Ahhhh...Christmas! Part 1 - Decorating the Tree

Ahhh, the holiday season. Can you feel it? I walked into the Hudson’s Bay (Canadian department store) on November 1st to be greeted by soccer ball sized Christmas ordainments hung from garishly pre-lit artificial Christmas trees. A lame jazz version of ‘Deck the Halls’ was pumping out of the sound system. I could see the Christmas cheer and good will was already spreading like wild fire as I took nearly a whole minute to get my baby stroller through the heavy double doors, all the while being stared at by a 20-something year old guy on the other side of them. Maybe the iPod earphones not only impaired his hearing but also his vision and sense of chivalry.

“Excuse me…” I said sweetly to the Chinese couple that blocked the walkway into the store. They slowly turned and looked at me and then continued on with a conversation I couldn’t understand. “Excuse ME!” I said again. The woman moved barely a foot out of my way and I didn’t feel bad when my stroller wheel clipped her ankle. “Woops! Sorry!” I beetled my way through the men’s department and taking in as much air as my lungs could hold I held my breath all the way through the women’s cosmetics and perfume section. My eyes teared, as I said “No thank you!” in a high-pitched hold-your-breath kind of way to the three women that tried to spray me with this year’s latest scent. I wasn’t even here to do my Christmas shopping and already I felt the heaviness that often comes with Christmas for so many of us.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas - mostly just the decorating my own house part of it, but all in all I do enjoy it. However, with most things that we love there are also the things we dread. Here’s the beginning of a short list of some of those things…

#1. Decorating the tree:

OK, so hubby has pulled out the Christmas decoration boxes from storage, and on a nice cozy night I decide it’s time to put up the tree. Last year we bought an amazingly garish lime green artificial one, but in years past it’s always been a real tree. My husband and I have very ‘different’ ways of carrying out tasks and bringing the tree into the house and setting it up is just one of many. By the time Zol has the tree in the door the entire living room is completely covered in pine needles and the tree sap on the front door frame will never come off. In my hopes to keep the evening light and fun I say nothing, knowing that for the next week I’ll be sticking my foot with all of the missed needles that the 30-minute vacuuming session missed. Balancing the tree into the tree-holder is another task we disagree on as is using a saw inside the house to make the tree shorter (add sawdust to the 30 minute vacuuming). With the tree in place and ready to tip over at any minute, I begin to unpack the decorations. What goes on the tree first? You guessed it – the lights. Now I don’t know what the heck happens to my decoration box over the course of a year, but it never fails that my carefully wrapped up tree lights decide not to work when they are pulled out for the next Christmas season! The evening is now OVER as I can’t do anything until I have a set that actually works. Last year they actually did work, but they were permanently on the epilepsy inducing flash setting and hence completely useless.

The next day I buy a new light set and AGAIN that evening make an attempt at decorating the tree. There’s always a favorite decoration that’s been crushed into a million pieces of crazy sharp shards of glass. Several pieces of this lost treasure are later pulled from my foot in the next three days. I also somehow manage to lose the metal hooks that hang the decorations, and at least a half hour is lost to scouring the house for paperclips. With the tree up I sit back on the couch and admire my work. Now I don’t claim to be a master at tree decorating but I did learn from the best – my mother. A florist by trade, as far back as I can remember she could bang out an amazing tree every year. She taught me the proper steps to creating a beautiful exhibit, with the decorations perfectly hung and evenly dispersed - and for this, I am thankful. On a different note, I am often saddened by my husband’s response when I say “ Sweety! Come here! Soooooo…?! What do you think!??!” My arms splayed wide open, with a look on my face that only four year old has after creating an artistic masterpiece. He says, “Yah, looks good.” Oh well… can’t please them all.

The month of December carries on, and with a few missed waterings there is a halo of pine needles on the ground around the tree every other day. By December 25th the tree is a bona fide fire hazard and its lights are turned off if we need to leave the room for any extended period of time.

January 1st passes as does January 15th and finally I get enough energy to bring down the tree. I carefully wrap up the new Christmas lights knowing they’ll be useless next year and I’m pissed that I’m spending all of this time wrapping them up so delicately. With every decoration and string of lights that is pulled off the tree, 5000 needles fall to the floor. Finally naked, the tree is lugged out the door and for the next few months my socks find the needles that have AGAIN been missed in a thorough vacuuming.

But regardless I still love Christmas… it’s the same thrill and drill every year and I fall for it, going through the same motions, loving and hating them equally. But there are still a few things that get my goat during this Christmas season… so stay tuned!
Ps. do you have anything you love/hate about this season? Do tell! Leave a comment, as I love reading them! *dalyn
Pss. the pic of me in front of the tree is me all dressed up 50's style for a new years party that NOBODY else dressed up for. those are NOT my real breasts for the record, although now that i'm breastfeeding it's a pretty close resemblance of my body.

true love

It feels like your mouth does when you anticipate a piece of gum, but it covers your entire face. It starts in your nose, floods your mouth and eyes, then fills your brain with that tingle that makes your sight and nostrils water and run. I sing loudly along with the lyrics to The Dears and look down on my lap to see her smiling so sweetly up at me. My nose tingles and tears well into my eyes, but not enough to slide down my face… “Gooo! Ahhhh! Oooo! Oooo! Gaaaaahh!” she says… a chubby hand flails in the air and hits her own face. She ponders the pain, but smiles as I clap my hands to the music.

I think I have found a different and new meaning of love. I am now a mother… crazy… and SO IS MY MOMMY VOICE!!!

We're Havin' a Baby... Part Three!

A fog clouded my eyes. I blinked and blinked to clear them, but to no avail. I felt the sticky tape of the IV pulling on my arm. I looked down at my hands. Each digit looked like a chubby breakfast sausage and not one of them would bend at will. I turned my head to see Jess standing beside me, holding little Graye in his arms. Behind him Zol sat in the chair he’d earlier passed out in, smiling when he saw I was finally awake.

“How do you feel?” I felt FAT. HUGE. It was as if the Michelin Man or Pillsbury Doughboy had fathered me in some previous life. All I could see where my hands, arms and feet and I knew just from looking at them that the rest of my body was 3 times the size it normally was. Later, a picture of my face taken at the time proved it much to my dismay. Jess handed me the baby, and she nursed quietly.

The day carried on, with nurses coming in and out. My blood pressure was checked no less than 15 times over the course of the day. Zol and Jess left at some point to go clean up what Jess later called ‘a scene from an episode of the Sopranos’’ back at the house. I don’t remember much of what was said to me that day aside from the fact that I had a catheter and there would be no need to get up and pee (thank God!). My eyes remained blurry and I was lightheaded with any sudden I movement made.

For some strange reason, during my whole three-day long stay at the hospital, whenever food was brought in they placed it SO completely far out of reach I had to annoyingly buzz a nurse to come put it in front of me. By the time they got around to moving it within my grasp, much of it was cold and soggy.

That evening I was moved into another room, one with a window and thankfully a TV!! Zol came back after the clean up and we watched crappy shows and ogled our new daughter. He left later in the evening and I settled into what I thought would be the first ‘night of hell’ I’d heard so much about. Turns out this wasn’t the case as Graye would softly grunt and quietly squawk if she was hungry. Not the case with every other woman with child on that ward. They let ‘er rip ALL NIGHT LONG. I longed for my own house and bed as the woman next door to my room called her family in Russia at 4am two nights in a row. As to not wake her baby with her chatter she leaned against my doorway as she babbled away in Russian...

My teeth had the equivalent of a 70’s shag carpet on them by the next morning and I decided it was time to give them a good brushing. Moving and shifting around on the bed had been hard enough, but getting up? Yah, just a TAD more uncomfortable. Due to the whole giving birth thing and then the surgery, getting off the bed proved a bit more challenging than I had thought it would be, and getting back INTO the bed was even worse! Imagine me perched in saddle upon a horse – take the horse away… that was me trying to walk.

Later in the day my midwife Beth showed up and asked me if I had remembered anything she’d told me the day before. I had no recollection of even seeing her, so she retold me the news… the placenta had been removed successfully and without any damage done to my uterus. There was no known reason as to why it had not released. Retained placentas weren’t that common and nobody really knows why it happens. She told me to keep taking my stool softeners (that did NOTHING) and Tylenol and that she’d be back the next day to hopefully get me checked out of the hospital.

Thursday morning came and six hours of waiting finally had us released from the maternity ward. A million papers to go over… getting the baby into her car seat… yada yada the hospital drill… finally we walked out the door into an amazingly beautiful day. The sun was bright and hot and so was our van that had been parked in it for six steady hours. The seven speed bumps we went over to exit the parking lot reminded me that my body was still not yet my own. It felt like I had been kicked in the box to an extent I’d never imagined possible, but looking down at our wee little one, so small she needed to be wedged into her seat with rolled up diapers and blankets – I almost felt no pain.

We were going home – as a real FAMILY. Zol and myself were now connected for a lifetime whatever the winds may bring us… and that felt…. wonderful.

We're Havin' a Baby... Part Two!

Part Two of a story... read first part HERE.

Prenatal classes had informed me about having to push out the ‘afterbirth’ or placenta shortly after the baby came out. I had no idea what this entailed or what it looked like as it wasn’t something they’d shown on the 200 plus birthing TV shows I’d watched up to this point; in each episode baby would come out – cut to getting in the car going home scene.
A chill came over me as the water crossed over to the cool side of tepid. My body began to shake a little, Beth telling me that hormones were now flooding my body causing me to quiver. The baby was taken from my arms to get cleaned up and checked out.

“OK Dalyn let’s get this placenta out! Puuuuushhhhhhhh!” Beth pulled on the cord and the water went from clear to a deep shade of red. I lay there calmly, not knowing what to expect… What was normal in such situations? How long does it normally take to get these things out? Why is the water red? When can I hold my baby again? A few minutes passed with no result and I was pulled from the water, dried off and helped over to the bed we had set up in the living room. I lay there naked with a towel draped over me and they placed the baby at my breast. I looked down at her perfectly squishy face. Her mouth opened and took in my nipple… and she had her very first meal. Now, normally the baby staring to feed tells something in my body that its time to release the ol’ placenta, but for some unknown reason my uterus just wasn’t going to let it go. The midwife gave me a shot in the leg – oxy-something-or-other and minutes later I felt a surge within me… the contractions were staring again! They increased in length and then in pain, but still no afterbirth!
“OK Dalyn, were going to get you to stand up and push. Zol, you’re going to have to take the baby OK?” His face was stricken with the “But I don’t even know how to hold a baby!” look. Taking off his shirt he sat there on the couch, cradling our baby as I was lifted up to stand. Jess stood by my side, looking concerned. Beth pulled and pulled on the cord…. Nothing. More pulling… nothing. With blood dripping onto the pad below me Beth said, “Well Dalyn! The good news is your blood is clotting nicely!” I looked at Jess as she said this. Standing there naked, umbilical cord swinging between my legs I cracked a smile at Jess and gave him the two thumbs up signal. He smiled back nervously, returning my hand gesture. What better time for a little comedy?

A wave of exhaustion fell over me, and becoming dizzy I was laid back down. The painful contractions continued, but with nothing to show from them and with the clock ticking, Beth made an executive decision. We were going to the hospital. An ambulance would be arriving any minute to pick us up. Oh… OK. I hadn’t planned for this… I hadn’t planned for this at ALL. In my blind belief that nothing would send us to the hospital on the night of the birth, the personal bag for the baby and myself had not been packed. Jess raced about the house trying to put together what he thought might be useful for my stay there. Standing in the doorway, he held up a pair of 5 year old ‘period’ underwear that NOBODY was ever suppose to see (ladies, you know the ones I’m taking about!?). “Will these be OK? Do you wear these?” I nodded in embarrassment and he disappeared again to gather more things.

“The ambulance won’t have the siren on will it?” I asked desperately. A needle was being jabbed into my wrist for the second time, and an IV bag was then hooked up to it. Things began to happen quickly around me in preparation for the paramedic’s arrival. I heard footsteps on the staircase outside and looked up to see two men standing calmly in the doorway. Dizziness set in again…
Lifted into a sitting position, my head swelled with the heaviness of passing out… a dead weight inside your brain that you are unable to fight. Blind spots flashed in front of my eyes and my head bobbled in its fight to stay alert. They laid me down again.

A stretcher was brought in, a special one that was made for the sitting up position. Turns out that due to the big staircase out front I would have to be transported down the stairs in this ‘sit-up’ gig, and once down they would place me on the real stretcher, pop me into the ambulance and then speed off to the hospital. Sounds simple right? I suppose, so long as you haven’t lost a lot of blood and having painful contractions every few minutes. The paramedics lifted me up in their first attempt to place me in the seat. Never having passed out before I didn’t realize I was until the room went black before me within a matter of seconds. Back on the bed, lying down again, the dining room light came into view swinging above my head. Waiting until I’d gained full consciousness, they tried a second time and this is where everything just became a blur. I could hear metal clicking and clacking as they strapped me into the seat… my head was fizzy with lightheadedness, loose on it’s bearings and bouncing around like a bobble head doll. I felt myself being lifted up, and then tilted back in an attempt to get the blood back into my brain. A rush of cool air surrounded me and I saw the streetlight dancing through the trees. I heard footsteps going down the stairs… more clicking and clacking, I couldn’t stop my head from swaying side to side. At this moment something occurred to me. I could die. I could be dying right now… oh my god I had NOT planned for this! Then the weirdest thing happened. In a half awake state, my mind propelled itself into the middle of a dream – the kind you have when you are sleeping. I have no recollection now of what the dream was about, just that it was a short clip that had no beginning or end and made no sense at all. I felt my body laying flat now, blankets being wrapped around me. I opened my eyes to see an Indo woman in what I thought was a paramedic’s uniform looking down at me. She was saying something… everything went black. She was saying it again…

“Dalyn, Dalyn stay with me OK? It’s Beth, OK look at me… Dalyn, it’s me Beth!” I squinted my eyes but still only saw an Indo woman looking at me. I heard the sound of wheels on cement, the front gate clinking… it was so cold! Then LIGHTS! Big bright circles of light shone above me. I was in the ambulance now. A surge of pain rocked my body as my uterus contracted. “Good, good, you’re doing GREAT Dalyn.” Now I saw Beth beside me, her face shadowed from the blaring overhead lights. The ambulance began to swing back and forth as it traveled down what must have been the most potholed street in all of Vancouver! “So! The babies name, Graye… how do spell that?” I was confused by her question and a tad annoyed. You’re asking me how to spell my daughters name? “Ummm… G-R-A-Y---E… it’s… it’s a family name… OH GOD! IT HURTS!” I moaned and moaned my way through the contraction. Beth carried on with ‘light conversation’ all the way to the hospital. I realized later it was to keep me awake and coherent as my body was doing it’s best to pass out again.

Cue theme song to the show ER! Rolling down a sterile hallway, Beth at my side, people in scrubs passing by, long florescent lighting flashing above my head. Rolled into a room, another needle for another IV being poked into my arm, I came to as another contraction rolled through me. “Make it stop! PLEASE, just make it stop!” The events before me blurred again, doctors and nurses coming in and out. Then the familiar faces of Zol and Jess appeared, our baby swaddled in Zol’s arms. I smiled at him, his face racked with concern and confusion. Time moved slowly and after what seemed like an hour a doctor appeared at my side.

“OK Dalyn, bla bla, bla bla bla bla, OK? Bla bla bla and then bla bla bla and worst case scenario we will have to remove your uterus, alright?” I looked into his eyes and nodded, pushing out the words “OK”… I turned to see Zol’s face now ashen and white as a ghost from the doctor’s words. He handed off the baby to the midwife and leaning forward placed his head between his hands. Two seconds later his head lifted, his eyes rolled around like marbles and then back into his head. His body became limp and he slid off the chair and onto the ground beside me! Another contraction turned inside me as the nurse and midwife straighten him out on the ground…

I was being wheeled down another hallway… lights above me as we traveled to the operating room. What felt like 12 people surrounded me, their many conversations filtering in and out of my ears.

“OH PLEASE! Please, please… make it stop!” ANOTHER contraction! Still they spoke over me for what felt like half an hour. What the HELL was taking so long!??! Haven’t they done this before??? A nurse placed a plastic mask over my mouth. I couldn’t breath I couldn’t breath I couldn’t BREATH! “I CAN’T BREATH!” She released the mask a bit and I felt air in my lungs again… still the talking… KNOCK ME OUT!!! Oh SWEET jesus! Just KNOCK me OUT!!! My body began to shake uncontrollably… it shook and shook. A different mask was placed over my mouth… the room finally faded…

To be continued….!

We're havin' a baby... part one!

Returning to the kitchen from a trip to the bathroom, I stood at the sink barefoot and 8 months pregnant rinsing a few dishes. Zol had just come home from work, and as usual we chatted about the many idiots that had cut him off in traffic that day. As he ranted and raved I felt something strange happen ‘down below’.

Now I’m not sure if you have ever peed your pants, but my last recollection of doing so involved having to use the toilet madly and holding myself like a 5 year old for at least a half hour. I stood there staring at Zol, underwear wet, holding a dish in my hand.

“Ummm sweety? I - I think I just peed myself…” He looked at me blankly. “I JUST went to the bathroom! Weird…” It wasn’t enough pee to have it running down my leg, but a change of underwear was definitely in need. With a fresh pair on I continued with the dishes. A minute later my underwear was just as wet as before. I started laughing, as did Zol…

“Oh my GOD I’m PEEING myself and I can’t control it! How annoying is THAT?” We sat down to dinner, and upon standing up the whole back of my dress was soaked. OK, this isn’t pee, this is something else. This ‘leaking’ continued for an hour or so and I started to piece together the earlier part of my day.

A tad tired from the wonderful baby shower my friends had thrown for me the day before, I decided to venture out in search of a baby car seat. My hunt was futile; there was NO WAY I was going to drop $300 on something that we didn’t really need. Our friends had already given us their perfectly good used one. I was on my way to another store when my tummy seized up into a Braxton Hicks contraction. Pulling the van over to the roadside I touched my rock-hard stomach. This contraction was lasting longer than they usually did. Several more followed and I decided it was best to just go home. I called Zol and told him to check up on me in few hours, saying the contractions felt a little different today. Upon getting home I napped and when I woke up I felt fine again and started to make dinner.

After dinner that night the leaking continued and in my soggy underwear I sat at the computer and searched ‘water breaking + pregnancy’. Thanks to Hollywood my ‘idea’ of my water breaking was a massive gush that left me standing in a pool of fluids - turns out this rarely the case. If your water breaks at all, it sometimes comes out in small leak… much like a slight pee in your panties! I called my midwife and told her what was happening.

“I thought you’d be an early one!” she said. “Get to sleep early and your contractions will probably start around midnight.” My due date was still 11 days away and we were 11 days unprepared for our home water birth… VERY typical of us of course. This week we had planned to get the living room ready; take down the table, blow up the portable bed and the birthing pool… lay down the tarp… you know, home birthing stuff?! Zol was anxious to get started, but still in denial I said NO, lets just wait and see if this is for real. Around 9pm I started to have a slight pink hue in the ‘leakage’ and that’s when I knew it was the real thing.
A strange calm fell over me as I sat on the couch flipping through channels and watching my husband take down our massive dining room table.

I’m going to have a baby.

I AM GOING TO HAVE A BABY TOMORROW.

Holy SHIT, it’s happening.

With the table finally taken down we decided to go to bed at 10:30pm. I laid there, becoming more uncomfortable with every tick of the clock. By 11pm it went from uncomfortable to something else.

12:00am… “Hun, I think I’m having contractions…”
It’s really hard to explain a contraction. The closest thing I can compare it to is the feeling that you have just before you have to puke violently, but without the nausea if that makes any sense? Imaging the uncontrollable feeling that your body has JUST before you blow major chunks. Your body becomes engulfed in itself and there is NO stopping what’s about to happen… and then a minute long surge that coats every fiber within you ------------------------- and then its over. That was a contraction for me.

We were half way through our prenatal classes at this point and had yet to learn how to time contractions. Rolling out of bed and into my office I sat at the computer and searched ‘timing contractions + pregnancy’. The pain was speratic and ununiform, but they were contractions, no doubt about it! Every 2 to 5 minutes Zol could hear my grunts and groans as I sat at my computer timing each surge. By midnight I’d had it and told Zol to get up and blow up the pool.

As preparations for the homebirth commenced I called my midwife. It was great to hear her clam voice on the other end of the line. She listened to me as I went through several contractions, telling me I was doing a great job. She told us to call her back when the contractions were 2 minutes apart, over a minute long and steady for 3 hours. I hung up the phone and focusing on a small nub of fabric on the blanket at my feet, this carried on for around two and half hours. Zol did his best to ‘time’ the contractions. They were all over the board and the only thing that was remotely consistent was the fact that they were getting closer and closer together. I puked up my dinner into a bowl, laughing as I did it. I couldn’t bring myself to walk around or take a hot shower as recommended, I just sat there on the couch and rocking and moaning. Zol sat across the room, notebook in hand, writing down the events as they happened… we’d previously decided that I didn’t want ANY kind of coddling or touching while going through a contraction, it would be much too annoying!

3am… “Call Beth Zol…. ZOL!!!!! CALL BETH!!!!” He dialed our midwife. He spoke briefly with her but she could hear me in the background. I must have sounded like a demon straight out of hell… such a deep guttural grunting sound was all I could muster. “I NEED TO PUSH! IIIIII NEEEED TO PUUUSH!!!!!” Beth hearing me, told Zol to make me STOP! NOT to push and she’d be there in 15 minutes. Zol then called my best friend Jess, who I wanted at the birth and he hopped in a taxi. Like she said she would be, our midwife Beth was there in less than 15 minutes… and Jess shortly there after.

“OK Dalyn, I’m just going to check you out, but your going to have to spread your legs a bit OK?”
“OH GOD, no no no… I can’t I CAN’T!” but I guess I did, or she pried them open! Her head popped up with a look of surprise.
“WOW, OK, your fully dilated! Lets get you into the pool!” The birthing pool was now full of warm water sitting in front of me. I don’t remember my PJ’s being taken off or Zol and Beth lifting me into the pool, but once that warm buoyant water surrounded me I felt a world of relief!

Jess arrived shortly after I was lowered into the pool, calmly walking in with an air of comic relief to him.
“Hey guys????? ????” He took a seat on the couch beside the pool. I felt a slight sense of relief now that he’d arrived.

Zol seemed tense yet supportive to me, but in a way needed his own support… turns out Jess would be JUST what he would require on the near horizon!

3:20am… “OK Dalyn, don’t push yet… look me in the eyes… Dalyn? Dalyn? LOOK at me… OK you’re doing great! You’re doing an amazing job! Dalyn? Dalyn? OK, LOOK at me… Keep looking at me… OK PUSH!!!” I pushed with everything that was in me. The contraction passed. It was an out of body expierience that I can’t compare to anything! The pain was gone, but now it basically felt like I was taking the biggest shit of my life! In between the contractions my body felt normal – painless as I floated in the warm water. Then I smelt something… like someone had placed a piece of burning toast RIGHT in front of my face! Zol appeared at my side with a pot of hot water, releasing it into the pool to warm it up.

“TURN IT OFF!! WHAT IIIIS THAT??? TURN IT OFF!!!!!” The smell was incredibly intense and obtrusive, breaking my process of traveling into the ‘birthing side’ of my brain. By heating up water in a pot something we’d previously cooked had spilled onto the heating element and the smoke (that nobody else could smell) was permeating the room and driving me insane!

3:30am… “OK Dalyn, with this next contraction you can push OK? But when I say stop, you need to hold off alright?” I stared at Beth’s warm eyes, so calm, so knowing. It’s rare that one looks deep into the eyes of someone she trusts that knows what is best for ones self. I don’t know that I’ve ever trusted someone as much as I did at that very moment. The need to push fell over me in a wave, Beth keeping my crazed stare aline with hers. The wave passed but quickly came back. I PUSHED….

“Do you want to see the head?! The heads right there Dalyn! Do you want to see it??” This meant somehow spreading my legs, so I passed on the new view of what was happening below. I felt nothing… NO PAIN. Amazing… but JEEZ LUOIS JUST GET IT OUT OF ME!!!!

3:50am… “Alright Zoltan, do you want to catch the baby?” In a blur I saw his face, apprehensive and sweet and scared. It makes me cry while I write this. In a hospital this situation would never have come to past… my husband kneeled on the floor in front of the pool, looking me in the eyes as my last contraction released our daughter into her new world… with the help of Beth he pulled her from the water and onto my breast and then wrapped his arms around the both of us. AMAZING. Our baby girl was alive and breathing, floating in the warmth of the water. Covered in vernix, cheesy from day one! Graye made sweet baby sounds and laid softly at my heart. Jess smiled at my side, looking down at his new goddaughter and Beth conversed with the second midwife who had just barely made it in the door before the birth…

Life was sweet and amazing and in our arms… we laid floating in it for what seemed like forever…

“OK Dalyn, now we just have to get you to push out the placenta, OK?” WHAT? Push out what? Still holding my baby they had me push… and push and push…. and PUSH. nothing. PUSH PUSH PULL PULL… the embolic cord was short. “OK, push HARD!... HARDER…”

To be continued…

i had a baby...

hello all...
well if you didn't already know, i've popped out my little one. she was 11 days early! Graye Roza Szilvassy came out with no trouble at all... 4 hour labour! the afterbirth, or placenta... well, it wasn't so fun. it was an 'interesting' experience complete with water birth, postpartum hemorrhaging and a then a nice trip to the hospital! all is well and both baby and myself are in perfect health. an entire blog posting will be dedicated to the story.

i thought id post a link to my prenatal pics... they are a tad unconventional, so be warned! we did a 60's take on prenatal life and we both love the results! our good pal Zipporah Wilson, an AMAZING photographer was just as excited as we were to try out the senerio!

http://seedlingimages.com/day_belly
or
here
ps. smoke was added LATER... i wasn't really smoking!
zippys website can be found here.

Moving Out Day!?

This is hopefully the LAST of the 'crackheads' postings... to read the full story, please click on the 'crackheads' label on the lower left of the screen! read from the bottom up, starting with It Couldn't Happen Again - COULD IT?

The much-awaited end of the month had arrived… A touch earlier than I had hoped for, but alas it was here. Lying in bed, wishing I had closed the window before I fell asleep, I stared at the clock as I had so many other early mornings. 4am. If I’m awake enough to look at the clock, chances are I’m awake enough to know I have to use the toilet. With every day my bladder becomes even smaller it seems. I could hear muffled talking from outside, and curiosity getting the better of me I decided to use the lou and check out the conversation floating into the street below.

Before my decent down the stairs I peered out the upper window. The sidewalk was alive with quick moving shadows. Once downstairs, I opened the slats of the kitchen window, and listened carefully. The usual angry banter between Eddie and the girl floated up… “What the fucks your problem EDDIE?? I’m just trying to HELP!” “Don’t fucking touch that! Just go away!!” “Whatcha gonna do now?? Hit me???!” Bored with the dialogue I tried to go back to bed, laying awake for over an hour…

8am arrived with a loud crash coming from the suite below. A myriad of voices; yelling, screaming and crying traveled their way up the heating vent to our bedroom. Downstairs the air was thick with the sweet smell of crack smoke. It hung heavy as did yet another disturbing argument. The girl was screaming at Eddie, telling him she was trying not to piss him off, but didn’t know what it was that she was doing to make him mad. Anything that came from Eddies mouth was hard to understand aside from words like “stupid bitch” and the “C’ word. The argument heightened to the point of physical violence and the floor shook under my feet. “Get your hands OFF ME!” SMASH – BANG into the wall. I could hear the faint voice of a child in distress and then Eddie screaming, “Release my SON! RELEASE MY SON!” The girl screamed back, as did the child. You could faintly hear Elvira, the wife, yelling in Filipino to Eddie. “Go play outside! GO!” Eddie yelled at his son and not 3 seconds later all hell broke loose (like it hadn’t already??). The worst of the physical fights I’d heard from below ensued as Eddie began beating on the girl. Her wails rang high pitched and loud, echoing up through the floorboards… then the cry’s for an ambulance began. “Call a fucking ambulance you fucking bastard! Call an ambulance!” While down, I guess he’d kicked her hard in the stomach. I ran upstairs to find Zol leaning over the side of the bed, his ear tuned into the heating vent. He too had heard every word. “I think I need to call the cops hun… she’s yelling for an ambulance…”

Dialing 911… “Police, fire or ambulance?” “Um… police then ambulance?” I was transferred to the ambulance line and immediately hooked up with a nice dispatcher. I gave her the low down… I could just see her shaking her head as she took the call. After giving the information needed, she kept me on the line as she transferred the call to the police dispatch that said there was a squad car enroute to our house already. Staying on the line with dispatch I continued with the situation at hand. “So you say the wife is pregnant AND useing drugs?” “No, not the wife, the girlfriend and yes, she’s a full on crack addict.” “Oooooh. OK. And the wife is there as well?” “Uh, yes. It’s a pretty horrible situation.” She took down names and asked about the children and if there were any weapons involved. When I told her the police had pulled up she let me go. Two cops screeched up in their squad car and made their way into the house. The fighting calmed. 10 minutes later I could hear the girl in the carport yelling to Eddie, asking if she could take his cigarette lighter. Looking out the kitchen window I saw her below, weaving back and forth in a drugged up haze. Her hooded jacket was pulled over her head, a half smoked cigarette butt hanging from her cracked lips. The green lighter flickered on and off as she attempted to light the smoke, which then dropped from her mouth as she yelled to Eddie again that she was going to take his lighter. She paused, scanning the ground for the lost smoke, nearly losing her balance as she bent to pick it up. “I’m taking your fucking lighter you fucking ASSHOLE!” The two children stared at her, as did Eddie’s wife as she stumbled away yelling, “Have a nice fucking life EDDIE!” As if that was the last he’d ever hear from her again…

The cops left but were back again later when the girl returned with the same arguments and screams. The day continued on for us… waffles for breakfast… yelling from downstairs... coffee sweetie? Don’t mind if I do!
The next day was peppered with Eddie and the girl going in and out of the house. With his family moved out he now had free reign of the place to use as a crack smoking den. 9pm. The smell was unbearable. We called the police yet AGAIN, this time we hoped would be the last. Four police officers showed up, one banging on the door, the other three each on a window. Enraged the girl began to scream, “STOP YOUR FUCKING BANGING GOD DAM IT!!!” finally the door was opened and the police now inside swarmed them. 15 minutes later a policewoman was at our door handing over the basement suite key, telling us to change the lock ASAP. I spoke with her for a while; she shook her head with sympathy. After they left Zol told me of the conversation he’d heard from the kitchen window while I spoke with the policewoman.

“Ya! It was pretty cool! While I was in jail I heard the baby’s heartbeat!!” “That’s great Tina, just great… you take care OK?”

The police left, as did Eddie and the girl. One last call to the police today brought a nice officer in a squad car to chat with me about the stolen scooter in our backyard. Knowing it was an expensive piece of stolen property; we had no idea what to legally do with it. In the end, after checking the records for stolen goods he said it was ours to do whatever we wanted with. Donate it, scrap it, sell it, use it… We chatted for a while, the officer shaking his head telling me how Eddie and the girl take up way too much of their time and he wouldn’t wish those two on anyone! I shook his hand and thanked him for all of the help the police had been these last few days…

I stared at our garbage bin, now filled to the hilt with crap and beside it a stewn pile of discarded clothing. Strangely enough a wilted red rose lay on the ground amidst the trash. The afternoon was coming to its end and hopefully with it, the thorn in our side, otherwise known as, the basement suite tenants...

Piss-pots, Plywood and Prenatal Pills

Rolling over and up, I peered over the duvet to get a glimpse of the clock. 5:45am.
There are many unpleasurable ways of being awaken in the morning, but having to listen to someone retching their guts out in the street below your bedroom window I’d have to place right up there at the top with the worst of them. Throwing the covers back, I slid my eight-month pregnant body off the bed and squeaked my way down the stairs to kitchen for a better look. A door slammed below and something thrown into the carport crashed against the wall, vibrating the floor beneath me. The girl was back – and in full force!

Before this particular early morning wakeup call, it had been a relatively quiet 3 weeks here at the new house. The eviction process was in full swing (whatever THAT means). In Vancouver it takes months to actually get somebody evicted from your property. The landlord basically has no rights to his home. It’s an annoyingly long and draw out process, and the downstairs tenants were fully aware of how much time they had before they would be forcibly removed – over two months of free rent was working in their favor.
For a month we had repeatedly suggested that our landlord simply board up the storage room in the carport, leaving its ‘tenant’ with no choice but to hopefully LEAVE the property. One balmy afternoon my ear caught the sound of hammering in the carport below. Half an hour later I heard the glorious sound of woodscrews being driven deep into a doorframe. Finally! No more doors for the white girl to slam shut at all hours of the day and night. Our things were now safely entombed behind fifty 4-inch wood screws and a massive piece of plywood. Several days before we had inspected the room to once again find more disturbing evidence. After much nagging on my part I had finally convinced my husband that we needed to get our vintage chopper bikes out of the storage room before somebody else did it for us and we never saw them again. It was much the same unsightly set-up as it had been before, a grungy blanket on the floor… soiled clothing, crack pipes and cigarette butts. We lifted some important things out of the room and then started to move the bikes out. Upon untangling the bikes from each other we heard a ‘clink!’ and then the unmistakable sound of liquid splashing and flowing. My husband let out a sound of annoyance as his lower leg, sock and then shoe became soaked with liquid. Yellow liquid… yellow liquid from a grape juice bottle... We looked at each other, both knowing what it was but not wanting to say it out loud. With the bikes rolled out and up onto the lawn, Zol continued to remove anything that may be ‘sellable’ as I sprayed the bikes down with the garden hose and then wheeled them into the safety of our house. Upon further inspection of the bikes we noticed disturbing clues that further confirmed our fears of the house going up in flames at some point. The girl had wedged a candle into the chain guard of one of the bikes – fully burnt down with the wax melted into the greasy chain!

The evening after the wood was drilled in place was a tumultuous one to say the least. At around 4am Eddie and the white girl came home from an evening of bike theft and crack smoke. There was no need to listen too hard to get the jist of the girl’s panic, as there was no concrete floor to lay her head on that night. She disappeared a few days after the board up, and for the three weeks I mentioned above things had been relatively quiet.

Two days ago there was the unmistakable banging on the basement door… looking out the upstairs window I stood, arms crossed staring at the girl as she stormed aimlessly around the street below. Her wild eyes caught mine. She let out a scathing scream and then yelled into the carport, “Tell your father he’s a FUCKING DEAD MAN!!!”. Breaking her lock with my eyes she disappeared into the carport. A massive crash echoed into the street. Glass smashed and wood splintered as she tore down a huge shelf that held useless bike parts, jars of nails and broken appliances. She then staggered up the street and out of my view. Hmmm… I thought, looks like she’s back! And sure enough at 5:45am this morning she was there again, outside my bedroom window… retching her guts out in a ditch. Food poisoning? Too much smack? Upset stomach? No to all of the above… morning sickness - she was pregnant, by at least 2 months now. The sounds I’d heard this morning sadly confirmed what a neighbour had told us, as had the words from the girls own mouth in a fight she’d had with Eddie a month ago. I guess I just hadn’t wanted to believe that any of it was true.

I stood in my pj’s at the kitchen window, the cool early morning air blowing on my face. She sat crouched on the sidewalk below, dry heaving as Eddie stood beside her yelling something unledgible. He walked away and she paused her sickness, standing and looking to see where he’d gone. Her angry voice yelled for him to hurry up – particularly loud in the quiet of the hour. She paused, turned and looked up at me in the window. I didn’t look away or hide, I just calmly stared back. Uncomfortable, she looked away. Crouching back down again she waited until she heard the basement door slam shut, resuming her sickness; only this time I knew the heaving was fake. Eddie grabbed her by the sleeve and they stumbled off and up the street in a cloud of mad yelling. I sat down at my kitchen table to eat my cereal and fresh yogurt. I swallowed my prenatal pills but they stuck in my throat like a lump. A hand to my belly as a foot kicked my ribs… how lucky I am… how very very lucky I am. *d

Sorry BUT....

i just HAD to do this to her new album cover... i'm so sick of hearing about this girl and the title of her latest was simply ASKING for it...
have a great weekend folks! *d

It HAPPENED AGAIN to be continued post...

To make sense of this post please read THIS ONE and then THIS ONE first…

There are patios and then there are PATIOS. We managed to acquire one of massive proportions upon moving into our new place MUCH to my pleasure. For over a month it was completely covered in boxes and ‘furniture’ (childhood toys and memorabilia, chairs without seats, tables without their legs etc…) but eventually, all of these items miraculously disappeared into the closets and cubbyholes of our house. A Vancouver winter had left the deck covered in scum and caked on dirt but that day the sun was shining and the moment felt right – it was time for some good ‘ole power washing!

There’s nothing I love more than a high-powered hose with an attachment that has some sort of ‘power-jet-stream’ function on it. I often envy those that actually get paid to do this for a living; stripping off grime to reveal cleanliness has so many rewards! After planting my flower boxes and hanging baskets I gave it a good sweeping and slug the hose up onto the deck. I then proceeded to start the much needed patio cleanse. The deck had a slight lipped edge to it, making it difficult to get the water to wash off the sides and instead the water and soil slowly funneled and hence plugged its only outlet… a 1“ x 1” drainage hole. In the blind joy of the jet stream I failed to notice this until about 50 gallons of water had backed up around the hole. In vain I tried to scoop out the dirt with my fingers, but realized that the problem had fused itself in the drainage pipe, situated in the carport below.

Earlier that day I’d noticed the ‘white girl’ wondering around the yard and back alley. Her strawberry blonde hair hung in stringy chunks around her face – unbrushed, unwashed for god only knows how long. She wore a pair of soiled men’s denim pants and an oversized royal blue soccer jersey. Her eyes had the hollow look of ‘crackhead’ to them… no colour, just deep dark pupils of blackness. They were set deep into a squished up childlike face, thickly peppered with freckles. She’d peak around the corner of the alley and up the short length of the fence to the basement door below. A loud ‘come HERE’ whistle from Eddie and she quickly trotted up to carport, like a dog with its tail between its legs. As usual, at around 1pm there were horrible yells, bangs and slamming doors from the suite below. One-sided conversations floated up from the floorboards… “NO! NOooooo! FUCK YOU EDDIE! Please! PLEASE don’t make me sit in the alley!” and “What AM I to you! A F---ing DOG? You can’t treat me like this!” and “What cha gonna do HUH!? HUH Eddie?! You gonna hit me you big man??! Do it… DO IT! Why don’t you just kill ME!?” I chewed my peanut butter and banana sandwich slowly, shaking my head back and forth in disbelief. Afternoons like this happened every other day – the screaming, the fights, the mild beatings. There were scads of crying sessions as well… but the kind of crying an 8 year old uses for attention more than actual anguish or pain- the boo-hoo-hoo-hoo kind of bawling – fake and tearless. You know… the type that stops and starts when someone is looking or paying attention? It gets pretty old after 20 minutes.

I stared down at the 10 x 10 foot puddle that had formed around the hole. I could hear water drizzling onto the concrete below and decided to go take a look. Hopping down the back porch stairs I rounded the corner and pushed open the door that led to the carport below. Fully opened the door barely cleared a figure sitting cross-legged on the ground. It was the girl. She held a takeout container to her mouth, shoveling into it some sort of Asian noodle. There is a type of comedic timing that we often only see on cheesy TV sitcoms – the kind that rarely - if ever, happens in real life. Well in the mere seconds it took me to stop the door from slamming into the wall again, my mouth dropped open, eyes wide with horror at the sight before me. Looking upwards I watched as the drainage pipe twitched and then BURST open – spewing a MASSIVE explosion of black water into the air! Trying to jump up in time to avoid the 50 gallons of liquid was futile, and the girl – situated about a foot away from the pipe above was instantly soaked. Pushing past her and apologizing profusely, I tried in vain to reconnect the pipe. My attempt only made things worse, shooting the mud out even further. Hearing the commotion, Eddie appeared in his doorway to find the both of us covered in mud and water. The girl said, “It’s OK… I’m fine.” I told her again how sorry I was and that I was pretty much finished. I retreated to my unfinished deck upstairs feeling horrible… welllll, not really horrible but more so embarrassed as this was the first and only interaction I would have with the girl.

Later that day I saw her ride away with Eddie, perched precariously on the crossbar of his stolen bike. She had changed her shirt but her jeans and hair were caked with the dark potting soil from my planters. Sure that they were gone for the evening I grabbed the key to the storage room we had in the carport. I had noticed that the door was ajar while down there trying to fix the pipe… Turns out I didn’t need the key as the door was unlocked. I peered inside and was pissed off yet saddened by what I saw. A lone 100-watt light bulb burned away, flooding the dingy room with light. The soaked soccer jersey was tossed into a corner. A water bottle filled with yellow liquid. A plastic dustpan filled with cigarette butts. An empty drug baggy with white residue. A crack pipe. A pair of dirty tube socks. Our things had been moved around to make room for a makeshift bed – a grungy blanket and overstuffed toy bear as a pillow made that obvious. This was no longer our storage space but a drug addicts bachelor suite. She’d even tried to hook up our vintage TV to our old VCR… Now what? I thought… I wish there was a handbook on how one should handle such situations. I closed the door and locked it. Back upstairs I rearranged my pretty plants and organized our inviting patio, all the while the scene of the exploding pipe played over and over and over again in my head…


AGAIN this is to be continued…

deadshits...

our australian friend showed me this the other day... i was pissing myself at some of the stuff he said... good stuff to start off your weekend!! *d

Yes... It happened AGAIN...

Every 5 minutes I hit the refresh button of my browser. Logged in to Vancouver’s Craigslist ‘apts/housing for rent’ section, with critical info entered into the ‘search for’ field, I waited patiently for JUST the right living conditions to appear on my screen… painfully this situation didn’t appear for 2 weeks! 2 weeks of skimming through fake scam advertisements and misleading posts… overpriced basement suites and useless property management firms that never emptied their voice mailboxes. Finally something within the highest range of our budget had come up. I sent off the critical first contact email…

Hello there Scott,
In regards to the 4 bedroom house located at 55th ave. between Fraser and Main St.... we are interested in viewing the house if we could?
We are a hardworking professional couple looking to for a 3 bedroom rental home in Vancouver. We have decided to move as our current home has become questionably safe, and the street we live on has become extremely noisy over the last few years. (right on Knight Street) We are looking for a quieter place to call home!
We are looking to move for May 1st or 15th or earlier if need be. We have references upon request.
Thank you for your time, Dalyn (day-lynn) and Zoltan
604-722-6xx1 anytime
(I attached the perfect picture of zol and I as well. I find this helps…)

I received an email shortly thereafter and zol took the phone call from a ‘Scott’ later that evening. (my hubby’s a PRO at this kind of conversation!) The overwhelming response to the placed add, had Scott in a tailspin. He certainly didn’t want to interview all of the applicants. We learned from the phone call that he was doing for his landlord what we had done for ours after the fiasco of Dawn Barton - taking over the job of the landlord due to his severe language barrier and finding decent tenants him. Though we’d yet to see the house, we felt good about our prospects just based on the 10 minute phone call. We could view the house in 2 days. I of course, immediately started packing…

Wellllll… it was PERFECT! Very rough around the edges, but nothing paint, a few throw rugs and all of our cool stuff couldn’t cover up. A tad far from where we’d have preferred to be, the house was situated in ‘Little India’, but worth the drive. The house was huge, had tons of storage, a massive deck and a ‘very sweet Filipino family’ that lived in the suite below. After a painful week of waiting for Scott to give us a call, he finally did saying that we’d had the place right off the bat – he just forgot to tell us… leaving me amongst newspaper, boxes and mental agony for 7 days. After realizing I was pregnant he really thought the place was best for us, that and the fact that we enjoyed fixing our home up and were use to dealing with a non-English speaking landlord. That weekend we met the landlord, shook hands and the place was ours.

I can’t really explain the scope of what it’s like for us to move. My husbands 40 plus years of collecting a very WIDE scope of things has left us with an amazing collection of items, rendering our home a museum of the 1950’s 60’s and 70’s. Packing it all up and moving it safely to another location requires skill, dedication and a close friend that has no idea of what he’s gotten himself into till its too late. When asked if he’d mind ‘helping us move’ that Friday… poor poor sweet Jess had no idea what he was in for. His day was spent with my husband emptying a storage garage we had decided to give up and also the contents of our previous house into a 2 ton truck... it only took 3 trips to get not quite everything! The day was long and hard… and running on a muffin and bottle of water Jess of course became confused when my husband said, “I use to have a TV collection…” upon lifting the 10th vintage television set into the truck. “So how many does it take to make a collection?” he later asked me… “Eleven?”

While unloading the truck at our new abode, the downstairs tenant Eddie and his friend started to help us take the boxes up to our patio. Our landlord was there and helped as well. We were uncomfortable with the assistance, (more-so embarrassed at the amount of stuff we had) but after saying “NO need to help!!” 5 times we just gave in and let them lug away. An hour later the deck was full and we thanked the unwelcomed help. Later that evening as I was unpacking the kitchen, my husband came in with a distraught look on his face. From the rafters of the garage he’d managed to knock down some sort of ‘pipe’ fashioned from a coke can. “It had all these little holes poked on top…!” “Oh sweety, it’s probably just for weed!” he then pulled from his pocket a tiny tiny zip-lock baggy and I could tell straight away it hadn’t been used for the ‘green stuff’. “oh…. hmm”. This discovery coupled with the brief conversation with the old coot next door earlier that day… “Oh God, you’re not moving into THAT house ARE YOU?” our high-winded spirits began their agonizing float to the ground. Could this all really be happening to us AGAIN we asked ourselves?

Within the next month we began to notice things we hadn’t in the excitement of moving in and claiming the new place as ours… like say, the sketchy looking white girl that was always hanging around, violently freaking out on Eddie everyday at around 1pm before his kids came home from school... The homeless man that banged on my back door looking for Eddie... The police that came looking for a fugitive they believed was hiding out downstairs… The ‘transactions’ that happened right outside my kitchen window in plain view involving fists full of cash and little baggies with white pebbles in them… The man sleeping in our garage at 2pm… (who'd obviously been eating take-out, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes right next to our highly flamible antiques we had stored in there...)
Or say the massive pile of expensive bicycles in the backyard? Some were just remnants of their former selves, a frame with a deflated wheel, or a wheel with missing spokes… a bike would show up one morning and be gone by the next, curious… waking up to a repeated BANG BANG BANG one morning we looked out our upper window to see ‘Eddie’ smashing a lock off of a new bike. “oh” we realized… now we get it. Our backyard was a bloody chop-shop…

Don’t ask me how, but I know what crack smoke smells like. It floated up from the basement suite with full force one afternoon – the air thick with its sticky, choking sweetness. I immediately drew my hand to my belly, wondering what damage our unborn child would possibly procure from the fumes. Opening all of the windows, I sat down and thought about our new situation. What the heck was going on!?? The people before us HAD to have known what was going on downstairs, there was no way around NOT knowing unless you were legally BLIND and couldn’t smell. Trust me, there’s just NO WAY the smell of crack can be confused with a Filipino curry. Why would Scott have done this to us? My husband and I discussed our unfortunate situation at length and decided that taking action was far worse than dealing with it. We had learnt this from our previous experience and never wanted to go through that again. Though they were crack dealers and bike thieves’ - at least this time the downstairs tenants were quiet and polite. With a blind eye to the chop shop and plugged air ducts for the crack smoke, we had decided to wait this storm out… oh and what a storm it would be... to be continued…

It couldn't happen again - COULD IT?

MOVING IS HELL - at least in my world it is. i'm sorry ive been away for so long. i've missed writing a posting. but im back! heres a little sum-pin sum-pin to get me (and you?) goin again! Love your comments, please leave them! *dalyn

From the basement suite doorway she waved a chubby arm at us as we struggled up the walkway, arms loaded with moving boxes. Her name was Dawn Barton, and this was her eldest son Nathan. Her other son was playing video games inside. After the exchange of names and niceties we continued on with the dreaded weekend of moving in together. After 6 months of “dating” (not spending more than 10 nights apart) my now husband and I decided it best to just live together – saving on rent, gas and bills. Though the move was hectic, we sensed that something downstairs just wasn’t quite right every time we pulled up to unload more of our stuff. An ever-changing group of teenagers was gathered around the patio table at all times; hovering over a full ashtray and a loud game of poker. Acknowledging our presence, they’d flip the oversized hoods of their sweatshirts up and glare us down.

A week or so passed. We were settling in nicely, unpacking, painting etc… trying our best to be patient and unaffected by the noise from below, which by this time had become unbearable. The group of teens, whether inside or outside were obnoxiously loud and rude. I don’t think I’d heard that kind of swearing before – and I’m no saint! Huge potty mouth over here, but these kids took profanity to an unheard of and useless level. It was painful to listen to. Trying to focus on finishing the last few months of school while having to hear that crap all day made my class deadlines next to impossible.

Soon enough we began to figure out the family dynamics of the downstairs tenants. Dawn was a professional ‘system worker’, spending part of her day using up other peoples cell phone minutes successfully scamming this or that government agency out of some benefit she didn’t deserve. Her youngest son (9 years old) refused to attend school, spending his day loudly disagreeing with anyone and everything – often with a 7/11 ‘big one’ hotdog crammed into his mouth. The alleyways were littered with his fast food refuse. The eldest son (14 years old) was the main breadwinner; a seasoned criminal with an endless rap sheet and future court appearances to boot. There were several other young teens – co-workers of the eldest son - that also called the downstairs suite home. It seemed they often needed reminding of what it was they did for a living, and yelled it out at full volume several times a day to each other… “I’m a motherfuckin’ DRUG DEALER motherfucker! You wana mess with ME? Dat’s right foo! Dat’s right BITCH MOTHERFUCKER! I’m gonna fuck you up!!” There’s a frightening quality in the voice of a 14 year old boy high on cocaine at 10:30am on a Tuesday morning, the kind that turns your stomach upside down for the rest of the day… we couldn’t live like this and us moving again was simply out of the question.

The arguments that filtered up the staircase ranged from “Who the hell let the cat piss in my shoe?” to “Fuck you, you fucking bitch! I fucking worked that corner 3 nights in a row!!” to “Suck my dick BITCH! Come over here and suck it hard! Get off your fat ass and let’s see YOU fucking bag this crack!” (hmm… I can’t imagine the circumstances I’d have to be living in that would cause a comment like this to be said to my mother…) ‘Conversations’ like these were the norm and conflict was the spice of life for the tenants below. The police were always there, inquiring about someone or something, taxi’s refused to pick us up from that address… the list goes on.

The neighbours began to approach us with scary stories of their own, and a genuine concern about how we were coping with the close quarters. We began to document the goings on of downstairs with a written timeline of events, photos and even verbal recordings of fights over drugs and money and eventually verbal threats directed at us. After a few months and with our landlord on our side, Zol, myself and 20 or so neighbours decided to sign a petition in favor of evicting Dawn and her ‘family’ due to constant disturbance of the peace and the unsafe environment the neighbourhood had taken on since her arrival. Everyone gladly signed including the old fart up the street. While taking in his trash one morning without his glasses on he ran into someone he thought was someone else and started to discuss the petition with them. Had they signed it? Had the tenants upstairs given it to the landlord yet? How was everything proceeding and when would Dawn and Co. be evicted? Well, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, he was talking to Dawn.

My life went from horrible to ‘horribler’ – I know, it’s not a word. Every chance they got they yelled and screamed obscenities at me. If they could hear that I was home upstairs, they’d yell up the staircase how they were going to kill me. How dare I fuck with them! They weren’t going ANYWHERE. Didn’t I know who they were? motherFUCKIN’ GANGSTAS apparently…
The registered letters of their eviction arrived, and one after another they ignored them, leaving them in the mailbox. They knew the drill… this certainly wasn’t the first time. A month and a half passed. The landlord would now have to hire the Sherriff and a bailiff to physically remove them all from the house. And so he did. We didn’t know exactly when it was going to happen, but God knows I wanted to be there when it did!

The stress of the conditions and school getting harder for myself caused a pretty explosive fight one evening between Zol and I. All hell broke loose. We rarely get into actual ‘fights’ but when we do we’re both pretty dam loud. Hearing our distress from below, three of the teens had crept up into the staircase to listen to us argue. I could hear them crackling around on the many garbage bags of crap they had stored on the stairs. Two of them being overly obese caused an argument of their own, as their cellulite made sitting space limited. Angered even more by the fact that they could hear Zol yelling at me I simply lost it and began kicking the door that separated us from them – yelling at them to fuck off. They didn’t. They snickered and laughed. They snickered and laughed and then somebody playfully shoved somebody else. That somebody shoved back harder. The other somebody then sucker punched someone and sent them and the person behind them crashing down the staircase… 400 pounds of meat slammed into the wall at the bottom! Then, an incredibly disturbing sound began to develop. It started low and methodic, like a bloodthirsty demon quietly escaping from Hell. Was that Dawns little sister who had moved in a month ago? The sounds got louder as did the protest of her now victim. You could hear her high-pitched gurgling scream all over the apartment below. Our walls shook as her and her opponent slammed into and through the ones below. For two minutes the fight continued and by far this is one of the scariest things I’d ever had to listen to. It sounded like a murder was taking place. I stepped out onto our deck to listen better as the battle continued in their kitchen below. Her scream escalated and then ---- STOPPED… 5 seconds of dead silence… a wheezing gurgle, a sputter. Then the screaming stared again… but different now. Though no words came from her mouth her shriek said it all, “I can’t believe this just happened to me! I CAN’T – BELIVE – OH – MY - GOD! I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!!” Looking over the ledge of our deck I saw her 200 pound frame sway aimlessly around the yard. She stumbled in the dim of the patio light attempting to dial a cell phone with her free hand. The other was held to her face, blood seeping out of her fingers and dripping down her neck, soaking the collar of her “I love kitten’s!” t-shirt.

“OK, call the cops!” I said to Zol and looking down at the girl he did. She’d managed to collapse into a lawn chair and was now leaving a blubbering message on Dawn’s voice mail to please hurry home. Strangely, every bit of hate I had for this girl and the others below left me, and grabbing a wet cloth I ran down the steps. She let me move away her hand to reveal a deep 4 inch gash on her cheek. I realized then that the horrible gurgling and breathing she continued with was that of an asthma attack. I didn’t say anything to her, but held the cloth to her face till the paramedics arrived. From the deck we quietly hid and listened to the police report being made. Her cousin (Dawn’s eldest) had slashed her face with a kitchen knife… self defense he claimed…

The next morning at 7am I was awoken to pounding on the door below. Looking out my window I saw two massive men with papers in their hands. In the alleyway a large moving truck, two young men were unloading empty boxes out of it.

“Sherrif! Open up!!” BANG BANG BANG! Of course they didn’t open the door. So the Sherriff and bailiff did it for them. They took it off its hinges! I listened as they gained entry to the house. “Get up, get your shit and get the fuck out!” he bellowed at Dawn. She protested of course but this guy wasn’t taking any shit from her. “This is the fourth time you’ve had this happen! You know the drill!”

It was amazing… in 45 minutes every single thing they had in that place was packed up by the two young men and dumped in a pile in the alleyway! The locks where changed and the windows secured. They (there were 7 of them) despondently sat a watched. They had 24 hours to have all of their belongings removed from the alleyway or a garbage truck would pull up next. I decided to go to school, and when I came back there was unheard of silence in the house… aside from the traffic on the street, peace had finally visited our new home. A shredded paperback novel or two was all that was left of them. A sad legacy really, 1 inch pieces of paper littered the yard and alleyway. I gladly spent an hour cleaning them up.

We never heard of or from them again. I thought we’d get a rock through our window or our cars keyed, but alas - nothing. It was over. Though this experience scarred me probably for life I NEVER thought it would ever happen again. How could it? Seriously! What would be the odds? Well after 3 years of living in the above mentioned house, my husband and I decided it was time to move into something bigger and off the noisy street. I was pregnant and we had decided to have a home birth and the tiny 2 bedroom wasn’t going to cut it anymore. So after looking diligently we found the perfect place… 4 bedrooms, 1500 square feet! Huge deck! Great area… it couldn’t happen again… it couldn’t, could it? To be continued…