Freakin' out on a Saturday night part II

As we drove to our first destination, Kazs' kids, I was assured that everything would be alright and that we were simply looking to get an idea of what we might need in the near future. No biggie I kept telling myself, but as soon as we walked into the store panic overwhelmed my once calm demeanor, I was now in full "oh shit" mode. We spent a hour in there looking and examining prices. $1000 for a crib, $600 for a stroller, $600 for the change table, $XXX for diapers food and clothing, -$XXX for Katie not working anymore. Again quick math in my head and "OH SHIT" As we left this store we proceeded to another baby store called E-children with the same result. As we neared the end of our visit to E-children, my wife looked at me and could tell i was a bit uneasy, saying "Too much Too fast??" I could only muster a squeak that sounded like a "yes". We left the store and went about our nightly business, or so my wife thought.

that night we had two house warming parties to attend and since I know had a Built in Designated Driver, I thought it would be a good idea to bring Gin and Tonic, other was know as G&T, to the parties. As the parties wore on and the drinks came faster, I could no longer hold it in. I was now starting to sweat and it was not hot enough to sweat even if I wanted. As I wiped my brow, I kept telling myself to calm down and stop being an idiot. But the feeling could not be quelled, I was a ticking time bomb about to explode.

Now many of you would have stopped and thought to yourself, if I stopped drinking, maybe I will be able to calm down and think a little more rationally. Well my friends, I could have used that advice at the time of the said freak out.

As we pulled up to our second destination, the ticking inside was getting louder and louder like the infamous tell tale heart. I couldn't stop it so I quickly poured another drink and tried to push it back down. It was sort of working, so I was telling myself, until friends who had not heard about our little secret began to congratulate us and tell us how happy they were for us, all fine and dandy, but they continued on with things such as "Your lives will NEVER be the same" or "Hope you didn't like money" other said "Man you don't know what you are getting yourself into". Now as I look back on these I know that they weren't meant to wake a sleeping giant, and how were they to know what I had been going through all day. Well That was it, I couldn't control it anymore. I was now officially freaking out.

I am not ready for this, we cant afford this, do you know how much all this stuff cost, I cant be a parent, I wont be a good parent, 6 months is not enough time, I wasted the last 3 months, I want to travel more, is there a pause button, Can I make it stop and then start again when I am ready, do we have to get a mini van... were all thoughts and sentences that came out of my mouth in what seemed like one long run-on sentence. I was left panting for air, sweating and extremely unsure of myself. What have I gotten myself into. If too much G&T caused panic, I was officially KO'd drunk!

Here is the part where my two buddies "Trevor linden" and "Pete the Plumber" came to my rescue. They talked me down and calmed the monster that was now unleashed. To make this LONG story short, a few more drinks and a lot of conversation about buying second hand, not getting more on our plate from God that we can handle, my wife most likely doing a lot of the feeding and stuff during the first few months, as well as numerous other heartfelt assurances that I, and we, can and will be able to do this.

So I am thankful to say that I have made it to and through my first and hopefully only official "freak out" of becoming a father. I still have times where I don't believe it, but I am thoroughly excited and eagerly awaiting the arrival of our little one in early march. To those of you who helped my little incident, thank you and good night!!

Freakin' out on a Saturday night part I

Well well well, I officially had a very VERY "freaked out" freak out session on saturday starting at around 3:15 and carrying on late into the night. Friends and family were there to witness and help calm me down, with a special shout out to my boys Trevor Linden, and Pete the plumber - Thanks!

I guess that I should preface this blog with the reason why I freaked out, you see my wife and I are expecting a little baby over the next year... that is right you heard it right, we are pregnant and having a child. So before the wise cracks start, yes my boys can swim and apparently very well as all it took was one try. So that is the background info to the story, shall we begin.

I awoke on a cool but sunny saturday morning and rolled over to see if my wife was awake or still sleeping. As per normal she was sleeping as evidenced by an adorable little baby like snore> I slipped out of bed and went to the kitchen to make us some breakie, eggs and toast. When my wife finally rose from her slumber, we sat and ate our food over some tea and conversation about what our day would entail.

As the day started to warm up and the sun beat down hotter and hotter on the earth, we decided to talk a nice walk in griffith woods. It was a short drive later that we found ourselves hand in hand walking on the paths through the unique woods that is simply know as "Griffith". We passed numerous people, saying the mandatory and obligatory hellos, with an occasional "wha sup" nod thrown in to single men walking or running passed. It was here that my freak out began to grow and fester. You see we walked past a couple, but not just any couple, a VERY pregnant couple. The woman looked liked she was litterally about to bust and I may have even saw some amniotic fluid on the path, without proper testing I couldnt be sure. Then it hit me, that is going to be us in 9 months... wait a minute we already are 3 months pregnant. With a little quikc math in my head, that left us with only 6 months to prepare. The sweat from walking and the sun was now being joined by the sweat of terror and fear. What have we gotten ourselves into, we cant handle this, we cant even handle ourselves. How are we going to be able to bring a child into the world and be able to handle it. And not only that, but we have just throw the first 3 months away and done nothing to prepare. I began to glisten.

A short time later, as we were walking, I calmly looked at my wife and said "are we ready for this?" She looked at me blankly and asked "What, what arent we ready for?" "A child" was my response. The conversation carried on for the remainder of our walk as we discussed the time we had left and that we would learn as we went with the hlp of friends and family. By the end of the walk, I was quite calm, and the sweat was now simply from the heat and nothing else. I even felt brave enough to suggest that we go and look at baby stuff... first mistake.

Cats

So we have a nicely manicured and well groomed front and back yard. Something that we put a lot of time an effort into and take pride in. A lot of people wonder why we put the time and effort in, but I want to have the nicest lawn and yard on the block. No big deal right, well that was until recently this summer when our neighbours decided to get a cat, sorry a DAMN CAT!!

Now some of you readers out there might be cat lovers, and so I don't offend, I urge you to stop reading here and now. If not, continue on as I delve into what I believe should be a cat free world, or at least my little part of the world.

Our neighbours to the south have had kittens before, which are quite harmless, until they become full blown cats. The problem with cats, is that they are evil and can see through your soul. Have you ever seen a cat that is not skidish and that you can actually enjoy. Cats do their thing when and how they want, we used to have a neighbour who would walk her cat on a leash, this was the funniest shit I have ever seen, as the cat would lay down on the sidewalk and not move, leaving the lady standing there, looking stupid with a cat on a leash until that cat was ready. A dog you can train and are loyal, but a cat would scratch your eyes out if it felt like it, pure evil. And their slit eyes are eerily similar those a serpents eyes, and we all know the most famous serpent of all... But on top of that, it seems socially acceptable to just simply let you cat out at night or during the day to roam free doing what ever they please, which brings me to my point about our neighbours stupid cats, which I might add are unlicensed and collarless.

You see the stupid cats that live in our neighbour hood decided that it would be a great idea to use our gardens and flowerbeds as a litterbox, and for those of you who know, cat feces and urine is a very unpleasant and pungent odour. Not only do they use our flower beds as a litter box, but the bird houses that Katie loves and likes to watch as the birds build nests and chicks are born and so on and so forth, they get invaded, raped and pillaged a la Genghis Khan. We woke one morning to see a lot of nest on the ground with some little hatchling remains, which did not make Katie a happy person.






Now if some of you have advice on how to get rid on the cats we are all ears, so far I have tried cat repellent, cat scat, and rocks. The repellent didn't work as I came home one day and saw the cat sitting there looking at me, almost smiling like the Cheshire cat. So i launched out of my truck and took off after the cat. It jumped and took off under the our deck with no way out, until I heard a thrilling "THUD" and the cat was gone. I thought it might have knocked it self out, leaving it a sitting duck, but it simply bashed its head on the deck and was gone. In the meantime, I ended up with a pulled hamstring. Cat 1 - Me 0



The other option of rocks has worked fairly well. We keep a few stones on our table in case we see the cats, and simply launch them at the felines in the hopes of have a David and Goliath moment. I have hit the cats on numerous occasions but I am yet to kill one. So Cat 1 Me 1. That brings me to the option that I am using now, cat scat. This is a little mat that has spikes sticking up so that the cat cant walk on the dirt without pain. So far it is working, and i am going to build some more out of brad nails and plywood, something that will actually puncture the paws of the cat to cause pain and suffering.



That is right people I want pain and suffering for these and all cats, and I mean that. If Katie would let me, I would set our squirrel trap with bait, catch the little devils and throw them in the river with a rock tied to their tail, or better yet, I have tried to leave antifreeze out "by accident" so the nosy cats would get their due justice (try this at home). Katie, however, has kiboshed these and many other ideas and has given up on the hope of getting rid of the stupid animals. I, on the other hand, will fight tooth and nail until they are gone (IE dead).

The Final thing that puts the nail in the coffin about cats is this. Have you ever heard the saying "Oh there is the crazy dog woman with all those dogs..." No, it is always been and will always remain "There goes the crazy cat lady..."

I leave you on this post with the score Cat 1 Me 2 with the hopes of changing it one day to Cat - dead Me - Winner. And to all those cat lovers out there, I told you to stop reading so you can only blame yourself and cant get mad at me or think I am cruel.

Giving up coffee

Okay, so I decided to give up coffee for the span of one month, no I am not crazy enough to give it up forever. This was a decision that I came to one night while I laid awake not feeling that well, and looking back on the past few days of not feeling well, and I came to the realization that I was drinking too much coffee. Now some of you may question this thought process and tell me that one can not drink too much coffee, but when you start to feel bloated and you are using a quick "timmies" (Tim Horton's for you American folk) for a pick me up instead of breakfast, lunch - or in my case usually both, things are not good.

So as of august 1st I have not had any coffee. I have found that my cravings weren't as bad at the beginning of my ordeal, but as the days have turned into weeks (august 9 today) I find more and more that I might be on the verge of killing for a coffee. I even find myself day dreaming as I drive about church coffee... I know scary, we all know we only drink church coffee because

A) everyone else is
B) It is the socially acceptable thing to do after church
C) It gives you an out when you don't want to talk to someone

other than these reason, we really don't ever need to submit ourselves to the "church coffee" simply for enjoyment, it doesn't exist.

There was one other thing that I have started to notice since I have given up my beloved coffee, and this may comes as a shock to some of you, I have started to inexplicably gain weight. Now for those of you who don't know me really well, gaining weight has always been an issue with me, as in I was always the scrawny kid with the pipe cleaner arms. Now don't get me wrong I am not complaining nor am I saying that I am fat, but I got my thinking. Give up coffee, gain weight... there had to be a correlation, something that ties to two together. Then it came to me, coffee is a natural stimulant that causes the bowels to do their thing, which up until this point had been a regular 3 times a day occurrence. Well now I was experiencing something that scared me, my routine had been broken, my days are muddled and confused as my natural clock is no longer running properly, as if it had run out of batteries.

So now, dear readers I have come to this point, I know that coffee is the battery that runs my natural clock, yet I have made the decision to give up coffee for a month. By my count I still have a long way to go until the end of august. So I am put to a decision, either put up with that fact that my body is pissed at me and is going to do everything to throw things off, or admit I cant do it and return to my beloved coffee like Romulus to the mother teat. So my decision is simple really...

I am going to start smoking, and that way I don't give up, I get my battery back up and running and all is well again. As we all know, a smoke and a coffee is always good for...