Two stories with Niall from tonight.

First, Niall, Nonna (my mom) and I were watching a cartoon:

Cartoon: I think I just cracked my Artex!
Joshua: What’s an artex?
Nonna: Must be a {seal}.
Joshua: What’s an artex seal?
Nonna: Ceiling.
Joshua: Sorry, thought you said “seal”.
Niall: A “ceiling” would be a baby seal!

Successfully hacking diminutives is such sophisticated humor for a six-year-old.  Also, Artex here, but I didn’t know that at the time.

Second, while getting him out of the bath and asking what he wanted before bed:

Joshua: Do you want a story, sing you a song, …?
Niall: I want you to play me a song on the {fawoot}.
Joshua: The what?
Niall: Flute.
Joshua: Flute?
Niall: FLute.
Joshua: I don’t have a flute.
Niall: [looks at me]
Joshua: Oh, the harmonica?
Niall: Yes.
Joshua: OK, I can play you something on the harmonica.

Problem is, I only know how to solve major-key musical improvisations one way — I work myself into a corner, like you do, and need to resolve the melody line, and all my endings sound basically the same.  Mozart used the first half of his career employing — “inventing” is probably closer to the truth — “discovering”? — major key endings like that, but when I try it, it just sounds like the “amen” chorus at the end of the “Johnny Appleseed” hymn.

Niall didn’t mind.  Little boys are awesome.

Here is my photographic study of my Dad from today, with suboptimal equipment, entitled “Have You Seen My Reindeer?”

Off He Goes

Know a man
His face seems pulled and tense
Like he’s riding on a motorbike
In the strongest winds
So I approach with tact
Suggest that he should relax
But he’s always moving much too fast

Said he’ll see me on the flip side
On this trip he’s taken for a ride
He’s been taking too much on
There he goes with his perfectly unkempt clothes
There he goes

He’s yet to come back
But I’ve seen his picture
It doesn’t look the same upon the rack
We go way back

I wonder ’bout his insides
It’s like his thoughts are too big for his size
He’s been taken; where, I don’t know
Off he goes with his perfectly unkempt clothes
There he goes

And now I rub my eyes, for he has returned!
It seems my preconceptions are what should have been burned!
For he still smiles.  And he’s still strong.
Nothing’s changed but the surrounding bullshit
That has grown

And now he’s home and we’re laughing
Like we always did, my same old, same old friend
Until a quarter to ten
I saw the strain creep in
He seems distracted and I know just what is going to happen next

Before his first step
He’s off again

(Sooner than two years this time, OK?  Love you.  Miss you.)

All Vedder Tuesday

There’s a great lyric in the Queensrÿche song Bridge, written by Geoff Tate [correction from reader: Chris Degarmo penned the lyrics].  I use it as a rotating quote on this site.  It reads, “And so I sit here through the night, and write myself to sleep — and time keeps ticking.”

In such a position I find myself tonight.  I am outraged to the point of violent nausea by what happened today with Jennifer’s attorney.

As regular readers know, Jennifer has filed for divorce.  She has retained counsel — wholly appropriately.  Jenn scheduled an appointment last week (and just told me about it) to meet in his office.  Alarm bells went off.  Why should I go to his office?  Every experience I’ve ever heard is of divorce attorneys serving one with papers.  Plus, I was annoyed.  So I told Jenn I wasn’t going.

We’re still on last week.  Jenn called me from her mobile, in his office, and handed the attorney her phone.  The attorney told me that I needed to come to his office to get everything notarized.

“Why can’t you serve me with the papers and let me notarize them?” I asked.

“You might not do it right,” he said.

Hm.  I told him I’d think about it, and to call me on Wednesday when I had made up my mind.

Jenn was distressed.  Jenn, through this whole thing, has honestly, honestly been working in what she believed were the best interests of Jenn, Niall, and me.  Awesome.  I wanted to recognize this for her.  But she has been fed a line of malarky by the attorney, with fire and brimstone warnings about what would happen if I didn’t go into his office to fill out the paperwork.  I could completely lose custody!  Jenn would lose all say in the uncontested divorce and a seventy-year old judge would (not could) rule against me, drive me further to the poorhouse, and keep me from seeing my son.  The attorney had fully convinced her that she had no say in this matter.

Yes, absurd, I know.  But stick with me.  I’m not writing this to defame Jenn in any way.  Stick with this.

Jenn called back to get my address for the service of the papers.  I gave it to her, and told her I would be expecting the papers.

Jenn then called my mother to try to convince her of the absolute necessity of following the attorney’s advice.  Jenn was upset.  My mom was upset.  My mom, in the nicest way possible, tried to explain to Jenn that she was being sold a line (my mom and I hadn’t talked about this yet — this is independent.)  My mom then called me to pass on what Jenn had said.

OK, so Jenn thinks she needs it.  She thinks she is acting rationally and in my best interests, and it’s worth recognizing.  I still didn’t want to walk into the lion’s den.

Jenn called to plead that I attend the new meeting, scheduled for Friday (today).  I acquiesced.

I don’t have an operational car right now.  I needed to finagle a ride.  From Woodland Hills.  To Santa Fucking Ana.  I tapped my dad to chauffeur.

“Explain to me again why you need to go to his office?” asked my dad warily.  “This whole thing stinks.”

“I know,” I said.  “I’m doing it for Jenn.”  My dad picked me up in the early morning to drive to Orange County.

When I first got into his office, I was not completely off-put.  He told me he would validate my parking ticket.  He seemed personable.  I sat down.

The first form he set in front of me was a statement of my debts.  I was told to sign it.

“How do you know my debts?” I asked.  He told me that I had filled it out six months ago.

I asked to see it.  “These numbers have changed.”

“So?” he asked.

“You’re asking me to sign this under penalty of perjury that everything is correct.  These are not correct any longer.  We need to correct it,” I said.

He got flustered.  “Well, if you change your numbers, she’ll have to change her numbers!”

“OK,” I said.  “Let’s change them both.”

He changed them, under my guidance.  He didn’t change hers.  He asked me to sign it.

“I’d like to run this by my lawyer,” I said.

Jenn and the lawyer both got upset.  He started to browbeat me.  “You just gave me these numbers.  I put them on the form.  What’s the problem?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “That’s why I want to run it by my lawyer.”

More pressure.  Dunno why, but I signed.

The next form was to attest that my list of assets had been correctly filled out.

“Could I see it, please?” I asked.

“See what?” he said.

“The list of assets that you have.”

He handed me a list.  It listed my bank account balances (all wrong), valued my car at six times its actual value, and for other assets, listed a value of zero.  That’s for all other stuff, like household items and collectibles.

“These aren’t zero,” I said.

More upset lawyer.  Honestly, I had no idea why.

“What happens if I have assets that aren’t listed on the page?” I asked.

“Then we would be — er, she would be — entitled to a hundred percent of them,” came the response.

So we fixed the numbers.  We were about to finalize them.  I said that I had two lawsuits in litigation, and asked if I needed to list them.  I was told that, yes, if I didn’t list them, even as “unknown”, “they” would be entitled to 100% of them.

I asked Jenn if she was planning on making a claim to that money.  I expected the answer to be “no”.  The answer was “yes” — she was making a claim, that she hadn’t disclosed and we hadn’t discussed.  I again said that I would like to run it by my lawyer.  More upset people.  More browbeating.

Actually, at this point, I can’t remember if I was browbeat into signing it or not.  But I was already getting queasy.

Another exchange that can be omitted for brevity followed.  I’m trying to get to the piece de resistance.  As follows.

I was asked to sign a form saying that I agreed with their description of the case.  Which I hadn’t fucking seen.  Let’s be clear.  I hadn’t seen the damn thing.  I requested that, hey, maybe I’d like to read the fucker first.

I started reading it on his monitor.

Here it gets good.

There was a paragraph attesting that both Jenn and I were in good health, able to work and earn our full income.  He was trying to slide past this one.

“Whoa,” I said.  “That’s not true.”

“OK, we’ll take it out,” he said.

“No, actually I’d like it to state that I’m disabled and unable to work.  That’s the truth,” I said.

The lawyer got a wicked smile.  “I’d advise her against that,” he said.

“Then I’m not signing it, at least until I run it by my lawyer,” I said.  After all, this could jeopardize my pending lawsuits, being subpoenable by opposing council.

“I’m not going to put down your disability without proof!” he thundered.

“OK.  That’s fine.  I’ll go to a doctor this week, get the proof, and fax it to you,” I said in honest equanimity.

He leaned forward.  “You know what, I’ve been really patient with you.  But the truth is you’re not a very nice guy.  I’ll see you in court.”

I smiled a wry smile and held up my parking ticket.

“No, I’m not going to validate you!” he near-screamed.

“OK, I said.  Bye!”  I stood up and walked out the door.

I was two steps past, really leaving, and the lawyer said, “Josh Josh Josh!  Come sit down!”

I spun and glared.  “That’s Mr. McGee,” I said.

“Mr. McGee, come and sit down.”

“I’m not going to sit down,” I said.

“Come and sit down!”

“I’m not going to sit down,” I said.

“If you take this to court, it will cost you ten thousand dollars.  You don’t have ten thousand dollars.”

“Let me understand this,” I said.  “Your plan is to insult me, then threaten me?”

“I’m not threatening you.  Come and sit down.  You don’t want this to go to court.”

I stood and equivocated.  I finally said, “I’m stepping out for five minutes to make a phone call.”

I walked (wrong direction, twice, which kinda ruined the moment) to the lobby and called my dad.  I told him what had happened.

“Get the hell out of there!” he said.  “Go back, tell him ‘Fuck you!’, and walk out.”

I hung up.  Actually I pushed the red button, which isn’t quite as dramatic.  I decided I wasn’t even going back.  I went down the elevator, got in the car, and called Jenn from my cell.  I told her I wasn’t coming back.

“Do you really think I’m trying to screw you?” she asked incredulously.

“I trust you,” I told Jenn (mostly true).  “I trust that lawyer about as far as I can throw him.”

We had a surreal conversation, which could be distilled to one statement.  Not hard to choose, because it’s the one I said five times.

“You have three options, Jenn.  You can have this lawyer serve me with papers, I’ll have my attorney review, and I’ll return them.  Or you can fire this lawyer, have a new lawyer serve me with papers, and I’ll run them by my attorney and return them.  Or you can set a court date.  If you don’t want this to go to court, this ball’s in your court.”

Let’s go back a bit.  I’m not a very nice person?  What, is he going to tell on me to the playground monitor?  Not be my best friend any more?  Tell people that I wear Spiderman underwear?  What the fuck?

“Like my reason for being here is to get you to like me,” my dad said later, playing me.

“I wonder how many people that works on,” my mom said later.

What?  The?  Fuck?

An epilogue.  Jenn is not a stupid person.  But she has a dramatically miscalibrated bullshit detector.  She was probably socialized this way, as a female in a religious family.  But she trusts too easily.  Way too easily.  One time, when she had a flat tire, she called me (panicking — she wouldn’t do that now, to her credit) and I talked her through getting someone to call out and change it (she was about eighty minutes away).

“What should I do with the tire?” she asked.  I pictured a shredded tire.

“Put it in your trunk, or have the tow truck driver take the tire away,” I said.

She chose the latter option.  Almost.  She gave the driver her wheel.  He was happy to take it, which is probably connected to the fact that buying a used replacement cost hundreds of dollars.  She was happy to send it away.

So, trusting.  Great, in a friendly, well-monitored twelve-year-old.  Not so great in an adult woman who is making choices to affect peoples’ lives for at least the next thirteen years.

I don’t know if Jenn still reads my blog.  I have no reason to expect her to read it.  I don’t read hers.  But I dearly hope that she will reflect on this.  Or ask her dad.  Or her best friend, who’s a trial attorney.  Get someone to fill her in on why I might distrust her attorney, who is counseling me not to retain counsel.  She is not stupid.  She really, really isn’t.  And I know she’s not trying to screw me.  I just want her to realize her power, fire this scoundrel, and let us get on with this in a reasonable fashion.

I’m not sure if writing this helped.  I think it did.  I’m not as nauseated.  And you’re welcome to post, or (maybe better) send me private email.  If any reflective person thinks I’m unreasonable, with a better bullshit detector, please tell me.

But I’m not wrong.  Shit.  I’m not wrong.  What do you call a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?  What indeed.

OK, it’s been weird lately.  New apartment, waiting for Internet access — then my phone dying — then getting Internet access, but losing Gmail access — all rolled into one stressball with my Dad being in the hospital.  This has all conspired to make me one of the most difficult-to-reach people on Earth.

Among my great accomplishments of late was missing the annual meeting for the Penguins on Stamps Study Unit — of which I’m the president.  At least, if they didn’t throw me out for missing the meeting.  So unfortunate.

But I’m back.  My Internet connection works, and so does Gmail.  My phone works, and even rings!  And, best of all, my Dad’s out of the hospital.

If you sent me an email, I almost certainly received it and responded.  If I didn’t, please send it again.  If you left a voicemail and I didn’t respond, please call again — I’m not sure what got lost while they were doing account manipulation at T-Mobile.

So, sorry for the silence, but I’ll be back with chatter now.

Sorry for the quiet.  Sebastian and I are nestling in nicely to the new apartment (that finances have dictated), and Internet access is up and running at last.  Niall will see the apartment for the first time on Saturday.  Friends, email me for my new mailing address and for the new mcgees.org email address that will be sent directly to my cell phone.

I watch Antiques Roadshow.  I can usually only stomach the original, British version, not the horrid American knock-off.  Frequently someone will bring in a family piece — say, a portrait of a relative from Georgian times, or a needlework sampler that a greatⁿ-grandmother composed in the early 19th Century C.E. — and will ask after its value.

Now, establishing an auction value makes sense for these: that establishes what items like it, in comparable condition, fetch to when sold to someone else with an interest in art.  But the valuers will go on to give a higher value for insurance purposes, which is supposed to be a “replacement value”.

Replacement?  What could that possibly mean?  Surely you aren’t going to go out and find another portrait of your ancestor, right?  Another sampler that a distant forebear created?  No, it probably means a contemporary of what you have — a portrait of someone else, or a sampler by someone else.

This baffles me.  Why bother?  If it’s Revere Silver, and there are other, more-or-less identical items on the market, “replacement value” make sense.  But the literally irreplaceable, the one-of-a-kind items?  When they’re gone, they’re gone.

My former boss (Jeff, if you’re reading, it was your father) once talked to me about an insurance agent approaching him about insuring his children.  He was likewise dumbfounded.  As he saw it, the argument seemed to be that, if his child died, it would take a lot of money to make up for it.  This is nonsense.  There is not a figure (in dollars) I would accept in exchange for Niall — there may not even be a figure in lives I would exchange for his.  That’s not big-U Utilitarian, but it is how I think.  Heirlooms like the cassette tapes that my family recorded for my Nana, which I now have safely in my possession and will be encoding to digital form, don’t make sense to insure.  There is no accounting for ancestry.  de la Rocha lyrics come to mind: “Sell your history for a VCR.”  No thanks.  You keep your VCR, I’ll keep my heirlooms, please.

I’ve had Niall since Saturday afternoon.  I drop him at school tomorrow.  As the seconds go by, I get more and more frantic about squeezing every last moment from the time with him.

We were listening to a random music mix, and G’n'R’s Yesterdays came on the rotation, which has the lyric “Yesterday’s got nothing for me.”

Niall’s eyes brimmed with tears, and he turned to me and said, “There’s nothing for me either, without you.”

However justified Jenn was in leaving to get on with her life — the appropriateness could be as high as 100% — the decision left a body count.

OK, let’s run down my week so far:

1. Wife left me and took Niall (my fault)
2. Got dropped from the interview process of the job for which I was applying (my fault, essentially)
3. Worker’s Comp claim was denied, so I will have to sue the WC insurance company (not my fault)
4. Ditzy HMO doctor whom I saw twice while out of work due to work-related injury claims I never told her I was off work, and refuses to sign my disability slip (fuckin’ not my fault)
5. Paid over $100 (that I didn’t have until friends opened their wallets) to file my taxes (my choice)
6. Ran out of meds (that said ditzy doctor forgot to refill) and for which I don’t have insurance anyway (not my fuckin’ fault)

So, today:

7. Computer crashes (shit happens)

You’d think with my whole professional and educational life spent living at the whims of computer hardware, I would have a top-of-the-line backup system in place.  You’d be wrong.

I fixed it.  The computer, and recovered the data.  It took some effort, but I did it.  I’m doing a full backup tonight.

Next step would pretty much have to be “blindness”, right?  I’d say “death”, but that’s not always seeming like such a bad alternative this week.

I don’t think it appropriate to write at length, or write details, in this public arena.  But not writing anything about this has made it impossible to write anything else on the site, so I’ll just do a fifteen-second version and leave it be.

My wife Jennifer has left me, taken our son, and asked for a qvibepr.  She has moved in with her parents.  She left the cat.

I am devastated, and left with no income and no disability checks yet.

Things might be slow in these parts for a while — or, I may go into fits of hypergraphia to keep my mind off things.  One or the other.

There’s a lot I want to write, and maybe I will write it and just not publish it.  As I said, this is really not the most appropriate arena to air it.

Anyone who wants to leave condolences, please do.  I might not be able or willing to give too many other details.  Anyone who wants to lend me $100, so I can pay for medication and maybe rent, I wouldn’t turn that down, either.

All hail the lucky ones!  I refer to those in love.

Niall, to Jenn:  Do you like sweet gopher poop?

Jenn:  Er, no.

Joshua:  Mommy only likes sour gopher poop.

Niall, to Jenn:  Do you like sour gopher poop?

Jenn:  I really don’t like any gopher poop.

Niall:  Have you tried gopher poop?

Jenn:  Er, no.

Niall:  How do you know you don’t like gopher poop if you’ve never tried it?

Niall and Sebastian recovering together on a couch bed, Niall from a virus and Sebastian (the furry one) from a liver condition.

Niall woke up feverish and vomiting.  We think he has the flu.  Very inconvenient timing, as I’m supposed to be at work in a handful of hours.

Sebastian is home, and we have Mika’s ashes now.  He will be going in for a checkup next week.

Mika, our beloved cat, died this morning in her hospital incubator following surgery.  She never regained consciousness.

Thank you to everyone who wrote in, publicly and privately, to wish her and us the best.

Sebastian is recovering well after his surgery, and is expected to make a full recovery.

Mika
1999 – 2007

Mika, our cat, is dying.  I got a second opinion this evening, which was essentially to keep her comfortable and put her to sleep when it seems that she is in pain.

Our glassy-eyed beast of the night whom we have loved since before we were married is going to be gone.  I am a wreck right now.

Friends of Mika, please make arrangements to come and see her.  She doesn’t bite any longer.

I’ll keep readers updated.

I found my hat.  Or someone found it.  It was sitting in the hallway outside the coat closet, so I picked it up, and I’m wearing it right now.

You don’t know what a big deal this is.  This is the only hat I own that has ever fit me.  Baseball caps, even large ones, fit like yarmulkes.  I groan every time I find out that the free giveaway at an event is a hat.

My father, who stands several-plus inches shorter than I (and is shrinking, I think), has an even larger head circumference.  He once spent approximately the GNP of Finland on a custom Stetson, I believe, and it comically rests on the bridge of my nose when I try to wear it.

This is the curse of the McGee head.  These massive skulls.  My brother has one.  My son has one, the uncomfortable details of which I’m sure my wife could inform you about.  And yet — and yet — I was treated for a Chiari Malformation last year.  My brain was literally too big for this head.

Don’t worry, I won’t let that fact go to my head.

Niall has two sets of favorite music.  System of a Down — seriously, System of a Down — and the most banal set of children’s CDs that someone started calling “Children’s Music” to him.  The latter are insipid, major-key jaunts on a Casio and nylon-stringed guitar, with a bad tenor and a bunch of breathy children singing the most profoundly weird songs.

I loathe them.  I would have said, under other circumstances, that the producers should slip under a freight train for producing, distributing, and charging for these, but Niall really, really does like it, and sometimes likes the same song over and over again.  Annoying, but not quite as annoying as his screaming his head off in the car.  Usually.

One time, Jenn and I were driving along listening to one of these atrocious CDs, and I began questioning the surrealistic lyrics in progressively off-color but G-rated fashion.  Jenn was laughing for a while, then chuckling.  But the one that got her to snap was the following:

Song: Did you ever see a lassie, a lassie, a lassie?  Did you ever see a lassie go this way and that?

Me: Is this one about a girl who goes both ways?

Jenn: STOP!

Today is my seventh anniversary with my incredible wife, Jennifer.  Jenn, when you read this, I love you, and thank you for the best seven years of my life, and a lifetime more.

I was watching The Two Towers with my brother. It came to the Battle of Helm’s Deep, and all the young children were being ushered into caves while the men and older boys were being armed.

“I care about the kids as much as the next guy,” I said, “but surely even a seven year old boy or girl could ferry arrows to the front lines?”

“We don’t talk about the arrows!” said my brother.

Niall, my boy who just turned one, was practicing spatial skills today. He likes to take objects and pack them in containers, and to unpack containers. There was an empty half-liter plastic water bottle on the coffee table and a large plastic iced tea glass, and he was holding on to the former and trying to fit it into the latter, but he was trying to put it in sideways. I worked with him on it for a while and showed him how to insert it so it fit. Then we tuurned it into a game. He would take the bottle out of the glass, turn it around 180 degrees, then reinsert it. Then we would clap together and I would praise him.

We did this probably twenty times, as I was calling to Jenn to come in and witness it. She did get to see it, and she started playing the game with him. He played successfully for a couple turns, then seemed to forget the trick and tried reinserting it sideways. One time he tried putting it in, then pressed really, really hard to get it to go in, then lost hold of it and it skittered across the table. He looked up at me expectantly and started clapping. It was the funniest thing, as it looked like he was trying to pull a fast one — “Now we clap, right?”

It was a lot of fun. For a while he was trying to hold both pieces to do the insertion, but his arms aren’t long enough to hold the glass away from his body sufficiently, so he looked at me and very clearly, through body language, asked me to hold the glass for him. It’s amazing how much can be communicated and learned without spoken language.

My wife and baby are back from twelve days’ vacation and they both remember me!

There are five new baby pictures, at the bottom of the list.

The new garden page isn’t ready yet, but I wanted to share with you the absurdity that is the kabocha squash plant. It now has seven squashes growing on it. Keep in mind that all the pictures are from a single plant, started outdoors from a single seed.

This is a joyous post.  On Friday, 03 October 2003, our son was born.

Named Niall Henry David McGee, he came into the world with a minimum of fuss in a quick and easy delivery after only ten hours of labor.  He was an alert, curious, quiet, 7 pound 6.4 ounce baby boy.  His favorite activities at present are sucking and farting, and to his credit he is quite good at both.

On Sunday they let us go home.  We were home for ten hours before we found he was running a fever, so back to the hospital it was.  It turns out he was dehydrated, and may have had a urinary tract infection (we are waiting on the results of the urine culture.)  Both are being quickly sorted out, through antibiotics and supplementation of his feeding with formula, once we found a nipple that he liked.

Jenn and I are happy but very tired.  I will keep you posted as things develop.  In the meantime, some pictures:

Well, the weblog is back after my week+ hiatus.  The holidays were great: Jenn and I were able to see both our families, and in the days after Christmas Jenn’s sister, Jenn’s brother, and my brother (ages 20, 18, and 18, respectively) came to stay with us in Thousand Oaks.  We had a fabulous time.

The highlight, perhaps, was my developing a serious addiction.  To a video game.  I don’t play video games.  Jenn has a Sony Playstation that I gave her as an anniversary gift because she does enjoy video games.  I have played and enjoyed games such as Roll Away and Mortal Kombat 4, but they never manage to hold my interest for more than an hour or so.  My brother rented some games to bring with him and, on a whim, picked up Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 since he knows I enjoy watching competitive skateboarding.

I love this game!  After they left Jenn and I went out of town, and on our way home I stopped to purchase a copy ($40, by the way) at Toys Backwards-”R” Us.  Last night I started playing about an hour after midnight, lost track of time, and finally stopped at 4:30 a.m.

So, I’m hooked.  I’ll probably play more tonight: I am very close to unlocking Venice Beach.