Saturday, September 02, 2006

my big return

In a true twilight zone fashion, shortly after confirming with a friend that while this eMac has been loyal and good to me, yes I would toss the fucker aside in favor of any of the second hand, clapped out old iBooks I could find on eBay, and bloody oath I'd do it in a heartbeat, the damn thing shat its pants. That'd be my eMac, not my friend. Anyway, I've been incommunicado for the past week and oh my, hasn't my blog suffered for it? Because god knows I'm usually so there with the updating. Yes. Anyway, my mac is back and now you could go postal in my bank account without seeing even a single dollar ducking for cover.

Truth is, I was hoping my computer really had shit its diodes so that I could go over all woe is me on the outside while on the inside, I whooped it up and started shopping for something lap toppy. Of course, I'd need to sell something in order to afford it but phooey, that's why god gave me two kidneys.

******

As I write this and because I'm such a responsible parent, Daniel is sleeping it off in his car seat, in the car, in my driveway. Outside. He's been there since around 3.15 this afternoon, and I've been in here filing my nails and eating bon bons. He passed out on the way home from seeing what ever doctor was available today as long as it wasn't that freak from a few weeks back, so I figured he needs his sleep more than I need to not be reported to child services. He had a bad night last night, experiencing his first bout of something worse than a cold and consequently, his first fever. The little thing whimpered from the wee hours onward, and when he wasn't whimpering, he was aimlessly crawling around the bed and frequently almost off it, while I spent the night patting and shushing and retrieving him from plumetting over the edge. He finally fell asleep at around 7am, and we languished in bed til about midday. He was sleeping and I maintained a vice like grip around his ankle with one hand and with the constant patting, a Parkinsonian twitch with the other. By the time we got to the doctor, his temperature had dropped to 37.4C, which may or may not still be high, its been so long without a computer that I didn't think to google that til now, and I'm being either responsible or irresponsible and haven't filled his script for antibiotics yet, mostly because he fell asleep in the car on the way home and I didn't want to wake him by going to the pharmacy. I reckon I'll wait 'til tomorrow to see how he is. Last time we saw his own GP, Daniel had a mild infection in both of his ears and the doctor said to wait and see. Today, while he was obviously unweller (it's a word), only one ear was inflamed, so despite having a fever earlier in the day, he's already kind of twice as well as he was last week. Sort of. Oh, whatever. If he wakes up in time, I'll fill the damn script and be done with it. and just so we're clear, my reticence to do so is not a money issue. I'd never deprive my child of a medicine he needed because I was being tight arsed about it. No, it's an issue because antibiotics are often given before the body has a chance to seek and destroy whatever bacteria is creating havoc, and I'm in a quandary because his is such a little body and while it's okay to decide to let my own deal with shit on its own, is it right to make the same decisions for someone else? So you see my dilemma. Or was that a tangent? Yes? No?

********

It being Father's day tomorrow, the childcare centre, I mean, Daniel made a card to send to his dipshit sperm donor. An aside, I've put my issues with the idiot aside because we have a lifetime of sharing this little boy ahead of us, and the bigger picture necessitates, in my opinion, being an adult and just getting on with the business of being amicable. So I've been nice and kind and thoughtful of his daughter who - hang on, I forgot to tell you the background story. Rewind to the end of June, if you will, back to a time when the child support shit had finally been, uh, finalised. I got a letter from the agency with all the details on it: the father's name, the names of all his dependants, and the dollar amounts payable to each. I thought it a bit weird at the time, to have his other kid's details listed on my letter. I mean, she's his kid too, but her information, even her existance, isn't really any of my business. Obviously, the sperm donor's ex-wife, H, got the same letter. Remember now, that the sperm donor hadn't yet told anyone about his latest and in my opinion, greatest child, so when H opened what she expected would be a routine letter from the agency and found out instead that her payments would be reduced because Oh My GOD!! there was another child, she lost her shit. She also collected their eleven year old daughter, T, from school that afternoon screaming and wailing and asking T, who is, I repeat, only eleven fucking years old, if she knew about this other child, and as any eleven year old would do when confronted wiht a mother who was yelling and crying and being a general dick, she responded with her own yelling and crying and wailing and generally freaking her own shit right out of there. Then H telephoned the sperm donor, S (are we following the secret squirrel code here?) and lost her shit all over him all over again with T in the background screaming and crying and still losing her shit all over the place. Way to break the news to your daughter, H. Kerist. The upshot was that T found out about her brother in a pretty traumatic way, and bla bla bla, more of the story goes here, so I, being awesome and despite never wanting to see this dipshit again, realised it was about the children, not us, and told S that T could see Daniel whenever she wanted. He was all 'I appreciate that' and then set about appreciating it so much that he cancelled on us three times in a row an hour before he and his daughter were due to arrive. It's not the cancelling that pisses me off, it's the timing and the lack of courtesy. I mean, how hard is it to send an email or a text message or even make the frikkin' phonecall earlier in the day to warn me that he'd call or text me later to confirm or cancel? Thing is, S lives only for himself. He makes his little plans and as he always has with me, doesn't bother to keep me up to speed with what's going on, even if it directly affects me, so when I had to chase down his second child support payment because he'd decided to move the goalposts yet again, without keeping me informed, I figured fuck this shit, and am a little unwilling to put a stamp on that little card because fuck that shit too. I can't make things easier or less secretive for T if her own parents are unwilling to do the same, and while I feel sorry that Daniel won't grow up knowing his big sister, I'm also as relieved as shit that he won't be growing up exposed to that mob of lunatics.

******

It's several hours later and Daniel is asleep. There's a new vaporiser chugging out the eucalyptus and peppermint smelly stuff, and the little dude is chock full of antibiotics and paracetamol. He slept for more than three hours in the car, and then he tried to smile and play, but really didn't have the energy to do anything more than be weak and pathetic all evening. It's heartbreaking. His eyes were glued shut when he woke too, and when I pinned him to the floor so I could bathe them in saline, he shrieked and crieds and threws his legs around in what I hope was protest and not pain, because I've got to do it all over again several more times to try and clear up the goop. If it doesn't clear by the time we go back to the doctor on Monday, he'll be getting some antibiotic stuff for them too.

I hate that he's in childcare, and I hate that because because he is, he's always fighting off one thing or another. I wish I didn't have to work.




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