I’ve been meaning to blog (and write a short story and clean my kitchen and pay my bills and do my laundry and whip up some art and read a book) but I’ve been so overwhelmingly sleepy. I slept eleven hours last night, followed by a two hour nap this afternoon. Not only that, but in the time it took me to write those two sentences, I sneezed nine times and it felt like an accomplishment.
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Watch my life unravel...
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The medal is lovely, don’t you think? I wonder who the picture is of…he looks familiar. Anyway, now we can get back to our regularly scheduled blogging. It’s been awhile since I blogged about crack. I’m sure you all miss that as much as I do. Stay tuned! Oh, and just because I’m a glutton for punishment, I entered another contest I don’t want to win. Finalists have to participate on a live radio show. Today I was over at the ESI blog, and noticed they have a Zoom Cam over in the right sidebar! Oh my god, it’s a music video with light bulbs and it’s a song about someone whose life is unravelling because she wasn’t careful about what she wished for – the parallels are freaky! How do they do that? Meanwhile, you may have noticed that several of the ESIs left encouraging comments after my last post. That’s what they DO, they encourage you and say how wonderful you’re going to be, and they empathize with your angst but they keep ramping up the pressure somehow. I got an email from their spokesperson and he said it was excellent that I was suffering so, because all the other ESIs would be delighted to know I was taking it so seriously and not just dashing off some piece of tripe like so many others might do. He inquired somewhat delicately about my health, and asked if perhaps I might be displaying some physical symptoms of stress he could share with his fellow ESIs. I mentioned the increased alcohol consumption, and the touch of Tourettes Syndrome I seem to have developed since winning the contest, and he was pleased. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. As you may or may not know, I recently won a contest over at the Elgin Street Irregulars blog. The contest was to propose the best idea for a contest. My winning suggestion was to have a pre-contest contest to suggest prizes for the real contest. I know this is complicated, but it’s a meta-blog, which means if they’re going to have a contest, it’s only fitting that it be a contest contest, with a pre-contest to determine the prizes for the actual contest. I have some brilliant ideas for what the prize should be be for the REAL contest, but I won the pre-contest contest, and the prize for the pre-contest contest is the opportunity to write a guest post on the ESI blog. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking ‘What the hell kind of prize is THAT?’ A spokesperson from the ESIs contacted me two nights ago and said “Congratulations, you won, do you have your guest post ready?” I stammered something about not having it ready and could I please have an extra day. He replied of course I could have an extra day, but he’d need to smooth things over with the other ESIs, because they’re such sticklers for deadlines. The pressure intensified as the day went on. I visited the ESI blog and saw my name up in lights, and an explanation from their dog that I was a little delayed but my post would be coming soon and it would be extra-special and brilliant. Brilliant! That’s exactly what I needed to intensify my already-crippling performance anxiety.
(If any of you have a spare extra-special brilliant idea, please send it my way ASAP. I don’t know how much longer I can stall those ESIs.)
My sister’s partner, Maurice, moved out to Nova Scotia about a month ago to take a new job. Kerry and the kids will be joining him once they take care of some things: sell the house here, find a house there, iron out a few of the more acrimonious details with an ex, pack, give birth, etc. The baby was due on September 15, and indications were that it would arrive earlier than that. Maurice delayed his departure for NS as long as possible, but then he really had to go. The due date came and went, and still no baby. He flew back for a visit the weekend after the due date. Still no baby. He called his boss and arranged to take the rest of the week off, which isn’t something you feel good about asking for during your first month at a new job. But his boss said yes, and Maurice stayed the rest of the week so he could be there for the baby’s arrival. Total strangers started giving them advice. A little old lady came running out of a store and told Kerry she needed to have more sex. “And you tell him your orgasm is just as important as his!” said the little old lady emphatically. Men would approach Maurice in parking lots and say “The problem is you’ve been out of town. She needs more sex to go into labour.” Kerry and Maurice did everything in their power to convince the baby to emerge. They drank castor oil. They spent hours on the breast pump. They went for long moonlit walks on the Gatineau trails and had lots of sex in those chalets along the trail (there were too many children at home for them to have sex there). But still no baby. Kerry updated her Facebook status bar: “Kerry is still pregnant and probably always will be.” There were visits from the midwife and trips to the hospital for stress tests, to see how the baby was doing. From all indications, he was doing fine but his placenta was starting to show its age.
On Saturday Maurice called me and said he had no choice, he had to do a bunch of things before he left and he had to leave, but could I go stay with Kerry at the hospital? He picked me up and drove me to the Gatineau Hospital. Kerry was doing great – smiling and relaxed and good-natured as always. This is her fourth baby, and she’s had the other three naturally, at home with midwives or alone, and they’ve all been remarkably easy births. This baby has been full of surprises from conception onwards. Okay, here’s a bit of medical trivia for you. They use prostaglandin as kind of a pre-induction technique if your cervix isn’t soft enough yet for an oxytocin induction. Guess where they get prostaglandin? If you said pig semen, you’re right! That’s where Kerry was at when I got to the hospital: she had a string of pig semen tucked up in her vagina, and was waiting for it to soften her cervix. And she was waiting for the baby to put his head back down into the birthing position. If all went well, they could induce the next day.
But I found myself doing exactly the same thing, because the damn machine is hypnotic. Fortunately Kerry thought it was funny. Maybe because she wasn’t in any pain. They checked her cervix a few times, and she was still only 3cm dilated, which is where she’d been for a month. The contractions stopped during the night. At 11:00 am they determined that the baby was in a good position for birth and the pig semen had done its job, so they started the oxytocin induction. Kerry and I sat and talked for a few more hours. She was having contractions every three minutes. She wasn’t in any discomfort. Then the OB-GYN came in and did another internal. “Oooh,” she said, obviously surprised, “You are 8 centimeters! I am going to break the waters.” I got my camera ready and took a few warm-up pictures. The doctor broke the waters, and there was a big gush. But the doctor didn’t take her hand out, and she started to look concerned. They were all talking french, so Kerry and I didn’t understand it all. But it was becoming clear that we were going from an easy, painless, uncomplicated birth to some kind of obstetrical emergency. They put Kerry in an upside-down-bicycle position – flat on her back with her butt up on something and her knees by her ears. The doctor said to Kerry that she needed her to push really hard, because the baby’s cord was being pinched by his head against the cervix and she couldn’t get it out of the way – they only had a few minutes to deliver him, or they’d have to do an emergency C-section. (I found out later that you’ve got seven minutes before the baby dies, and only four or five before brain damage. There probably wasn’t even time for a C-section.) The doctor’s whole hand and part of her arm were entirely inside of Kerry’s vagina. There was a lot of blood. Everybody was scared – you could see it and feel it. I knew that if anybody could push a baby out under such adverse circumstances, Kerry could. If what they were telling her to do was humanly possible, she would do it. Kerry was staying calm and following instructions PUSH PUSH PUSH PUSH but I could see the fear in her face and my own legs were shaking like crazy.
The baby’s name is Sam! He weighs eight and a half pounds and is 22 inches long. He’s really mellow, easy-going, bright-eyed, alert and aware. I like him a lot. He’s going home today to meet his three big brothers and his big sister. Kerry can’t wait to get home to all her other babies.
And then, quite some time ago, Harper put the brakes on the project in mid-stream. I was disappointed, but I still thought there was hope. Now I hear the project is off because Harper wants to use the building (it’s the old US embassy, across from Parliament Hill) as a swanky greeting room for his international visitors. Well screw that! My gut reaction is one of disappointment. I wanted it, and now it’s not gonna happen. But Kelly Egan put a lot more thought into why he’s disappointed with this decision, and I agree with every word in his column today. Here’s an excerpt:
Read Kelly Egan’s column here. I wonder if there’s any way to turn this decision around. Okay, so I quit smoking two months ago and I gained five pounds. (I’m lying; I gained six pounds.) My pants don’t fit right anymore, and that means I spend a lot of time feeling uncomfortably aware of those six pounds. I could go out and buy jeans a size bigger, but I won’t do that because I have no intention of keeping the six pounds. I’ve been trying to lose them for about 6 weeks now, and so far I’m not having much success. I lose a pound, then I gain it back. At one point I lost two pounds, then I gained them back plus another one. I know why I’ve gained the weight: I’m eating more. I know what I have to do to lose it: eat less. It’s so elementary, but it’s just not happening. A couple of days ago I found this website called MyPyramid Tracker which lets you track your diet and exercise. It’s freaking me out though – it wants to know how I spend every minute of every day. It includes a pretty exhaustive drop-down list of activities. Did you spend any time butchering animals today? How much time did you spend digging worms with a shovel? Conducting an orchestra? Seriously. My life seems so mundane when I see all the things I could be doing. On the other hand, MyPyramid Tracker doesn’t overlook the mundane either. It asked me how much time I spent sitting on the toilet today. The site is run by that creepy surveillance-obsessed US government, which I didn’t notice until after I’d registered. The more I think about it, the more it bothers me. They should call it MyParanoid Tracker. I had no idea Ottawa Centre had seven candidates running for MPP.
From left to right: Richard Eveleigh, Independent. Let’s just say he needs to polish his public speaking skills a bit before he tries this again. I felt kind of sorry for him because he doesn’t speak clearly and I don’t think he hears very well either, and honestly, he seems a bit confused. Greg Laxton had to keep explaining things to him. He’s a single-issue candidate: the environment (but eccentric-environment). He declined to answer a number of questions – some legitimately because they were about party positions, and others because he didn’t understand the question. (I will give him points though for having the guts to say he didn’t understand the question rather than using the opportunity to talk about something else, the way more experienced candidates do.) Greg Laxton, Greens. I liked him. He was smart and comfortable and personable. BUT. BIG BUT: during his 7-minute intro, he didn’t talk about the issues. He talked about himself and why he became a politicans and how he wrote his masters thesis on electoral systems and how he was the one who put McGuinty on the spot in public about committing to a referendum (the upcoming MMP referendum). He talked about what he had done rather than what he would do if elected. Danny Moran, Family Coalition Party. Practically the first word out of his mouth was abortion, and God wasn’t far behind. I found him surprisingly likable though, in spite of his preachy moralistic politics. He seemed like a pragmatic, down-to-earth, screw-the-politics kind of politician. He promised to be “loud, shrill, strident, annoying and persistent” if elected. I couldn’t possibly vote for him, but he’d be kind of fun to have as an extended relative who I could see once or twice a year at family gatherings and argue with till we’re both blue in the face. Trina Morisette, Conservative Party. Trina didn’t show up until it was her turn to talk. She didn’t seem quite real – she sounded more like an advertisement for herself, describing herself as “a new face and a trusted voice.” She was like a cardboard cutout with a party line and a memorized speech. On several occasions she made a point of saying that her father was a cop and her mother was a nurse, and seemed oddly self-congratulatory about it. She overused words like ‘proud,’ ‘passionate,’ and ‘values.’ She even said something like “these values are the cornerstone of my personal constitution.” Seriously, who has a personal constitution? Get real Trina. Will Murray, NDP. Will was pretty intense and focused, and he spoke to issues like the social safety net, health, education, pollution, cuts, and the fact that Ottawa does not get a fair deal at Queen’s Park. As a lawyer, he’s done some interesting stuff, including some legal challenges against jailing mentally ill people who should be hospitalized, and fighting Money Mart on usery charges. At one point he pointed out that provinces with NDP governments are doing well in terms of balancing the books. I heard him say “Commies are stronger than they were previously.” But what he really said was Economies, not Commies. Yasir Nagvi. Liberal law professor who immigrated from Pakistan at the age of 15, and came from a socially conscious family. Stressed his involvement in community and voluntary groups, like the Centretown Community Health Centre, and the Food Bank. Stuart Ryan, Communist Party. If the man has any personality at all he should dust it off and bring it to these kind of events. (Although I have to say, I think I prefer his personality to that of the perennial Communist Party candidate, Marvin Glass.) As far as policy positions, they all sounded nice but unrealistic. Highlights from the Questions from the Audience: There were quite a few questions about the referendum. All the candidates are voting YES on the referendum question, except for Trina. The PCs as a party are against it. There seemed to be a bit of confusion among some of the candidates about the referendum. Laxton was the resident expert, and he framed it as a matter of democracy rather than process. He pointed out that the current system does not technically meet the criteria for democracy. There was an interesting flare-up when Will Murray (NDP) said that Laxton’s the only Green candidate who knows more about MMP than about the environment, and that he (Murray) knew more about the environment than Laxton did. Laxton was visibly – and audibly – pissed off. The only other heated moment came when a woman in a wheelchair approached the microphone (which was right beside my ear) and started screeching about accessibility issues (specifically about the lack of wheelchair-accessible washrooms along the 401). She was quite shrill and she was pointing her finger at them and jabbing the air and demanding timelines for improvements and saying that people with disabilities in Ontario have fewer civil rights than Blacks in the South, and that when someone wants to shit they want to be able to shit. Of course she was absolutely right, but you can’t go around being that livid all the time, it’s just not healthy. Interestingly, the Family Values candidate had the best answer for her: there’s legislation in place, you just have to find out who needs to be yelled at and then yell at them. Anyway, it’s late, so that’s it for my report from Carlington’s All Candidates Debate! Here are a couple of extra pictures:
I thought this one was kind of funny. They all look like they’re about to pass out. This list was inspired by Meg Fowler, whom I discovered via Darren Barrenfoot. Meg likes to make lists of the things she loves. She does it mostly on Fridays, but I’m not that disciplined. Feel free to add to my list in the comments. (We’ll do Things We Love About Autumn in a week or so. Then we’ll move on to Things We Hate About Winter.)
??? 1) Are you voting in Ontario’s provincial election on October 10th? 2) If so, who are you voting for? 3) How are you voting on the referendum question? 4) Hypothetical bonus question: If the new electoral system (Mixed Member Proportional) were in effect for this election, which of course it isn’t, would both your votes go to the same party? 5) Why is it considered rude to ask people who they’re voting for? Here are my answers: 1) Yes |
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