Almost 12 years…

“Mandatory All-Staff Meeting – 11:30am”

That was the e-mail that popped onto my screen at 10am yesterday morning. We all knew it was not good. But we had no idea how bad it was going to be.

At 11:42am, our CEO came in looking solemn and the room fell silent. He didn’t mince words. It’s over. The company is shutting it’s doors. We are all unemployed as of January 29th, when our contract ends with our client. Roughly 90 people in our office, and 495 people in our Detroit office. There was a brief Q&A period that was fairly short on the A’s, they don’t know all the details themselves yet. We were then told we could go home and come back ready to work the next day.

The news hit the Detroit media by 4pm. It was on the Wall Street Journal’s web site, and the 6pm news on Detroit television. Today, it’s everywhere in the local media as well. My phone has been ringing. Friends are calling to offer support. I have also been getting kind words and emails from friends who follow me on Facebook and/or Twitter.

It still doesn’t feel completely real. I’m familiar with the emotional stages of all this. I’ve done it before, mind you that was 14 years ago. If you’ve been following me for a while you know that we thought this might happen last year.  It didn’t of course, and somehow now, when things were starting to look up, it’s suddenly over.

So now what? I don’t know. I have just under three months to get my financial ducks in a row, and potentially a severance agreement might give me a little more breathing room. There are no details available yet on that.

I dreaded having to tell Kelly the news.  She has been through so much recently.  She has enough on her mind and I want her to be able to focus on school. Not surprisingly however, she took the news quite well. She is, as always,  incredibly supportive. Her faith in me, combined with the coping techniques I have learned from her, are helping me stay calm.

Around the office today, very little work was accomplished. Small groups huddled together. Quiet conversations recounting what discussions were had with significant others the night before. There were more tears. There is plenty of apprehension. There is anger, lots of anger.  There is denial.  But mostly there is sadness.

I’m not sure what else I can say at this point. Certainly I will have more news as it becomes available. Stay tuned.

Booo!

I’m not really into Halloween this year.  I used to go ALL out .  At my peak, I carved 8 pumpkins over 2 days, had the fake spider webs and stuffed corpses on the lawn. I even had mini-strobe lights that I built on little circuit boards. These were hidden in the shrubs all over the front yard and would fire randomly creating a really cool effect.  This year. Meh. I plugged in a couple of electric pumpkins. That’s enough.

I like Holloween. I love seeing people dressed up. I’m just not in the mood for the extra hassle this year.

But in the spirit of this night, I thought I would post a couple of pictures I found on my phone.

As you know I was in hospital for a couple nights a few weeks ago. This hospital is comprised of three or four separate buildings ranging in age from very old to quite modern. The original hospital opened in 1904 as a sanitarium for Tuberculosis patients. By the 1930’s it could house 630 TB patients and was one of the largest sanitariums in the country. Over it’s 25 years of operation, 6695 patients were admitted, 45% did not survive despite the best and most advanced treatment available at the time. With improvements in medicine and the invention of antibiotics, demand for TB beds declined sharply.  Over years, multiple additions and redevelopment has occurred and today the hospitals focus is adult rehabilitation, complex continuing care and long term care, with a continued specialty in respiratory services.  Also with TB making a comeback, there is still a unit dedicated to the care of these patients.

So when I wander the halls of this Hospital, it’s history is always on my mind. On my last visit, they had set up a display case with old medical equipment from the hospitals very early days, along with photos of how some of  these devices were used. The display gave me chills. I can’t imagine what it was like to have you life depend on such crude implements. And the patients in the photos, I wondered if they had suffered, if they had survived.

One night during my stay, I had some time to spare while waiting for the sleep lab to be ready for me. I decided to go exploring. This is something I have always done. As a kid in Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, at night when everyone was gone, I would explore every hallway and room that was not locked down. I found all kinds of interesting things, including a room with little animals in cages, which I thought was  a petting zoo of course. Luckily I could only look through the glass as the door was locked. Another time I stumbled onto a couple of night shift cleaning guys lying on benches and smoking pot in a deserted waiting room in the basement. Somehow, the fact that they were smoking IN a hospital is more shocking now than the fact that it was pot. But it was the 70’s. I’m sure they thought they were busted, but I said nothing. I was not supposed to be there.  I was always somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be. But I was never scared. Maybe it’s because I had not yet seen “The Shining”  Of course, it hadn’t been made yet.

This time I went down to the basement and found some deserted hallways linking each of the buildings underground. These area a couple of  pictures I took.

The entire time I was down there I did not see a single soul. Perhaps that isn’t the right choice of words. As I moved through the halls, it was clear in some sections that I was in a very old building.  I wondered about all those that had lost their lives here. How many lost souls might still be here? Was I really alone? I stopped in my tracks. I got goose bumps and the hair on my arms stood up.  I was way at the other end and had a ten minute ride back through empty halls, alone. Or was I?

Happy Holloween!

GiST #4

• I have all the things in my life that I need and most of the things that I want, and have acquired a good solid understanding of the difference.  There is nothing I want at the moment.  (that can be bought.)
• Good health. I’ve been successful at maintaining momentum with my new eating habits. I feel better already and this is strengthening my resolve.
• Old friends. A few have come out of the woodwork lately, thanks to the wonders of Facebook. But these are the good kind of old friends. A reunion is in the works.
• Cookbooks!  I have a new appreciation and excitement around the idea of cooking. When you are trying to eat healthy, it just makes more sense to cook your own food. I’ve been to the library and co-worker has loaned me a few very good books.
• Fall colours. I prefer spring, only because it leads to summer rather than to snow, but nothing compares to beautiful display put on by trees this time of year. I was out for a walk yesterday, and although I had forgotten my camera, I was able to get a few pictures with my BlackBerry.

A Yellow show

An Orange show

My Front yard

What’s on the way (Front yard last winter)

Curbed

Yesterday, in the comments on my Parking post, Lynn asked a very good question about the show “Curb your enthusiasm” and whether or not I had seen the latest episode. I had not. But now I had to.

Lynn gave a very good little synopsis of the episode, so I’m not going to repeat it, but in a nutshell, the lead character dates a woman in a wheelchair and Lynn wondered how I, or any other person with a disability, might have felt about the show.

Let me just say this. Larry David is an awkward self centered idiot. That’s the pretty much the whole show. That’s what you should expect when you tune in. That’s the humour. And it’s funny. Often very funny. Other times just awkward. But it is what it is.

But let me back up for a second and tell you why Lynn’s question made me burst out laughing.

I work with a lot of fun guys. Well, I don’t work with them, they are web designers and coders and honestly I have no idea what they are rambling on about most of the time, but we eat lunch together. And we verbally abuse each other for fun. They joke about my age, I joke about their lack of knowledge, they make fun of my choice in movies, I make fun of their limited freedom (they are all married with kids) and so on and so on. All in good fun.

They all like “Curb your Enthusiasm” and have started watching the episodes over the lunch hour the day after it airs on cable. The first time was two weeks ago and they couldn’t find me before lunch. I found out afterwards and let them have it. “Thanks for the invite jerks!”  “No no, we couldn’t find you.” “Ya ya sure, I see how it is. Exclude the disabled guy. No problem. I get it.”  “Shit, he’s on to us!”  And that’s the way it is with us all the time. Great fun.

So this week, they made sure to come tell me. “Ok, this is your official invite. We will be in my office watching Curb your Enthusiasm at lunch. Are you coming?” “Meh, maybe, if I feel like it”

Well, I was eating lunch and I forgot, and by the time I remembered I was involved in a conversation with someone else. When I finally headed towards my friends office I wasn’t sure I even wanted to watch it anymore.

My buddy’s office has a glass front. Like a big aquarium. Two of them were in there watching. They were facing me, but the screen had its back to the glass so I couldn’t see what they were watching, or even if it was over and they were tackling some sort of coding issue. As I came down the hall and got closer, they both looked incredibly uncomfortable. Even from a distance, just from the look on their faces, I was getting the impression they didn’t want me to join them. Maybe it wasn’t even a look as much as just the vibe I was getting. They honestly looked like deer in headlights. So I just pretended like I was headed back to my desk, shot them the finger, and kept going. (don’t worry, we often greet each other that way)

And I really didn’t even remember the whole thing until Lynn posed the question. Then it all made sense. And that’s why I burst out laughing.

So today I went to see them and asked if that’s why they had looked so uncomfortable. Sure enough, that was it. They felt the show was way over the top and, being friends, didn’t want to offend me. I told them they should know me better than that, and asked to have the episode put into my network folder so I could watch it on my lunch, which I did.

Well, clearly, if I had never ever heard of the show, and this was the first episode I had ever watched, I might be offended. But I’ve seen the show before. Larry is who he is, that’s the character, that’s the running gag. He’s says the wrong things to the wrong people and just generally reacts poorly and inappropriately all the time. So knowing this, I was able to laugh at most of it.

The only problem I had with the show, honestly, is that it was poorly executed. First and foremost, if you’re going to portray disabled people, get disabled actors. The two actresses in the show are not disabled in real life. To me that’s the equivalent of portraying a black person in a movie by putting makeup on a white person. Makes no sense right?

That would have solved the other problems with the episode, hopefully, because you would have had expert consultants on the scene to tell you what was incorrect about the things being portrayed. For example, the whole show, Larry is pushing her around in her chair. Wrong. Disabled people push themselves, or have power chairs. Another scene, she lets herself be carried up the stairs by Larry in his arms. Again, no way. NEVER. That would NOT happen. It was done for laughs, but I couldn’t laugh because I was busy thinking about how implausible it was.

There were a few funny parts too that were well done. Like the assumption that a disabled woman in the same neighborhood as another disabled woman must certainly know her. That’s funny because that nonsense actually happens. Also Larry trying to get into a comfortable position to kiss her was kinda funny. It is a little tricky.

So overall, I didn’t find the show offensive. No more than I ever find Larry David offensive. That’s the point of the show after all. I just wish he had put a little more effort into it.

And then tonight, at Kelly’s building after work, I had my own little “Curb your Enthusiasm” episode.

A little old lady got into the elevator with me.

She looked at me puzzled.

“Which floor dear?”

“Seven please” I said.

She pressed seven.

She looked at me again.

“Which floor do you live on, one or seven”

“I live on seven”

“Oh, I thought you lived on one”

I thought about it, but I’m tired of being confused with another guy that lives on one.

“No, there IS another gentleman in wheelchair that lives on one, but I live on seven”

“Hmmm.”… pause …  “So there are two of you.”

Sigh.  For the record, I look NOTHING like that guy. WTF?

Parking

There’s a little something I need to rant about. This is nothing new, I’m sure you’ve heard the arguments a million times. Handicap parking. What the hell is wrong with people? But I have a couple new twists for you, from my perspective.

First off,  as you know, I was in Toronto last week at a hospital. I had to stay there overnight for two nights. When I got there, it was mid afternoon and the lot was fairly full. There were no handicap spots to be had. So, as I always do in these situations, I find the farthest possible corner of the parking lot, and I park on an angle across two spots. Then I place my sign, a magnetic sign i had custom made, on the side of my van. It’s bright red and white and it says “WHEELCHAIR RAMP” with a large international wheelchair symbol, followed by “PLEASE DO NOT PARK WITHIN 3M (9 FT)” Then I place my handicap parking permit in the window. All of this ensures that when I get back to my van, nobody will have parked too close to me and made it impossible for me to lower my ramp. Or so you would think. It case it’s not clear to you, I park across two spots to make doubly sure that even a blind person driving their car (apparently there are lots of them) will not block me in even if they don’t see my sign.

Later that afternoon, I went out to my van to see if I could move it to a handicap spot, or even an end spot on one of the rows (with my ramp on the end side) Instead I found  a piece of paper under my windshield wiper. “Great, a ticket” I thought, while wondering how the hell I was going to reach it. I sat there frustrated until an older man on his way to his vehicle was able to help me retrieve it. It wasn’t a ticket. It was note. I scanned it so you can read it yourself:

(click to enlarge)

Now, this person was so bothered by my angled parking in the far corner of the lot, that he took the time to find a sticky note and a pen, write this, and place it under my wiper. Most astonishing is that in a parking lot of a rehab hospital, with a wheelchair sticker on my door and the parking permit in the windshield right under the wiper he had to lift to place the note, and not to mention the fact that I have no driver’s seat in my van, none of this enabled him to figure out on his own why I was parked on an angle. Most aggravating for me is that I had no way of knowing who wrote this  so that I could let them know just how stupid they were.

And then yesterday at work, one of my co-workers approached me to ask if I had called parking enforcement the day before. No, I had not, why? It turns out another co-worker had parked in a handicap spot and got a ticket. Here, in this area, that’s a $350 fine. She gave a whole bunch of excuses why our friend had parked there and then looked to me for a reaction. My response was: “Good. Perfect. ”

She was angry with me, “how can you say that?? She’s a sweet person, she’s our friend! How can you be such an ass about this, that’s a lot of money!!”

Well, in short, do the crime, pay the fine. Plain and simple.

The circumstances are that our parking garage is being worked on; half the decks are closed off. There are not enough spots this week for the amount of cars they have sold permits to. It’s truly a mess. But that doesn’t justify parking in a handicap spot. Sorry. You have 500 spots to chose from, I have 8. If yours are full, sorry about your luck.

What confuses me is why people come to me when they get a Handicap Parking ticket. It’s not the first time it’s happened. It’s as though they think I can pick up the phone and call the handicap society and get them pardoned. “Hello? Yes hi Jim it’s me Syl. How are the kids? Good, good to hear. Listen, my friend here got a ticket for parking in one of our spots, she’s a good kid, she didn’t mean it. Can you take care of that for me? Great, thanks Jim. See you at the meeting next week.”

Spare Tire

Last week I took Wednesday through Friday off and drove to Toronto to spend some time in a hospital there. If I haven’t blogged about this before, in short, due to my condition I have associated respiratory issues. Mainly, I simply don’t breathe well when I sleep.

Right now many of you are saying, “ah yes, sleep apnea, my father or uncle or husband has that, no big deal”. Well, not really. It’s a completely different root cause, with slightly different results, and a more complex solution.

Seventeen years ago, when all else was failing, I was referred to a specialist in Toronto who is world renowned in this field. At the time I spent 9 weeks at this facility, and came out feeling like a new person. Also, I was armed with an in depth knowledge of my condition and how to best take care of myself.

I am supposed to return annually for a couple days just to make sure everything is still on track. They do a full sleep study and a bunch of other tests to ensure that nothing needs tweaking.

This time around, I had not been in almost three years. Time slipped away somehow, life happens.

For the most part, things are fine. The numbers are not as good as the doctors would like, but the main cause of this may be that I have put on about 16 pounds in the last 3 years. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but I assure you that I have noticed the difference in my breathing. I know I need to lose the weight. I already knew that.  I understand the consequences. But nothing helps motivate me more than to see it on test results. In print and bar graphs and charts. That’s motivation.

And so it begins again. I did quite well with this five years back. I lost about 25 pounds in just over a year. It might not seem like a lot by reality show standards, but for being in a wheelchair, that’s no small task. I’ve started doing all the right things again, and already I feel a little better. The hardest part is that I have no easy way of knowing how well I am doing. Short of going to a hospital where they have special scales, I cannot weigh myself. I will only know in 6 months when I return to the same hospital. Yes, that’s when they want to see me again. Six months. And I had better be lighter.

Way Late Vacation Videos

Ok.  It’s been over a month since I last posted and I have no idea how time has gone by so fast.  It seems like just yesterday I was picking up Kelly in Toronto.  She was quite surprised that I actually arrived at her dorm  at the exact time I said I would, even though it’s four and a half hours from here. It was luck more than anything, although getting up extra early did help. But I let her think it was brilliant planning on my part. Darn, she’s going to read this isn’t she?

So now here we are. Many wonderful weekends have gone by.  Dozens of delicious meals together. Plenty of involved conversation. Many many giggle fits. And one fantastic vacation. And now, despite all that,  and seemingly just a few days later, it’s time for her to head back to Toronto to finish her TESL course. I’m sure there’ll be a few tears held back when she boards the train tomorow, but I know it won’t be long before I see her again. In fact, only two days, as I will be up in Toronto myself on Wednesday for some routine medical tests.

As most of you probably read Kelly’s blog too, you’ve already seen many of the pictures from our vacation last month. I also captured video of some of the wildlife we were lucky enough to interact with.  Bondi Village, where we stayed, never disappoints and this year was no exception. Deer, red squirrels, chipmunks, blue jays, bats and chickens. These were our daily visitors. And the stars at night! On one particularly clear night, I had to force myself to go back into the cottage. I just wanted to sit and stare at the sky. Simply incredible.

The following are two of the videos I took at Bondi Village during our stay.
This first video is our little friend Chippy. He jumped on me before we were even finished unpacking the van looking for nuts. After that, he came looking for us every single day. I miss him, but he certainly has enough food to last him through the winter. Watch how he stuffs his cheeks until they are absolutely full!

And this second video is a little more of a rare occurrence. Remember this is not a petting zoo. These are wild animals. And yet on one evening, and only on that one evening, this deer came and ate right out of our hands. We had a bag of baby carrots, and she wasn’t about to stop until she had the whole bag.

Sorry for having been away for so long. As the it gets colder outside, I’m sure I’ll find myself at the keyboard more and more often.

Going…

We’re going. On vacation that is. Kelly and I are leaving on Sunday morning and heading to a cottage up north. I love it there. The air, the trees, the wildlife, the stars, and the quiet.  I am so looking forward to the peace and quiet. Each of us has a good book to read, and for me it’s one that I started last Christmas. There just never seems to be any uninterrupted time to read any more. But there will be, finally, this week.

On a less happy note, I found out this week that the home I grew up in is being torn down soon. I drive past it almost every day on my way to work and I noticed that it, and one or two houses on either side were suddenly vacant. Then a developer’s sign went up on the corner lot, which is commercial. I made a few calls and it seems that Shoppers Drug Mart (a drug store chain if you aren’t from Ontario) has purchased all the properties and will be tearing down the houses to build a parking lot for their new store.

The demolition is set to begin soon, so tonight I went for a stroll with my camera and took some pictures. It’s vacant and abandoned, so I permitted myself to go up on the porch, peek through windows, wander around the back yard, and even enter the garage as the side door was wide open. It was hard to take. The recent owners had not kept it up at all. We had lived there for almost 20 years, and everywhere I looked memories came flooding back. We had the garage built. My dad finished the inside himself. The workbench that he built is still there, and I remember sketching out the plans with him on a scrap of paper and going to buy the wood. The fence he built in the back is already half torn down. The new windows we had put in look old. The central air conditioner that we had installed and brought us such relief sits lopsided and rusted. The doorbell I picked out and helped wire has fallen off.

But the tree, the beautiful chestnut tree my dad and I brought home from the nursery and planted in the front yard, now 15 years old, stands strong.. Within a week or two, it will be gone. And that’s what is hurting the most.

There are so many changes happening in my life right now. I need things to slow down a bit. This coming week at the cottage with Kelly is just what I need.

GiST August 26th, 2009

• Sharing a meal with family on my fathers birthday. He is 73 today.  He wanted Ribs, and we ordered out from a place that I know he likes. I think he thought this one through VERY carefully. He can eat ribs with his hands, he can make a mess, and nobody is going to fuss at him about it. I love my dad.
• Having a job full of responsibilities. Days like today, where I feel more like a firefighter than anything else, are reminders of why I am there, and what my real value is.
• Being able to afford to put gas in my van without thinking about it. At $1 a litre (that’s about $3.73 per US gallon for my american friends) it occurred to me as I was filling my 65 litre tank that although I was unhappy about the cost, I don’t have to choose between gas or food or heating my home. I am very  fortunate.
• The freedom that my van affords me. The ability to go where I want, when I want. A freedom not enjoyed by  many who use a wheelchair.  Here too, I am fortunate.
• Stopping by the marina tonight just in time to see the Wednesday night sailboat regatta returning. The wind was in the right direction and all of them had their colourful spinnaker sails up.  Simply beautiful and peaceful to sit by the water and watch.

Grace in Small Things…uhh…#2

• An amazing variety of in-season produce. There’s a special place in my heart (and my tummy) for Lafferty’s Corn. I tried both the Yellow and the Peaches & Cream variety tonight and although both were amazingly yummy, I like the Yellow better. Yum!

• Having gotten enough projects off my desk at work this week so that I can enjoy a full guilt free weekend.

• Getting a beautiful postcard in the mail from a friend. I knew it was coming, but I had forgotten, so its arrival was a nice surprise.

• Enjoying an ice cold Corona on the deck while quietly grilling up dinner on the BBQ. My neighbours in the back have a pool and pre-teen daughters. Rare are the summer days where I can enjoy silence in my back yard. Today was one of those days.

• Hearing confidence and happiness and excitement in Kelly’s voice as she tells me about her recent experiences in her new career path.

• Being able to count with the fingers of just one hand the number of sleeps before going to pick up Kelly