There is this sculpture of a dragon, across the street from my office. He’s clutching a golden orb in one claw, his mouth agape.

Every time I see it, I hear Robert Plant’s plaintive cry from Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song”.

I made a website, well really, a web page to show you all what I mean. You can find it here: http://www.aaaeeeaaa-aaa.com.

I really hope Mr. Plant and Mr. Page take this as a compliment, and don’t sue me for every meager penny I have.

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I mentioned a few posts ago that I took a woodworking course in February. Here are a few photos of the project I built in class – a blanket box made of pine.

I developed a new respect for tablesaws in this class. We did bevels, rabbet and dado joins with them.

We started from raw lumber, laminating boards to make the top, bottom and sides. Plenty of thickness planing and sanding – but it wasn’t so bad – we used machine tools for nearly all of it. When I took my guitar making course, years ago, it was mostly with hand tools.

The course I took was Woodworking level 1 at Camosun College with Russ Franson. It was a great course. Russ mentioned that woodworking had been in his family for as many generations as he knew.

He mentioned that he learned many of these skills from his great-grandfather, who had a shop where he built coffins.

When he mentioned that, I think I knew where he got the idea for the project he had us all build, but I think I’m still calling mine a blanket box.

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From Mike Lathrop’s Personal Blog

Hey! How about a non-reproductive related post for a change?

Best graffito ever. Not sure if it was taken as a compliment, but I’d bet it was intended that way.

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We had an ultrasound this morning. Here are some photos of our wee baby boy!

This one is just the foot. Near as I could tell, I counted 10 fingers and 10 toes.

Here is a creepy photo of our fetus’s skull. Nothing about that sentence, nor this image, isn’t creepy, but look how adorable!

It’s a trip.

We’re pretty much all on board with this little feller (now a confirmed accurate description). We were standoffish before – we worried about the let down if something went wrong. It occurs to me more and more though – parenthood involves a lot of worrying, and that’s probably just the way it is. All I seem able to do is to have faith it will all turn out okay, whatever that means, and to do what I can to make sure everything is okay for now. This morning, I saw everything was okay. Next week, I might start to wonder again. The realization I’ve had though, is that when this child is born, that’s just a whole new set of worries to consider.

The likelihood of a problem with this pregnancy is getting more and more remote. And we saw it moving around. The poor technician was chasing it all over in Julie’s womb. I’ve seen photos like these before, but watching the head turn back and forth, seeing the arm go up to touch it’s head, seeing the legs move made this thing more and more person like.

Oddly, so does knowing the gender. Seeing the images of the fetus move makes me see it as more of a person. Being able to add the personal pronoun, “he” instead of “it” makes him much more personlike also. I’d like to think that knowing the gender wouldn’t make that difference so apparent, but it really does. To a degree, knowing whether it is a girl or a boy is the difference between accepting it as a person rather than a thing. Maybe this represents something I need to work on, maybe it’s something our culture needs to work on, or maybe it’s fine to attach personhood to gender. Food for thought. I don’t think I’ll be able to solve that one today.

In any event, it pleases me to know any more detail about this little guy, and I can’t wait to meet him in person!

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It’s been a while since my last post, and I have much to write about. I’m not writing it all now though.

I was just talking to a friend, and she was worried about the bublet (which is what we are affectionately calling the human to be in Julie’s tummy). She was concerned because she hadn’t heard anything here for a while.

We are in week 2 of the second trimester now, and so far as we know, all is still well. Julie feels barfy and tired much of the time. It’s weird to say it, but speaking for myself anyway, that fact brings some comfort that everything is probably going well.

More later…

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It’s getting hard to not to be excited. There is now photographic evidence of the wee one.

The grey blob in the green oval is an ultrasound image of our fetus. Good thing I am not a ultrasound tech, because I would have presumed it to be a half-digested lima bean. Nonetheless, the REAL technician identified a heartbeat, purring along at 175 bpm. I think anxiety wise, Cletus the fetus might take after it’s father.

We were so excited we had some photos taken at a quaint little studio in the corner of the Mayfair Mall food court.

A good day was had by all. Fingers are still firmly crossed, and all good vibes are still appreciated.

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We had an ultrasound this morning when we went to see a specialist. I saw the little feller’s heart beating. So tiny, so fragile, so fast and so undeniably present.

This is a big event – it means that the fetus is viable, and that things are going as well as they can. We haven’t been this far yet.

The specialist said that before we saw the heart beat we had a 60 – 70% chance of seeing through to a successful delivery. Seeing the heartbeat, however, has improved our odds to about 95%.

Those are good odds, and I am freakin’ giddy.

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Late last year, we had a miscarriage and I blogged about it. In that entry, I said that the next time, I was going to share the news of a new pregnancy right off the bat, because, well, in the event that the pregnancy didn’t make it all the way through, I’d want to blog about it anyway.

And then Julie got pregnant again, but then she wasn’t after a few days, before got the chance to make an entry. A month later, and the same again. The truth is, over the last year, Julie has been pregnant more often than not. The first time, I didn’t blog about it because I didn’t get the chance. The next time though, I wanted to wait and see.

Julie is pregnant again. I am not announcing that with the confidence and certainty that I’d like to, but that’s because I am neither confident nor certain. Experience has shown me that early pregnancies don’t always pan out. In our case, it hasn’t panned out yet. Right now, we’re on week seven. We haven’t been this far along since the miscarriage in the fall. That experience really took it’s toll on us, so it’s hard to feel excited, because I know the more excited I feel, the harder it will be if things don’t go how I want them to. Still, I am very hopeful.

It’s an odd quandry. I decided I want to tell the world about the big news when it came a few months ago, and now it’s here. I don’t like keeping secrets at the best of times, let alone when it’s something big like this, something that I really want to happen. I want to process this experience with others. It’s in my thoughts all the time.

But you know what? I haven’t hardly told anyone. Last weekend I was in Vancouver, and I saw many of my nearest and dearest friends, and I didn’t mention it to anyone. I thought I was waiting for the perfect moment to mention it, but then I saw a few moments like that come and go in conversation, and I chose not to say anything.

For example, I had breakfast with my usual buddies on Sunday morning. I am very comfortable with these people, I’ve known everyone at that table for at least 8 years, and some for nearly 20. I was talking enthusiastically about my new apartment. Someone asked about what we’d do with the second bedroom. I said, “We might use it for a little one, if one comes along”. That’s where I could have mentioned that “little one” might already be on it’s way, but I didn’t. Instead that theoretical “little one” just hung in the silence for a little too long, then the subject changed.

Here’s why. It’s because I am ambivalent about our current pregnancy. I am totally excited and really want it to work. I am trying hard to put good vibes out there, and to have faith that good things can happen, that this time it all might work out. I am, at the same time, worn down. We’ve had a lot of ups and downs in this process, and while we’re hopeful, the end is not yet clearly in sight. After nearly a year on this rollercoaster, I am starting to get a little numb.

The few people I’ve told were aware of our miscarriage last fall, and so when I tell them we’re pregnant again, I can see that they are trying to figure out what to say. It’s a bit awkward. I can also see that they are trying to gauge where I am at, to pick up a hint as to how they should react. I think my ambivalence is apparent, and it makes an awkward situation more awkwarder.

So, now I am putting it out there. Read it as you will. Now it’s not a secret, and for me, that’s a relief. Whatever your persuasion is on things mystical or religous, any good thoughts aimed in our direction are appreciated.

I’ll keep you posted.

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Are you familar with the video blog of Ze Frank? There was one entry that resonated with me that you can find here. In it he talks about how it’s a good idea to check in with yourself and figure out which version of you showed up today. He calls it finding your baseline, and I need to do that today.

My apartment is messy and yet unpacked. It’s frustrating trying to find a place for everything. One of our goals is to not own anything we don’t have a place for. Right now, I think things with places are the exception, not the rule. It’s getting better, but I wish the progress was faster. Moving really makes one understand that ownership of something is not always an asset. In fact, it is frequently a liability.

I walked to work today. Since moving, I walk to work most days. I think I’ve only driven 2 or 3 times so far this month. Weather is getting nicer, and the walk clears my head before the day starts, not to mention the obvious health benefits. Yesterday I woke up, trying to figure out what that feeling was in my lungs. I couldn’t place it. It felt familiar and good. My lungs feel bigger. They feel more like they did when I was younger.

I spend about $5 every day on coffee. That adds up.

Work without travel is starting to feel normal. Projects I take on now aren’t necessarily bigger, but they do tend to be longer. The urgency isn’t there to meet a hard deadline fast. I have more concurrent projects, each taking up less attention. The good news is I’m finding it easier to leave work at the office when I go home at the end of the day, and that is what I really wanted to accomplish. I’m sitting at my desk right now, thinking about the first step in managing the concurrent projects I have. I am looking forward to narrowing my attention to one of them for a while, before I meet a milestone and switch to the next.

I had my best tax season ever. Not that I like paying tax, quite the opposite, but this year my accountant told me I was the first to get all my stuff to him, and that never happens. I dislike “doing” taxes more than paying them. It’s one thing to have to pay a big bill. It is quite another to spend days and weeks trying to get familiar enough with a very complicated system to feel confident enough to apply your interpretation of it to your specific situation. That houseplant you bought for the office but then took home, is it an office expense, office supply, or neither? It depends on your interpretation, like how the meaning of an interpretive dance does. Over the course of the last year I made it my goal to make the whole process of taxes as easy for myself as I could. When February rolled around, I already had pretty much all my documents sorted and ready to go – this was a first for me and now I’m all proud of myself.

I’m healthy. I’m frustrated with my never-ending move. I’m settling in to a new strategy with my business, but still a little rattled by the change. I’m on a self-esteem high because I managed my tax challenge effectively. I’m in the mood to focus on work and get lost in it for a while.

This is my baseline.

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I wrote this originally on March 14th, behind stage at the Pattison Conference this year. I just found it as a text file while cleaning up my PC desktop.

I am writing this from behind stage on what will likely be my last time here at the Frank Sinatra compound as a Staging guy at the Jim Pattison Partners in Pride Executive Conference.

This is a very bittersweet time for me. This is my 10th year on this show, and I really like working with the crew, and the delegates of the conference.

Including myself, 3 of the 6 crew here in 2008 were there in 1999 on my first show. Several others have come and gone in that time, and I have made great friendships and contacts with many of these folks.

And, it’s not everyday a guy like me gets to rub shoulders with the presidents and executives of companies like Ripley Entertainment and the Overwaitea Food Group. I’m now on a first name basis with Jim Pattison, the owner of this conglomerate which is now the 3rd Largest Private company in Canada, and his executive assistant of 45 years, Maureen Chant.

Every even year, like this one, the conference is a little smaller, and is held in a tent on the tennis court at the former estate of Frank Sinatra, which Jimmy acquired in 1995. It’s always a bit of a surreal experience, and this year is no exception.

Jimmy likes to have personal contact with us. He’s come backstage and to our lunch table and regaled us with tales of hosting Oprah Winfrey and Steadman on his yacht, and what the corporate culture is like at Wal-Mart. Apparently, they have over a dozen jets, but as part of their lowest-price cost cutting creedo, executives pack their own brown bag lunches when they fly on them, and their are signs in the hallways of their offices that warn potential suppliers that if any offers of perks in the form of gifts or entertainment tickets will result in the termination of their accounts. “They practise what they preach” said Jimmy, “They are in the news a lot, but they are good, good people”.

He was pretty excited about his magazine distribution company, The News Group, into Wal-Mart’s stores. They have been working on this for the last 10 years. The News Group’s calls weren’t returned for the first 5 years, and for the second 5, the calls were returned but they always declined. When they got the job, Jimmy told us there were three reasons they got the business. Persistence was first, and the deal they offered was second. The third thing they said was that the News Group’s behaviour was always professional. Jimmy remarked that in that 10 years, they did not once disparage their competitors, but instead just focussed on their strengths.

This gig has been a part of my life for so long that this year, I got to enjoy February in a whole new way. I wasn’t very involved in production of the show like I usually have been. I really only contributed about 18 seconds to the 15 minute show, of which 12 seconds made it in. I worked 40 hour weeks, meeting my other client’s needs, not th 60 or 70 hour weeks exclusively on this show like I have the past. I even had time to take a woodworking course over the 6 weeks before the show. That was pleasant, but it felt a little strange. February is normally a dark month with less daylight in this part of the world, but I actually got to see the sun occaisionaly for the first February in a while.

So I am sitting backstage right now, passing time while Jimmy’s latest acquistion, Guinness World Records, is giving their presentation. Tomorrow I’ll do the awards show like I usually do, then I’ll fly home on Sunday on Jimmy’s private jet After a few days of recovery, I’ll start to work on the several web related projects I have lined up for the last week of this month, and start packing to move in to our new home at the end of this month.

The move and the decision to stop travelling mark a commitment to a big change in my life. I think it’s positive – we want to start a family and I don’t want to be out of town for that, and we want to be in Victoria, and we like it here. That said, any change to something new involves some separation from what there was before, and there are many things about the Pattison Show and life in Vancouver that were really great, and I am going to miss dearly.

I never thought I would have said this a few years ago, but the Pattison Show is very much one of them.

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It’s been a while.

I don’t know why.

Been busy, been moving, bla bla bla. For whatever reason, I haven’t been blogging. I keep wanting to, but I think I start to forget how.

I keep thinking, I need to write an entry about this, or about that, and then I think about how it could be a great entry, and then I think about how I am not up to writing a great entry right now, and then another day goes by.

So I am writing this entry, I think, to prove that an entry doesn’t have to be great to be written. I can just sit down and start typing and lo, the blog lives.

And now that I am doing it, I remember that it is comforting to sit and tap at the keyboard. It gets the wheels turning. It gets me to start thinking about stuff.

Like, how since I last wrote, I’ve changed a bunch of stuff in my life. Notably, I we have moved. I am really committed to living in Victoria now. We bought a home. This was a big dream of mine for a long time, and I am really happy we did it. I feel differently, and better, about the place in which I live.

I also worked on-site at a corporate show in a remote place for the last time. This is something I had been talking about getting out of for a long time, and now I am out of it. This also feels good, mostly, but I already miss the camaraderie I used to share with the great people I used to work with. I’ll retain friendships and business relationships with many of those folks, but hanging out in a living room or restaurant or working on something over the phone and via email in my office is just not the same as being present, with a team, under pressure, on site at a corporate show.

So much of change, and it’s all good change, but any time one starts something new, it usually means a loss of something old, and regardless of how good the change is, there is a part of you that mourns that loss, just a little.

So it turns out I do know why it’s been a while. Things have been changing. Life has been up in the air, and the blog fell by the wayside. I think the fact I am sitting here typing now is an indication that things are settling down. That feels good.

And I remember now that an entry doesn’t have to be great to be written. It’s not why I have this blog. I remember now now why I do this. It’s because I like to write little tidbits like this one every now and again. So whether it’s a great entry or not doesn’t matter much to me – it’s really just the process of putting thoughts down on paper. Or on screen. On the web. Wherever. Just not in my head anymore.

I can’t seem to do without an audience though. Thank you for reading this far!

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The papers are signed, the dealing is done, and the place, or at least the mortgage, is ours. Julie and I are now the proud new owners of a 2 bedroom + den apartment located near Quadra and Hilliside.

Here is a link to a short video I made during the housing inspection.

In 1984, when the complex was constructed, they erected two buildings side by side. The developer named one WestHampton Green and the other WestHampton Gardens, so I’ve just been calling it our place in the Hamptons.

We are very excited. I am very excited. We weren’t ready to buy when we lived in Vancouver, and it was demoralizing to keep watching housing prices become more and more unattainable. Our move to Victoria was motivated by Julie’s education, but the condo market here is a more forgiving, and we figured that getting into a place we owned would be a side benefit. I have no idea what housing prices are going to do in the future, other than probably go up in the long term, but I do feel we got in just in time – if prices rose much more we’d continue to have to rent, and I am pleased to not have to worry about that anymore.

The day we went to first look at the place, I noticed a map in the glove compartment of my minivan. This was the same map Julie and I used when we took the ferry to Victoria to check out the city a month or two before moving here. It had a circle that went around the intersection of Quadra and Hillside and it was labeled “Good Area”. We drove all over, and this was the only area that received that designation. Here, “Good Area” meant good to us. It’s colourful. There are ethnic restaurants, coffee places, and the cheapo reperatory cinema nearby. It reminds us a little of Commercial Drive in Vancouver, which had a very hippy-dippy liberal feel with many immigrants and fantastic restaurants. I can’t say Quadra Street Village is an equivalent of Commercial Drive, because it just isn’t similar enough, but it does have some of that feel, and that appeals to us. That said, there are a few street urchins around, but for me the good outweighs the bad, and I feel very comfortable in that neighbourhood.

It’s a close walk to downtown. Google maps puts it at 2.1 km away from my office, and it’s less than a block away to the nearest supermarket too. We’re hoping to decrease our dependence on automobiles. This was a very conscious choice. We may have been able to get a much larger place, maybe even a detached house if we rented the basement, had we been willing to commute from the boonies. I’d like to say that I don’t want to drive for altruistic planet-saving reasons, but the fact is, I really just like having extra time in my day, and walking is good for me. I’ve put in commuting time for jobs in the burbs in the past, and I just don’t feel the benefits of a house would outweigh the hours and hours of my life I’d spend behind the wheel to make it happen. I may change my story after we have a few whippersnappers of our own running around the wee apartment, but I’ve met and talked with several people who have experienced and enjoyed family living in condo, and I am confident enough to give it a try. I have a feeling that my time spent with kiddos instead of in the car would be worth more to them than a backyard. With fingers crossed, we’re hoping to have a chance to find out.

The experience of buying the place was more complicated than I thought it would be, and I am glad to have it behind us. I thought we’d make an offer, they might counter, and it would be done. In fact, we made an offer, they accepted, we reviewed the strata documents and saw an special assessment coming down the pipe, and opened negotiations with a new lower offer to reflect that, They countered that, we countered their counter, they rejected our counter-counter, so we accepted the first counter. Then they had a lawyer change the standard agreement on one point, and we disagreed with the broadness of that change, and we countered with different wording, and they accepted.

During all this, I think there were three or four times where I thought, as I signed a piece of paper, “This is it! we’ve bought a house”, but that was only true on the last round, when all 4 required signatures hit the page. This was mostly handled by our realtor, who was dealing with their realtor, who was dealing with the two sellers – the one who was in town, and the other who was on vacation in Mexico and had to be faxed all of this paperwork. It was a long, nail-biting week, but eventually we all agreed and good business was done.

Speaking of our realtor, If you ever need one in Victoria, I have to highly recommend ours. Paul Holland is an absolute godsend to folks like us who need to navigate the complicated, rewarding, and dangerous experience that is buying a home. I came into this experience thinking that it was inconceivable that a Realtor could add value to a real estate deal equivalent to the commission they received, but Paul disproved that entirely. He was pickier than us. We looked at 11 places in total over a course of 6 months, and he never gave us a hard sell. In fact, he was more likely to tell us the reasons not to buy a place, and he shared with us a great deal of expert knowledge we didn’t even know existed. He is patient and understanding, and very willing to take the time to explain what he knows, and he will also tell you when he doesn’t know, rather than changing the question or the subject. Paul also put a lot of time into our deal – enough that I had to change my previous opinion about realtors. He met with strata members, property managers, realtors, building inspectors and mortgage brokers on our behalf. He read countless pages of very dry strata meeting notes with a fine tooth comb in great detail. I know this because I did too, and he knew them better than I did. His expert advice is extremely valuable, and he puts in the time and diligence to make sure he knows he is doing the best he can in the interest of his clients. I might sound effusive, but it is only because of how much better I feel moving into my first home that I know is a result of his service.

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A big (for me anyway) project that I worked on over the summer has launched. It’s called Artevist.com, and it’s a site that is about creating T-shirt designs by and for people who are concerned about global issues.

The site boasts many features, some of which were implemented during some very late at nights after last summer’s long days.

The list includes:

• a forum blog
• classified ads
• an online store
• design submission uploading
• a contest and voting system
• search functionality

• membership management

Essentially the business model for this website is this:

1. Get as many designers and artists as possible who are riled up about global issues of all sorts to create and submit t-shirt designs.
2. Get as many people as possible to vote on those T-shirt designs, scoring them from 1-10.
3. Pick out the most popular designs, reproduce them on T-shirts using ethical fibre, labour, and printing techniques

1. Sell them to as many concerned citizens as possible through an on-line store.

We’ll see how it goes. The site has been in beta since the end of last year, and it’s acquiring members and designs exponentially as time goes on. This is a good sign, and hopefully it will continue.

At any rate, we’re all very proud of it here at BigMike Studios, which is to say I am proud of it, and it was great working with (and continuing to work with) the team assembled, which included the nice folks at my former employer and now client, ShowMakers Productions, and my compadre and office-mate, Robert Aitken of Kazoo-Studios.

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I was in Mexico over the holidays. My very generous Grandmother sponsored a trip to a 5 star, all-inclusive resort for myself and the rest of her progeny. There were 23 of us in total, and I for one had a really great time.

Highlights included

• A round of Golf at Puerto Aventuras
• Ziplining in a cenote
• Swimming in an underground cave
• The Swim up bar
• Trying to keep up at the discotheque with my 8 cousins, aged 16-22 years.
• Visiting Chichen Itza with the whole fam-dam, including my Grandmother, for whom this visit completed her homage to all 7 of the new wonders of the world
• Snorkeling with Turtles in Akumal bay

• Learning to windsurf

The best part, however, was just hanging out with my relatives. Of the 23 people who were there, Julie and I are the only ones who don’t live in Calgary. It was a bigger treat for us in that way. It was nice to spend an extended period of time with everyone. Usually we only see them in big family gatherings. It was much more relaxed when we were all sitting by the pool sipping on a pina coladas for days than when we are all gussied up for Christmas dinner and trying to pack all the visiting into a few hours. I don’t have a problem with Christmas dinner, mind you. It’s just that the pool for days with the pina coladas has a different and very pleasant vibe as well.

And I write this now having been home for a week. My brother calls what we are now experiencing the “all-exclusive” lifestyle.

It was a rude awakening on my first day back at work. I got out of the car after parking it and stood mystified in front of the ticket dispenser. I had no wallet and no cash. I hadn’t really carried my wallet or any cash for two weeks. It seemed odd that I couldn’t just show the ticket dispenser my wristband to prove my innate parking rights. After pondering my situation for a minute or two, I realized there was no other option than to go home and get the wallet. Such is life in this cruel, real world. Nobody parks for free during the day on Fisgard street.

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Since my last entry, a few notable things have occurred.

I had fun with my high-school buddy Troy, who came out for a fun late-November weekend. We ate lots, drank lots, played pool and golf, and had a blast. Geography, and lives busy with family and occupations have made it hard for us to connect one on one, even though we’ve kept pretty good contact over the years. It was a great time, long overdue.

I keep trying to know what I want, in the effort to get it and not live a life of default choices. I have decided I want to concentrate my business on doing content-managed websites, and at least for now, motion graphics production. I don’t want to travel with work so much. New years is coming up, and with it, resolutions. Rarely have I stuck with them very well, but this year, I am resolving to get more work that keeps me at home, and to try to make 2009 a year I don’t travel anywhere on business.

That’s another thing I’ve learned in the past while. I made the choice on several occasions to say no to work that I could have stayed up all night or in the office over the weekend to do. I didn’t say no because I couldn’t do it, nor did I say no because they weren’t good projects. I said no because I am starting to realize that unstructured, free time is when I do my best thinking. It’s when I am able to see most clearly where I want to be, and where the best path is to get there. I struggle against a strong protestant work ethic that says if I just always keep my nose on the grindstone, everything will work out okay. I’m starting to realize that this is true, but taking the nose of the grindstone every now and again is okay too. In fact, it is frequently nicer, and you get a clearer sense of where the best grindstones are when you raise your head long enough to look around.

I bought a new phone. It has a qwerty keyboard and runs the windows mobile operating system. I don’t know if I like it or not, but it plays a mean game of solitaire.

A website that BigMike Studios provided all backend programming and technical services for has launched and is now available to the public. It is targeted towards artists and activists, hence the name, http://www.artevist.com.

Julie and I went to Vancouver for a weekend. I went for many reasons. I went to celebrate Christmas with my in-laws, to meet with several business contacts, and to reconnect with many of the friends I have there. I had breakfast with the same group of guys I always did when I lived there. Same restaurant, same time, every week. More or less, that has been going on for 15 years, and several of us knew each other for nearly a decade before that when we were all in the same scout troop. It’s easy to forget there is a whole world in Vancouver going on. this trip reminded me that it was all still there. I was also reminded, however, that the commute is not always as easy as one imagines. Our ferry was delayed from a 7pm departure to about 11pm do to high winds during a storm.

I have also spent much of the last month getting excited about what I am doing just 3 days from now. Julie and I will be getting on an airplane bound for a Mexican vacation in a group of 23 relatives - everyone from my Grandmother down. It will be 100% FUN! I cannot wait, but will have to for 3 more sleeps.

Phew! Blog karma, check.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

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Over 40? Christian?
Would you like to be in charge?
Congratulations!

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you owe it to them.
a unique way out of debt
looking for rare coins

I have found a new hobby! Making haikus from spam subject lines!

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Remember that camper van? Well, one downer about that rig, aside from the rust and the water tank leaking and whatnot, was that it had but two seatbelts. When we were expecting, I was contemplating the utility of such a vehicle, and I couldn’t make a case for keeping it. So, I placed an ad in Craigslist and UsedVictoria.com, similar to the one that got me the van in the first place. You might recall, about a year ago, I traded my old motorcycle for the old van. Well. now I have traded the old campervan for a newer minivan.

I am now the very proud owner of a lovely 1995 Dodge Caravan.

Now, you might ask, why would someone trade such a nice looking newer van for my old camper van. Well, for one thing, the old camper van had everything, including the kitchen sink, and the previous owner of the minivan wanted to do prolonged camping. He also was a contractor and a smoker, so his van was full of tools, ladders, fishing tackle and boat motors. Okay, a smoker nor contractor might have use for the latter two items, but they were in there, dumping oil and gas all over the smoky carpet.

The nicotine varnish all over the interior was thick and palpable. After hours of scrubbing, it was still everywhere. I scrubbed every surface, including the carpet on the floor and the headliner. After two days of leaving it with the windows open, it was much better, but frankly, still kind of hard to be inside.

I called the nice folks at Diamond Detailing here in Victoria, at the corner of Douglas and Burnside. I have never had a car detailed, and didn’t know what to expect. They said they’d give me the full interior treatment, and that would include leaving it overnight with an ozone making device in it to help get the odour out. Returning the next day, I honestly could hardly recognize this van. In fact, the first thought that ran through my mind was “Wow! someone has a van of the same colour and a similar vintage to mine!”

It turns out though, that these guys just do an amazing, amazing job. Every surface was shiny, and there wasn’t a spot on the carpet. I asked him how they got it so clean. The answer to that was that he removed the seats, and the plastic cowlings over the carpet, pulled the entire carpet out of the car and powerwashed it. The result was fantastic. the car didn’t smell, wasn’t brown anymore, and was suddenly a pleasant place to be.

So, here’s hoping this van lasts long enough that I can do another trade in a year or two. I like the trading thing - it’s fun!

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I thought a lot about the title of this blog. Miscarriage seems like an ugly, loaded, and antiquated word. It makes it sound like someone made a mistake, like they dropped something they were carrying. The fact that I am still processing though, is that last Thursday, we learned of our miscarriage.

We started out that Thursday feeling pretty good. We were in our 10th week of pregnancy. We’d been reading the books. A few weeks ago the books said our embryo had grown limblets and they were starting to make “fluttery movements”. Later, we read about how there should be finger pads, then about how the embryo was a fetus, and the difference was that there was no tail anymore. By the time last Thursday rolled around, we had a good idea of what we expected our fetus to be. We were excited that day, because we had an appointment with our maternity doctor, and we were hoping to get a date for an ultrasound.

That morning, though, Julie had a tiny bit of spotting. The maternity doctor told us that there was still a pretty good chance everything was okay. I had heard that this was actually fairly common, and wasn’t alarmed at all until the doctor mentioned that about 50% of the time everything is fine. Needless to say, I didn’t like those odds. She said this as she was putting the velcro cuff on Julie’s arm to take her blood pressure. I think it was a testament to Julie’s calm demeanour that her blood pressure was fine. If you had taken mine at that moment, it would have been off the charts.

The doctor had a little gizmo for listening to the heartbeat of the fetus. We listened quietly but she couldn’t find it. She reassured us that at this stage that is very common. She put together a requisition for an ultrasound. We got in the same day.

I couldn’t tell what I was seeing on the ultrasound screen. The silence in the room, however, told me something wasn’t right. Julie said she knew right away. After a few minutes of poking and probing, the technician told us to wait for the radiologist, who would go over the results with us.

The results were not good. My eyes and ears were working, and I remember hearing the radiologist say that at this stage, the size of the fetus was about 3 weeks behind.

That there was no heart.

That it was missing other organs.

That it wasn’t a viable pregnancy.

But, my mind wasn’t really taking this in. I learned later that neither was Julie’s. I was jumping right in to stage 1 of the grieving process, denial. The radiologist and technician told us about some of our options from here, but I don’t think either of us really took those in, either. I was just thinking, there has got to be some way this can work. Maybe the dates were misinterpreted. Maybe we conceived later in the month they were thinking. By the time we got back to the car to drive away though, the fact was starting to sink in. We were not going to be expecting a child on May 11, which was the due date we had been looking forward to.

I have wanted a family for a long time. When we first saw the blue cross on the pregnancy test in the first week of September, I was beside myself. The emotional part of my brain was doing back flips and an interpretive dance that the conscious part of my brain could only really understand as some crazy mixture of happiness, love, fear, and confusion, but mostly happiness. Julie remarked that week that I was smiley. I felt smiley. I’d think about all the things that were coming down the pipe. First words. First steps. The day in day out. Not wanting to eat broccoli. Appreciating swings and jungle gyms again, and in a new way. Packing lunches. The stuff that I have no way of anticipating. The whole kit and kaboodle.

So, Thursday, it became clear that this was not not a viable pregnancy. Having a child was not going to happen, at least, not this time.

I felt a range of emotions. Mostly sadness. Also some anger. Anger at what, I do not know. The nearest I can tell, it was at the heartless little fetus. After weeks of doing my best to imagine that little critter in Julie’s belly, with the fluttery limblets and the finger pads, I came to learn it was all a lie. There was only the imagined idea of those things, it never actually existed. It’s like that heartless little jerk just informed me there was no Santa Claus, or that my friends were just pretending to like me, or something like that.

Which, I might add, feels pretty terrible.

And, I am told, anger is another stage of the grieving process.

Another thing we’ve now learned, is that the loss of the child is not the end of miscarriage woes. There were several options we could choose from to move forward from there, and none of them seemed too pleasant. Right now, Julie is going under general anesthetic to have the remnants of the pregnancy removed. I am sitting next to the bed she’ll be returned to when she wakes up. Anything I am going through right now is peanuts compared to what she has been having to do.

It’s Saturday now, and it’s a relief that it’s happening. We’ve been waiting since Thursday. Because Julie wasn’t supposed eat before the procedure, she’d been skipping meals until a call would come to let us know it wouldn’t be for another 12 hours, so it’d be safe to eat supper.

I’m glad she’s in there now. I’m glad I live in Canada where I have access to the excellent team we have been working with, and the only thing I have to worry about financially is the parking fee. I’m glad that when Julie comes back to the bed I am sitting next to, it will be over. Overall, though, glad does not describe my state of mind.

I have learned, however, a few things that are meaningful and useful to me through this process.

Soon after we learned we were pregnant, I was working out of town in Toronto and Las Vegas for about 3 weeks. Usually when I am doing this, I am very busy, and finding time to call Julie is difficult. In the past, on these long distance phone conversations when she has been telling me about her day and I am waiting for my turn to tell her about mine, I have grown impatient. I’d think, “she has no idea how important the work I am doing here is”.

In the grand scheme of things though, it’s not that important. It seems that way, the total budgets for the corporate events I work at frequently tally in the millions for just a few days, and the scale of them is incredible, and everyone involved is usually dialed up to 10. It’s show biz.

This last trip was different though. When I was talking to Julie and she was telling me about doctor’s appointments and how big the embryo should be at this stage etc, all I could think about was how unimportant this conference was. It meant nothing to me compared to my love and concern for Julie, and this new family we were starting.

It occurred to me that I’ve probably always felt this way, but when you place yourself at the absolute centre of your universe, you lose perspective on things like that. Having a family to think about put me just to the side of the centre of my universe, and suddenly it became abundantly clear to me what is at the centre. While doing a good job and making sure I was happy with what I saw projected on the screens at the conference was still important, it wasn’t nearly as important to me as what was happening at home.

This, I think, is the main reason I want a family. I want that perspective, and I want to have those relationships in my life. I am sure there are other ways to find that meaning, but this is the plainest and most obvious way I see to get that into my life.

And on Thursday, when we found out our pregnancy wasn’t viable, and would have to be terminated, and everything seemed pretty bleak, Julie and I stuck together. I called the clients that I wasn’t going to be able to make time for this week, and I told them their projects would have to wait for me. There was a temptation to dive into work mode so as to ignore some of the processing I have to do around the loss of our pregnancy. There was (and still is) the fear that the ramifications of putting them on the back-burner will bear poor results for my business.

But I knew (and still know) on a higher level what I needed to do. I needed to be there for Julie. I needed to let myself need her as well. The clients were very understanding, and the time lost from me on their projects will not cause the sky to fall. Julie and I need to stick together right now, and that’s just how it has to be.

The most important thing I have learned through all of this is about my priorities. Family is coming in first. This is the way I like it. Nothing about losing this pregnancy has been good, but knowing what my priorities are, and that I like my priorities is a comfort, and this whole experience is helping me to be sure of what they are.

There is another thing I have learned. It’s about secrets. When the blue cross showed up on that drugstore pregnancy test, I wanted to tell the world. I wanted to blog about it desperately. The thing is, that most people don’t tell anyone. They keep their cards pretty close to their chest until the end of the 1st trimester. That would’ve been just a couple of weeks and change away for us, and in my mind I was composing the blog I’d write announcing our big news.

But, I thought, statistics show that the chances of a miscarriage are pretty high until the end of the first trimester. I wouldn’t want to share the big news prematurely. In fact, I think part of the reason I haven’t made any entries lately is because I couldn’t imagine blogging without mentioning this really, really big event in my life.

All that said, here I am, blogging about the miscarriage. Moments ago, thinking about the title and whether or not to call it for what it is. The fact is, miscarriages happen to a lot of people, and while it is sad, I don’t think it’s shameful. In fact, if anyone cares enough to read this, that’s a comfort. I don’t want this very big experience I just had to be a secret. It’s a really, really big drag. It’s sad. It’s also a fact, and a part of my story.

So, next time we see the blue cross, I’m not holding back. be prepared, if you are reading my blog, for the emotional roller coaster that is trying to have kids. We are going to keep trying, and we are going to succeed, one way or another. It is hard to see a bright spot in the future now, but to quote a line I heard in a movie last night, we have hope, “pure, naked, fragile hope”. That’s how it feels, naked and fragile and tender and vulnerable, but I am very happy that we have hope, and each other, in this rough time.

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I am making this blog entry on an iPod touch from the Apple store here in Las Vegas. I just tried to buy one but they are out of stock. Bummer!

Now if I want to buy one I will have to think about it first. I hate thinking about impulse purchases!

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