From Wish to Reality

Well, it was in just the last post that I was catching myself wishing for a sailboat...and holy crap I've got one.

The Canadian Thanksgiving weekend was a mad dashing rush to temporarily acquire a trailer, pack everyone (me, Rue, 2 girls + Dog) drive for 5 hours through rain and blowing snow on the Coquihalla connector, deal with a drunken Rugby team in Abbotsford pounding on my hotel door at 2, 3, 4 and finally 5AM, head out in the morning to meet up with the donor (did I mention that the boat was FREE? Alright DAMAGED, too - but nothing a little E-glass, elbow-grease and gelcoat couldn't fix) and get the boat on a maybe too short trailer with dodgy 1970's wiring...

Did I mention that the trailer was probably too short?

Then the mad dash back up the Coquihalla, eyes staring into the rearview mirror as the trailer bounced on every bump, waiting for the sickening crash that would mean that the boat had torn itself free of restraint and had slipped off the trailer into the path of unsuspecting travellers on the darkest part of an already darkened highway...

Then the welcoming sight of my driveway and home...

I am the proud owner of a very much used, very much in need of TLC almost-40-year-old Flying Dutchman...

What have I gotten myself into?

Week Two

It's the middle of week 2 of the Double Income, Kids in Daycare regime and it looks like we survived the mutant flu-plague the girls brought home with them late last week.

The transition has gone relatively smoothly with some minor bumps in the road.

I think our dog is relieved that all the sick people have left her alone to bask in the sun on the couch...I almost purchased a remote webcam just to see what kind of trouble she gets up to while we're away.

Rue and I have an appointment at 11:30am with a family doctor who is accepting new patients - it just took us two years since we moved to Kelowna to find one. Did I mention that Rue and I work for the same employer? That we're both part of the big happy family that is the BC Public Sector?

That everything that I've ever thought about the public sector is mind-numbingly true? Both good and bad...

Daycare

It's such a blessing to be living in a country where the most important issue of the day - the one that has been manufactured to have SO MUCH critical importance to our lives - is state-sponsored daycare.

Not nuclear proliferation...

Not Israel-Palestine...

Not trade wars with the US...

But DAYCARE!

Mad Cows? Oil? Bah! Trivial stuff. The real fight is over who gets to care for your one or two-year old. (Don't fool yourself - Many have no problems with the preschoolers -3-5yrs- going to a good quality daycare/preschool. Most of the talk bandied about by "experts" refer to the "socialization" of one and two year olds, or the economic prison imposed upon women "forced" to stay home and care for the offspring they hatched. Last time I checked, parenthood was something people engaged in voluntarily. You don't want the responsibility - don't have children...The proposed programs of national daycare seems to be about indoctrinating our young and "saving" them from the clutches of all parents whom the previous government deemed incompetent to raise their own children.)

Full disclosure time: My wife has just returned to work and my daughters, aged almost three and four and a half entered a private-company daycare two weeks ago...So for us this is a top-of-mind issue, as the double-income wouldn't flow until we found spots for the little ones. Time on the waiting list: one month. So there were spaces available. Cost to have them in full time: $530/month/child or $1060/month.

I also have to disclose that my parents ran a private "Family Day Care" out of our own home from the time I was twelve to the time my mother fell ill and died from cancer almost ten years later. "Family Day Care" was a form of business that I believe is still allowed in which a private person can care for a preset number of children in their own home as a business subject to regulation (in the case of my parents' business it was the local Family Day Care Society, whose minions would drop by for a chat/inspection every month or two) so I've seen it from both sides. It is a form that seems to have fallen out of favour because of the regulations involved in keeping a normal house safe for lots of kids with varying degrees of discipline and stupidity (yes, my biased observation - you weren't there... some kids are just DUMB!) It's a job trying to childproof a home for your own kid - try seven or eight of the snot-nosed little hell-spawn (yeah, they got into my room and found stuff they shouldn't have and that I had to explain to Mom and Dad...)

But I digress.

This issue has been kicking around for 36 years (see CBC News INDEPTH: Day care in Canada). Every government promises it in an election - every government has broken its promise after they've gotten elected and people have moved on. I didn't see Conservatives fighting the 2004 election on daycare. I didn't see any Liberals wagging their fingers at their candidates shouting "You didn't deliver on daycare! You betrayed us!" when election after election came and went.

It's after the election. Why are politicians still talking about this? With the thought of going to the polls at any time now (potentially) the issue hasn't been allowed to die its normal post-election death with phoenix-like resurrection 5 years later - just prior to the NEXT election, when the same group of engaged parents from the previous election are no longer concerned: their kids are in school now so why should they give a damn about somebody else's children? - But with this minority government situation part 2, maybe a sitting government might actually have to do something, as opposed to the nothing of every previous government.

As a ruthlessly self-interested parent - sometimes you have to be - as a good first step I'd like to have something right now rather than this nebulous "perfect system" that's been talked about for 36 years and never delivered upon. The journey of a thousand steps starts with just one.

I'll take my $1,200 x 2 kids please. That's a 19% reduction in my costs versus a whole lotta nothing up to this point. Like I said: it's a start.

And I promise not to spend it on beer and popcorn.

Doin' the Happy Dance

So what's the big secret?

Am I going north to drop in on Temujin, even though he came to Kelowna and didn't visit me?

No that'd be nice. But how does that improve my life?

Did I win a lottery?

No, that'd be nice too. But the site would be a lot fancier, and there'd be a lot of "Ha Ha! I'm so damn rich and you're not!" posts, so no that's not it either.

---

I went and got myself a better job. Big deal, you say. Fine, I say. I didn't ask you to come over here and rain on my parade, now did I?

I did say that it was important to me, and important to my family. With my current job I drive back and forth every day from Kelowna to Penticton, robbing me of about one and a half to two hours of my day commuting.

OK my commute kind of looks like this, so I shouldn't be complaining (this photo doesn't do the view justice, especially in fall.)



But now I'm doing the happy dance!

New job, closer to home, more money, better organization (lots more impressive on business cards!), better title, my own stinkin' office (wooooo!) and the ability to threaten friends of mine with poking into their files of past business dealings and results with said organization. And all I have to do is take the body blows when the non-financial-speaking revenue producers are called on the carpet to explain to the budget chiefs in Vancouver why they're spending so much damn money. All this and Excel models, too!

WOOOOOO!

It's funny. Thinking back to when Rue, the little princesses and I moved here over a year ago, this was the exact job I had envisioned myself having, and with this organization too. I guess Rue's right. A little positive thinking can go a long way. And a man can accomplish great personal things if he has the right person supporting him every step of the way.

Thanks, hon!

Did I forget to say WOOOOOO!

Secret Identity

When I first started this blog - and no one in the real world knew that I had it - I could cut loose with any old detail about my personal and professional life and it wouldn't matter: nobody knew me and nobody cared - it was a nice safe little public place to vent and scream and do whatever I felt like.

But then I had to go and ruin it because I wanted people to read it. And then they started to ask me about things I was writing. And then I got stage fright because people in the real world that I knew and that knew me in a certain context started to know about the other things I was thinking about.

So what has this got to do with anything?

I have news.

Big news (to me at least. It won't effect YOUR lives any...)

And I can't say a damn thing about it here because there are secret listeners (And to you secret listeners: no, Rue's not pregnant! Shut up about that...)

When I can say something about it I will, but I'm just steaming to let it out!

Sleep is becoming elusive due to the excitement.

Death and the Internet

It was the summer of 1990. In between my third and fourth year at university I decided not to go home for the summer break. I thought, quite rightly that hanging out in Vancouver over the summer would be better for my social life, as well as getting that pesky office experience that would help my career in the long run.

I shared a three bedroom apartment on Commercial around 47th with very good friends Dan and Allison and fourth roommate Julie, who I remember chiefly for the fact that she used to wash her car clad in nothing but her bathing suit, a fact that me and my beer-drinking buddy Dominic could appreciate as we consumed many a bottle on the balcony over-looking the driveway. She moved out a month or two into the summer and was replaced by another friend Rhonda, who didn't have a car, and didn't prance around in her bathing suit. Quite a pity, actually.

I was feeling pretty happy regarding my current situation when I got a call from my best friend from high school Brent, who was in the area and wanted to see me. How'd he get my number I asked? My Dad gave it to him, he replied.

I don't know if anyone else admits this, but I had grown apart from my high school friends - I really didn't have much in common with them anymore and was loathe to introduce them to my newer, cooler (relatively) university friends.

Yeah, I felt like a complete asshole, so I decided to invite Brent over for some drinks.

His brothers drop him off in an old junker of a sedan and take off, saying that they'll see him. Do we have any common ground left? I ask him what he's been doing. Rigs in Alberta, he says. Gets a contract, makes a ton of dough out in the middle of nowhere, comes to town and blows it. Repeat, repeat and repeat. As he's telling me this, he's eyeing my female roommates in a way that makes me think that this was a bad idea.

I get us out of there. We go to a club in Gastown. The music's loud (great, I don't have to talk to him) and I think a girl I know (and want to know better) might be there, but thankfully isn't. The hours drag on and I realize that we have nothing left to say, nothing in common. This was a big, big mistake. His eyes are prowling the dancefloor, ogling the girls as they glide by to the beat...

I really don't want to be there. I'm going to have a word with my Dad about giving out my phone number. Thankfully, I'll be moving soon so the fact that my address is known, isn't that big a security risk...

I'm an awful, awful person.

The night's winding down - I ask him when he's calling his brothers. He looks at me funny. Call them? They'll pick him up tomorrow, he says. Oh, so where are you staying? He stares at me and I feel the obligation of five years of high school. Five years of getting each others back when everyone else thought we were losers. Five years of being there when the other needed him. When his Dad beat the crap out of him and he started to drink uncontrollably our last year of school, who talked my parents into letting him stay until graduation? Yeah, that was me.

I tell him to get ready to go - we'll hail a cab.

Cool, he says, I just gotta go to the bathroom. He heads off as I try to think about how to explain this to my roommates.

He comes back, looking a lot more tired and groggy than when he left.

We hike up to Granville to hail a cab. It takes longer than I expect, but it's a Tuesday at 2am and Vancouver ain't Toronto. I look over and notice that Brent appears to be asleep. I can't wake him. At all. A sudden realization sweeps through me: the fucking bastard took something in the club and now I have to deal.

The first cab slows, stops. When he sees me moving my prone friend towards the rear door, he puts the cab in gear and floors it, leaving me and my friend alone again. Brent slumps onto the sidewalk and rolls over snoring. I hate him at this moment. Really.

I'm tempted to leave his ass on the sidewalk and make my own way home. Minutes go by and I'm still contemplating it. Friendship aside, I couldn't think of a plausible explanation for his brothers the next morning.

I have to drag this human anchor along with me.

Finally a cab and then finally home. Hauling his ass up the stairs and throwing him on the floor of my room. Looking at the time: 3:20 am and contemplating what a shitty time I've had. I try to sleep but can't.

Morning's not much better. He's ogling my roommates again, and even worse, playing with a Swiss Army knife over and over again like one of those compulsive freaks that cut into their forearms again and again and again. He's talking about us all renting a houseboat and having parties in the Okanagan.

I want him dead. The thought actually crosses my mind.

Hours pass. Finally his deadbeat brothers show up. I am relieved. I can't get him out the door quick enough. We'll do it again he says. I say sure and think to myself never in a fucking million years...

His brothers ask if I want to buy a calculator. They have a choice of about 50, all in the trunk of their car. They show me this in broad daylight. Great, I think. A "business trip" for them.

Brent gets in the car and says "See ya."

The car drives away and I never see him again.

I climb the stairs back to the apartment and throw myself onto the couch with relief, the tension washing out of me...

"What the hell was that all about?" says Allison.

"I have no fucking idea. Anyone wanna lay odds that he'll be dead in a gutter within five years?"

I felt bad for saying it, worse believing it. I vowed to myself not to give him a second thought...

---

...and I didn't until I was playing around with Google the other day.

And came across his mother's obituary, which mentions that her son Brent had "preceded her into death."

What a stupid way to put it. I googled further and came across his name in someone's online family tree, listing his death in December 1997.

He was 28. He had a "partner" and a daughter named Jordanna...

As I sat in wonder at the power of the information age, yielding all this information at the whim of a few strokes of the keyboard, I also sat and thought if there was anything that I could've done to help him; was he tied to his fate to be dead at 28 just the way I'd off-handly predicted in a moment of anger?

Rest easy, Brent. I'm sorry I couldn't help you, and I'm sorry I wasn't a better friend.

I'm sorry that you've wasted your life and have a little girl that will never know you.

I'm sorry I didn't know until now, years later, that you were even dead.

If I'd known, maybe I could've stood by you that one last time...