Looking Forward

Took the youngest boy off of Phenobarbital this weekend. It was the last step of a three-month plan to wean him off it, one that we started after our last stay in the hospital back in October. He had been in for a 24 hour EEG that showed his brain “background noise” was getting closer to normal and that most of the posturing he does were not a result of seizures, but a result of muscle spasms cause by his brain injury. Good news to us of course, and also to him, as his Neurologist thought we could start taking him off of Phenobarbital as he could see no medical need for it to continue.

He hasn’t been completely off it long enough to see if it’s gonna make much difference in the day-to-day. So far, as we’ve been tapering down, the biggest change has been his frustration in his inability to move very much. Now this might be good in the long run. We’re all hoping that perhaps this frustration will be the motivation he needs to start doing more, that it’ll be the dissatisfaction of his current state that will help motivate him physically. Of course there’s no guarantee that this will be the case. Could be that now we’ll just have a much more cranky baby on our hands. A baby with a bit more attitude: A baby fed-up, bored and looking for a fight.

Could happen…not likely, but it could.

As with all things Ike related, there is no road map. His limitations are unlike anything I have to compare it to. This past week, we went to Ike’s school that he will be starting in March, we met with his teacher, with the students in his class and took a tour of the campus. Sweetie and I liked it, Ike liked it, the ten kids in his class seemed nice with two of them having severe disabilities, but there’s really nobody like Ike. There’s no one with the severe physical limitations he has coupled with an outgoing social-butterfly persona. There’s no one who gives a high-pitched yell to get your attention and then when he gets it, smiles all the way down to his toes. In fact there are very few “normal” three-year-olds that are as aware of his surroundings and of other people, as he is.

Sweetie and I try not to get too far down the road on this. Like all parents we hope for the best and take what were given. At times it seems like the less I worry about the future the better off I am, but at other times I clearly see myself as an old man, sitting across the table from him and playing chess; laughing about life, baseball and the passage of time.

It’s gonna be a strange day when they pull the buss up outside our house, strap the boy in and take him off for his first day of school. I got a feeling that the trailer is gonna seem awfully big and quiet.

Site Update

Welcome to the new and improved Trailer Park. We’re just about finished getting everyone to our new location at thetrailerpark.org. There are some new friends with web pages that are still in the process of moving in so be sure to take a look around at the park at the other trailers in the coming weeks.

I hope you like the new look. Though the look of the page has completely changed, the biggest improvement has really been the inner-html-workings. A great big kudos goes out to my friend Minnie from Indianapolis who worked her ass off on this. I could not have come anywhere this close to cool without her know-how and hard effort. She totally rocks. Notice how you can hover over the trailers on the homepage and the trailers name pops up, totally cool.

The writing, on the other hand, is the same old same old, not too much I can do about that I guess. I’ll continue to try to update the forum once a week and bring you a bit of what’s going on in my life and posting up new music that I’m working on. I got rid of the comments area for now. No one ever did much commenting anyway and it was always to depressing to look at the few who did.

Sweetie said she wanted a blog page, so we moved in a singlewide for her. There’s room for a Mini-Mart maybe, though we don’t have anything to sell right now. Could be in the future though…we’ll just have to wait and see. Other than that, I’ve moved the Prairie Dogs over here and Minnie said she wanted a lot to put up her trailer as well. That leaves one site open in the park so if there’s anyone out there looking for a hook-up drop me a line and let me know.

Thanks again for stopping by and be sure to come back. I’ll get a proper forum up here before you know it and well be back into the swing of things.

The Fishing Club

The Saturday night fishing club was not a club that met on a regular basis. It used to, before there were kids and wives and mortgage payments to make. Before Brian moved back home to Lethbridge and took his amazing box of tackles with him and before Hank stopped drinking and falling into the bay. In those days they would gather rain or clear summer or winter at the fishing pier next to where the old Top-Of-The-Pier used to be before it burned down. Back before the city turned it into a park, and Harbor lights was the only waterfront restaurant left that was worth a damn.

For one summer back in 82, the club boasted 12 members, all Canadian. Although it didn’t start out that way on purpose, the Canadian only rule was quickly adopted and remained in effect ever since. There was no charter for the club, no set of rules per se, you just had to have your own reel, bucket and only drink Canadian beer. The fishing would start whenever you got there and go on through the night and well into Sunday.

Lots of the guys would get there after they had taken their dates home. Once or twice the dates wanted to come along, but once you got out there, there was no leaving. No Girlfriend ever came out twice.

Corlis used to go. He was born in Red Deer but spent most his life in Calgary before moving to the lower 48 during the great Canadian migration of the early eighties. At that time the Canadian economy was in the tank and there was great promise in the Ronald Reagan U.S. of A. A large number of Canadians packed up their stuff and moved to Washington in the mistaken belief that good jobs were just around the corner, and that Tacoma was a city balancing on the edge of greatness.

No one foresaw how long the city could balance on that edge.

Twenty some odd years later the club was down to five members. No longer an every Saturday night affair, they would, every few months or so, pull out their rods and reels, pull on old rain gear and with a short case of Molson in their bucket, head out to the pier.

The old fishing spot they used to use has mostly Cambodian and Laotian immigrants using it these days. So now they meet at a newer pier built after a hotel moved into the neighborhood.

Sunday afternoon Corlis came by all bleary eyed and ragged. I think he was trying to renege on watching the game, but I wouldn’t let him. We hopped into his Desoto and headed down to the Spar. He was asleep before halftime and afterwards, I was just barely able to wake him up long enough to drag him into his car and drive him home.

The Mill

One apple and one coffee cup full of water sit perched on the edge of my desk. I put them there to eat but I have little stomach for them right now. I have the remnants of a cold lingering and I thought an apple might do me good but as I sit here now and look at it, I’m not sure I want it after all.

I gave my desktop monitor to the accountant. Hers blew up yesterday and I have my laptop so I gave her the one off my desk. I cleaned up the dust and little bits of chewed rubber band that though sprayed all over my desk, settle under the monitor. Somehow I think that by chewing rubber bands into tiny chunks, I might control my nail-biting obsession and in some pathetic way create an illusory modicum of control over my life.

I also cleaned up small chunks of fingernails and un-bent paper clips, post-it notes that have been folded up on themselves and paper dots left over from a filing mission I mistakenly undertook in a four hour frenzy of office organization last June.

I have made no resolutions this year. There are only a handful of promises I can keep anyway. Love seems to be one I’m pretty good at, keeping this web page updated so far has been another one and music continues to be another one that I find I’m able to keep. But after this top three things seem to slip a little.

I’m not sure how many promises I need to keep up in the air anyway. Three seems like a nice solid number.

New Years

I spent New Years on my back on the living room floor, staring up at the ceiling and reading book titles that live on the lower shelves of the bookcase. A little earlier in the evening I was reaching down to help the blind cat get off the couch and I threw my back out. It dropped me to the floor and that’s pretty much where I stayed until it was time to go to bed.

It’s the first time I’ve ever done that, had my back go out on me leaving me helpless on the floor. Sweetie was nice enough though and got me an ice bag to put on it and fed me painkillers. She wasn’t feeling to hot herself, having come down with a cold that had her head all stuffed up and her throat a little sore.

Heather and Earl came by with some baked chicken and a few other assorted goodies from their party. It was very good and right before midnight I even managed to struggle into a standing position to toast in the New Year. A moment just like in the movies, if only movies were a bit more pathetically like real life.

Today it’s feeling quite a bit better. Though I’m not sure how long I’m going to be able to sit at this desk without it acting up on me again. It’s all a new world for me, and not one I’m all that interested in living in. I suppose that more than anything it is just a little nudge to remind myself to do something about my weight. Weight that though appropriate if it were part of my mussel-bound entry in the Worlds Strongest Man competition, seems to be less appropriate when throwing out my back picking up an old blind cat.

Perhaps when I begin what is to be my new training regimen I should start out slow. A pencil perhaps, or better yet, the stylus pen on my new Palm Pilot that sweetie was so thoughtful to get me for Christmas. Today didn't start off all that well either, as I managed only ten reps of the Coffee Cup Curl before my cup became empty. I thought of getting up for another cup but that seemed too hard, so I grabbed an apple out of the fruit bowl, my coat and keys and headed out to the mill to begin the New Year.