Filed under: From Bachelor To The 'Burbs
So I promised a post about Abby. As Tania and the kids are on their annual trip to see her mom in Kelowna [you couldn't force me at gunpoint to go out there when I've only got two weeks of vacation left until December] and it’s just me and the cat here at home, I guess now’s as good a time as ever.
Abby’s a sweet cat. She’s affectionate, but not annoyingly so, and she goes away after awhile and enjoys sitting on the top of the easy chair or sofa. She doesn’t need people all the time – just enough of the time – and she’s incredibly good with the kids. Hailey manhandles Abby constantly, and Abby just takes it, never complaining or lashing out. She generally avoids Liam [I can't imagine most cats think much of seven year old boys], and while she loves everybody, she’s definitely Hailey’s cat. She either sleeps with Hailey or on the end of our bed, depending on what she feels like doing that night.
What’s annoying about young Abagail is her overwhelming desire for food. She craves it, and seemingly all the time. In fact, I can hear that she’s just jumped off the kitchen counter upstairs as I write this; she knows if she gets caught up there she’s in big trouble. Anyhow, as soon as morning comes and she senses you’re waking up, she begins walking all over us and meowing loudly. My morning routine consists of going directly to the shower; Abby sits outside the door and meows until I’m done. Opening it doesn’t help the situation, so I keep it closed. She screams while I get dressed, she screams as I put my watch and ring on, she screams as I go down the stairs, and she screams as I feed her. She then gobbles it like she’s been starved all her life, and about once a week she pukes it up because she’s eaten it too fast.
If you’re home with her, she begs for food pretty much every hour on the hour. My last cat, Malechai, was waaaaay too fat, and that’s my fault. I refuse to make the same mistake twice, so the screaming continues. I haven;t decided what to do about it yet, but a mist-spray bottle full of water might be in order.
Our cat is demonic. But she’s a good cat.
- BC
BIG, CLUMSY POSTSCRIPTS: I can’t believe the traffic this blog’s getting for people looking to heal their lawn after burning it. The post “So You’ve Burned Your Lawn – Now What?” gets a lot of visitors. If you’re one of those people, it’s HERE. And drop me a lawn! Ask me a question! My lawn sucks too, but I fixed it!
Filed under: Family
So Liam, despite my wishes and contrary to my demands, turned 7 years old today. Hailey bought him a couple of Littlest Pet Shop dogs [and by Hailey, I mean me, but she'll pay me from her allowance], and Tania and I bought him the biggest water gun you’ve ever seen, which Opa is demonstrating the proper use of here. We also got him roller blades and a “Spectator Set” – a boxed kit complete with binoculars, a camera, a flashlight, a portable Walkman-style radio, and a watch. I also picked him up a wicked-awesome skater-style helmet, and decked it out last night with all kinds of skull and fire stickers:
If you’re keeping score, I am the coolest stepfather ever. Anyways, it was a pretty good day: I picked the kids up at the Rec Centre, where the day camp is for the summer, and Tania, Opa [their grandfather - his name is Werner, but he's just Opa to all of us], and the rest of us went to Swiss Chalet for dinner. The staff sang him a happy birthday and gave him piece of cake.
Afterwards he had baseball, where he was doing fine… until a ground ball went between his legs, and he got so down on himself he basically wasn’t playing anymore. I talked to the coach about how I’d pull him out if he kept it up, which he agreed was the right thing to do. I got a brief time out and walked out to left field, and told Liam that he had two choices: get back in the game and play it properly, or get pulled out of the game and go home to his bed without opening his gifts as planned. Guess which one he chose? Yeah, he’s not a dumb kid. He picked himself up right away, and when they plopped him on first base the following inning, he caught the ball twice for two consecutive outs and was happy as a clam. Go figure.
After our traditional post-beezball trip to 7-11 for Slurpees all around, we went home for presents. But while Liam looked like this, Hailey looked like this. She got incredibly jealous of his presents and started complaining about how his birthday presents are better than hers, blah blah blah, and was miserable for a good half-hour after I’d sent her upstairs to her room. Liam responds more to firmness and discipline than Hailey does; he knows that if you mess with the bull, you get the horns. Hailey’s obviously more mature than Liam, and I don’t really need to raise my voice with her at all because she’s rarely a problem. It’s hard to know what to do with her when she is, but I just figured that I wasn’t going to let her selfishness wreck his good time on his birthday, so off she went to her room. Thankfully, everyone managed to come around and end the evening on a happy note after she’d gotten over it, and she even apologized to me at bedtime, which is rare to hear from a kid. Gotta love the Hailey.
Kids make you run the emotional gambit, and drain your energy like a pair of midget-sized, soul-sucking tornadoes. At the end of the day, theirappetities sated only for the moment, they retreat to their rooms under protest and leave you collapsed in the living room like…. well, likethis.
Still, they’re pretty fun sometimes.
- BC
BIG, CLUMSY POSTSCRIPTS: I must write about my third child, Abby. Have I written about Abagail yet? No? Well, she absolutely runs the first hour of my day, every weekday. Tomorrow I’ll let you know about the demonic ball of fur that rules this house with an iron paw.
Filed under: Uncategorized
So I get a surprising number of hits every day from people who, after accidentally burning their lawns with fertilzer, have been asking Google how to repair them. Because some time has passed since I touched on the issue of my demonic lawn, I’ll try to help them out here.
If you’ve burned your lawn up with fertilzer, one of two things has happened: you’ve either used the wrong fertilzer, or you haven’t spread the right fertilizer correctly. Using ‘the wrong fertilzer’ means that you’ve used one that has different kinds of pellets in the bag. What’s happened here is that the nitrate pellets, through no fault of yours, have clumped together in the grass and burned it up. You need to start using Scott’s Turf Builder, which is one of the only brand-name fertilzers that contains all of the different kinds of pellets in one pellet, and which will not burn your lawn at all. Be warned: other fertilzers will say they won’t burn your lawn. They will.
If you think you’ve been using the right fertilzer, you haven’t spread it around correctly. You’ve got to use a spreader to prevent clumping. If you have used a spreader and it still burned, then take a look at your lawn closely. I’m willing to bet that the spots that are burned up are the spots where you turned the spreader another direction while walking, and didn’t close the flow of the pellets as you were turning. This causes clumping, and it’s how your lawn gets burned up.
So it’s burned, and you’re wondering what to do. Firstly, you’re gonna have to get down in those burn spots and pick out the excessive fertilzer bits. Get as many as you can before you do anything else. Next, pick up some Miracle-Gro. You’ll want the one you can attach to your hose, but if the store doesn’t have it then get the blue powder kind and mix it into a watering can. If you’re going this way, mix in three scoops of the Gro into a standard watering can [the scoop comes in the box].
Now you’re ready to water. And baby, you’ve gotta flood that puppy. Watering the lawn is the only way to get the green grass back; adding the Gro will make it grow back faster and thicker, and the water itself will help take the excess fertilzer away while it saturates the lawn. You need to water every day for a couple of weeks to get that green lawn back. The more you water it – and I’m talking 20 minutes a day after the initial flood – the faster you’ll get your lawn back.
There’s no short-term answer here, kids, but the Miracle-Gro will help you. That stuff is magic. If you have enough left over, use it on your flowers and they’ll go crazy. Hope this helps.
BIG, CLUMSY POSTSCRIPTS: It’s a million degrees in Toronto today, and Jalal from the convenience store in my building at work seems to comment silently on it here. There’s no AC in my office, and hasn’t been any for six years. The air quality is atrocious in here. The building’s gonna have to ante up on an AC unit soon, or I’m not working in here anymore.
- BC
Certainly the most alarming thing about marrying into a family after a significant amount of time as a bachelor is that you immediately start living your life for other people instead of yourself. Surprisingly, the transition is not as difficult as one might think.
It isn’t for me, anyhow. When I was a child, I didn’t dream either of being rich or having a fantastic job. Subsequently, I have never cared much for the accumulation of money [I find it more of a hassle than a desire], and I have never pursued the kind of job that one apparently dreams about. Instead, I dreamt about being married and having a family. Marriage is something that agrees with me, and while an argument could be made that I haven’t thus far proven I’m very good at it, it remains something that I quite enjoy. I have always wanted children [I question my ability to parent on a daily basis, mind you, but that's enough material for another post unto itself], and the idea of creating my own family has always been appealing. I’ve happy to report that now both marriage and parenthood have come to pass that the focus of my life shifting to both of those things feels remarkably normal.
With this in mind, then, the thought of taking the kids to Niagara Falls on Canada Day didn’t fill me with as much dread as I thought it would. We hit the Butterfly Conservatory first, where I got some great pictures of the kids and Tania with butterflies on them. It’s the largest butterfly conservatory in North America, and they just flutter all around you as you walk around. Tania had wisely bought tickets to the Falls as a whole, which included free transportation around the town on the ‘People Mover’, so we parked the car at the Conservatory outside town and shuttled in to the White Water Walk. Tania took the most remarkable family picture ever here, and Liam made this one absolutely perfect:
Isn’t that picture awesome? Anyhow, from White Water Walk, where Tania says they filmed a scene from Superman years ago, we took the Mover down to the Falls and snapped some pictures there that I’ll post in a bit. Coincidentally, they had a Superman Returns-themed Hummer there, and while the girls were in the can Liam and I were admiring it. The guys who were responsible for it saw our all-Falls access passport and gave us four free tickets to see the movie. That’s pretty sweet!
Afterwards, we hit the Maid of the Mist. Tania and Liam stayed on the bottom deck, but Hailey wanted to be on the top so I took her up there [again, pictures tomorrow]. I love the Maid; if you haven’t been on it, well, get on it. After a super-expensive lunch we went up that tacky street in town so that Liam could see the Marvel Comics Arcade, where Tania snapped a picture of the boy and I in our web-slinging poses in front of the Green Goblin. It was getting close to 9pm then, so we caught the last Mover out of town and back to the car. The kids behaved, and we all had a good time.
It’s kind of weird when the pleasure of the kids you’re responsible for matters more than your own. I can’t figure out why it comes so naturally. I don’t think I’m gonna think about it too much, though, and just go with it. It’s easier that way, you know?
- BC
BIG, CLUMSY POSTSCRIPTS: I hurt a friend’s feelings yesterday. I sincerely apologize for doing so. I’m sorry.
Also, I snapped this one of Liam playing beezball last week. His tongue’s sticking out, and the ball’s coming off his bat. You can’t take a bad picture with these digital cameras, man.
When I married Tania, I knew that I would be taking responsibility in many ways for Hailey and Liam. As a stepfather, I’m responsible for their safety, their happiness, and for helping them shape themselves into the people they will eventually become. I’m also responsible for them financially, as my money joins Tania’s in paying for their extra-curricular activities, such as the soccer, swimming and baseball they both enjoy. Unfortunately, that particular responsibility appears to be one that Tania and I must bear alone… because Tania’s ex-husband has never paid child support.
Tania and her ex [we'll call him Art] have been apart a long time, and officially divorced for almost one year now. In that time, Art has given $100 in total to Tania in child support and paid half of Hailey’s $120 bicycle. That’s it. Part of the reason is that Art appears to be unemployable, and has not held a job longer than three weeks since I have known him. To the best of my knowledge, he currently receives welfare. somehow, though, he pays rent on a basement apartment and maintains a car [eventually I'll get into his great failings as a parent, but let's keep this talk about money for now]. Apparently, then, there’s some money, but not enough for him to help support his own children.
If Art were making $40,000 a year, he’d owe $550 per month to Tania under Ontario law for fathering two children. Last night I determined that if he made that amount, like he has in the past, he’d owe her a minimum back payment of $6,600 from the date of divorce. However little he makes right now, does he not have to pay her *something*? As the father of two children, should he not be so concerned about their welfare that he should *want* to pay her something? Even if the money he’s getting from the government is minimal, should he not be giving her what he can, and at least *trying*?
It’s my belief that he looks at Tania’s marriage to a man with a job, and sees the house and two cars we own, and somehow feels relieved of his responsibilities. I also think that Art, like many other divorced dads, thinks that he’s giving money to his ex-wife instead of to his children *through* her. Both are stupid thoughts to have, in my estimation, but it gets worse.
Both Tania and I can smell a shitstorm in the next few years ahead over custody, because Art wants his children to live with him. Live with you? You’re on welfare! And because they get their rules, discipline and lecturing only from home, Dad’s place is like a frickin’ playground to them, and Daddy’s a superhero. It’s a frustrating situation for both my wife and I.
Because of this, I’ve decided that there’s no time like the present to arm ourselves against the future. Tania will begin urging Art to start paying what he *can* pay effective immediately, and should he fail to do so, we’re going to be making some legal moves [I don't want to discuss them here, just in case, but rest assure they will help our case in the future]. Whether he pays anything or not, mind you, the time has come for the courts to slap the “deadbeat dad” label on Art, for non-payment, and be made aware that he has not been supporting his children. That’s something we’re going to pursue as soon as possible.
Being “instant family man” sure can get messy sometimes.
- BC
BIG, CLUMSY POSTSCRIPTS: I haven’t mentioned my lawn in awhile. Well, I’ve been watering like crazy, and it’s greener than ever. I appear to finally winning the war. However, we face the south, so the sun kicks the shit out of it a lot. On top of that, my mower broke, and Tania’s dad has to bring his mower by every two weeks for me. Our chess game continues…
