Northward Midget

Tag: parenthood

  • Lest I Forget

    I refilled my Provigil and Clonazepam (AKA Klonopin) scripts today over lunch.  After a trip to Subway, pulling into the office lot, shutting off the car, I shook two Provigil tablets into my hand and went inside, then slugged them down with a shot of Pepsi Max.

    I felt better that afternoon than I have in a long while.  My boss (the bestest one on Earth) had been looking for me in the interim, and when I asked, he had a new project for me.  It’s the usual maddeningly vague request, but I’m happy to get something concrete to work on.  Yeah, that’s it, I was actually happy to have that thrown on my lap.

    I love working.  I need to work.  So much of the time, I can’t decide what to do, so I sit there.  Sometimes I sit on the couch at home and stare off into the middle distance.  I’ve mentioned that before, like Puddy on Seinfeld.  Well, it drives my wife crazy and I can’t blame her.

    Anyway, it’s because I can’t decide what to do.  The girls’ rooms need cleaned, the laundry needs done, there are chores I should be doing around the house.  What to do?  Which to do?  I’m crippled with indecision.

    The work problem is similar but opposite.  Often, there is nothing specific to do.  I chase bugs and squash ’em right and fine.  Sometimes I’ll latch onto a technology (“NoSQL” lately) and whittle together something vaguely practical.  But there’s no real direction.  No projects for me.

    Well, now I got one, but this is getting way off topic.  Suffice it to say I’m glad I got it.

    What I’m meaning to say tonight is that that 400MG of Provigil made me into the man I’m supposed to be.  I’m quick-witted, generally happy, and good to be around.  So much so, in fact, that when I came home the wife was angry with me.  She thought I was foolin’ at it, and said it was cruel of me to play “happy” with her, that it fucks with her head, and if I want to do it, do it with the children.

    Well, I was doing it with the children, but I also tried to make conversation with her.  Anyway, I understand why she’d be pissed.  For all she knows, for all she’s been through with me, I’ll slip back into a zombie again tomorrow.

    And I might at that.

    On the downside, the Provigil seems to have increased my anxiety.  I’m considering downing a couple of the Clonazepam to get me to sleep, but my logical mind is doing well enough warding off the bogeymen for now.  It’s the typical stuff: how to pay the bills, worry of getting deeper in debt, of paying for what the kids need and what I want to give everyone.  Why am I, in a pretty good-paying professional job, not able to make ends meet?  Why are we living paycheck-to-paycheck?

    Heh.  I’m not helping myself by writing about it, am I?  Maybe I am.  I know we’re a fuck of a lot better off than most of the country is right now, that I’ve got a great boss (and friend) and a great job at a company that really seems to care about its employees.

    Our holiday party is this week.  We do a “Secret Santa” schtick.  Last year, my contribution was a Kiss Snuggie.  A Kiss Snuggie.  Perhaps the most brilliantly ironic brainchild of the Gene Simmons licensing empire.  How am I gonna top that?  So, I was close to opting out.

    Then, in my Provigil-induced euphoria, I remembered the gift I got last year.  It was a Jack Daniel’s gift box — accompanied by a framed portrait of one of my co-workers.  We’re pretty sure it was proffered to the pile by the president and founder of the company, who’s also one hell of a guy.

    So, this year, my gift will be a Jameson gift box accompanied by that same picture.

    Which reminds me: I was supposed to wrap it tonight.  Maybe I’ll just buy a gift bag from Wegman’s and tape it closed to protect the gag.

    It’s no Kiss Snuggie, but I think it’ll go over pretty well.

    So here I am typing up a storm, the primary purpose of which is to be able to go back to this entry when my next psychiatrist appointment comes due, and know what worked for this one day.  Tomorrow I’ll maybe try a Provigil in the morning and another at noon, to thin out the hyper.

    So many times, I go into that office (after waiting a half hour past my appointment time), and everything goes blank.  I forget how I’ve felt for the past month.  I can’t come up with a number from one to ten, ten being feeling pretty good.  I remember last time it was four.  I was gonna go with three on the next visit, and it’s been at best a three this month, but if I can ride this Provigil for the rest, it might up to a six.  I just need to remember to tell him why, or why I think it is, which is the Provigil, and not the Seroquel, which I’ve ramped up to 400MG each night.  That’s making me tired, and its introduction coincided with feeling slightly better last time, but I was also taking two Clonazepams before leaving work each night.  I think it was those tranquilizers that were helping me — not the Seroquel.

    Pristiq does seem to be a good foundation drug for me, but I may want to go back on the Abilify booster instead of continuing with the Seroquel.  I’ve had a lot of trouble waking up since starting it.

    Alrighty then, almost a thousand words that nobody but the spam-bots are gonna read, but they’ll be typed, and I’ll have reference to them when I see the shrink again next month.

    The bigger girl was a rascal tonight.  She wanted to play, and I couldn’t get her to calm down.  Finally I took both her hands and told her to breathe with me.  Deep breaths.  Well, of course that boloney didn’t work worth a pig’s ass.  However, she did entertain herself trying to kick me in the nuts for a few minutes, and eventually forgot her playthings and crawled up into bed.

    Lights were out and we’d started the drift off to sleep at 8PM sharp.  Little girl went to bed within a half hour.  It was another hour after that before I lifted myself up out of bed, leaving both sleeping.  She was just so danged full of energy tonight.

    And get this: she had a bloody lip and was painting herself with the blood.  Little smears all over her bare chest and around her mouth.  She climbed up on the dresser and cooed, “I look like a zombie!”

    She let me wipe off her mouth (which I suspect she re-smeared after lights-out), but insisted on keeping her chest marked up.  I’m trying now to catch the wife to warn her about it before she goes to bed, so she doesn’t find our eldest covered in blood tomorrow morning and freak out.

    I think I’ll close with that.  Goodnight, friends.

  • OK, Maybe Not

    As has been pointed out to me, the love of ones offspring is not an accurate metric of ones success as a parent.  A kid loves her daddy if he beats her, molests her, ignores her.  Kids just love their daddies — at least while they’re kids.  They don’t realize how much they hated him until they grow up.

    I have a problem with discipline.  That is, I don’t.  My volume ratchets up, my cadence becomes rigid and stern.  I attempt to manipulate with my voice, knowing it’s impotent.  Sometimes I threaten consequences I have no desire to carry out, or back out of my ten-counts to sentencing.

    I’m awful at putting the girls to bed.  Tonight took an hour.  The eldest was full of energy and had no desire to just lie down.  What do I do?  What can I do?  I tried grabbing her (not violently) and laying her beside me in bed.  Her younger sister was ready by this time, after a crying jag because, well, we read “One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish” or something.  Does it really matter?  What boils inside these devils?  They’re raw emotion, puppeteered by cruel whimsy.

    She wouldn’t lay down.  I tried threatening a consequence, coolly explaining that when she asks for a playdate or to ride her scooter tomorrow, she needs to recall why I say “No.”  So I start my count, and she interrupts saying she wants to explain something, so I say to explain it in bed quietly with me.  She can’t do that.  She does eventually come over, but doesn’t explain, and then it’s another count later when she won’t be  quiet and I desperately want at least her sister to get to sleep so I can deal with just one of them at a time.

    She says she’s going to her room (she sleeps with her sister in the younger’s bed), so I acquiesce, and then she starts sobbing in there.  Again, I just want to get one of them to sleep.  If I can get the younger down, then I can devote attention to whatever’s keeping the older up, but they’ve got to get to sleep because the clock is ticking and their mother is going to be home soon and I’m gonna catch hell if they’re still up.

    I get up, try to calm her down, she vocalizes her hatred of me, I go back to her little sister and finally get her to sleep as the sobbing resumes in the other room.  While I’m waiting for the littler one to settle into a “lift the arm and drop it” limpness of true sleep, the elder’s shadow appears at the door.  She wants to lay down, but she doesn’t.

    That’s the beginning of the end, and about five minutes later, she’s asleep.

    What should I have done differently?  Tell me, parents.  Tell me, Doctor Spock and “Raising Your Spirited Child” lady.

    Why can’t I do something so simple as putting my kids to bed without having every nerve untwine me to raw frustration?

    Oh, and I also don’t enjoy spending time with them.  That’s what I’m told.  I take it for granted.  Damn, I’m some kind of fucking monster.

    I love my kids, more than I love anything or anyone.  Maybe that isn’t enough, since I don’t love much in this world, including myself.  There’s no drug to fix that, and the shocks didn’t do anything.  Am I stuck with the prospect of decades of therapy?  Can’t I just be normal?

    “You are not special.”  That’s a tenet of Recovery International, paraphrased.  We all have these problems, and ours are not more terrible; we just feel them that way.  Really?  So, nobody out there experiences any joy in life?  That problem seems a little special.

    Sorry, folks.  I’m just typing tonight.  I thought maybe something useful would come out of it.  Nobody reads this, anyway.  It was supposed to just be an exercise in getting a blog up and keeping my writing muscles, well, saving them from the atrophy they’ve been undergoing.  Was I ever a good writer?  I at least seemed to enjoy it in high school, knocking off goofy little twist-endings and macabre mood pieces in the wee hours on AppleWorks on my green-screen Laser 128 before setting off on my paper route at 5am.  Watching the world premiere of “Like a Prayer” on MTV.  Listening to Pink Floyd and REM.  Calling up BBS around the country with stolen calling cards.  Playing “Wasteland” and “Bard’s Tale” and “Might and Magic.”  Writing virtual girls in BASIC that told me they loved me.

    And now I’m a bad father.  You’ve come a long way, baby.

  • And To All a Good Night

    This night, as per the title of this post, I’m living good.  Ani wanted a playdate. Usually, I dread such things, because it means her going door to door asking if anyone wants to play with her, and Christ knows what it means to me.  Am I supposed to come over and linger at the sidewalk as she does what kids do?  I hate to just send my kids to a house and let them have at it.

    But tonight, she wanted to play with a little boy across the street, and apparently they’d arranged beforehand their engagement.  So, I go over to get her situated, and the dad is on the porch, so I’m happy to give my greetings and be on my way, but whaddya know — he’s smoking!

    Usually, when I’m smoking in the driveway, I coyly attempt to hide my cigarette when a neighbour comes by, thinking they’ll think I’m some monster blowing cancer into the faces of my little angels.

    But this guy was smoking, and by the slight slur in his voice (perceptible only to a fellow drinker), I could tell that wasn’t just Pepsi in his glass.  And he immediately offers me a beer!  And the beer, after a tour of their lovely home, becomes a glass of wine, and another, and indeed a wonderful night spent communing with a fellow husband, father, and neighbour.

    It was fun.

    And fun is what I’m supposed to be having, right?  I’m supposed to be finding myself, finding something outside of my role as a husband and father, getting out and doing things.  It’s why I went golfing for the first time in my life last weekend.  It’s why I now have Saturday nights free to do whatever I want.

    More importantly, it was just fun, good times.  He’s a great guy, his wife is a great lady, their son is a good kid, and they drink and smoke and we had good conversation and seemed to enjoy each other.

    So, may all of you have as good a night as I did.

    Oh, and one final note, to all the psychiatrists out there, and all those spending their timesheets and grant dollars puzzling out depression: the answer is alcohol.