Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once and awhile, you may miss it.

Ferris Bueller… You’re my hero.

He’s not wrong.

My two girls started the new school year this week. Grade 7 for the eldest, grade 4 for the youngest. Like all parents who look at their kids at this moment as they head off to school or board the bus, I too got a dose of “Holy shit, my children have grown so much!”.

Time is a subtle bastard. He sneaks up on you when you least expect it and bumps you just hard enough to jostle your comfy rose coloured glasses off and as you look around in a daze, you catch a glimpse of reality in the harsh light of day and see your children, not as you always see them: as your little girls, but as the young women they are quickly becoming.

It can throw you for a pretty big loop because you’re not expecting it. One moment, you’re holding this tiny infant in your arms, bursting with love and the next they’re giving you the universal teenage brush-off to signify how uncool you are: “Whatever, dad.”

Thankfully the eldest hasn’t fully crossed to the dark side yet and five minutes later she’s back to “I love you daddy. Can we play Little Big Planet together?” One of these days though, I’ll blink and even that will be just a memory. Ahh, Time, you bastard. I hate you just a little bit in times like this, but at the same time, without that subtle jostling, I wouldn’t see the beauty right in front of me and cherish the moments I do have.

No. You shut up! I’m not crying. You’re crying….

Errr. Anyways. I’m just going to sit in the corner here clinging vainly to the false hope that they’ll always be my little girls. At least until the next time Time comes along and knocks me spinning…

Enjoy The Silence?

So, Tam and the girls went down to the states for a week to visit her mom on her birthday. Due to blackout restrictions at my work, I wasn’t able to make it.

While I was sad to not be going and enjoying some quality fam-jam time, the introverted nerdy recluse that lurks in the core of my being secretly reveled in a week without the wife or kids.

My week of bachelor life however started off to mixed results. I woke up on the Saturday and managed to pull a stupid: I locked myself out of the house. I knew I’d done it the second I closed the door behind me. Yay for having to climb in my kids bedroom window. Double yay for not having the neighbours call the cops on me.

Thankfully, the afternoon turned out somewhat better. Managed to have a few of the guys over and we played board games for most of the evening. Not something that I regularly get a chance to do, and the fact that we all had piles of shame we needed to work through was incentive. I would have liked to get through more, but we’re not as young as we used to be.

The rest of the week passed somewhat uneventfully. I mostly just worked and came home to an empty house. Too empty to be honest. When I’ve been alone in the past, I’ve thought nothing of it. It’s part of the background. This time though, there was definitely silence. Sure, the cats were racing about being shitheads, but the lack of people in the house was definitely noticable and once I noticed, it became somewhat disconcerting.

You know that feeling you get when you’re alone and your mind starts playing tricks on you and your imagination goes into overdrive? Yeah? Picture that amplified over a whole week. I’m not ashamed to admit that I slept with a light on. It didn’t help the silence, but as I’m a hardcore Doctor Who nerd nothing really does…


Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that as much as I’m a nerdy introvert, having a connection to the world is a necessity. The noise and chaos of my life has become part of who I am and without it, I don’t feel normal.  Who knew?!?!

In The Beginning…

Growing up I was shy, quiet and very reserved. These days, I’d be labeled an introvert but back when I was growing up I was a considered a nerd and had very few friends. I’d tried Hockey but it wasn’t for me. I’d tried Cubs and it wasn’t for me. I’d tried soccer and I liked it but I wasn’t amazing at it. While I was never picked on or harassed like the extreme end of the nerd spectrum, I wasn’t ever part of the cool kids cliques either. I was a blip on the school radar and that was it. Which made me very happy. I enjoyed the invisibility (though the slew of 80s teen movies had me secretly dreaming to be the hero of my own story). I  survived by telling stories inside my head and hanging with the few friends I did have.

My mind was a far better place than this drab reality that we currently subscribe to. My cousin had turned me on to Tolkien and Lewis and they fueled my early imagination. Narnia and Middle Earth were my homes away from home, along with Treasure Island and a thousand other fantasies. My imagination roamed these worlds created by others and dreamt of something more. Then, in the summer of ’84, I met a kid named Brian Henderson and everything changed. Continue reading “In The Beginning…”

I’m Batman!

I shall refrain from excessively commenting on my lack of posts. It’s become too repetitive really. The TL;DR version is: Computer broke and life happened. Moving on.

Bringing you up to speed from my last post to this one is as simple as this: Healing from gall bladder surgery took about a month to be truly back to my old self. I got fed up with Mark’s as they weren’t giving me the promotion that I’d been trying for. Got a new job at Target as of this past February as a Hardlines Team Leader and have been loving it ever since. Kids are growing like weeds. Wife is as hot as ever (despite her belief to the contrary). About the only thing that hasn’t gone overly well is that as an unwanted and somewhat inconvenient after effect of my gall bladder surgery back in September, I have some possibly damaged vocal cords that make me sound like I have a permanent case of laryngitis. Think of Christian Bale’s Batman. That is essentially how my voice sounds on a regular basis, except that I can’t project over any distance with my voice. Other people have described it as I sound like Patti & Selma from The Simpsons. I’m going to go with Batman… He’s far cooler.

While it doesn’t hurt, it is definitely damned inconvenient, especially when you work in a retail environment that sort of requires constant conversation.

On the plus side, I recently got around to having a doctor look at it and the guess is that there is a lesion of some sort on it and now I’m waiting to see a specialist soon to properly diagnose and treat. I know some of you are wondering, why the hell I didn’t get it seen sooner than this if my surgery was last September. Simply put, I got lazy and the aforementioned “life” happened. It didn’t hurt and I kept thinking that it would heal on its own. It hasn’t and I finally got around to doing something about it.

And that brings you up to speed on my life for the time being. Now carry on with your lives and I’ll carry on with mine.

If you do come back, I will promise to have fixed all the dead and dying links on the sidebar… Meh, who am I kidding, They’ll get done when they get done… aka eventually.

Tales From Post-Op

So my gall bladder came out last night. Apparently the surgery was more difficult that usual.

I feel old and worn out today. But drugs are helping ease the pain. Just wish it didn’t take me 20 min to get into bed.

Least its gone. And I’m on the broth and jello diet now. Yum!

Soon I will be having the slurpee I crave and my mum’s vegetable soup. I can’t wait.

Pax

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The Tale of The Inflamed Gall Bladder

So here I sit in the local hospital waiting to have my gall bladder removed. I’ve been here for a little over 36 hours now and am kind of bored (hence this post).

To sum up, for those of you who are interested. Went to sleep monday night. woke up around 2am tuesday morning with some intense pain in my abdomen. Whimpered through the night and came into hospital around 7am. After a flurry of tests, it was determined that I had gallstones and an inflamed gall bladder. Doctor put me on antibiotics and kept me for observation, with the intent of getting it out if at all possible.

Surgeon says he will fit me in today at some point so now I just sit here and wait.

I’m happy that its happening and I’ll finally be free of the pains that I occasionally get, but there is a big part of me that wanted to leave this life with the same parts I came in with.

According to the nurses, I’m one of the calmest patients they’ve had.

I am, but only on the surface.

The thought of going under the knife scares me a lot. I know the chances are very slim but every what if is running through my head right now.

Anyways, not much I can do about it now. See you lot on the other side.

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Ghosts Of Bloggers Past

So hi. Been awhile now hasn’t it. This is probably the longest stretch that I’ve gone without so much as even a whisper.

Such is life. I’m back now however and will be infrequently rambling on about the stuff in my head as I see fit.

Won’t really go into the reasons for my absence from the blogosphere other than to say life happened.

One of the things that has occurred during my time away from the world, is that I’ve apparently gained an alter ego. There is apparently another Greg McFall who is American and lives in Vietnam working for a charity of some sort. I get his emails sometimes.

Based on the emails I get, I’ve discovered that my alter ego is gay (or at least very bisexual) and has a number of boytoys scattered throughout Southeast Asia.

For the most part I have generally ignored them as its business stuff ” we need to change the meeting location from room x to room y at hotel c” sort og thing. Occasionally I get one or two very explicit ones from one of the boytoys but for the most part its fairly mundane.

The latest episode of living vicariously through my gay alter ego was an email from a Hoang My. Apparently she’s Miss Vietnam or Miss Universe or something. She wants to get involved in my doppleganger’s charity. I have to answer this one. the shit disturbing bastard in me is going to have fun with this. I’ll keep you posted.

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Obligatory Baby Pic Post

My daughter turned 4 months old at the beginning of the month and now tops the scales at 14lb. 9oz. and is 25¼” long. Putting her in the 75th Percentile for weight and 80th for height. Yes, she’s a big baby and is already outgrowing 6-9 month sized clothes. She’s happy, healthy and is almost always smiling. Now if she’d only sleep through the night…

Here’s a few pics we had done recently. They’re cute, but we thought they were far too impersonal and posed for our tastes which is why we have so few of them. Still,  she’s my baby girl and I have to show her off every chance I get so here they are.

Emily JadeBlanketBlue DressButterflyTutu

Hello World!

Hello Everyone, I’d like you to meet Emily Jade, my darling daughter.

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She was born at 1.31 am on December 2nd, 2009. She weighed in at 8lb. 3oz.  and measured 21 3/4″ long. It was a fairly easy delivery after being induced and mum and baby are healthy and happy (if tired). There are more pics in the Gallery and I’ll add to them when I can.

Obviously my already sporadic and non-existent posting schedule just got worse. Deal with it.