Just because the universe is out to get me, doesn’t mean I’m paranoid (Part 1)

I do have a tendency to wallow in negativity, but I’m hoping that discovering my own divine goodness will change all that. Meditation is supposed to be the vehicle to get me there, but it's stalled on the Lazy Highway at the junction of Excess and Sleeplessness at the moment.

I’m staring down the end of 2009 and wondering what 2010 has in store for me. An attitude adjustment would be a good move for me in 2010.

But before I go that route, I’m going to wallow in negativity one more time and then flush. (Actually, this is such a long post, that I may cut it into two or three posts).

If I had tunnel vision, I would be inclined to say that the last five years were a complete write-off. There were tough times and there were (paltry) good times. I should add a disclaimer of sorts saying: "I'm aware that I'm very fortunate to be born into the time and circumstances I'm in."

But since this is my last (multi-part) wallow, I’m going to highlight the low points for my reading audience. Right off the bat, I have to say that sometimes when things really suck they can be funny later. But some things just keep right on sucking.

Roof and heart: 2005/6

We returned home from our Christmas holidays to a terrible smell. I thought that perhaps we forgot to take the garbage out, but that wasn’t it.

When I walked into our living room, the ceiling was hanging down. The roofer took that old roof off, but didn’t get around to putting the new roof on and it rained while we were away.

This house was a three storey semi-detached home with a flat roof. I was home when they were removing the tar and gravel. I had assumed they were putting on the membrane to replace it, but they didn’t. Lacking a 50-foot ladder, I couldn’t confirm this. That was my mistake.

We spent the next seven weeks in a depressing little furnished apartment while the roofer’s insurance company and our insurance company funded the replacement of all of our ceilings and the floor refinishing and replacement. Thank heavens for insurance. We paid for the actual roof replacement when it was done and had our home inspector verify it.

The night we moved back in, my older daughter, who was four at the time, vomited all over her room from the overwhelming smell of varnish. My younger daughter, who was two (and who is the melded reincarnation of a goat and a science geek), wrote on some walls, broke into her sister’s piggy bank and dropped coins down the vents to give it that lived-in look. There. Perfect.

About six weeks later, my 37-year-old husband walked gingerly down the stairs from the office, where he had been entering his students’ marks.

He was clutching his chest.

“I have crushing chest pain. Can hardly breathe.”

Following the ambulance carrying my husband was surreal. This is something that happens to other people. All I kept thinking was: How could he have a heart attack? He’s a sub-three-hour marathoner, non-smoker and has the healthiest diet of anyone I know.

At the hospital, they ran tests and kept him overnight.

When I returned home where my neighbour and friend was minding my children, he told me that my older daughter’s asthma was acting up, so he gave her the “puffer”. A father himself to children with allergies, he was adept in assessing these things and administering her puffer.

I took her temperature and it was 104F. Not up to another trip to the emergency, but not feeling very tired, I gave her some ibuprophen, propped her up on me and administered salbutamol in intervals for what remained of the night.

I fetched Oli the next day. Tests revealed that he hadn’t had a heart attack. We were so relieved and regarded his followup tests with the internist as a precautionary measure.

Oli laughed and joked with the technicians as he sailed through the stress test. It was inconceivable that he’d fail the test. He returned home ebullient, but very tired. Hours later, the doctor called him up and said he wanted to see him first thing in his office.

That was our introduction the term peri-myocarditis. The doctor figured that it was brought on by a virus Oli had two or three weeks prior. Oli was over the bug, but just couldn’t shake the fatigue. But he didn’t let that stop him from riding his bike to work (in February), working out, coaching the basketball team and participating in exercise labs with his Grade 12 physiology students.

The pain he felt that night was from sudden swelling of the heart muscle (myocardium) and its membrane (pericardium).

Looking back now, I feel that this situation may have arisen from another factor in addition to the virus, and that’s chemical. We moved back into our home in winter time after the floors had been sanded and varnished and the walls re-painted. It’s not practical to keep the windows open for long periods of time when its -20C.

Lucky for us that we live in a place where we can access a heart-specialty hospital. Oli was put in the care of a cardiologist at the Ottawa Heart Institute.

And so went the rounds of tests and appointments. During this time, my daughter’s asthma was poorly controlled, and it seemed that when I wasn’t going to the heart institute or emergency with my husband, I was at the family doctor’s or the emergency department of the Children’s Hospital for Eastern Ontario with my daughter.

Oli was exhausted and grey and slept a lot. I worked, went to appointments and did as much as I could around the house. The girls went to daycare, as they had before. This tore at my husband, who felt that while he was home, he should at least be able to take care of his children. Not possible with his level of illness.

I remember Halloween that year. Oli was too weak to take the girls out, so he gave out candy—seated on a chair on our porch because he was too weak to stand up.

Happy Valentine’s Day—welcome to heart failure

Valentine’s Day 2006 was another low point. My husband's cardiologist, during an earlier appointment said that he was referring my husband to a "colleague". That actual reason is hazy but it was something like "making sure all the bases are covered."

Our appointment was Valentine's Day and when we arrived to meet our new doctor we found out that he was a HEART FAILURE AND TRANSPLANT SPECIALIST and we were there because Oli's heart damage was looking permanent.

Those were more frightening times. Our doctor was very reassuring, but still, Oli was trying to adjust to the fact that he couldn't trust his heart.

His heart was something he took for granted before. Now it thumped ineffectively like a big water balloon in his chest. Irregular heart rhythms woke him in the night and he was plagued with constant chest pain. At least his function wasn't so bad that he was on the transplant list.

Eventually, Oli felt well enough to teach one class a day, and so he did. He walked when he felt well enough and rested a lot. He spent every waking moment cuddling his little girls, fearful that he wouldn't be around to see them grow up.

Watching him go through that made me feel powerless. What's the saying about wishes being fishes? I wished that if he couldn't magically be cured, that I could at least hand him my heart and say, "Why don't we share and alternate weeks?"

See also:

Part 2: Scabies seem appealing

Part 3: Betting our Hedge

Merry Christmas—I stole your iPod

Just before Christmas, my husband and I decided to treat ourselves to a cross-country ski date (without children). So we hired a sitter and headed to Nakkertok.

The weather was perfect. We had a nice lunch of paté and crackers and fruit in the lodge afterwards and met up with old friends.

We returned home; I paid the sitter; she left; Oli looked over at the kitchen windowsill and said, “Where’s your iPod?”

And there it was, THAT SINKING FEELING. The iPod nano was a gift I had received the week before from my employer after working for months on a big project. I used it only a few times.

“I thought it was right there,” I said, hoping I was wrong and misplaced it.

“It was exactly there,” he said. “And the cord for my phone charger is missing too.”

You see, my husband seems to have a photographic spatial memory. He seems to always know exactly where things are. I’m very spoiled because I use this memory remotely, never having to wonder where my keys or glasses are.

He picked up the phone and called her. This sitter is a high-school student who had babysat for us once before.

He asked her where the iPod was. She said she didn’t touch it. He asked her if she perhaps borrowed it and forgot to put it back.

“I wouldn’t do that to you guys,” she said. The denials continued.

Then, my husband suggested that perhaps it was dropped outside when she was playing with the kids and that she should go look for it. He offered her a reward for returning it, but warned that if it wasn’t returned he would be calling her principal and employer (where she works part time).

She agreed to look.

I felt sick about this, but marveled at how calm, kind and persistent he was in questioning her.

When he took the kids out to play a little more, our “former” sitter showed up, handed me the iPod and told me a story about how she found it in the snow.

She refused the reward and then said, “I want to work for you again.”

I tried not to laugh. Then I shut the door.

All this had me thinking about some things:

1. Dealing with behaviour like this is a skill and one that my husband demonstrated handily. He was clear about the consequences, provided a face-saving option for recovery and never lost his cool.
2. I’m really naïve. I can’t believe that someone would go for instant gratification, forgoing a future income in excess of the value of the stolen item. She’s never going to work for me again, nor for any of my friends. The sad part of this is that my kids really like her and pestered us for weeks to call her.
3. Thank goodness, I packed the laptop away. Mind you, that's much tougher to hide, even in a bulky winter jacket.
   
4. I wonder what went “missing” the last time she was here. But if we never noticed, it couldn’t have been that important.
5. Bad shit seems to happen when I go skiing.
6. I don’t see many dates in our future now.
7. Sometimes the greatest gifts are the ones you get back.
   

Moving beyond regret: "Gourmet" food and office visits

Maggie's recent dietary misadventure is a good example of how, in
life, suffering is inevitable, but misery is optional.

Her digestive tract is still pretty enflamed. At least,she keeps her food down now, but each meal is followed by a bout of gagging. Lovely.

But, she's never looked better. Look at her in that photo, showing off her now somewhat perceptible cheekbones after 48 hours on the supermodel diet. Although in her case it was paper towel that was (likely) consumed and not toilet paper and heroin. Careful, Maggie those bones could cut glass. Her coat is all soft and shiny now too. Bitch.

So, Maggie made a mistake (or ate a mistake). Who hasn't? But she's
still wagging that little Aussie butt of hers. For her there wasn't
exactly a fallout from this, more of a spray out, but she's not
suffering. Not her. She's moved on--right into my office, where:

• I can feed her several home pre-cooked meals a day, along with a king's ransom worth of gut-soothing medication, and
• She can be admired by all and sundry who stop by for a visit.

What's the lesson here? I guess that even if things seem to suck at
first, there can be an upside. Either that or Scott towels are yummy.

Me soooo sorry

Maggie deeply regrets her lack of control around paper towel the other day. Doesn't she look contrite?

Here I am complaining about the cost, but she must have been deeply uncomfortable. She added much vegetation to her paper indulgence. Interestingly, her vegetation of choice was the dessicated mint plants growing in the backyard. How do I know this? Guess. Mint is an herb known for improving digestion. Didn't work though.

Maggie doesn't look like her bouncy self in this picture. In fact, she kinda looks like me when I eat the WHOLE bag of Doritos and then feel like I'm going to go into labour (which would be miraculous because I'm not pregnant. I just have a LOOOOOONG memory).

But my whiskers are much darker.

Sparkling snow and dog vomit: Taking the bad with the good

Bright sun and a 20-cm snow base--it was a perfect morning to ski, so I did.

My husband dug out my skis and waxed them up for me. Not well enough to go out himself, he was determined to send me out to enjoy an hour of sun and snow. He’s wonderful that way.

Out the door Maggie and I went. I skied along the river parkway where an earlier skier put down perfectly straight tracks, which eventually gave way to a lumpy walking trail. But I didn’t care.

It was -10C, with a wind chill factor that supposedly made it feel like -16C and I was warm and happy.

In the past, if a cross-country ski wasn’t at least 90 minutes of significant effort on groomed trails, it didn’t count. Of course, that was before children and before THE SHIT happened. (For my other thoughts on shit, go here or here.)

Today, I was thrilled just to be out and ski alongside the sparkling river with its growing patches of ice that bobbed on its wind-ruffled surface. Maggie chased squirrels and collected burrs in her fur.

When I got home, I had coffee and laughed and chatted with my little family.

Then Maggie vomited and vomited all over the place.

Setting your intention: a practical approach

Hag with a big bag of sh--

I used a little positive thinking to apply to my conundrum of the other day, and it worked.

See, I lost track of Maggie’s “output” again. The brown leaves of late autumn make that one special chore of responsible dog ownership a little tough.

With this light dusting of snow we got today, scooping the poop will be so much easier. I sound like a total lame-ass. Why do I like winter? “Well, there’s skiing and it’s easier to find and bag the dog shit.”

So, I made a point of looking for other shit and disposing of it in order to balance things out in the universe—that little bit.

Boy, did I find it. The first pile I happened upon looked like it was left by a small pony. Definitely not Maggie’s. She would have needed stitches.

After I set my intention to pick up shit wherever I found it, I found it in spades:

• near the schoolyard
• on the sidewalk with shoe treads squashed into it
• bagged and hanging on a tree
• at work (just kidding!)

But, luckily not on the bottom of my shoe. See, I find that lucky. It’s all about having the right aspirations.

Looking for shit in all the wrong places

Watching my dog run and jump and chase the ball makes me very happy. At the risk of anthropomorphizing my little Australian Shepherd, Maggie: she looks so joyful when she’s outside.

And that makes me joyful.

But when I’m bending down to the ground, trying to locate her brown shiny turds on the brown shiny leaves of late autumn, I get frustrated.

Here I am trying to scoop her poop like a responsible pet owner and I can’t find it. I’m being thwarted by the frickin’ environment.

Then I get philosophical and start thinking about “shit” in existential terms.

When we look for shit (in the form of offense or things that piss us off--like lice), we often find it. It’s a the-glass-ain’t-just-half-empty-it-has exploded-into-tiny-shards-on-the-tile-floor-and-a-piece-just-got-stuck-in-my-foot kinda thinking.

My grandmother called it fault finding. You may have forgiven someone their trespasses against you, but you’ve always got your hairy eyeball out for the next transgression.

And most of the time, we get offended because we’re so egotistical that we think that a person’s sole motivation was to hurt our feelings in some way. More often than not, people are just doing what they’re doing to get by, but we misread the situation completely.

I like to say that if you walk around with your head in the toilet, you’ll always find shit.

But, when you’re looking on the brown shiny ground for the remains of last night’s Alpo, it’s nowhere to be found.

Sometimes, you just have to let things go.

After I resolve to locate it next time, I call Maggie and take that first step on our return journey. Then, there’s that squishy, sinking feeling under my shoe and the smell hits me in the nose.

There are two ways to interpret this situation:

1. Sometimes even when you let go, the shit finds you, or
2. When you surrender, you find what you’re looking for…sort of.