Pregnancy Update | she’s a girl.

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Gabriel

Copyright ImageEvangeline's first photo

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Thronged were the streets with people; and noisy groups at the house-doors
Sat in the cheerful sun, and rejoiced and gossiped together,
Every house was an inn, where all were welcomed and feasted;
For with this simple people, who lived like brothers together,
All things were held in common, and what one had was another’s.
Yet under Benedict’s roof hospitality seemed more abundant:
For Evangeline stood among the guests of her father;
Bright was her face with smiles, and words of welcome and gladness
Fell from her beautiful lips, and blessed the cup as she gave it.
‘Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie’ (1847) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

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We’re having a girl, and her name will be Evangeline. She will be born during the fist week of August, which makes sense because August is an awesome month.

Diane, my girlfriend, chose Evangeline, so I’m currently working on a middle name, although I do have a super-secret and totally awesome one already. Choices other than my awesome but secret one include:

My great-grandmother was named Rose, which goes back a few more generations on that side of the family. My grandfather had sisters named Bernadette and Rita (who was also an actual Catholic Sister), her middle name was Gratia, or Grace. There are also a few Léa’s in my family history, so if George Lucus hasn’t copyrighted it that could be cool.

There’s also Arvilla, Hazel, Josephine, Annabelle and Eliza. My three sisters are in the mix as well, and so is my mother. Or I could go with Cooler, which is my cats name. Evangeline Cooler Landriault… it has a ring to it.

I didn’t want to know the sex of the baby, but Diane wanted to tell me so badly she looked like she was about to burst. Just based on how she was bouncing around after getting back from the ultrasound I kind of had a pretty good idea it was a girl.

We started discussing having a second child almost immediately after our son was born, in 2009. And Diane always had a semi-secret smile when she talked about the possibility of having a girl.

She wasn’t the only one, her oldest son has been talking about having a little sister for a year now. And my mother has wanted a protege for a long, long time.

I’ve been telling Diane I was totally cool either way for our first, and for this one. But, honestly, the idea of raising a girl is freaking me out.

It’s probably not rational, but raising a girl just seems insanely complicated. And scary as hell. Not the clinical stuff, or at least not specifically the health stuff, but mostly teaching her how to be safe. Or how to be a princess.

To be honest I find most “girl” things are, mostly, ridiculous. Ponies? Gymnastics? I have to go to gymnastics meets now? Unicorns, I’ll have to learn about unicorns. And sparkles.

Teaching my (currently two-year old) son how to defend himself will be easy. People who meet him are all certain he’s going to be a large person, so teaching him to defend himself is basically going to be me showing him how to throw a punch from the shoulder. He’s already beating up his six-year old brother.

But I’m already starting to have nightmares about my daughter asking me how to defend herself against the insanely vicious self-esteem attack-games girls make on other girls. Jesus, what if she’s the first one in her class to “develop”? What if she’s last?

What if she asks me for advice on dealing with the ‘mean girls’ in her class and I screw it up? Christ, she’s probably going to want to date.

Obviously I’ll try my best to get her interested in sports, like real sports. There are soccer and rugby leagues in this region for girls, and also a mixed hockey league.

But what do I say when she asks me for advice on boys? How do I keep her safe from the ‘pornification’ of high school dating?

How long do I wait before explaining to her that people like Rush Limbaugh exist?

Thankfully there are a lot of women, alive and not so much, on my side of the family who will serve as excellent role models for my daughter. My paternal grandmother, for example, was a mathematician who worked on developing radar during WW2. My three sisters are all brilliant, strong women, who have lived interesting lives.

My mother had her poetry published when she was barely twenty. She went on to work as a book and magazine editor, and was the editor of the local paper. Her aunt became a Catholic nun when she was a teenager, and taught high school for forty years. She was also a brilliant painter and could kill a person with a stare at thirty paces.

So maybe, with living examples and stories about her ancestors, Evangeline might have a chance to survive despite my neophyte parenting skills…

There’s a young woman who works weekends at the gas station where I buy my milk and pop, she’s being raised by her single mom, she plays rugby and soccer, gets marks in the mid-90′s and is going to university next year to learn how to bio-engineer a cure for cancer.

I have to find her mother and interview her.

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Posted in Evangeline's Week In Review, Family, Humor, Humour, Parenthood, Parenting, Vankleek Hill, Writing | Tagged | 5 Comments

Little Victor Update | the TV zombie

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Gabriel

Copyright ImageVictor the TV Zombie

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I think I’m about to find out how much TV is too much TV in the safe development of a child’s mind. My two-year old son can recognize Dog The Bounty Hunter’s voice, and has now started to respond to Dora The Explorer.

Dora is something new for Victor, we just started watching mostly-age-appropriate cartoons together a few months ago. But “Dog”, which comes on in the afternoons on A&E, and because there’s very little else on for his father to watch in the mid-afternoon, has been part of Victor’s life since he was just past his first birthday.

To be fair to his mom and me, Victor watches less than six hours of TV per week. I’d say it’s closer to four, and that includes DVD’s. But, for a two-year old, I do find it a little weird that he knows how to use the remote to turn on the TV, and change channels. He’ll also stop and look at the TV when he hears Dog’s voice. Which is one reason why I haven’t watched Dog in a few months.

But I’ve noticed recently, during those six or four or three hours a week, that his jaw is slack, his mouth is open and his eyes are glazed over. And that has me a little freaked out.

TV is definitely not Victor’s surrogate parent, or even his bored high school-aged constantly-texting babysitter. He spends most weekdays with me, in my apartment, and the TV is almost always off or on one of the news channels — which, for the most part, are really just poor quality versions of Dora and Dog… which are really just poor knock-offs of Bugs Bunny.

Which is what makes the glazed look all the more… disturbing.

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One of the biggest changes in Victor’s life over the past couple of months is how much time he has running free. His mom moved into a new house, with wide open spaces and a long hallway, for Victor to roam around in. He finally has lots of space to ride his little vehicles and, in the spring, there’s a great backyard for him to play in.

I’ve also started to trust him to not run into the corners of my tables, or bring down my bookcases, in my apartment.

When Victor is loose, he’s a running, laughing stamina-filled, oatmeal-fueled machine. His balance and coordination have improved so much over the past couple of months. Just last November, when he was out of his ‘play area’, I felt I had to follow right behind him at all times. It was the only way I felt secure enough having him whipping around my apartment.

But now I’m confident enough in his abilities I can just set him down and get back to writing — after making sure the exacto-knives are out of his reach, of course. I also have to unplug the PS3 so he doesn’t trip over the wires… but then he tries to plug them back in.

The kid is crazy like that. He’ll take an empty pop can off my coffee table, and bring it to my recycling bin. He’ll pick up a DVD case off the TV table, walk around with it over his head, then put it back exactly where he found it… like, exactly. He’ll even nudge it a little with his finger to get it right.

He seems to know, or remember, exactly where everything goes.

If I tell him, without pointing, to put whatever he’s carrying on the table, he’ll put it on the table. When his mom says “give it to daddy”, he goes out of his way to find me and hands me whatever it is he was carrying. My favourite is “where’s your bottle?”, then he runs off and finds it. I just find that fascinating, that he understands what we’re saying, without having the words yet.

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His favourite word of all time, or for the past few months, is “ball”. Or “bahll” / “bawl” / “ball-e”. It’s also his favourite thing, and his favourite shape. He has a giant yellow bouncing ball, a rubber Christmas ball that’s roughly the size of a softball, and a hacky sack.

They’re almost like a security blanket for him. He can live without them, but once he realizes he doesn’t have access to them it can be a problem.

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…something Victor doesn’t really have is a security blanket. Until recently he refused to sleep under a blanket altogether. And he barely tolerates the two little teddy bears we leave in his crib / playpen — although, if I hug one of his teddy’s, he’ll hug the other and say “teddy”. As long as he has a pillow, and access to a full bottle at 2:30am, he’ll sleep right through the night.

The only reason, as far as I can tell, that he has started to use the blankets is because my slumlord landlord won’t fix the windows in my apartment so, in the winter, when there’s a wind, there’s a -10C draft from every one of them.

I leave the heat on all night when Victor is here, and the baseboard heater is just a few feet from his crib, but still… when there’s a wind, the curtains move.

Which also freaks the cat out.

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One other thing Victor loves doing that blows my mind is stacking stuff. He loves stacking thing on top of other things, or putting things into other things.

He’ll take a box, like an empty diaper box, and walk around picking up his toys and random objects — empty water bottles are a favourite — and storing them in his box. Then he’ll carry his box around my apartment for a little while, then take stuff out of the box and stack the objects on my shelves or tables.

He can unscrew the canister his bum cream comes in, he can turn my printer on, he knows how to turn a juice box into a squirt gun, and he loves to dance to everything from Muddy Waters to The Weeknd.

But my my favourite thing Victor does is when he lifts his arms over his head, his hands all balled up with his thumbs sticking out, and he yells “YAY” with a big grin… except when I’m carrying him and he buries his head into my cheek. That’s definitely my favourite thing, by far.

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Photos Of Victor’s Week(s):

Victor's Week

Victor's Week

Victor's Week

Victor's Week

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Posted in Family, Humor, Humour, Parenthood, Parenting, poverty, Vankleek Hill, Victor's Week In Review, Writing | Tagged | 2 Comments

The greatest Christmas movie miracle of all time

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Gabriel

Copyright Image...how Canadian babies are made.

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This originally appeared as a column in the December 22 print and online editions of the North Bay / Nippissing News, the weekly newspaper I’ve been writing for recently. I’ve been recovering from some fairly serious illnesses over the past few years, so I haven’t been able to write professionally. At least not often. Most, or possibly all, of the profanity was edited out before publication.

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A few nights ago I was watching the greatest Christmas movie ever made, Die Hard, and flipping over to A Christmas Carol during the commercials. When I was a kid the Scrooge movie freaked me out just enough so I haven’t been able to watch it all the way through since – just to add to the freakiness, this time it was the colourized Ted Turner Edition, so everyone was wearing pastel coloured waistcoats, and 1850’s coal-oil soaked London looked like 1985 Miami.

But I must have caught it at just the right – or wrong – commercial breaks because I didn’t see the movie as a condemnation of Scrooge, or even his lifestyle. When the Ghosts started popping up, especially the Ghost of Christmas Past, the movie actually offered perfectly sound reasoning for Scrooge’s behaviour.

Scrooge’s mom died during childbirth, so his father resented him. When Scrooge was old enough – four or five – his father sent Scrooge away to school in an attempt to get rid of the kid. As a child the only friend Scrooge had was his sister, who died giving birth to a son, who Scrooge would hold responsible for his sister’s death. To add to the insult, Scrooge’s nephew comes back later in the story as a poor, but frustratingly happy young man.

Despite everything Scrooge remained a Christmas lover, and moved to the big city where he got a job as a clerk. At this point he met and gets engaged to Alice, a beautiful and deluded woman who believes it’s a virtue to be poor. She and Scrooge are very happy together for a few years. When Scrooge attains a certain level of success she breaks up with him – Scrooge says “I love you, I’ve struggled to be better than I was.” She says “fuck you, you’ve changed, here’s the ring, I’m outta here.”

At this point Scrooge rightfully swears off personal relationships, except the one with his business partner, Jacob Marley. Years later, after being told Marley is not long for this earth, Scrooge tells his clerk there’s no point rushing to Jacob’s bedside because “we’ve all got to die, Cratchit”.

It seems as though his entire early life was just one swift kick to the groin after another. In a purely historical context I understand how Scrooge must be seen as the ‘really bad dude’ — the beginning of the Industrial Revolution was not a kind time for the working man. But even in that context Scrooge remains a sympathetic character. I always thought, just from watching the Muppet version and reading some of the book, Scrooge was meant to be a character without a soul and the Ghosts were trying to give him one.

But Scrooge was just a decent dude who had everything taken from him, and the Three Ghosts were ultimately just showing him what he had left was worth living for. Even though they’re basically the same character, Scrooge is definitely not Henry “scurvy little spider” Potter from “A Wonderful Life”. That’s definitely a hateful bag of hate in dire need of a life enema.

In the end, however, by far the biggest Christmas movie miracle of them all has to be when LAPD Sgt. Al Powell puts five shots into the torso of the ‘previously presumed to be dead’ Euro-trash Terrorist, thus saving the lives of John and Holly McClane at the end of Die Hard.

God bless us, every one.

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Posted in Christmas, Entertainment, Humor, Humour, Journalism, Writing | Tagged | 1 Comment

How the death of Steve Jobs could save Canadians

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Gabriel

Copyright Imagea Vankleek Hill columnist

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This originally appeared as a column in the November 3 print and online editions of the North Bay / Nippissing News, the weekly newspaper I’ve been writing for recently. I’ve been recovering from some fairly serious illnesses over the past few years, so I haven’t been able to write professionally. At least not often. This was my third column with NBNN… so far so good. That is my arm in the photo. A few weeks of generic Polysporin and gauze bandages later and it’s a nice, healthy, virginal pink scar.

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Steve Jobs was a lot of things, apparently one of them was foolish.

Jobs, with some help, created Apple Computers and turned it into one of the most important technological forces in history. His genius was his ability to take an existing product, like a tablet computer, and change it’s interface so it became something else. Something convenient and beautiful. Basically his genius lay in squaring the base of a taco and charging us $599 for the privilege of ownership.

But, since his recent death from a case of pancreatic cancer diagnosed in 2003, we have found out that with his genius came intense stupidity.

Shortly before his death, in a confession to his biographer, Jobs admitted his nearly obsessive embrace of alternative medicines to treat cancer, ultimately led to a premature death.

The type of cancer Jobs was diagnosed with in 2003 was treatable, and survivable. But instead of seeking out care from a modern hospital, he spent months insisting on relying on basic quackery, health guru’s, spiritualists and the authors of self-help books. He made the decision to treat the cancer primarily with dietary choices.

By the time he accepted help the cancer had spread to other organs. He had waited too long, he told his biographer, before getting treatment that could have saved his life.

So, how can Canadians learn from the premature death of one of the truly great captains of industry? By following the example he set when he realized he was killing himself by not using modern health care.

By seeing a doctor who graduated from a reputable university based in a real country.

According to Health Canada more than 70% of Canadians use some form of natural health products regularly. These include nutritional supplements, probiotics, traditional Chinese medicine, vitamins, herbal products, and homeopathy.

Nutritional supplements are great, if what you’re looking for is a placebo effect with no medical documentation to support the claims either of the manufacturer or the recommendations of the person handing them to you.

There are literally thousands of products in Canadian stores promising, sometimes in the vaguest of terms, a healthier life. Some, like folic acid to prevent birth defects, are vital to our health. But they’ve been tested, there have been university trials proving the importance of calcium.

Just to have a basic regulatory framework in place, in 2004, the Natural Health Product Regulations (NHPR) were created under Canada’s Food and Drugs Act to regulate these products. But the new regulations meant only testing these products for manufacturing quality and safety standards.

There’s nothing in the NHPR forcing manufacturers to prove the effectiveness of these products.

So Suzanne Somers is free to get obscenely rich selling books marketing untested, unproven products in this country, and people like Kevin Trudeau can go on television and hock books telling people specific types of calcium farmed from seashells can beat cancer.

These books are poured over by people who would otherwise mock the idea of an aphrodisiac made from powdered tiger penis, but will then lecture you about the healing properties of a faux copper bracelet, or St. John’s Wart, or Lithium oratate.

People who can explain the details of the thousand years of ‘traditional’ Chinese medicine, based on herbs and the mystics of Earth-power, are generally unaware Canadians live longer than the Chinese, both our infant and maternal mortality rate are significantly lower, and Canada has never sent a potential plague into the world.

Of course this isn’t a panic, or an epidemic, it’s just one American industrialist who was, like thousands of Canadians, sucked into the unregulated and illusionary world of ‘alternative medicine’.

So be like the reasonable Jobs and embrace your inner MRI.

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Posted in Canada, Journalism, Politics, Writing | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

The avoidable and useless death of Debbie Hunter

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Gabriel

Copyright Imagea Vankleek Hill tragedy

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A friend of mine… maybe an acquaintance I respected and felt great pity for, died today just days after being admitted to the hospital in Alexandria. She was 41-years old, or very close to it. I know that because we were almost always in the same grade.

Debbie Hunter was the most bullied and belittled person I’ve ever known. And I’ve known quite a few. Debbie had a severe form of epilepsy, it caused her to black out for anywhere from ten seconds to a few minutes. During these blackouts she would rock back and forth and make a low moaning sound.

When the blackout ended it always took a few moments to re-orientate herself. So, of course, the giant fucktards in our high school English class would laugh themselves silly, and mimic the moaning sound and rock back and forth in their desks.

Eventually, I think it was in grade eleven, she had brain surgery that took away most of the seizures, and some of the teasing. But she spent most, if not all, of high school isolated from everyone around her.

All of that bullshit left her a prime target for the users in Vankleek Hill. A few years ago, when I ran into her for the first time since high school, we sat on a bench on Main Street and caught up. As I was getting ready to leave she grabbed my sleeve and told me she was being abused.

She told me the only man she could find to love her was someone almost thirty years older than her, and he wasn’t kind. She had no friends, no one to turn to.

I said a few things to him… like “hi, Debbie is a good friend of mine. If anyone were to hurt her I would be very angry”. It was all I could do at the time. Debbie thanked me. But it was something I should have said twenty-five years ago.

There were other health issues, both mental and physical.

She deserved so much better than what was thrust upon her.

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UPDATE: They released Debbie’s “boyfriend” from the hospital on condition he “stay out of crowds”. I spoke to him today and he says there won’t be a diagnosis for whatever he has until Wednesday at the earliest. Debbie, he said, died from a blood clot, possibly related to diabetes, although her tests haven’t come back either.

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Posted in Vankleek Hill, Vankleek Hill History | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Little Victor Update | Repetitive cacophony

Posted on August 22, 2011 by Gabriel

Copyright ImageVictor's first sucker

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A few years ago there was an episode of Family Guy called “Stewie Loves Lois”, where Stewie — the family baby who has spent most of his life trying to kill his mother — suddenly starts to appreciate everything his mother (Lois) has done for him.

While Lois is trying to relax, and escape Stewie’s manic attempts to gain her attention, Stewie walks into her bedroom and tries to get her attention by repeating her name…

“Lois! Lois! Lois! Lois! Lois! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mama! Mama! Mama! Ma! Ma! Ma! Ma! Mum! Mum! Mum! Mum! Mummy! Mummy! Mumma! Mumma! Mumma!”

Finally Lois gets angry and shouts “What!?”, Stewie responds “Hi” and runs off giggling.

To a certain point this is my life now.

When my son, who just celebrated his twentieth month outside the womb, stays in my apartment, he sleeps and generally hangs out in my bedroom. Unless he’s sleeping I leave the door open, so he can see me while I’m on the computer, or hear me as I ramble round.

Within the past few weeks he has taught himself the “Stewie trick” to get my attention… “da… dada, da dah, DA DAH” then, when I walk over to the door, he giggles, smiles and waves before going back to play with his toys.

Even if he works himself up into a crying jag — he can start crying like his bottle was missing if I wait too long before showing him I still exist — as soon as I show myself he stops crying, smiles and waves.

It’s just the beginning. He’s even started doing it outside while I’m pushing his little buggy. He’ll be his normal watching everything self, then he’ll yell “dah dah” and whip around to make sure I’m still driving.

Mostly Victor and I communicate by yelling at each other. Victor has always been pretty good at playing by himself. But when he takes a break he’ll start babbling loudly in one of his nearly-speaking voices, and I’ll repeat it with the same intensity and volume. It makes him happy, I think, to know someone’s agreeing with him.

Also, a few weeks ago, maybe even a couple of months ago, I started to notice how Victor would turn his back to me and run to the furthest corner of his PlayPen whenever I held my arms out with the intention of lifting him.

Once he got to his corner he would turn his head to watch me. Wherever I moved, he’d take off for the opposite corner. Or he’d dive to the ground. It was a game, and more often than not he’d be giggling the whole time.

He does cry when I finally catch him, and lift him out of the PlayPen, but only for a few seconds.

He has started doing the same thing with his stuff. He has finally discovered the concept of “mine”… or at least he’s being more vocal about it. He’s still more likely than not to hand something over if you ask for it, but now he’s either asking for something in trade, or I’ve got to pry it out of his tear stained hands.

Once Victor has decided an object is his it takes a struggle to get it back… he’s a strong little dude, with big strong hands.

This is not going to be an easy eighteen years.

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I don’t know if one has anything to do with the other, but when Victor is with me in my apartment the music is constantly on. There’s always background noise, usually in the form of Blues, Country or modern rock, but also from the proximity of a busy intersection.

But when he’s with his mother, in her home, it’s mostly just the general noise of a home.

So, I think, Victor is using some of his musical toys to maintain a comfortable noise level. The problem is, one of them is broken, so when it sings it sounds like it has been ‘auto-tuned’.

The other problem is, Victor knows how to turn it on, and the final problem is he can keep it singing forever.

It’s the lumberjack from the stop-motion animated Christmas classic “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, and it sings a song called “Silver and Gold”… but it comes out like he was just shot, and probably won’t finish. But it does, and Victor squeezes its left hand, and out comes the song for the twenty-seventh time that morning.

The real problem is, the lumberjack doll is one of the things Victor hates to be without. And if we take the batteries out, he’ll shake it a few times, then offer it back to you because he knows we either sabotaged it, or we can make it work again.

I left a YouTube of him making sure the lumberjack is singing, so if you scroll down a bit you’ll see / hear what I mean.

I think we have to start playing music at Diane’s place more often… or, I guess, we could just buy him a new lumberjack, except I hate that frigging song now.

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Photos Of Victor’s Week(s):

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