city made sure the notice was in a place where people would see it en route to their regular lives, and at an intersection that gets very heavy Stampede traffic at this time of year. I got Turner to slow down as we came up to it one day, so I could take note of the email address of the relevant planner to whom comments could be directed, just for reference. I didn't think I'd actually write. This was Saturday.

But later that night, once Sloane was asleep for the evening, I found myself in front of the computer, mulling over the Lilydale issue. In general I don’t think that residents can make much of a difference when a city’s political environment is like Calgary’s – one where money talks and residents' interests come way after business interests. You only have to take the barest of passing glances at the reality that is Calgary: the sprawl, the transit situation, the riverbottom being plowed under for Ikea and Linens N' Things, etcetera ad nauseum, to see that the only vision guiding the overall "plan" is money and where the developers want to make it. Business comes first in Alberta, plain and simple.

So it's basically a given that Lilydale will be granted their discretionary rezoning request, I know that right from the get-go. But, enh, I figured I’d put that Planning degree to use. What else was I doing that night? Nuthin. ...Dust off the ol’ M.Sc. and defend the community, eh? So I banged out this email to Josh Hagen, planner at the City of Calgary.

Scoring for the Cultural Inclusionists

John Johnston, Shepherd's Bush resident and old friend, on the London bombings: here.

Categories: Friends

Comments [0]

Birth Story: Part The Eighth (The Good Drugs)

(Part Eight in what was originally conceived as a five-part series... please see the preceeding chapters, below, for context. And please see Disclaimer For The Birth Story, here.)

I slept for about an hour, and awoke so well rested it was like I’d been asleep a hundred years. I tell you, the human body is an amazing thing. It gives you the most incredible strength when, in this case (for real), you need it the most. About to enter the final stage of labour, my body sucked every last drop of rest it could get from that one hour of sleep.

As I opened my eyes, even before I started looking around, I remembered the labour before the epidural, and a huge wave of gratitude cascaded over me – god, the gratitude. It was palpable, it was enormous. For the fact of the epidural, I was certainly the most grateful I’ve been in my entire life for anything. If I wasn’t frozen solid from chest to mid-thigh, I would’ve jumped from bed and run down to the hospital lobby to give a rousing address on the amazingness of Canadian health care system, the absolute good that is socialized medicine, and the divine qualities of anaesthetic, with a special shout out to the wizards known as anaesthetists.

I tell you whut! I was so thankful for all the joy and love in my life. I knew the baby was about to arrive, and, hey, there was a little thing of orange juice beside the bed… I looked around the room and noticed anew how nicely appointed the place was. And out the window in the early dawn light you could see the great view over the Glenmore reservoir – how lucky I was to get such a nice room! And lookit, there’s my lovie Turner, asleep in the chair beside the bed… and there’s my mom down on the pull-out couch. And I can’t really feel my feet! Har har har – just like Father Jack Hackett: “Are those my feet?” Hee hee, hehhhhhh. …Yeah, breathing in and out, golly does that feel good. Man, could life get any better?

…What I didn’t know until long afterward (as in, not until a few months later) is that the epidural I received contained not just anaesthetic, but also a Phenobarbital drip; a narcotic. So, uh, no kidding I felt great – I had a catheter squirting happy drugs right into my spinal column. I imagine I would have been grateful and excited about the birth and all that stuff anyway, but in hindsight, that pounding early-morning first-waking euphoria I experienced was very likely heightened by the good stuff gliding down my IV. …Just a hunch.

I was examined soon after I awoke and it was declared that I was 10 cm dilated and 100% effaced. It'd been only about two hours since that exam where I was only a centimetre and a half dilated, so obviously I’d made a huge amount of progress since the epidural went in. The nurses encouraged me to rest and try to sleep, to recharge for the pushing stage, coming soon.

So the shift changed and the day nurse arrived, Turner and Mom woke up, Brother John came back after a few hours of sleep at home. Dad was coming in and out, splitting his time between reading cases downstairs in radiology and skulking around in the background on the labour ward. Overall, the early morning passed fairly uneventfully, and was a few hours’ reprieve for everyone. We’d brought a LOT of stuff to the hospital with us – birthing ball, ghetto blaster and a pile of cds Turner had made specially for the birth, bathrobes, a cooler of food and snacks – all of which we hadn’t used (but had seemed incredibly important to have on hand in the planning period, certainly). Mom went around and put the room into a semblance of order. People got coffee and muffins. I brushed my teeth. A few hours passed.

Now, as an 18-year-old patient diagnosed at a teaching hospital with an somewhat-unusual cancer, I’d spent my young adulthood being the obvious and generally willing guinea pig for medical students and personnel-in-training of all sorts. As such I submitted to the third attempt at taking my blood by the new clinic nurse with a tight-lipped smile. And acquiesced to a troop of second-year-meds students milling through my lymphangiogram to point and stare while I lay supine on the table with needles in my feet. That sort of thing. Because, well, you know – these people have to learn somewhere, I supposed. And I was well aware I was probably the first case of Hodgekin’s lymphoma most of these folks had encountered. So I felt a sort of duty to the education of the medical profession or something.

However, during the pregnancy, I realized I'd had quite enough of being the test case. I was certainly not the only pregnant/labouring woman who would come through the hospital doors. I was reasonably assured they’d have lots of other chances to trot out the greenhorn resident on other ladies, or perhaps even on me in a later pregnancy. Due in part to the negative experience of dealing with the prenatal practice that followed my pregnancy (discussed below), I was finding myself weary of dealing with health care professionals and their needs. I'd resolved that I came first in the circus that is labour, and they could take their students elsewhere.

So it’s a measure of how comfortable and at ease I finally was when, sometime mid-morning, they arrived with an EMS intern and asked if I’d let him do the bladder catheter procedure… and I said, “Enh, sure, what the hell.”

Let’s back it up a smidge – I couldn’t feel the urge to pee although I’d had bags of IV fluid by that point and there could be no question that my bladder was full. I thought I might be able to go to the toilet if someone helped me to the bathroom – but apparently because I couldn’t stand (my legs were frozen), hospital policy dictated that I wasn’t allowed to use the toilet. So although I’d greatly feared the bladder catheter (as mentioned here), once it was thrust upon me as “Necessary”, like with the epidural I forcibly thrust the horror out of my mind’s line of sight and submitted. Fine, shunt the bladder, go ahead, I suppose.

For the record, it took the EMS guy four tries and ten minutes to get the catheter in. Cheers again to the Phenobarbital drip that made everything just that much more tolerable.

Overall the morning was good, but it was a lot of waiting. I was repeatedly told to rest, get some rest, sleep if you can. Really, I was probably ready to start pushing soon after I woke up from my one-hour post-epidural nap, but since I couldn’t feel the contractions or the urge to bear down, I dug in until they gave me the go signal. I know some women have births that go really fast and there’s lots of medical staff rushing around and the ladies say things like, “There’s no time – it’s coming now!” This wasn’t my experience. There was a great deal of sitting around doing very little, of just being-in-labourness. I know the staff wanted me to get more sleep before I started pushing, but I couldn’t. I lay there, resting, but for the most part I was just waiting for someone to tell me what was going to happen next.

Eventually a delivery doctor, one I hadn’t met from my prenatal practice, came breezing into the room, all officious. She didn’t introduce herself, stuck a finger in me, told the nurses I could start pushing anytime, and ran out the door. Uh, thank you.

I’ve heard doctors bitch and complain about how needy and annoying patients can be, and how the medical system puts them under so much pressure and stress and blah blah blah… And most of these complaints are completely substantiated.I agree that given the current state of health care in Canada it’s very difficult as a doctor to be all the places people want you to be, and do all the things people want you to do. But for pete’s sake, if you don’t even take the time to INTRODUCE yourself, you deserve to be snarked on the internet, frankly.

I grew up surrounded by the medical profession, and I’ve watched my parents work. The immediacy of treatment, the need to judiciously utilize time to best advantage, it’s central to the work. But when your job brings you into regular contact with people going through the big, era-shifting experiences in life, you have a responsibility to those people. They’re going to remember your contribution as one of the myriod facets that made up that experience for them. I was giving birth to my first child, and she was the attending physician, plain and simple. So I tried to insert some social niceties into our brief interaction: “Hi! I’m Ashley,” I said, knowing full well that she would have seen my chart and knew my name. She didn’t respond, and pushed a gloved finger into my vagina with no preamble.

Okay, Maybe One Gripe, For Old Times' Sake

...Okay, okay, I will allow myself one unclichéd complaint about living this close to the Stampede grounds - mainly because it was unexpected.

It’s this: We can see the nightly fireworks out the back door, just above the tree line behind the house. Billboards around the city are advertising the fact that they’re putting on twice the fireworks this year, and the ads show a family of aliens standing around on the moon, watching the Stampede fireworks, visible from space. Twice the fireworks sounds great, right? Everyone loves fireworks, right?

…Well sure, if you live in Bonavista and can't hear them from any part of your house. You forget how fricken LOUD THEY ARE, when they’re not happening right out on your back lawn. Loud, I tell you. Remember the Sesame Street sketch with Harry and John-John where they're doing Loud and Soft? And John John demonstrates Loud by going, "LOOOOOOUUUUUUUWWWWWWWDDD!" and he's got his own hands over his ears while he's calling out the word?

Yeah. That. The fireworks are LOUD.

And, like, jesus god – they’re blowing up half of China out there every night. Every night, that is, at 11:40pm. Isn't that a bit extreme in terms of timing? Like, c'mon already, kids want to see the fireworks too. But if you put the fireworks in the middle of the night at a time when most kids should have been in bed for hours already, you're just ASKING for screaming kids all across the city the next day. As a new parent I am suddenly and acutely aware of the deep connection between your child's sleep schedule and daytime sanity. So fireworks way late at night + no school in summertime = shitty combination for kids and parents alike.

And you know the Stampede goes for ten days, right? That's a lot of fireworks, and a lot of amplitude to a bunch of kids' sleep-deprived crankiness. Sloane sleeps through the cannon-decibel booms and the flashing lights outside our rattling single-paned bedroom windows at this stage, but just barely. Next year - not a chance.

Fie upon you, Stampede fireworks-planners! Fie!

Categories: Calgary | House | Sloane

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The Greatest Outdoor Show On Earth. ...Maybe.

Friday was the first day of the 2005 Calgary Stampede, self-styled Greatest Outdoor Show On Earth. And we live in Ramsay, the community directly behind Stampede Park. When I bought this house, I knew what it meant. Even though I was buying it for the inner-city location, and the big yard, and the proximity to Inglewood and the river trails and for all sorts of reasons that pointedly avoided looking the neighbouring rodeo and exhibition (1.3 million visitors each year) in the eye, I knew we'd have to deal with Stampede sooner or later.

Last year we fled Alberta at this time of year, so as we sat at sunset, looking out over the red-spackled mud flats of PEI's north shore and Turner said "Aw jeez, we're missing the Stampede right now," he had to just take my word for it that all kinds of yip-yeehaw hell was breaking loose in Calgary, and we were better off eating Malapeque Bay oysters and slaloming the Anne of Green Gables tourist sites (my theory being that it’s waaaaayyy better to visit someone else’s backyard hokey tourism nightmare than stay home and deal with your own).