I hate to use this expression, but...

...FML.

Here is what I've been going through lately:

1) The ongoing trials and tribulations of the Big Yam's health

Tuesday night, didn't make it to my class because the Dotytron called and was like, the Big Yam feels hot, J said she thinks he has a fever, how do I take his temperature, blah blah blah. So he takes the Big Yam's temp and it's like, 38.3 and then 38.9!!! (Anything about 38C when the temperature is taken rectally is a fever.) So we got the last appointment at our clinic (once again, I'm so so so thankful I got onto one of the Family Health Teams in Toronto - it's like the smartest, most efficient system, EVER!) - as it turns out, our doctor's office keeps a few appointments open during the day for just such a scenario, and it's called a "will-call" spot or something, and basically it's the doctor's call whether they think the symptoms warrant a visit. So we see the doctor and she's like, "Well, a fever alone is never harmful, it's the body's way of clearing infection. I know parents worry about febrile seizures and brain damage..." (cut to me SPAZZING OUT HARD on the inside because I HAD NO IDEA I SHOULD EVEN BE WORRIED ABOUT SEIZURES AND BRAIN DAMAGE!!! WTF?!??? WHY DOESN'T ANYONE TELL ME THIS STUFF?!!!??) "but," she continued, "that rarely ever happens. Even if your baby has a fever of 40C over 24 hours, it's not a cause for concern." She did say it was weird that he was presenting with a fever after being on antibiotics for 3 days, but she told us to monitor it and if it went on for more than 48 hours, to bring him back.

So, on Wednesday night, I come home from work and he's got a fever of 40.3!!! So the Dotytron and I totally freaked out and cancelled dodgeball so that we could basically just sit and stare at the Big Yam in silent worry. The Dotytron had basically not eaten dinner on Tuesday night because he just sat and stared at Master T in lieu of eating, even though throughout this, the Big Yam has been totally cheerful and fine and eating. Wednesday night was super weird, because Master T would suddenly break out in these inconsolable crying jags, that were so uncharacteristic of him - like, full on pouty, miserable, real-tears crying, for no reason! It was so weird. So we totally got freaked out by that.

Thursday, the fever is gone, and he's kind of back to his usual self, but appetite is decreased and a little clingy and irritable.

This morning, I notice he has this tiny, pin-prick rash on his forehead in between his eyes. When I'm changing him, I notice the same rash is all over his torso. I think it's a heat rash because we gave him a warm bath and put him in fleecy pajamas, note that he's not feverish, and bring him to J, who tells me that it might be chicken pox (which again, I HADN'T EVEN CONSIDERED BECAUSE I'M THE MOST OBLIVIOUS MAMA EVER!) but that she'll still take him because he's likely not contagious anymore (I've said it once, and I'll doubtless say it many, many more times over the years - I LOVE MY DAYCARE PROVIDER MORE THAN LIFE - especially cuz today, not coming in to work wasn't the best option for me). So I totally sent my kid to daycare today with chicken pox. Or, what my sister thinks might be roseola, another virus kids get that has high fever, pinprick rash symptoms. Oy. Vey.

2) The good news

The good news is, my kid takes a rectal thermometre like a champ. Seriously. So completely unfazed and cool with having something stuck up his butt. It's the best. My advice for parents: go to the doctor armed with rectal temperatures if you are the kind of person (like me) whose ego loves validation from traditional professionals (lawyers, doctors, not chiropractors, etc.) The doctor's look of approval after we responded "rectal thermometre" to her question about where the temperature was taken was almost enough to mitigate how bad I felt with the Big Yam being a sickie. A distant second choice is armpit, but that might be the way to go if you are worried about puncturing your kid's rectum - but seriously, the "just the tip" rule of thumb works really well here.

3) Interment

Yesterday was the interment for Poppa D's ashes, which was sad and sorrowful and stressful at the same time. He's in a beautiful spot at the Toronto Necropolis, which is close to our house for visiting and is one of Toronto's oldest cemeteries - it's really peaceful and quiet there and it's across the street from Riverdale Farm, which is perfect - I'm planning on taking the Big Yam there on Remembrance Day, when I have the day off of work. I still can't quite believe that Poppa D is gone - it hurts to think about it and it hurts every time I think about how fast the Big Yam is growing up and how he's growing up without his Poppa. My heart hurts and my head spins from the fact that life insists on continuing. I get teary thinking about how much he would have loved to see Master T in his cute little log costume and how much he's missing and how much the Big Yam is missing not having his Poppa around. I'm sad for how much the Dotytron is missing, not having his dad around...it's just sad all around...it's not fair.

4) Arson!

Last night I heard my trashy neighbours yelling something so, being the not-so-discrete snoopy voyeur that I am, I looked out the window, thinking that I might be witnessing a domestic. They were shouting something and I saw this weird orange glow on their faces and noticed other people gawking on the street, so I went outside. Well, as it turns out, MY NEIGHBOUR'S TWO GARAGES WERE ENGULFED IN FLAMES. Not my neighbour-neighbour, like the house on the corner, about 14 houses down. He had two extremely derelict, ancient garages that were really just shack/frames, but they were ON FIRE - like flames already up onto the roof and jumping onto his fence and the front of his (new!) car on fire, fire. It was insane. I went out and confabbed about it with the neighbours and the one who called it in to 911 said that when she called, the flames were 2 feet off the ground, but in the time it took her to make the call, the entire thing was up. The fire department says it looks suspicious - my neighbour didn't keep anything in there (other than his car) but had just down the raking and had 12 bags of leaves in there. The fire department came super quick and got the blaze out but the guys garage is a smoking, charred wreck, his car is donezo, and his fence got all burned up.

If I were the fire department/fire marshals/what have you, I would have INSTANTLY gone around interviewing the bystanders. Because if you're an arsonist, wouldn't you want to hang around and see your work? That's what I've been led to believe by such incisive, informative, hard-hitting journalism pieces as Backdraft. If I were the fire department, I would be looking around the people assembled for this guy:

Is it bad that when I came back into the house all a-twitter with the excitement of the fire and the thrill of talking with your neighbours out of context in your pajamas that I wanted to dig out this record and blast it into the street?

If this ever happens again (let's hope not), I can just see me and the Dotytron looking at each other, giving each other a nod, and then pushing the speakers and sub woofer up to the front windows, putting on this record, and then raving in the street. LOL.

5) Group work and mid-term hell

I'm trying to merge all the components of my team for this stupid final report for a school assignment and it's killing me and no one else cares and it's driving me crazy. Those foolios better not think that I'm bringing the whole document together, because that ain't happening. I can tell you that much. I offered to bring the works cited list together and make it cohesive and that's what I'm doing. Then I have a mid-term due next week that is crazy. The prof has set these insaneo page limit expectations like, 7 pages single spaced for Part A, but when I look at the questions, they look like one line answers to me. UGH. Do you know how much WORK it is to make up so much b.s.? Answer: a lot. More than if I actually had a lot to say.

So that's the update. Things have been bats**t crazy around here and it's been non-stop stress and go and managing too many teams/coordinating too many events (like buying Prince tickets). This weekend our social docket is blessedly free, thank my lucky stars. We have massages on Saturday and I have to make a brief appearance at a baby shower on Sunday before having dinner with Momma D and Ehmdo at Momma D's house. Sounds pretty darned blissful, doesn't it?

Fin.

525 948.766

That's how many minutes there are in a year (according to the Google calculator, NOT according to the song from Rent.) That's how many minutes young Master T has been in our lives. That's how many minutes we've spent falling in love with this little guy who started as an idea, grew in my tummy, and emerged as him - a fully-formed human being with a pretty amazing personality. A little baby who began with scrawny chicken legs and arms and a low voice who is now a funny, babbling, winding and grinding, almost-walking little Boobla.

Each minute that passes makes you marvel at the point you're at now, while simultaneously being wistful for the the baby that was before. We're looking forward to what kind of ridiculousness he's going to spout once he starts talking, but when I hear him babbling away to himself in the back seat I know I'm going to miss the sounds of his nonsensical pre-verbal musings.

This year has been filled with sweetness and light and bitterness and shadow. Last night, when we started reflecting on the magnitude of what this year has meant for us with the Big Yam, we couldn't also help but have a cry about what we lost, too. I'm so very, very sad that Poppa D didn't get to spend T's 1st birthday with us. I know he would have been over-the-moon and would have loved every minute of it and would have been thrilled to be there to spoil him and laugh at his hijinks. We hadn't had a cry like that in a while and we needed it. The one year marker is a significant one and I was struck anew by how many moments and milestones Poppa D wouldn't get to witness. I really wanted T to experience a grandparents sleepover and going to a ball game with his Poppa and seeing his Poppa cheer him on at school plays and sports games. There is so much about this moment that f**king sucks, even as we're celebrating. I has thought that Thanksgiving would be harder, being the first major holiday without Poppa D, but I'm finding that I'm having a much harder time with the Big Yam's birthday.

Here are some photos from the weekend - for Poppa D.

T wearing his birthday crown & tux

T's birthday cake - a classic golden cake with chocolate frosting (which was too sour, but whatever)

The Big Yam's first taste of refined sugar was VERY favourably received

All tuckered out post dim-sum lunch

We spent Sunday afternoon playing kickball and touch football with the cousins - this is a scene from the sidelines.

I don't start work until Thursday, so today I'm spending with Momma D and the Big Yam.

Fin.

Remembering

Monday started off as a strange, weird day. There was this weird, buzzy, restless, heightened charge to the air that made us kind of tense. I couldn't believe we were having a memorial for Poppa D. It felt like it was for someone else. It still feels like we just haven't seen him for the normal amount of time that we don't see Momma and Poppa D sometimes (a couple of weeks) and that we'll go for dinner in a week or two and he'll still be there.

The memorial was truly beautiful and truly a celebration of his life in a way that people often intend those things to be but they rarely are. Our friends played piano and bass and the room was filled with friends and family, all coming together to pay their respects - there must have been over 150 people there - I can't imagine having touched that many people's lives, myself. The speeches, especially the Dotytron's, Ehmdo's and Momma D's were beautiful and heartfelt and helped to paint a picture of the husband, father, grandfather, outlaw dad, son, brother, friend, colleague that people lost too soon.

I feel like now the hard part begins. The part where we all have to learn to live without Poppa D's gentle, supportive, loving presence in our life. When I think about the loss for the Big Yam and how unaware he is of what he's lost, and how he won't even remember that year he got to spend with his Poppa it makes me cry so hard.

The Dotytron wisely took this week off of work. I'm going to resume regularly scheduled posting tomorrow to bring you all up to speed on what we've been up to as of late.

With you in grief and in joy,

Fin.

Memorial

Today is the memorial service for Poppa D. I can't believe it's happening - that we're actually doing this. Most of the time it feels like we just haven't seen him in a while - like he's gone on vacation and we'll see him in a week's time.

My heart aches for the Dotytron.

Fin.

Spitting image

Everyone always looks at the Big Yam and sees his Asian colouring and how deep and dark his eyes are and remarks on how much he looks like his mama. We've been going through old photos and we came across ones of the young Dotytron and I can totally see so much of him in the Boobla Khan. Some of the expressions are identical to T's. See for yourself:

In the last two weeks the Big Yam has been working on his vocabulary. His one word vocabulary. He knows how to say "miao" (Cantonese for cat) and he spends his mornings as I'm getting his breakfast ready chasing the cats and shouting "miaomiaomiaomiaomiao!" at them. It's pretty cute. I'm trying to teach him other words but no luck so far. This past week I've been leaving him with J, his caregiver, for an hour here and there at the drop-in centre and actually taking off and leaving the premises to get him used to her. He's been fine. Distressingly fine. He's notorious for being pretty independent and an easy, relaxed baby so that's to be expected I guess, but it hurts a teensy bit. Although, he reserves special smiles for me and when I show up to collect him he immediately drops whatever he's doing (gumming something he shouldn't be gumming) and crawls over with a big grin. He's also been a bit clingy afterward but that could also because he's got a cold and he's cutting a new tooth. Who knows.

Last night we had Momma D and Ehmdo over to watch the Big Yam while we played in our first dodgeball game of the season (we got spanked, but that's incidental.) I made us a pretty fantastic dinner - open faced steak melts consisting of: nice bread sliced semi-thick, brushed with roasted garlic oil, and lightly toasted in the oven, topped with smushed roasted garlic cloves, caramelized onion, sliced seared steak, and horseradish cheddar, broiled to melt; sliced tomatoes with salt and pepper; and a mache salad with grated grano padano and a lemon-olive oil dressing.

Fin.

Poppa D

To say that we are still in shock from Poppa D's sudden passing is a gross understatement. I can't even begin to express how bitterly unfair it all is and how sad I've been - for the Dotytron, for the Big Yam, and for Momma D, Ehmdo, Nany, the rest of my extended Dotytron family, and finally, for my own loss.

My bio-dad is a diffident robot at the best of times and an outright bastard at the worst of times and it is a testament to what a kind, gentle man that Poppa D was that the love that he engendered in his children, his wife, and his extended network of family and friends could be so uncomplicated and pure. It is the kind of legacy that we can only ever hope for - to be remembered only positively, without asterisks, codas, or qualifiers.

I'm feeling very angry right now. Angry at the injustice of it all. Angry that he would have been such a great, loving, goofy grandfather and that Master T was robbed of the opportunity to learn and grow at his feet, to be exposed to Poppa D's unending love of music specifically and the arts in general. I'm mad that the Big Yam won't ever be able to hear his Poppa play him a song on the mandolin or remember the unending goofy faces that Poppa D could make. I'm especially angry because Poppa D was so excited to be a grandfather and committed himself wholeheartedly to the role. How, even as my own bio-dad willingly estranges himself from me and my life, Poppa D thrilled to every moment. I can still hear the excitement in his voice ("Did you see that?!!!") and how he boasted to anyone in the immediate vicinity when he saw the Boobla crawl over to a chair and pull himself up to standing the first time.

As a product of Westernized-but-still-fairly-Chinese parents, I have never known the depths of parental acceptance and support that Poppa D was capable of. I never heard an unkind or discouraging word. I'm sure that he looked a little askance at the loudmouth brassy girl with a woeful ignorance of the Beatles' catalogue that his son chose for a partner, but I never saw it. He gave his son the best of himself and I will be forever grateful for it.

There are no words to express our collective grief. There are no words to express how the outpouring of support and love from our families and extended family of friends have eased the heaviness of our hearts and provided succor for our pain. This life we eke out for ourselves is filled with moments that will break you a million times over with their beauty and ugliness and it is only through sharing those moments with the relationships that we build, nurture, and sustain that we can bear it.

With a full heart - RIP, Poppa D. Thank you.

Fin.

Fuck Cancer.

Fin.

camp momma & poppa d

oy. yesterday i called in sick to work. one too many sleepless, restless nights in a row - a combination of the heat, the no a/c at lil' ugmo, and the fact that on wednesday night we went out to see the dotytron's friend K play at gate 403 on roncesvalles in a straight ahead vocal jazz band. we didn't get home until midnight. i've been going to sleep at 9:30pm. it was a combination that resulted in me waking up on thursday morning feeling tired, cranky, head-achey and like a giant, sweaty, over-heated tubster. i couldn't face going to work.

instead, we went to the dotytron's parents' house and i napped and soaked up their a/c and loved life. it was so nice to visit with them anyway. the live up the street (but quite a distance away - like a 25 minute walk?) but we don't see them nearly enough and so we drank their pop and they bought us pizza and spoiled us and treated us like big kids.

it was heavenly.

this all meant that even though i woke up at 3am last night and had to stay up reading on the couch (we're still sleeping on the living room floor) by flashlight for 2 hours until i could get back to a fitful sleep, i am much more well rested today and ready to face the mountain of work ahead of me.

tonight we're going for AYCE sushi and then a viewing of "twilight: eclipse" with jenny calendar, lolly, dr. rei & hanbo, bwong and his new gf (!!!) and my mum. what a crew!

i'll try to take some pics.

big weekend ahead!

fin.