The jig is up.

Back in August 2002, when I found out about my pending fatherhood, I quit smoking. I had been smoking about a pack a day since 1988. I did a damned good job of it, too. Three days on the gum, and then nothing.

Well, I can't really say nothing. I did have a cigarette every once in a while. Like one every couple of weeks. And when I was out of town on business, I'd break down and smoke a packe over the course of three days. But when I came back, it was back to normal.

So the new year comes closer, and I finally get down to finding a psychiatrist, so I'm not a total wackjob by the time the kid comes out. That was a complete ordeal, getting passed around from operator to operator, asking them all to find me a shrink, and each one saying, "We don't really do that ..." What the fuck do you do then??

But I struggled through, and found someone and made an appointment. There was a wait of about six weeks between my making the appointment, and the appointment date. But okay that's done. I have that to look forward to. I even did the math on when the meds would probably start kicking in; I was cutting it close, but they should be taking effect by the time my son was born.

On the day that I was all ready to head in for my first appointment, I get a call from the doctor's office saying that they had to reschedule it for two more weeks out. Well that just fucked everything up! I was livid, after all I had gone through to get this set up in the first place. I was panicking. I bought cigarettes.

Just a pack, and smoked them over the course of those two weeks. That did it, though, and I've been smoking a couple of packs a week since. Am I proud of this? Not at all. Do I think I can quit again? Yes I do. Has this been a difficult thing for me? Yes it has.

Could I tell Bridget? No; she'd made it perfectly clear that if she found out I was smoking, she'd kick my ass. And this was before Caden was even born, so I certainly couldn't tell her then. She'd have gone ballistic on me. So I hid it. I would be able to reel it back in at some point, now that I'd be on a regular schedule with meds and doctor's visits.

That didn't work out as well as I'd hoped, since every single appointment I make with the shrink gets rescheduled for two more weeks out. Once I ran out of meds and had to chase around to get the prescription refilled. Add to that the fact that the guy I'm seeing doesn't ever really ask me anything about how I'm doing, and I'm basically on my own plus meds.

So last night, after class, I come home and she smells it on me. She asked if I had been smoking and I came clean. I got the silent treatment, she went up to bed with Caden and I slept in my chair downstairs.

I'm sure she's upset because I hid this from her. I can think of several times when I outright lied about it. Her: "Can you even imagine being a smoker now that you're a father?" Me: "No." As time went on from the beginning, my failures only multiplied.

When I woke up in the morning, I went up to bed first and lay there next to Bridget and Caden, who were both sleeping very soundly. Caden was completely snuggled up with her. This was 6AM, about the time he usually starts to stir, and she asks me to go change his diaper and then we have happy, smiling awake time. Or I carry him around in his bouncy seat with me while I take a shower and get dressed.

They were sleeping, and stayed that way. Caden made a couple of noises, and I tried my best to peer over the top of his head to see his face. But he was turned in towards Bridget, and I didn't get very far. I could see his long eyelashes, and the tip of his nose, and I wanted to stroke his fuzzy head.

I didn't. I went downstairs and took my medicine, then headed back up to take a shower. About halfway up, I sat down on the stairs crying. I'd been down since the night before, just like I used to be all the time. I had tried to be a good father and failed. I was separate and distant from my family that I love so much. I had been voted off the island, and the remaining contestants had decided to share the grand prize between themselves.

Bridget has had a brief conversation about my paycheck with me on IM today. She goes to work at 3:30 today, so I won't see her until late tonight. I'll be picking Caden up from her parents' after work. I expect that she'll have told them all about all of this, and that I'll be voted off their island, too.

I'll drive him home, and he won't remember anything about any of this. He'll be the same baby he was yesterday and the day before. I'll have to feed him at least once, which means I will have to hold him, and he will probably be smiling and happy at some point. I really don't feel like I'm responsible enough or good enough to hold him and play with him. I don't deserve to be a father.

I will very definitely do all of those things that need to be done with babies, because I am a father, even though I don't deserve to be one. I will also cry.

I have caved. I have made the background image on my work computer's desktop a picture of Caden with his arms out, smiling.

I have always hated those people, with the pictures of their kids all over their computers and desks and everywhere all the time. Now I am one of them. I still hate those people, the other people, who set the background to "Stretch," so that the tiny picture is now huge, out of proportion and grainy. I have not done that. I have only sharpened the image in Irfanview, and left it on a black background. Not some crazy, twisty, make your eyes freak out and cause remote control sessions to behave erratically crap. Just plain black.

I went to the shrink again on Friday. I'm less than satisfied with the level of service I'm getting from that office.

First, they called my house early and told my wife, "We've had a couple of cancellations, so we need to move the appointment to 2:45." It was originally scheduled for 5:30. Whatever. I do not understand how other people cancelling their appointments cause my appointment to have to be moved, unless the doctor wants to leave early for the holiday. This on the heels of all three appointments I've already had being rescheduled for completely different days.

So I get there at 5:30. Only the doctor is left in the office. He talks to me for a while, and I say, "Yeah, uh-huh. Yeah," a lot. I actually had to interrupt him to say things, which he then moved right past anyway. He gave me the title of a book he wants me to read.

Then, while bidding me farewell, he said I'd have to call on Tuesday to make another appointment, because there wasn't anyone left in the office to make appointments.

I'm starting to wonder what I'm paying for. So I'm going to look for another doctor's office. The prescription I have now actually has a refill on it, so that gives me a little time.

We went to Madison this weekend to see David and Vanessa and teeny Max. Bridget was telling them what to do, and they enjoyed receiving those suggestions. Still, I felt it necessary to temper Bridget by telling her to stop telling them what to do. We had a good time, going for a walk, eating bagels, cooking out, watching Cops. Watched a lot of Cops, so I got that going for me.

The Cops episodes were real old, too. Like over ten years old, gauging by the cars. But apart from that, hardly anything has changed. Criminals are still doing the same stupid crap now as they did then. Cops still have the same cop haircuts now as they did then.

It's good to have some stability in your life.

Sometimes, in the past, I would have dreams. Good dreams, where I was happy and things were right. Sure, maybe the dreams would be all weird and surreal, but the feeling I had in the dream was good. Then I would wake up and realize it was just a dream and realize that I was still in the drudgery of my awake life.

Not that my awake life was actually intolerable. I was only perceiving it as such.

Now, I look at Caden and Bridget and I feel like I did in those dreams. And I keep expecting to wake up to drudgery again. I can feel how good things are now, but the goodness still feels fleeting and intangible. It's a nervous time for me because of that.

Bridget says his cord is hanging by a thread, and will likely come off this week. It's about time. I can't wait to play with his bellybutton, because I think he might find that amusing, and I will definitely find it amusing.

Speaking of Bridget, she's been working as a waitress for three days now, and doesn't completely despise it yet. The rest of the staff is giving her a little crap about how she thinks she's going to hit the floor and make mad tips, even though she's a total rookie. Her response: "I might just be good at this. You never know." They don't know who they're talking to. She's gonna show them all up.

This morning, on the way to work, it was overcast. It must have been quite an interesting world when no one knew what clouds were. When I look at them, I think big bunches of water vapor condensed around dust particles, and sometimes it rains. Caden, on the other hand, has no idea. He just looks up and sees a big, wide swipe of various shades of blue-gray.

I tried to look at the sky through his eyes, and I succeeded to some degree. And the cows and the trees. But not for long, because I was driving and you have to stay in the moment with that.

What I did realize, once the strip mall area came up, was that people's creations of signs and buildings and roads have nothing on nature's trees and hills and animals.

Maybe I'll go hang outside at lunchtime today.

Okay a bunch of news.

Vanessa and David have had their son, Max. We took Caden up to Madison, WI, to meet him, and he traveled very well. Max is like holding a saltine cracker in comparison to Caden. We are also guessing that Max and Caden will be the next Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Cause they're so cute.

Caden had yet another most giant poop of his short life this morning. I wasn't there to see it, but Bridget reports that she "cannot begin to describe the amount of poop that came out of [my] son." I have to think he's a pound lighter now, because he hadn't had a big poop for an entire week.

The wind of last weekend is all but forgotten now, and I have a plan to line the back of my yard with hedges to piss off all those fuckers who built fences all around me in an attempt to block off the utility pedestals from their own yards.

Bridget starts as a waitress at a fancy restaurant tonight. She's going to try it out and see if she can work part time there and no time as a retail manager. This would be great, I think. She's managed for quite a long time, and I think she needs a break from that as much as anything. I'm very curious to hear about how this first day goes, but she doesn't get home until late. I just looked at the clock and realized that she's already there working. Good luck!

Which reminds me - I have to pick up our son from her parents house. That would be funny if I forgot that, huh?

I neglected to mention that I have passed two of the seven required MCSE tests.

What is the deal with the wind already? For 48 hours now, it's been as though we are in a bad sci-fi movie, perhaps Kevin Costner's "Windyworld." It's starting to piss me off.

It's Mother's Day. I bought Bridget a gift certificate for a massage - actually it's just to Mario Tricoci's, where massages can be gotten, among other things. I insisted that it must be used on a massage. We ate corned beef and cabbage at her parents' tonight, and it was real good.

Last night we went out to Payton's all by ourselves. We left Caden with his grandma, had some dinner and a couple of beers, and came back home by 10:40. It was past our bedtime before we even left. Bridget asked me on the way there, "Do you think he misses me?" and several times during our outing remarked, "I wonder what they're doing now?"

We may not go out again for quite a while.

Yesterday morning he had happy time. Smiling and almost laughing for a good 30 minutes straight. It was wonderful.

I was feeding him late last night in his room, and he was kind of smiley after that, too. I tried my hardest to recenter my world view around him. Instead of focusing on the importance of work, or the neverending distractions I entertain myself with, I tried to center my world around Caden and picture everything in relation to him. I was not able to do this as well as I had hoped. I need more practice, and I was in a marginally uncomfortable position in the chair. Still, it's a good goal to have.

I've also made the discovery that, trite though this may sound, every smile I get is priceless. Every single one makes me the richest man in the world, for just a little bit.

My shoulder and back have been killing me for almost a week. I think it started when I was holding Caden all crooked.

He wanted to be held over my shoulder, but I wanted to be able to see him. So I twisted myself up for an inordinately long period of time. This, I think, is what has led to my injury. I shall suffer.

My third doctor's appointment was supposed to be yesterday. Yes, they canceled it again. That's zero out of three appointments they've kept. I would look for another shrink, but it was such a hassle getting this one, and he does keep the drugs coming. That's all I need anyway, really. The times I have talked to him haven't brought me any new insight, it's just been me saying, "Yeah, this and this and this," and him saying, "That's because that and that," and me thinking, "Yeah, I know. When will these appointments start to be useful?"

This blog was originally supposed to be about Caden. As soon as he can type, I'll set him up with his own blog. That should be interesting.

I'm getting my first tests scheduled for this coming Friday. Two should be fairly simple, and those are the ones I'm taking. The other two I'm going to have to crack books for. It's the kind of thing where if I was sitting down building a network, I could do it no problem. But they ask you stupid questions like, "What's on this applet, this tab, this button, this checkbox? What does that do?" Well shit, if I could just look at the system, I would know. I can't think of a situation where I would need to know that without having access to a system I could check it on.

He woke up at 4:20 this morning and Bridget got me up to settle him down. He was extra grouchy, and, as a result, so was I. I haven't been getting much sleep lately. But I know Bridget has to get up and feed him twice in the middle of the night, so I'm not trying to say I'm getting the short end of the stick. I'm just saying it's wearing on me.

I don't get a lot of time at home, especially with my long commute and class on Tuesday and Thursday. It's pretty crappy. The weekends rock; I get to have some good long slouching sessions with the boy.

Anyway, last night the solution was the bouncy seat. The bouncy seat it a fantastic invention, as it requires a minimum of effort to generate a respectable bounce. My only problem is that it's near impossible to do this comfortably from the bed, with the next on the floor nearby, because the sleeping surface of our bed is seven feet off the floor. I expect that if we had a normal height bed, it would be pure bliss.

I came up with that while trying to find a comfortable position for bouncing the bouncy seat. Then I thought about the specific frequency of the bounce, and wondered whether that frequency was engineered for a scientific purpose, or if it was pure accident. I also thought about how to make that bounce frequency longer by extending the wire frame so that the seat was further away from the fulcrum. Then I considered that maybe they didn't make the seats like that because then they'd be too large and unwieldy, or from saftey considerations with the baby would be sitting so high off the ground.

Then I wondered why adults didn't have their own bouncy seats. Sure, we have armchairs and recliners, but those pale in comparison to the metal frame bouncy seat. I imagined that adult bouncy seats would have thick chrome tubing for the frame, and some kind of thick stylish fabric for the seat. They could also vibrate, but would probably not have a removable "action station" that runs on a 9-volt battery.

Then I remembered these porch chairs that my great aunt Alma used to have, which were made of metal and had a bouncing action very similar to the adult bouncy seat I was developing, and how I liked to sit in them so much when I was in fifth grade and went there after school. They were painted this weird dusty lavender color.

She would sometimes take me downtown on the bus to go to Kresge's, where there was a small fast-food cafeteria inside. She only ever let me eat there once, and I got a burrito. I was hoping that it would be better than the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches she made me at the house, but it wasn't.

She would put actual butter on them with the peanut butter and jelly. I finally had to tell her not to do that anymore. I think I might have hurt her feelings, but I had to do it. I couldn't stomach another one of those disgusting sandwiches, which I did eat on a daily basis specifically in order that I did not hurt her feelings by refusing to eat the food she had so kindly made.

Then I fell asleep for about 20 minutes before Caden woke up again.

Caden usually sleeps in the bed with us. Last night, I awoke to a cry and Bridget shoving me because I had nearly crushed him with the weight of my obese sleeping body. I didn't even feel him; she says I was on his head. That I was sleeping on my back and his head was underneath me. We're pretty sure that he's forgotten about it by now, but I haven't yet.

Bridget took the edge off a little this morning by reminding me that he was none the worse for wear, and then turning to him and saying, "That was the first time that mommy or daddy practically kills you." I get the sense that we're in for a lifetime of hair-raising, near-death experiences. Like he's going to be a volunteer human shield when he grows up instead of, say, a corporate executive.

You know, I think I'd be all right with that. I hate fucking executives. You wanna know why there's unemployment? I wonder how many normal people those executive pay packages would support, if only they were spread out among many instead of being hoarded by one.

Yesterday he had the biggest dump of all time. He was cutting loose on my lap for about five minutes straight. No fussing or crying, just straight up dumping. I called Bridget as a witness and for backup. She heard him from the kitchen he was so loud. I had expected to handle this all myself, just to have Bridget available in case of emergency, but she went right for removing the diaper on her own, so I wasn't going to say anything till it was over.

It looked like someone had poured an entire jar of caramel sauce in his pants. We were cracking up at the scope of this poop, and Caden just lay there with a look on his face like, "Yeah. I did that. That was me."

He slept real good last night, about five hours in a row. And he was awake an hour or so before that and after his last feeding. He went a long time without eating, but it didn't seem to bother him at all.

Caden was outside yesterday with his eyes open. For a long time. He pretty much liked it, and he spent a good portion of the time sticking his tongue out at me. I wanted to take pictures of him making the tongue faces, but by the time Bridget came out with the camera, and unbuckled him from his carseat harness and etc etc - tongue face time had ended.

He's able to focus on objects about ten feet away, and he can follow them left and right from that distance. He's been getting better at saying "nnnn-GAAaa" when he's crying instead of just "AAAAAAAA." This is kind of nice. Even though I still can't tell what he wants from this attempt at communication, at least I can tell he's trying.

There was a short period of time where his crying could be very frustrating to me. I felt like I was doing something wrong, or at least not doing the right thing, and that was why he was crying. I don't feel like that so much anymore. It's gotta suck to be experiencing some form of mild discomfort and have no idea how to express that to anyone, not even to yourself. I think the crying comes more from the frustration of not being able to communicate than the actual discomfort.

Caden has been spitting up quite a lot lately. We're trying not to worry about it, but sometimes he's like a fountain. Everything I've read says this about spitting up: Babies spit up. It's what they do. All the time. Sometimes a lot. Don't worry about it.

The wireless internet people say that last Thursday, they realigned the tower my antenna is pointed at, and that they have to come out and realign my antenna to match. They were supposed to call me today about that, but no call yet. I should call them now, I think.

I have called them, and they'll be calling me back in 30 minutes. We shall see.

So what else is there? Bridget's plugged duct situation seems to have cleared itself up, which is good. She's getting tired, though. The waking up at all hours is catching up with her, I think. I'm not sure what I can do about that. I'll have to do some cleaning up tonight or something.

Long Easter weekend. Bridget has been experiencing boob pain, which she is attributing to a "plugged milk duct." She's been taking all published steps to make this apparently common condition go away - but it's still there. I'm at work, and we're waiting for a call back from the boob health people at the hospital.

My wonderful, magical fixed wireless internet at home is all screwed up. For some reason, I'm getting speeds that are less than dialup. Tim, across the street, is not having this problem. About 75% of my outbound pings are fine, 20% are high (in the several hundreds of ms range) and the rest are dropped. Not sure what the deal with that is, but I'm leaning on DLS to get it taken care of. They say right on their site that they guarantee 256Kbps, so I'm expecting them to give me a refund for these slow days. Otherwise, what good is the guarantee?

They claim that the tower is saturated with traffic, and that they're working on upgrading it this week. Whatever - this came on all of a sudden, and like I said, my neighbor doesn't have any problems! I do hope that once it's all fixed that I'll be getting the screaming 10mb speeds, though.

The thing that pisses me off most is that Bridget is at home, in pain, by herself with Caden, and can't even enjoy being online.

Here's another interesting technical thing. It looks as though someone else in my neighborhood has implemented a WLAN, because I can just about connect to it from my house. And it's not even encrypted. I may have to check it out this weekend.

Yesterday, Bridget started giving the lad Mylicon. It's like baby Gas-X. He's been much more content since then.

My initial concern was, "Should we be loading the kid up withg medications so early in his career as a human being?" Apparently, the answer to that is a resounding "Yes!" In this case, the active ingredient, simethicone, has no side effects and no interactions with other medicines or foods or anything. Apparently, it's a detergent that makes one big bubbles out of many smaller ones. Bizarre; we're feeding Caden detergent.

Whatever. As long as it helps him to be less grouchy when his dad comes home from work. I already feel the hours, days, years all slipping by. Life does not afford enough time to satisfactorily enjoy being in the presence of a child.

Wait a minute. Was that me that said that?

Last night I had a dream that Caden talked for the first time. And he didn't just say a single word, he spoke a complete sentence - something like, "I am bugging you!" and pointing at me on the emphasis. I was so proud. But, when I awoke, he was still just a wiggly piece of flesh that alternated between screaming, eating, and ejecting substances with varying degrees of blech. Oh well.

He was crying quite a lot this morning, turns out it was because he was hungry, but I didn't know that. I was trying to settle him down, and failing, of course, as I am not the one with the food. I found myself starting to get a little mad, so I handed him over to Bridget.

Bridget's lucky. Sure, she has to be with him constantly, but she's getting the parenting practice that I am not. I fear that it won't be long before I'm just another one of those bumbling dads who doesn't know what he's doing, and refers to his alone time with his child as "babysitting."

Bridget's mom got this album of pop musicians doing kids' songs. I'm going to spoil it by saying that the first track is the very best of all: Cake covering "Mahna Mahna" (from the Muppet Show). It made me laugh out loud. I listened to just that song about 12 times on the way to work, and once after I got here.

Caden is getting slightly better at getting his own finger in his mouth, and slightly better at allowing me to help him do it. I find the documentation on pacifiers to be contradictory. One sentence says that you shouldn't use a pacifier to get the kid to go to sleep, because then he'll become dependent on that. In the very next sentence, the book says that if you really must allow the kid to suck on something while going to sleep, he should be suckling the breast. I'm not sure how that won't become habit-forming.

Here's something that happened a few days ago that I forgot to relate earlier. Let me give you some background.

We live in a very young neighborhood. There are three couples across the street from us who all had kids a year or two ago. We see them all outside with all the kids, being friendly with one another, laughing, playing -- all that. Before we had Caden, we'd try to wave to them, or make very small talk as we were pulling in the driveway or whatever, but it never worked. It was like they were all actively ignoring us.

We started calling them "The Baby Club." I was always very envious and pissed that we weren't in The Baby Club. When Bridget got pregnant, I was very excited that we would now have our chance, but Bridget reminded me that once our baby was born, it wouldn't be The Baby Club anymore. It would be The Toddler Club, and we could very easily be excluded from that, too.

Finally the day came where it was nice and warm outside, and Bridget suggested we go for a walk. That sounded fine, and oh! Hurry! The Baby Club is out! If we hurry, maybe we can be in The Baby Club. So we packed up quick and got out the door. The stroller was in the garage, so we went out that way, opening the garage door like a curtain rising on a Broadway show. This was going to be a decisive moment.

We pulled the stroller out onto the driveway, and all The Baby Club people looked over our way. A couple of them gave disappointed, half-hearted waves. One guy, Jeff (who I've talked to on a few occasions and is very nice), came bounding across the street with congratulations. The rest and all their kids followed soon after, even my friend Tim and his kids showed up (also from across the street, but I've known Tim forever. Another story entirely.) and before long there was a giant crowd all oohing and ahhing over Caden.

We have been welcomed, apparently, into the baby club. I don't yet know if there are secret handshakes or funny hats.

I think the lack of sleep is starting to catch up to both of us. Caden seems unfazed by it, as he is able to sleep or not sleep whenever he pleases.

I'm just a little hazy this morning, and I have a headache. I actually took some Advil this morning when I got to work. I usually just tough these kinds of things out, but I think I need all the help I can get.

Here's a non-baby related story. Yesterday, between work and class, I stopped at McDonald's. I'm in the drive thru, and the lady behind me bumps my car. Not real hard, and I'm thinking we'll just stop after we get out of the line and say forget about it. So I park and wait, and the lady ... drives away! I go after her, as she's going pretty much the same way as I was going to go. When I finally catch up to her, she first claims that she didn't hit me at all, then that she was only behind me in the drive thru, then that she didn't have to stop because she didn't cause any damage. Fact is, there is a little scratch in my bumper now. (Not one that I care about, but if I didn't have to go to class I would have made a huge deal about it at this point.) So I yell at her for a while and then head off to class. A very anti-climactic ending, I know, but there you have it.

Bridget was kind of grouchy this morning, too. She's been going running around in the world for the last couple of days, which I'm sure has tired her out. I can't blame her; the weather has been phenomenal. But I told her to make sure to get a nap today. I hope she does.

I tried to nap in the car after I got to class yesterday, but I couldn't seem to pull it off. My seat doesn't recline in such a fashion that would make it a comfy bed. I'll have to clear out the back seat so I can stretch out there.