A case of the monday's

well lets see.
1. 4 a.m. baby wakes up teething. i suggest tylenol for baby.
2. 6 a.m. wife decides that baby should take some tylenol for his teeth.
3 8.am. baby and wife return to bed. i have a cup of coffee.
4.8:15 a.m. i climb back into bed after spending five minutes pushing 87 pound dog out of my spot.
5.8:20 a.m. wife starts snoring.
6.8:21 a.m. back downstairs watching the tube.
7.8:23 a.m. 87 pound whining machine comes downstairs and "wants" to go out. i attempt the "let out" dog backs away from the cold and walks back to the living room.
8. after a while i decide that i am too "mad" to eat breakfast.
9. the rest of the morning goes well until i try to watch the episode of dexter that my father-in-law has recorded for me. it was there just being formatted so he could watch it on his psp.
10. work calls they want me to come in two hours early to set up stages at w.f. ready school.
11. quality tire calls to ask why i have not picked up my order. i inform them that when my wife went in on the previous friday and they could not find my order and moreover the staff was kind of rude in regards to that the fact that my wife used to date an employee. the car ended up with different tires at a different price and on the original rims. almost the exact opposite of what i wanted.
12. i start watching Dexter. baby cries wife misses key scenes. the episode is longer than i expected. cutting in to the time i have to make a lunch/drive to work.
13. i am so shocked by the ending that i blurt it out and ruin the surprise for my wife. I now have forty minutes to drive forty five mins. to town and make a lunch. to bad for lunch.
14. the command start has not started my car. and because i dropped my keys in the snow the day before, my ignition is frozen solid. boo urns
15. lock de-icer rules
16. on the way into work I bitch about how bad Monday has been. I then realize that i don't have a belt on and am wearing my winter boots. also i am rolling sans watch.
17. i get to the school and have to pee. the bathroom is full over tots who try to tell me i can't use the bathroom because i don't go to school there. i ignore them and as i am bigger that them i pee when and where i want.
18. after i wash my hands and find the head faculty tech, a voice comes over the intercom saying that there is a water leak in the kindergarten class.
19. the fire alarm goes off. it is the loudest noise i have ever heard. (i was raised under a flight path and used to live on an Air Force base).
20. A sprinkler head has exploded in the kindergarten/preschool boot room (i guess not having weather stripping in a door way when it's minus fifty all weekend is bad?) soaking countless pairs of transformer and Dora the explorer boots and hats. 40 gallons a minute for almost twenty minutes. wet.
21. i am told to get a mop and "clean this mess up".......o.k.
22. after the mess is clean i am asked to set up stages for the school concert.
23. a stage falls and slides down my arm, scratching the shit out of it. awesome
24. i guess i work to fast as the eight hour job only takes about forty five minutes.
25. as i did not bring a lunch, my wife had to leave work go to a McDonald's and bring my some stuff that loosely resembles food. no straw.
that is what i would like to present to you the reader as "a case of the Mondays."

1995- 2009 i should be a doctor

On the 19th of August i had a job interview with the Regina Public School Board. The interview was for a custodial position with a starting wage of about 17 dollars an hour. The interview went well; I had all the necessary experience for the job. And i got along well with the three men that interviewed me. At the end of our interview when we stood to shake hands, one of the interveiwers said in passing that he would need to see a transcript of my grade twelve marks. My heart sank and i shook hands and left.

It was easy for me to leave school. I started high school in 1995 at Sheldon Williams Collegiate. I immediately was more interested in the social aspects of school than the subjects. At the end of grade nine i was smoking pot two or three times a week and had failed all my classes. It was the same for grade ten. After my fourth year of high school i still needed to get 11 credits. i was already the guy in the back of the class that everybody knew. And i was eighteen in a room full of fifteen year olds. I got a job delivering pizza and that was the end of high school for me.
Leaving school didn't put me at an immediate disadvantage. I was working full time while my friends were in university. I had lots of money and was able to drive a nice car. It wasn't untill my friends finished university that i realized i wasn't ahead at all. I was stuck working as a concrete labourer out side year round with no real future. It took the birth of my son for me to realize that i didn't want to live like this forever. I was tired of telling people that I was a high school dropout and hearing them say " You're a smart guy, How come?"
i needed to get a career instead of a job. I couldn't do this without a grade 12 diploma. After the job interview i went down to the office of the Minister of Education and applied to write my GED. About a week later i got a phone call from the School Board saying that i had got the job. I explained how i was signed up to write my grade 12 but did not yet have it. The man i spoke to said that once i had showed him that i had passed, I could start working. So here i am. It was easier to come back than i thought.

morning brain

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I am an early bird, up before the sun most days. I am a greens keeper and riding my bike to work at 5:45 am is a wonderful thing. I love when my bike reaches the point where i don't have to pedal anymore. Work is about two hundred and fifty feey lower than by house. I just have to pedal up my block and around the corner. when i get to the corner of the trans-Canada and Kenogami street i just coast and listen as the wind changes from a low whisper to a full out howl.
The downhill portion of my trip has three distinct stages. Number one is the initail speed gathering stage when i am flying past the house with the beautiful giant Alaskan Malamute. Every morning i wake the outdoor guard dogs of terrace-bay. stage two has be leveling of after about six blocks of mid range speed. i race past the abandoned apartment buildings and the empty Navy scouts hall. Stage three involves the most interesting part of the ride. After i pass the Scouts hall I get a real good view of the Slate Islands but I can't look to long as the road turns and really starts to drop fast. At this point i estimate i am travelling at about sixty- five kilometers and hour. On wed morning while traveling my fastest i had to swerve around a rather large black bear. the road is paved as it is the only access to the Terrace bay Beach. if it was gravel i would have a very intimate relationship with Ontario's king of the jungle. The bear was only there to eat wild rhubarb that grows on the side of the road.
After the hill there is about a five hundred yard slowdown zone. it is in this area that i see the black and grey fox who steals golf balls from work. I then spend my day returing the golf course to the way i left on the previous day( that pesky Mother-Nature keeps changing things). During my day I see the two foxes who live on the course. I give one dog cookies, he has earned the name Foxy foxerson. ( dont ask as he is probably a she). The vixen is Red and suede coloured and Hauntingly beautiful as all wild animals are. As i cut the greens I gradually end up with wet feet from the heavy dew that soaks the morning grass. After i have mowed my nine i often stop to enjoy a drink as a large white tail deer runs and bucks in the ninth fairway. after i am done cutting back what grew overnight I get on my bike and start the long and slow ride back up to my wife and son. This trip has only one phase, heart pounding cardio. one the way up I always get angry as i pass the small brook that runs through a culvert under the road. there is always garbage in the water. I stop and pck the bottles out and throw them in the waste bins up the road but every few days there is more. I wish everyone would stop and look around before they threw crap into the tributaries of north-america's largest fresh water reserve. Stupid humans. Animals are so much nicer to mother nature.

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I have been thinking allot about whats in a name. I have a four month old son and he of course carries on my last name. I watched a special on the discovery channel a while ago about tracing the human Genome. The show mostly focused on DNA passed down from mother to daughter. This made me wonder about my last name. How important is it to the world who my father is if the unbroken line of DNA goes back through the mothers side?
It seems like humanity has made a mistake as to which name should be dominant in our family tree.

I don't understand why?

One of the main reasons that I moved to Terrace bay was to get to know my father better. We went along time without speaking when I was a teen. My Father drove a transport truck for a living and was not home very much. needless to says we never got together from the time I was 16 until about 18. Alot of tings have happened since then that have brought us together. My step-mother Passed away suddenly a few years ago. The following spring my Step-brother lost a long battle with cancer. These two things changed the dynamic between my father and i profoundly. I let go of the anger i had harbored for so long about growing up without him around. I know alot of people have to grow up without a parent but for a teen-age boy it is hard not having someone tell you the decisions you are making will affect you for life. My mother was the only one who was there to do that for me.
I am married and have a new born son. I don't Know why my dad exactly left( everyone's story is different) but i do know that I couldn't leave my son. ever. I think that sometimes people just get fed up and decide that there is nothing left to fight for, but i don't understand why?

hymning and hawing

well my wife and I have decided that we don't like northern ontaro as much as we thought. Well let me rephrase that; We like northern ontario, it is stunningly beautiful. the shore of lake superior always draws my stare as i ride my bike to work. The rock that seems to just thrust itself out from the mossy earth is really amazing. the fresh air and the bird song are so foreign to me.
I grew up in a city with a population of 200,000, the town i live in now has about 1,200 people. Dont get me wrong i love this place, it's just hard to make a living here. There are about 800 people here that are on EI. that means that any good jobs that open up are attacked feverishly. i wonder what we are going to do when my wife's maternity leave runs out. our in come will drop by 50%. and life is only getting more and more costly. My son needs clothes I need clothes and so does my wife. I own my home and think that i am going to be stuck with it for a while. that means that i will have to pay the power and property tax on it. I think that for the sake of my family i have to try to move and if i own a house that i don't live in then i guess thats the way the cookie crumbles. hmmmmm

random things i can appreciate.

1. Stopping on the way to work to see the sun light up Lake superior.
2. smelling the rain hours before it comes.
3. my son always smile when i ask him where he hid my keys.
4.trying to make my house look better.
5. phone calls from friends.

Ahh Sunday

today is sunday. all day! i have untill noon to do what i want then my wife goes to work. then i do what my son wants to do. lately chris wants to jump in his bouncer and scream with joy. sundays rule

sixty five years ago today

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Sixty-five years ago today the allied nation lauched the largest amphibious invasion in history to fight tyranny and oppression in Europe. I care about this very deeply. I have a strange family. My great-grandfather (on my mothers side) fought his way through Italy and along with scores of other men it was eventually "liberated from Nazi control. My dads Father was in the Luftwaffe he was a Fallscrimjager(paratrooper) Opa was in an elite unit called the greendevils. Opa also fought in Italy. He was wounded badly at the battle of Monte Cassino( shot in the face and both legs) every family has stories like this and hopefully nobody ever forgets. I wont.

where does it go?

I am going to attempt staining the deck on my house, I say attempt because my wife is working and i am a stay at home dad on the weekend. My son is to young to help so i have to get a sitter so i can do work outside. luckily for me, my son is pretty cute so my sister will watch him for free. i am looking forward to working on the deck. I like to be outside and enjoy the colony of redpoll finches that live in the greenspace behind my house. there are a few other species that i cant identify but i enjoy hearing them sing their ageless sogs of love to each other. the back yard is a pain in the ass for me. I spend four hours every day walking behind a lawnmower as i cut the greens at work. the last thing i want to do when i get home is take care of a yard but i have a compulsion to have the greenest yad in the world. I wonder if it is a reflection of time spent watching my old yard in regina slowly get destroyed by my dogs or if i am just getting old? theother day i saw a commercial about thinning grass that was like a hair club for men ad. it was very clever but scarily accurate. i have all te tendecies of a fourty year old man, well except for the attaction to girls have my age(shiver). I worry what people think about my grass ad my shingles. what are they saying about the weeds in my driveway. then i remember that i am not from here so no matter what i do i will always be an outsider. i might as well have moved to kazakstan the reception would have been just as friendly......peole in small town that have never lived anywhere else develope what i like to refer to as " town syndrome". I overheard a woman at the golf course saying that this summer the clubhouse would be better because there is people from "here" running it. It makes me wonder what happens to these peole when they are forced to move to another place? do they eat crow? do they feel my pain? or do the residents of the new place sense their "town syndrome" and accept them as one of their own? My high school had more people in it than terrace bay. and i couldn't stand high school. I think i need to start planning a move back to familliar skies and eyes

i have just quit my facebook account. it feels kind of weird not to know what the guy i sat beside in grade six thinks are his five most favorite action movies are but i am surviving. I try to think back to what i used to do with my spare time before facebook and i remember doing home renovations and generally getting things done. i wonder what the inefficiency level of our society has to do with the economic decline. take the whole GM bankruptcy crap. I remember seeing a news story about the production of cars a few yeas ago and it showed the "line" where they are produced. there were four guys standing there putting on tires. a machine held the tires and another machine tightened the bolts. all the people did was guide the bolt machine in place. why was there four of them? how much did they get paid? was there not a robot that could do this job?. no wonder they went bankrupt. the car dealership here in town knocked 10,000 dollars off the price of a pontiac minivan. how bad were we getting screwed before?

a question of birds.

The town i live in has a pulp mill in it. right now the mill is closed down and the air is allot more "fresh" than it was last year. with the clean air the birds have returned, all kinds of birds. over the last few days i have seen a bald eagle being chased by a raven, a bald eagle being chased by a seagull, and a very weird looking woodpecker thing that kinda reminded me of Stephen Kings "it" i like birds. they taste good and were once dinosaurs. but they don't blink and that is just evil.