Atomictumor

I look at Pigpen, and he doesn’t seem the same kid he was back on Halloween. Theres nothing really different about him that I can put my finger on, he still looks the same, talks the same, plays the same, but theres something there, and he doesn’t seem like our baby boy anymore, or rather, he doesn’t seem like Mommy’s little baby boy, like he used to be.

I’ve seen this before with MastaG, back when Pigpen was born, and he almost immediately ceased to be our baby boy.

—

BJ and I drove back from our ill-fated Radiohead show in Washington DC, chock full of blah. It totally sucked. We had a crappy nights sleep, crammed in the back of our Subaru. Mojofilter, incidentally, got some sort of evil form of pneumonia, and was dog sick for like 2 weeks or something. It sucked.

We were still trying to have the baby, and getting a little nervous, because the pregnancy tests kept coming up negative. BJ wasn’t due for a period for some time (yes, I have always known when her periods were due… I could tell before she could that they were coming up on account of her being evil and her boobs hurting. TMI, indeed, but I could have made it worse), so we didn’t have that big indication that theres a bun in the oven, but we were still a little nervous that we’d actually have to put some effort into it, and that we’d miss that nice April-May due date that BJ was wanting to hit, to avoid being big ol’ pregnant in the cold of winter or the hot of summer.

While we had the opposite of trouble getting knocked up with Gabe, we were concerned that our fertility then had been a fluke, as BJ’s sister and brother both appear to be infertile. She was kinda concerned that she wasn’t going to be able to have the kid, and that made her want him more.

For the record, I had NO PROBLEM with the extra work involved in having a baby. None at all.

—

I had been working at the same place in town, doing tech support, and was about as high up on the totem pole as I wanted to get (which wasn’t high, unfortunately, but to get higher requires that you sacrifice your home life to a certain extent, and as the home life is the whole point of trying to get a higher place at the office, I didn’t see the point… still don’t). What was more important to me was that I did my job well, and had a reputation for being that way. Theres nothing like being considered talented at what you have to do every day, its a damn good feeling. If you don’t have that feeling at your job, I suggest a different line of work.

Problem was, I hated the job. The hours were good, the co-workers were good, the boss was good, but the work was tedious and irritating. I dealt quite frequently with escalations, and theres something soul sucking about talking to people who are red in the face, blaming you for the inactions of a mega corporation. Thats something nobody should put up with, but I did every day for a while. It started getting to me.
We’ll get back to that, but lets get back to BJ’s uterus first.

At some point in late August, probably a week or so after the Radiohead trip, we discovered that she was pregnant! Yay!

It was such a unique and fascinating feeling to have planned a human life that was now coming to fruition. I’m not one to get into where life begins, whether its when the embryo is created, or when the brain is formed, or maybe just with that first kiss, as somebody once suggested, but I was tickled that it was happening somewhere.

BJ had some ugly bouts with sickness during the first few months, as I recall. She didn’t suffer that much with Gabe, but it sure hit with this one.

As with our first child, we were looking forward to having the kid be either gender, but if we had a choice, we would have chosen a girl. We had our little boy, and with as cute as Gabe was, we were really interested in seeing how cute our little girl child would be. I was a little concerned, knowing BJ’s personality, and the thought of that being rolled up into a daughter of mine, with the appropriate heartstrings and hormones and whatnot made me a little concerned.

Also, as with the first child, the name planning began quickly. I don’t remember off the top of my head all the other names that were on the list. I know for boys, BJ was thinking about Xander, Leo, and several others. For girls, we had kinda given up on the “Anastasia Plum” that Gabe would have been, but still couldn’t come up wiht any great ones.

Shortly after finding out that BJ was pregnant, the whole September 11, 2001 thing happened, and I spent a long time wondering about the kind of world we’re going to be bringing this little creature into. I guess everybody did, back then. As I said before, I’m glad we got the chance to see Washington a month before that happened, when things were a little more simple, and a little less scary.

—

Around that time, also, I had found an escape out of the job I was doing. An old friend of ours was a manager of a structured wiring start up company, and called me up to see if I’d be interested in working for them, installing computer networks, home theater systems, and cable and phone lines. It would pay a little more than I was making, but it was a chance to do something else, and I jumped on it.

Not to dwell on it, because I think the best intentions were out all around, a month later I was quitting, and everybody was very angry at everybody else, because nothing quite met expectations.

Great. So BJ was pregnant, and I was out of a job. Luckily, the boss at the first job, the one I hated, was able to get me right back in. Insurance and all. It was great, and taught me something about burning bridges, and the importance in not doing it unless you had an airplane or could fly or something.

The job still sucked, but I didn’t mind so much anymore.

—

Meanwhile, time passed, and BJ and “Cletus the fetus” kept getting bigger and bigger. We finally went in for that ultrasound, and as we examined the images, the nurse and tech agreed that they were “99% sure that it was a girl.” The nurse added “In 11 years, I’ve not been wrong on this”.

Indeed.

—

Now that we had the sex, the naming began in full blast. We settled on Sadie for the first name, but couldn’t come up with a good second name. We tried and tried, but nothing sounded right. We loved Sadie, and we’re going to change it, but just needed some inspiration for the middle name.

It came, to me, one night. I was in that little twilight zone between sleep and wakefulness, what I suppose would be the first stage of sleep, and it hit me: Blue.

Sadie Blue Kilpatrick.

It was perfect.

—

More time went on, like it normally does, and we had our baby shower. The subaru broke down spectacularly on the way, slipping a belt, which really made it an interesting day.

We got some great gifts, including a blanket and a piggy bank with “Sadie” embroidered on them. I still have ‘em.

BJ kept getting bigger and bigger. As I mentioned before, she’s a small girl, much like Eaves, so when she’s pregnant, she’s PREGNANT.

—

Meanwhile, at home, all three of us were getting excited. Gabe was thrilled at the prospect of being an older brother, and was behind the thing the whole time. In fact, we let him originally tell BJ and my parents that she was pregnant, which made him feel so important!

We had a game, that everytime he did something silly, he’d have to change another diaper. By the time the kid was born, Gabe had gotten up to 124 diapers. He never changed one, the brat.

One day, he came home with some red spots on him, they looked like bug bites. We were at the Blueberry Farm at the time, as I recall.
A few days later, BJ started feeling bad.

A day or two after that, she started getting the red spots.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

BJ had never had chicken pox. Never. To this day, I don’t see how a kid gets through the landmine that is childhood without picking up chicken pox somewhere on the way. It boggles the mind. I had known that she never had it, but also that she never had the flu, and just assumed that she had one of those mighty immune systems.

I mean, she never got sick. Well, other than morning sickness. Ironic, eh?

Anyway, although MastaG had had the chicken pox immunization when he was a kid (which they wouldn’t give to BJ, for whatever reason, telling her that if she didn’t have it yet, she wouldn’t ever get it), he picked up a tiny case of it, that manifested itself as those ‘bug bites’. The boy didn’t even know he had the pox, and neither did we.

But boy howdy, at 8 months along, in March/April, BJ sure knew she had it. It was ugly. She had the welts all over the place. I still have several pictures from that era commerating it, and to her dying day she had a dozen or so scars it left on her. I remember looking at her big pregnant belly, covered with red welts. She had em in her nose, and on her eyelids. She was miserable, but as a testament to her strength, she took it in stride. BJ was a hell of a strong girl. Sure, she loved to be babied, but when it came down to it, she’d be up, looking after Gabe, doing laundry, and playing on the computer while at the peak of her poxness.

As a precaution, she called her OB-GYN, who did a check of the amino fluid to make sure that everything was OK.

I recall that day well. I had to work, couldn’t get out of it, because I was going to take all my vacation when she had the baby, and I was stressing. I had been offhandedly worried the entire pregnancy that something would go wrong, in that way of a husband who has a pregnant wife will, completely impotent to do anything about it, but unable to get it out of the mind.

My phone rang, and it was BJ.

My heart was racing. My hands were shaking. I asked her how it was.

“Ever heard of a girl with balls, Jake?”

“… what?”

“I said, have you ever heard of a girl with BALLS, JAKE?”

“Uh… … … what?”

“Its a BOY, Jake. They fucked up the first ultrasound, and its a boy!”

—

I was shellshocked. In fact, I didn’t know the meaning of the word shellshocked until that very moment. I had to get outside and walk around. My mind was officially blown.

Sadie wasn’t Sadie. I’d been calling the fetus Sadie for months, asking how my little girl was, picking out patterns with BJ for little girly rooms, and generally preparing to be the father of a little girl.

Not another little boy.

—

It took a few days to get around that, and then a few days to get over feeling guilty over fears that I didn’t love the kid as much knowing that it was a boy. Looking back, it seems like such silly emotions, knowing the amazing little guy that he is, but when you’re facing the unknown, I find you tend to overdo the emotions. Or, something about the clarity of hindsight. Whatever.

But damn, we had to come up with a name!

It took some doing, but we came up first with Ash, and then with Asher. I’ll be honest, the decision was somewhat influenced by Bruce Campbell’s legendary Ash Williams, but the truth is we both loved the name Ash. It did not occur to us that the main character of Pokemon is also named Ash, and has hence been the first thought of people asking what our inspiration for the name was.
Friggin Pokemon.

I’m not sure where BJ came up with Asher, I don’t think I’d heard that name before, although I’ve encountered it once or twice since then. I loved it, because I don’t see it as a name that anybody else in his class will have, but at the same time, is a ‘manly’ name. Asher. Just rolls off the tongue, and I still love the name.

Just needed that middle name.

—

By now, the big day, May 7th, was fast approaching. After the difficulties of Gabe’s birth, it was decided all around that a scheduled c-section would be the best way to go. 7 AM on May 7th came in no time. We had no signs of impending labor before that, in fact, BJ barely had any Braxton-Hicks contractions, which means Ash, like Gabe, would have probably hung out in the womb 2 or 3 weeks after the due date. BJ was happy to be evicting the kid.

We dropped off Gabe on May 6th, and enjoyed our last night without a baby. It was nice, because this time we KNEW what we were in for. We knew about the sleepless nights, and the uncompromising nature of these little bastards. We new about the stuggles to get the things to sleep, the frustration, the hopelessness that comes when you have a kid screaming, but we also knew about the first stares, first smiles, first rolls. We couldn’t wait.

May 7th, 5 AM, we were up and heading to the hospital. They found us a room, which was very small (which surprised me, because the rooms for the c-section gals are much smaller than the big birthing rooms for those women who prefer to squeeze out the kids, despite the c-section gals being around for longer periods of time). Seriously, the room was tiny.

BJ had some blood drawn, and I felt the ol’ fight or flight adrenaline raring up. I held her hand, at the side of her bed, being chipper, moving out of the way occasionally for the doctors and nurses, just trying to console and reassure her. I wanted to take her fear and trepidation, and replace it with my hope and excitement. I really had more fear and trepidation than her, but I fancy myself a decent actor.

When they put in the epidural, BJ started blacking out. I panicked inside. She woke up, it was just the stress getting to her, but it set things back a bit. They came back a little later, and were able to get it done. I was seeing those tell-tale twinkles of light which mean that the brain is about to shut down for a little unscheduled neepy-nap, but I wasn’t going to do it while she was still around.

Finally, she got loaded down with the epidural, was sufficiently numbed, and was brought out to the OR for the birth. This time, unlike Gabe’s birth, I was part of the equation.

They gave me some scrubs, with instructions to head to the OR in 5 minutes, which would allow them the prep time they needed. I took that time to go to the bathroom, and promptly started to pass out sitting on the toilet.

After a bit of time I got up, splashed water on my face, and steeled myself again. I stopped by the waiting room to tell BJ’s folks and Gabe that we’re about to start, and headed into the room. They were waiting for me, BJ pretty impatiently.

I was actually pretty excited about seeing the operation itself, seeing the incision be made, and seeing Ash be removed from her. She was concerned, because she’d heard of stories of men not finding their wifes attractive after seeing their guts, so she didn’t want me to. I thought that was silly, she was BJ, she’s the only woman I’ve ever loved, I’m not going to not find her attrractive.

So I snuck a peek, and it was awesome. Yes, I’m weird.

I found BJ to be a gorgeously beautiful woman until her dying day, so neener neener, BJ, I was right.

—

Asher was born around 7:30 AM on May the 7th of 2002. He came out with a big black head of hair, and only got an 8 out of 10 on that ’see how alive the kid is’ scale that they do. He was a bit purple when he came out, and didn’t immediately start crying, but the vacuum took care of that. We got to hold him immediately after birth, and, after he was cleaned off, and with BJ’s and doc’s permission, I was allowed to bring him out to the waiting room to meet Gabe, and BJ’s parents.

Introducing Gabe to Asher was one of the best moments of my life, bar none. Its one of those things that I’ll always be able to look back on and say “That was right. I did that correctly.”

—

We still didn’t have a middle name, and the birth certificate lady was getting twitchy.

—

I went with the doctor to see Ash be circumcised. Now, circumcision was something that we had discussed. We both realized that theres really no reason to circumcise the kid, that the medical reasons for doing it are practically null, but we both agreed that we would. I felt obligated to be there to witness the event, since we were going to put this newborn baby to a knife for reasons that we couldn’t define.

I watched the doctor put the clamp on, and Asher turn purple with screams. I watched as she calmly cut the foreskin, and Asher was hitching with sobs.

I put the salve on, and helped her bandage it.

I’ll never have another child, but if I did, I’d never be able to circumcise him, if he were a boy. Putting a baby, just forming brain synapses, and whatever impressions that blank slates like an infant form, through what amounts to mutilation is not something that I’d do, just so that he’d have a penis like we’re more used to.

I was able to calm him in my arms, and BJ finished the job when I got him back to our room, with the tit.

Asher took to nursing like a fish to water, and I’m so happy for that. BJ and he bonded in that way that she and Gabe weren’t able to, and I fully think thats the reason that Asher has always been more ‘her baby’ than Gabe was.

Eventually, it also got me off the hook for those late, late nights, because he didn’t take to a bottle at all. BJ didn’t consider that quite fair, as I recall.

—

The middle name came to us two days after Ash was born, for reasons we’ve that have been in this post.

James. BJ’s dad’s name.

Asher James Kilpatrick.

Our family was now complete.

Sadness has my voice low, and my throat choked up this morning.  I wasn’t really expecting that, but I guess I’m not getting off as easily as I was led to believe last night.

I want to explain something about the sadness, its a hopeful sadness.  I’m sad, but at the same time aware of The Beauty when it happens, aware of the 10 years with her, 10 perfect years, aware of how much she loved me and our family together, aware of how happy she was before she died.

I’m aware that her life could have been worse.  Her death could have been worse.

I’m wondering today what her last words would have been, and thinking how fitting it was that it was me saying them for both of us.  She explained during our wedding ceremony, when she recited the vows she came up with, the ones that made my heart rise and my body sway, that I’ve always been the talker.  Its true, if theres a silent moment, it’d be me to fill it up.  She was pretty introverted, and I always loved that about her.  Evidently she liked my extroversion, or whatever its called, because she’d smile when I’d tell her how much I love her, and all that stuff about moving mountains and whatnot.

I’d kiss the back of her neck as I said it.

Ahh, sadness.  Its OK.  Sadness is a tribute to her, its refreshing.  Today is the anniversary (monthiversary, whatever) of when her body died.  8:37  PM, if I recall correctly.

Or late at night, I guess.

Having good ol’ Nodbob around has gone a ways toward distracting me from the whole monthiversary thing.  While I don’t think I’d have gotten bent out of shape over it, I still haven’t given myself much time to think.  After I retreated to my bedroom tonight, I looked at the picture framed in her great big frame she had for years, of us at the renewal looking away, and thought.

My thinking often turns to where she is, which means this will wind up becoming a theological diatribe.

I know, with very, very little doubt (nothing is certain to me, really ever.  Love (me, her, kids) is, but not much else) that she is extant in some way, because I’ve felt strong sensations of her, in ways that would make my subconscious very clever if these phenomena are self produced.  I don’t think its that clever, myself.  I’ve pretty much described them here, so I won’t do it now, suffice to say, I’m convinced.

If that is the case, I wonder what she’s experiencing it?  I almost feel like theres an anchor in me thats in that other side, simply because of the enormous amount we were invested in each other.  Thats a weird feeling, sometimes.  It completely changes the way I think about death, because for years now, I’ve had a somewhat nihilistic view of death, not necessarily that its a final termination of self, but that theres no organization to the afterlife.

Don’t ask me to explain it at 2:30 in the morning.

Anyway, I don’t think that anymore.  I’m sure that BJ has communicated peace to me, in that same way that I’m sure that she is here, or has been here recently.  If she’s in peace, then that nihilistic view may be off.

Still though, I have a hard time with the whole milk and honey view of death, that theres an eternal reward of peace and harmony.  Purgatorial principles make some sense, but only because I think that human beings have the whole idea of “justice” drilled into their head.  By the same token, the idea of eternal damnation for doing bad things seems even more illogical.

Ahh, the problems with theological musing, because I hit this point, where I understand that logic has nothing to do with it, because I don’t think I can comprehend the logic used by God, or whatever you’d call the thing behind all of this.  I think my agnosticism of my years with BJ was just a way out of working these questions up, just a philosophical throwing up of the hands, and saying “fuck it”.  I don’t really want to do that anymore, because I feel a little like (and I know about the logical thinking of THIS) if I can get a handle on these questions, if I can figure out exactly what I think, or what makes sense, or even what I want to believe (because, deep down, belief is a choice) I’ll be closer to where she is.

I think, in some way, if I can follow that anchor line between me and where she is, I’ll have a glimpse at it.  But I’d only want to see her.

Which means I don’t appear to be over Step 1: Denial yet, huh?

And is my cue to go to bed.

I sure love you, little ghost.

Nodbob showed up around noon today, and we’re watching an Opus Christmas special right now.  I’ve always dug on Bloom County, but not so the much on Outland and whatever the hell today’s Opus strip is.  I like the inclusion of the children in the original strips, I guess.  Binkley and Milo and what not.

Anyway, today’s been alright.  There was a moment earlier today when that bittersweet, overwhelming sadness hit me, while I was folding clothes.  That song from yesterday seems to be the catalyst, it was running through my head, about the memories of love gone.

The sadness is beautiful.  Its a tribute to BJ, I feel.  It hurts, but I’ve never had a problem with pain, and she is certainly in a better place now, as I’ve felt her presence so many times, a presence too sublime and indefinably her to be my imagination.  It doesn’t make it any easier to have her, but now I see the sadness.

Growing up, I would imagine this kind of sadness, in remembering the sweet times.  Remembering the little moments that things were, and aren’t anymore.  I’d think of that, when I’d ponder the loss of loved ones, as I’d do from time to time.  That seems to be the scope of my sadness right now, it seems to be thinking of the sweetness in her.  Her smile (she’d get dimples), her wiggles, her voice.  The way she picked up a little southern twang when she was angry, and how it’d irritate her when I brought it up (sometimes I couldn’t help but smiling at how cute it was, even when I was in the midst of her wrath).

I think of the scar on her foot, that she got years and years before my time, at a water park.  I think of her tiny smile dimples.

I think of her children, growing up with her memory.

I smile, at her sweetness, her gift of herself, and how I was lucky enough to have had the sense to purposefully cherish every single moment.

Thats the sadness, and it is beautiful.

All things come in flashes. You take pictures of time in your mind, memories of moments, and freeze them, like a camera, until some days its all you have left.

Our hermit years, 5 or so years after moving out of the rooftop apartment, are like that. In these years, we set the cornerstone for our family.

—

BJ and I couldn’t afford to live on our own with my piddling Pizza Hut income without going into debt, which is something we didn’t want to do. If we moved back into her parents house, we could try to go back to school, and get some kind of worthwhile job.

Gabe was tickled to be living with Mamaw and Papaw, although he was still just a year or so old.

Wait… hmm… set a calendar now. Get the facts straight…

February 1996 - BJ and I began

November 1996 - Gabe was born

March 1997 - Moved to rooftop apt.

August 1997 - Moved to BJ’s folks house.

Right, there you go. So he wasn’t a year old yet. Good old facts!

—

We were back in BJ’s bedroom, although the world wasn’t quite as small. Because we were back at her parents house, friends still came over, but not nearly as much. We’d sequester ourselves in her bedroom as much as possible when Gabe was asleep, watching TV, or playing on the computer.

Gabe loved it. He grew quickly. Flashes of time are all I have from that era.

I recall one day, he and I were out on the front porch. Everything still felt like a chore, because I was impatient, so we’d go out on the front porch, or outside, and I’d wait for him to get fidgety, or bored, and we’d head back in the house so I could do something else. I loved the boy, but didn’t yet appreciate being a Dad.

Anyway, we were on the front porch, along with a hornets nest. Normally, we stayed away from the part of the porch that had the hornets, but I turned my back to look at something, and with the celerity only belonging to the toddler heading for danger, Gabe was gone. I turned around and found him, sitting on a step, surrounded by frenzied hornets.

PANIC.

I grew up the son of a beekeeper, so I know the rules for bees. No snap movements, not necessarily slow, but fluid. I wasn’t sure if that worked for hornets, but it doesn’t matter, because before I could realize what I was doing, I was in the mass of hornets, trying to shield Gabe with my body, and get him the hell out of there.

I watched one of those bastards land on his little fat hand, and sting it. I was running away, and it was in slow motion, the plunge of the stinger, Gabe’s reaction. He received no other stings, and I was unstung. I seem to have a freaky luck to not bear the burdens of my family that I’d rather endure than see them endure.

Anyway, Gabe was freaking out. Screaming, snot pouring, hand swelling up, we brought him inside, and took care of him.

Thats one of those flashes.

—

Another is a New Years party at a friends house in Norris, BJ and I there, drinking. She got sick, and I helped clean her up. Poor girl.

Another year, during that era, same house, same time, BJ and I were watching a friend we didn’t know too well sledding down the hill in back yard. We watched him sail down into the woods, past our view, and heard the crash and yell of a drunken guy hitting a tree on a sled. Good stuff.

Unfortunately, that guy died a few years later, in a car wreck. I didn’t know him, but knew him well enough to mourn him a bit. His name was Dee.

—

All the moments of tenderness still run together. Holding her hand, kissing her forehead, all these things are things that I feel like I’ve done all my life. They don’t stand out, other than to be what the rest of my life was sweetened by.

—

After a year or so living there, we were really itching to get out. We had talked with a friend who lived in low-income housing in Clinton, and got on the waiting list. A few months later, we had an apartment, for $10 a month.

BJ and I were both students, going to Roane State. We had done a play together, driving from Andersonville to Harriman every day for a month, to be in “The Good Doctor”. I, ha ha, had the lead role. BJ played my wife in a few skits, and we even had a pretty well received singing duet as an old couple. I don’t remember the words, but it was awesome. I always meant to do another play with her, but we just never had the chance.

I digress.. apartment, right.

We moved into Gatemanor in Clinton, and were thrilled to be there. Gabe was 2ish by then, I don’t remember exactly when we moved in there, but I know he turned three when we lived there.

These years were golden. We set up the place, we had a dining table, we had a bedroom for both of us, we had our own bathroom. We were able to invite family over. We made friends with neighbors, but still didn’t have that party place atmosphere. There were a few reasons for this, one was because the friends we had that were in high school the previous years were now in college, and it was a pretty long drive. Another reason was because we were settling down, and content to do this.

I started growing my hair out long. BJ got a job at the Store of Knowledge in Knoxville, and learned how to juggle devil sticks. Theres a video on Youtube of her doing it, but it doesn’t do justice to her skills, because she wasn’t used to the weight and feel of the ones she was borrowing. She’d be able to toss it 20 feet in the air, of throw it across the room to me, and catch the stick her her sticks when I threw it back. She’d juggle the stick unconsciously, while talking to me, or distracted some other way. She was so proud to have found a talent!

By now, she had quit school, and my slacker nature (as well as the need to have somebody watching Gabe while BJ worked) found me quitting before too long also. Over the next few semesters, I re-enrolled once or twice, but never got more than a semester or two before quitting.

I was being a “Mr Mom” and loving it.

Gabe, now about 3, and I would go on long walks. We’d walk out of the complex, across the train tracks to a gas station, where we’d get a drink or a candy (if I had some change) and sit on the benches outside and wait for a ‘monster truck’ to pass by. This being Clinton, TN, we were usually happy. Then we’d walk down the road a quarter of a mile or so, past the Pizza Hut where I’d worked, pass a few other shops, pass the fire station which sometimes let Gabe in to look at (or, gasp, climb on) the big red trucks. We’d head to Big Lots, and look at toys. Then we’d walk back home on the train tracks, looking for interesting rocks.

—

We lived, that first year, on $5000. Total income. Yes, we had food stamps, and assisted housing, but got no welfare, because we didn’t feel right taking it. We felt like kings. I remember that first Christmas, we didn’t have the money for gifts until Christmas Eve, and we went to the dollar store to buy stuff for each other.

I got BJ a crossword puzzle book, and bag of pens, a plastic box (thats still behind the TV, holding the superfluous remote controls) and a Kwanzaa doll christened ‘Kwanzaa Don’, and hung on the entrance to the bedroom/bathroom area of the house, to bless all that went under with his Kwanzaa blessing of whatever it is that Kwanzaa is.

We also eventually acquired his evil brother, Pedro, a marionette with six guns, a sombrero, and a sadistic smile, that was hung in the kitchen.

We wrapped the Christmas presents with the comics section of the previous weeks Sunday paper, and opened them that night. It was great.

—

Time passed, as is its wont. As time went on, we found our housing going up (because I wasn’t a student), so our discretionary funds went down. I finally figured I needed to get my ass a job.

I had computer skills from way back, but never on a professional level. I tried riding that big internet wave in the late 90’s, but found that I needed experience, and the willingness to work tons and tons of overtime at all hours of the day, and after my time at Ryans, I wasn’t inclined to sacrifice that much.

Eventually, I signed up with a headhunter job finding place, who lined me up with a job at Clientlogic, here in Oak Ridge, very shortly after it opened, doing DSL tech support.

A real job. This bad boy was paying 9 bucks an hour, which was a fortune!

BJ and I loved doing the math. At 9 X 40 hours, we could afford all sorts of stuff! We could get a real apartment!

Which we did, in Oak Ridge. We moved here in 2000, in a townhouse we found on Wakefield Rd. The landlord was a cop, a really cool guy, who ended up quitting the force after finding out about his wifes indiscretions with, well, the entire rest of the police force. And our neighbor. She was a bit of a whore.

We had stairs now, and two bathrooms (a luxury I miss today, in our 1 bath house). I had a real job, BJ could afford to quit the Store of Knowledge (the drive to Knoxville was a real pain), and Gabe was able to start going to the Oak Ridge Preschool, which did him a WORLD of good.

By now, friends rarely came over. We missed having the social contact, but didn’t really try to make friends. I’ve never been one to make personal friends out of co-workers, for reasons I still don’t really understand, and BJ didn’t really get out a whole lot. Her Corolla had died several years ago, and we had an 90s Subaru station wagon, but I took it to work, still leaving her with no ride. I worked the early shift, which I have preferred working to this day, from about 6 - 3.

I was good at my job (still am, I think), and got promoted pretty quickly. Eventually, I found out, I became the highest paid hourly worker there. I was offered a chance at management, but passed it up, again, because of the time demands. I just didn’t want to take that time away from my family, and I feel so completely justified by that. No matter what other grievances she’d be able to dig up on me (and believe me, she would) she wouldn’t be able to say that I held a job closer than her or Gabe.

Never.

—

Again, time went on. We made friends with the guy who owned the townhouses next door, and after 6 months living in our first townhouse, we moved into one of his. They were identical from the outside to the ones we were in, but because of a fire years ago (which claimed the lives of two poor little girls in one of the units, hiding in a closet) they had a much nicer interior, and a big assed back porch looking out on one of the greenbelts in town, protected woods. It was pristine. Sure, if you look in any other direction you see either townhouse, townhouse, or parking lot, but from the back, ahh, there were woods.

We’d go out there, every once in a while. Gabe and I, mostly, he’d be about 4, and we’d enjoy the walks in the woods. We’d walk down trails in the Greenbelt and end up a few roads down, then we’d walk back. There was a park on the way, and we’d often stop to get a drink from the fountain, and he’d play for a bit while I sat. He played by himself a lot, because there really weren’t many other kids in his life. Preschool helped him with that, and he didn’t, and doesn’t, seem to possess any of the social awkwardness I felt at his age.
By now BJ was working again, night shifts at the video store, which was a sweet gig on account of free rentals. I’d bring Gabe in every once in a while to watch her. She was a perfectionist. Videos had to be on the right shelf. They had to be neatly spaced. She’d do it quickly, but very throughly. Even up to her dying day, when she’d go to the video store, she’d bitch about the sloth applied to the videos. I’d laugh.

—

Around this point, we both realized that we were both thinking about the possibility of having another child. If we waited much longer, Gabe might be too old to have fun with the kid, and we’d lose that nice “getting rid of kids in our 40s” buffer we looked forward to. Both of us were leery of mentioning it to the other, for fear of getting shot down.

Yes folks, a planned child.

BJ even figured out the right time to start working on the kid, so that she’d give birth in the spring, so as to avoid a hot summer of pregnancy.

We finally quit smoking at this time, habits that we picked up before meeting each other. It was hard, but we both did it cold turkey. We survived, and were proud.

We also bought tickets to see Radiohead, which was its own tragic and horrible story. I wrote a review for it for a Radiohead fan website, you can see it here (look for the one signed by J). We didn’t realize it, but that child was about 2 weeks along during that ill fated trip to DC.

BJ was pregnant again. The threesome would end soon.