We went to the family cottage at Three Mile this past weekend to help my father tuck the summer stuff away,  preparing for the brutal Muskoka winter.  The place is winterized, but some mild tasks need to be completed to put my dad’s mind at ease before he heads south for the winter.  It was pretty low-key, only seven of us, including one sick boy (Hud) and one special guest for the weekend, my half-sister from Halifax.  Fun times.

The meals were simple and great, the company and conversation vibrant, engaging and occasionally annoying. Typical of a weekend up north with family.  I had a Saturday bout of insomnia that was borderline psychotic – like jump in the lake to try to jolt my body back to normal psychotic – but other than one item it will go down in the annals as normal autumnal weekend up north fare.

The other item mentioned was the discovery of 7-8 week year old kitten in the garage wood pile.  Now we knew the kitten was lurking about as cottage dog Brodie was barking at it (Or was that the wind?  Or the grass? Or a ghost that only Brodie can see….?).  We just assumed it had briefly strayed from its mother and we all went back to the tasks at hand.  Later on that afternoon, Steph went to build a fire and was startled by the kitten, who sat, shaking and weak, looking as pathetic as possible on top of the firewood pile in the garage. We knew immediately something had to be done or this futile feline was not going last very long.

To pop the balloon, we did not keep the kitten but it was a close call.  Hudson, lucid from his bronchial cold and perhaps the most emotional nine-year old on the planet became fiercely attached to the kitten, desperate in his pleas for us to keep her.  Smokey, aptly named by my father due to colour and location origin, was nursed back to health by tuna, water and Alice’s kibble.  And, after many calls to various agencies within the 705 region, the lovely women at the Orillia SPCA agreed to take in Smokey if we arrived before their Sunday closing time of 2pm.

There was a lesson here for Hud, and to a lesser extent Tasman, who were both enamoured by the idea of another pet joining our family.  They both made wild promises of care and cost but in the end I played the heavy and said our lives were not ready for an additional layer of responsibility we had enough problems with our current roster of obligations.  They huffed and stomped, Hudson got weepy and made the sad face known to every parent.  The face that usually bends you towards yes.  But, along with mild support from known cat hater, yet chronic son appeaser, Steph we stood firm and made the mad dash to Orillia to drop Smokey off.

The kitten rode home the entire time on Hud’s lap, purring under his gentle strokes, eyelids opening and closing in true content cat-like fashion.  When we arrived, the SPCA workers let us know Smokey was very dehydrated and malnourished and likely wouldn’t make it through the night if we did not take him in overnight and admit him to the shelter.

This pleased and appeased all of us, especially Hudson, knowing that if he couldn’t take Smokey home, it was comforting knowing that we did save her life.  The shelter women also let us know that because of her age and cuteness, a perfectly able family would scoop her up within days.  We have the shelter’s number and will call tomorrow to close the circle.

Watching Hudson manage the joy, the disappointment and the eventual satisfaction of this whole Smokey event was satisfying.  He is a really sweet boy with a huge heart which is going to be broken many many times in his life.

Probably break a couple along the way too.

I wrote a book once.  A 443 page grizzled ex cop detective novel that was both trite and immature.  There were a few solid sections and the overall story itself I liked – two dirtbags witness a public wedding proposal at a restaurant with a large rock and follow the couple home to home invade, female fiancée dies accidentally, one dirt bag gets caught, other gets away with the ring, cleans up his act and befriends devastated bereaved fiancée out of guilt, caught dirtbag gets off on a technicality, hunts down ex-crime partner, scotch soaked dick hired to find ring, intrigue ensues.

I wrote it when we were in New Zealand for a year and I was proud that I wrote it.  Started it on a previous blog actually and continued it during our jaunt.  Putting that many words to page is a significant accomplishment.  Even had it bound and it sits dusty on a shelf in my basement.  I think six or seven people have read it, including my father.  He didn’t like it, or liked some of it, but deep down agreed it was pretty juvenile.

Thing is, it wasn’t my voice. I tried too hard to be all smoky and slick.  And there are parts of it that give me shivers reading it – and the few that did read it were complimentary and I appreciate that.  Thing is, I am longing to have another run at it.  I have the ruminations of something kicking the can inside the cranium.  Something a bit more earthy and with more opportunity for humour.  And I realize by spouting off here to the two or three people who check out this blog is basically setting the bar of expectations at something more than its current state of zero.  Dangerous waters you swim young Jedi.

It’s the writing here that is obviously reminding me the absolute joy I get from stringing some coherence together.  Of course the adulation from others is another motivational trident jab.  We’ll see.  In New Zealand S. would take off every morning with Hud for 3-4 hours, leaving me by a word burning stove with a tiny computer and Dexter Machine drinking scotch from the bottle.   Now the distractions are infinite, time is even more valuable and my will once strong like ox is now weak like kitten.

So I got that going for me.  Let’s hope the exultation and attention will conquer some of these admitted roadblocks and kick my ass to the curb to get on this new work of fiction.

Usually when I am stuck for a topic to write about I look to desperation and despair to inspire some mellifluous words to weep up onto the page. This leaves some readers shaking their head at my level of exposure.  But as I have said before, I try to suck you in with my vulnerability, leaving you empathetic and feeling better about your own life.  What can I say?  I’m a giver.

It’s Monday as the date above suggests and I, like others, prefer Saturdays to Mondays.  Although, there is something about the beginning of a week that appeals to me.  It provides the opportunity to set the agenda for the week, both emotional (oh Jeezus, here we go) and the functional, as I have mentioned we try to equate our social responsibilities to other, more pragmatic responsibilities thus leaving us both financial and morally bankrupt.

This week’s goodies include:

• The basic: Swimming tonight for the boys.
• The neato:  Tomorrow night, S is going to see Hillary Swank talk about something, probably how to look manly and attractive at the same time.  (Actually keynote at a fundraiser for the Baycrest’s Women’s Brain Health Research Fund, but that sure murdered the light hearted joke).
• The exercise:  Basketball on Wednesday for me.
• The community: 190^th troop cubs on Wednesday for Hud.  High waisted pant wearing men unite!
• The crazy – Charity function for S. on Thursday.  Both are invited but I am deferring to protect both my liver and our pocketbook.
• Friday mad dash to the cottage.

So there is the functional and typical agenda.  What about the emotional agenda you may be thinking but secretly dreading?  Why am I having a conversation with my readers?  Is also making you feel uncomfortable?

Actually don’t know how I feel today.  Worried about my eldest son mostly.  Feel like we are unsystematically creating a little pain filled monster. That all his way-too-soon angst will manifest into something more nefarious, more permanent.  He is so concerned about how he is perceived and lacks an iota of confidence that before too long some thug will lead him down a path of notoriety.  Not today at nine years old, but tomorrow at 12, or maybe the next day at 15.  And I don’t know how to curb it.  I love him ferociously but feel inept to deal with the anxiety I have surely bequeathed upon him like some sort of inner cheek biting curse.

I portray myself as strong but real, allowing faults to be apparent, that is ok to fuck up every once in awhile, trying to let the air out of the overinflated balloon a little.  I dance and sing and clown in malls, not giving a shit what Yorkdale Shore think of me, displaying my own acts of random (yet oddly false) confidence.

I preach integrity and honesty, about the value of giving back to, and being part of a community, to be charitable and forgiving of others, how the harder things are, the more rewarding the accomplishments will be.

Yet all he wants is to play video games that reward acts of violence and watch The Hangover 2 and can’t understand why I won’t let him even though other kids can.

I want to attach myself to his torso and berate any playground cool kid that makes fun of the way he throws a football.  I want to sit next to him in class and wink 14 times when the answer is 14.  I want to race him to the 50 cent pop can machine at the fire hall and tell him everything really will be ok.  I want to lie next to him in bed and listen to his gentle, peaceful snore.

It’s still early I keep telling him and myself, that it’s only been seven weeks since the dramatic change of schools and I am underestimating both the impact and the effect.  I know I have to let go a little bit each day, month, year to allow the confidence to grow, trusting all the value based stuff I have been yakking will eventually sink in.

It still feels like I am running out of time.

Around seven years ago, during a late night exasperating discussion about who was picking up who, what function we were attending when, did you pick up the dry cleaning, my wife and I decided that we were not truly enjoying the lunacy our life had become. Mostly we were feeling guilty about shipping our then two year old boy off to spend the day with Fely, our first nanny, and how our obligations to the big fast city and our big fast friends and our small, slow family was turning our life into something that we both did not envision growing up. It was too much, too soon and resentment and sleepy hatred were starting to sluice through our veins.

So we cut bait.  Quit our jobs, sold our cute little house on the Danforth, eliminated all our debt and hopped on a plane to Nadi, Fiji, to begin our year-long journey of Australasia.  It was the best year of my life.

But duh, you knew all that, didn’t you.  You knew that we came back with nothing but our clothes on our back and a new lump in Stephanie’s belly.  And here we are. 5.5 years later.   New jobs, a new house (this time a rental, did I say a rental?  I meant to say rental, yes I have a complex, – a rental complex!! Ha! ) a wonderful new nanny Rebecca and of course the aptly named trip tribute, Tasman, my luminescent five year old son.

Maybe it is the whole peaks and valleys of life thing.  Maybe before too long, Steph and I will find a weekend of reconnection and intimacy to – along with Stella –  get our groove back. Maybe the oppressive guilt of not being able to guarantee there wont be another move in the next couple of years will dissipate.  As will the thought of injecting even more angst into Hudson that he will use against me in his teenage years.  Yet the next time we move, the impact will not be lost on Tasman and he too will curl his cute lip up and snarl at me for ruining his childhood.  Perhaps all this harried, tag-team parenting and social obligations that we secretly lament but never deny will cause a real wedge between my honeybunch and I, and, while staring through respective wine and scotch glasses, the acerbic emotions once rooted in passion will melt like weak wax and gather on the apathetic floor.  Door slam.  Couch sigh.  And scene.

I know, I know – ladies and gentlemen, the oscar goes to…I get it.

The other big maybe is the big D word.  Not diet, had stomach surgery for that.  It’s depression.  Maybe all the years of faking being the lamp wearing class clown is finally taking its toll and soon I will find myself making four day tents underneath my new sheets and letting my toe nails grow long enough to carve tiny movie quotes into them. Growing my hair to Three Stooges Larry code blue crazy length and having delightful yet sometimes argumentative conversations with my dog Alice.

Still too dramatic?

I don’t know where I am or where I am going.  I feel inadequate as a father and as a husband even though I know deep down my wife and my boys desperately love me.  My confidence did not increase with the loss of over 90lbs.  Even though I like where we live now, I still feel like we don’t fit in. I find it difficult to find motivation to change my life for the better.  I want to, I just don’t know how.

I feel like I did before I went to New Zealand.

Oh and what the fuck is with the NBA strike?  Seriously?  You can’t figure out how to share 4.8 billion dollars?  Fuck!

And this is by far way too much information to share on a blog.

At a party to celebrate a friend’s 40^th birthday last weekend, on the same day as my 42^nd birthday, the conversation turned to eating and I remarked that, being blessed without an ounce of willpower, I would eat until I exploded.  I compared myself to my dog, the beloved Alice, who shares my degree of gluttony and who would earnestly polish off bowl after bowl of kibble mere seconds after placing it down in front of her nacho cheese paws.  A woman, blonde now, brunette at some point, sloped nose, cuddling her white wine glass with both hands, wearing a smart black vest, with the breathless slur of an irrepressible early form cougar remarked, eyes creasing as she spoke …“Horses are like that too.”

Thus providing the providing me the title of today’s blog post.  Even emailed to myself as a reminder.  Which of course I needed, because a quick jaunt to Oakville to hide in the shadows of another’s birthday celebration turned into an all nighter of gently epic proportions.  I made it home in the morning, and using the birthday bank I proceeded to sleep it off in the lavender scented birthday sheets and pillows purchased by my wife for five straight hours.  Yes I woke up at 3pm.  Nope, did not embark on a promised culinary journey with burgeoning chef Hudson.  Nope I did not help with any harried house tasks that Steph needs to accomplish on Sunday to make her weekends complete.  Yes I fell asleep again on the couch this time, with mouth agape, until Steph rightfully demanded that “just go back to bed Jason…”   You know, classic 42 year old stuff.

So the last five weeks has been a blur between Steph and me.  Just one of those valleys in time where we pass each other in the night or in the morning doing our best to parent via tag team and offer occasional reminders that we actually like and love each other.  It’s a strain, because the missing time makes it easier to snap or nag or whine or moan and that does nothing to inspire the desire that is currently on vacation.

It will come back, it always does, after 12 years married and 14 years together we are smart enough to know that weeks, even months of ghost spousing always finds a path back to marital greatness.  She is my true rock, my lover and best friend and I would be a big freaking mess without her.

Basically I just miss her.

Sometimes it just works.  It could be the lavender oil your lovely stepmother gave you to spritz on your pillow to solve your insomnia or perhaps its just the random life roller coaster careening through the valley and beginning the quick ascent to a new peak.  Either way I woke this morning feeling a buzz.  Yes I facebooked it.  Sure I tweeted it.  And now, because basically I am social media whore, I am blogging about it.

The thing is, maybe this wasn’t so random.  Maybe somewhere inside my now lavender scented head there was a choice that today was going to be different then the previous day(s).  Maybe I thought fuck that noise, this milquetoast woe is me crud is pretty boring.

The waking in the dark to a quiet house can be a welcome and comforting respite to the consistent hum and clang and chatter of most of my hours.  The shower can be warm and welcoming. The shaving of my face a peeling back a layer.  The ironing of the shirt the opportunity to look snazzy and finally the packing of Hud’s well balanced snack the assurance that I am doing the little things that help my son’s day be that much healthier.

These are not just mundane chores of the daily worker.  These are the individual pieces of the Jason puzzle the give me the wholeness to begin my day in earnest.  To sharply kick my ass into an acceptable arduous gear.  To make me aware of the pitfalls, the random and regular eddys of depression and the so often battles against banality.

The subway can be occasionally smiley.  The underground path to my building can be appreciated for keeping me dry from the morning drizzle.  The elevator ride can be more than a blank stare at the elevator news, it can be a silly “it wasn’t me” comment to the fellow rider.  The mandatory morning event does not have to be enveloped by the juicy prick of useless anxiety, it can be an opportunity to provide counsel, suggestions of strategy, to eventual thankful participation.

The daily tasks can be attacked instead of sighed about.  The regular surprises are welcomed because you just battled banality minutes (and paragraphs) ago.  And finally the pressure of success that has haunted your waking days and sleepless nights can be answered by one simple e-mail request during a meeting where your poignancy shined and your input was head noddingly welcomed.

And now, as Fred slides down the dinosaur’s tail, there is now time to reflect, to raise one glass and turn into two.

But not three, because two boys are waiting for their suddenly elated dad to get home and hug them.

Not unlike peanut allergies, I find people’s challenges with sleep to be more apparent now then ever before in my adult life – roughly 20 years for those following along at home. The classic child rearing sleep issues are lamented every second of every day at a water cooler, Starbucks or play date near you. But I bet these literally tired discussions existed forever and will continue to afford new mothers and fathers the opportunity to compare lack of sleeping stories and bask in each other’s somnambulant aura for the remainder of time.

What I find interesting, scratch that, devastatingly annoying is the other type of sleep challenge.  The ones often solved by pills, warm milk, cold scotch or other roots or tonics that can aid a very tired person into a deep slumber.  I often suffer from this type of night terror, with last night being a particularly anxious episode.  I use the term anxious because that inability to fall asleep, to have your mind bounce from work to money to kids to neighbours to sex to lack of sex to food to food to food to why does my dog’s paws smell like nacho Doritos to infidelity to false lottery hopes to writing a blog to work satisfaction is very close to the same feeling of close to crazy that I have experienced in other times of my life.

Now work definitely sets this insomnia off, as does frayed nerves from a couple of back to back nights drinking.  Combine work stress and hangover nerve damage and I am lying wide awake at 3:14am listening to the raccoons squeak their strategy around getting into our green bin.  Last night I attempted to go to bed at 11:23pm, which is atypically late for me, but I could feel the tightness in my chest and gunning of the brain engine, so I was trying to be as tired as I possible before making the leap from couch to bed.

I moved from position to position, from bed to bed (Hud’s bedroom has a tantalizing cross breeze that I hoped would soothe my thoughts back to benign), finally getting to sleep at just after 5am, only to awake for work at 6:04am.  Yawn, stretch, lather, rinse, repeat, scream.

So here I sit, head feeling like a bowling ball balanced on top of a MacDonald’s straw, doing the only thing I know how to do, wax on about it in my getting more familiar word sponge, my blog.

Is it the same as complaining?  Tonight should be better.

On occasion, after a night of indulgence, I wake to find either I have scratched the thin layer of film on my eye, or – and I am guessing here – something minute has lodged itself beneath its oval, ocular frame.  It moves back and forth, swishing if you will, dynamically changing from mild annoyance to out right anxious fuckery.  I am guessing it happens only after a solid night if imbibing due to my ability to fall asleep awkwardly, and thereby laying my bald, dry eyeball on random bothers. Sure some may call it “passing out” but to me it’s just a comfortable settling in after a long day of work.  Either way, the bother is there, and the incessant blinking is no solution.  Wait, can’t a buy a solution? (play on words for you slow people)

It’s Friday.  It has been a very busy work social week which I knew was coming but was still not prepared for.  I did the kiss at night asleep and the kiss goodbye asleep in the morning to my kids all week.  I am not a fan of this ardor.  My boys are like a drug.  If I go too long without them I start to feel less like myself.  And, admittedly, the atavistic feeling occasionally pricks on freedom, but mostly I feel like I am walking through food courts without my wallet or I am missing the third and fourth toe of my left foot.

I did have a full on hung over barrage of cuddles and farty wrestles this morning, so, like any junkie, I feel somewhat sated with the love.  But, with a solo trip to a farm this evening, I will once again miss the ritualistic Friday night movie/Wii/Ipod Touch/easy dinner hanging out that I am longing for.  I am going to hang out with two brothers that I have known for 40 years.  Yes I am almost 42 meaning we are the offspring of now estranged parental friends.  Both of these brothers make me laugh.  They are of a different ilk than my crowd of thoroughbreds, but their confidence, quick smiles and occasionally salemensesque smarm are a constant source of warm feeling for me.  We have been trying to do this night for a long time, so, even while swallowing the occasional night after bile, I am looking forward to seeing them, their 4 wonderful girls and their god parents, my parent’s friends, for a night of drinking and telling lies.

They are also really really good at backgammon.  The betting kind.  Which I am dying to play.  Could be a long expensive night.

Liking Fridays is a pretty easy thing to do.  So is making ridiculously obvious statements.  For whatever reason, wife being away, impending conference of importance, overarching fear of success, I went to bed too late and woke up too early.

Now when Steph is away I am militantly organized to ensure the single parent disruption is kept to a minimum.  Snacks are prepped, breakfast fruit chopped, lunch ideas varied and abundant, spirit day clothes chosen and laid out – I take pride in running a placid morning routine to eliminate the potential where is mom tempest.  The boys deserve the smoothness.

So when the fucking raccoons managed to pry open the corner of the green been to pull all the rotting goodies out (including the fetid Alice shit) and spread it out all over our joint laneway, my plans for a stress free morning came to a screeching and muttering vermin murder under my breath halt.

But I get it – that’s life chimichanga, you prepare for everything else except for the things that accidentally happen.  Whether it’s strategic planning at work that one c-suite motherfucker changes with a sweep of his 50 dollar pen, or whether it’s the twitching whiskered nose of a hungry evil raccoon ripping apart last night dinner scrapings, you just can’t prepare for everything.

But it left me off.  Out of sorts.  Hands un-surgeon like.  Yawny and twitchy and I don’t drink coffee anymore.  A couple of really solid conference calls ironed out the morning, but the anticipation of the evening festivities – a couple of pints with some old mates – have me chewing the anxiety cheek and wondering what metaphoric raccoon lay waiting around the next corner.

Alas, and sadly, it will pass with a pint.  Not a crutch but a welcome relief after a challenging week.

At least I started another blog – it’s strangely cathartic.