don’t panic

There’s a new way to ream you in “America’s Finest City”… It’s called SDG&E. Yes, that’s right. Now, along with gasoline prices that are laughably high compared to almost any other state in the country, you can now pay up to FOUR TIMES as much as everyone else for your power.

But how could such a shafting come about? I mean, SOMEBODY would have stepped in said something, right? RIGHT!?

It would seem that someone did step in and say something. Our city government, in their infinite wisdom, decided to give us a break and freeze the price of electricity at what it was at this time last year. We all breathed a sigh of relief until we found out that what they were really doing was PUTTING OFF those charges until 2003. The three and four hundred dollar-a-month bills don’t go away, they just go onto your account as a credit debt. No one asked ME if I wanted an SDG&E credit card, and now I don’t even get a choice whether or not to use it. Well, actually that’s not entirely true. If I bend over and take it up the pooper and pay the full amount shown on my bill, then I don’t have to worry about a catastrophic balloon payment in 2003. If I pay what I did last year (let’s average that to $65 a month) and my full bill is around $400, then that means that each month I am accumulating a debt of $335. I figure we have about 36 months before the devil comes knocking, so that totals out to a mere $12,060 I will have to pay all at once. If I REALLY conserve power (maybe ditch the fridge or something) I suppose I could reduce my monthly debt to a very low $150. Hey, that’s only $5,400 due. No problem. Oh, and that’s assuming that they don’t charge me any interest on my debt, which would be just awfully nice of them, don’t you think?

This wasn’t a total surprise. We knew that a big bill was coming, but nobody guessed that it was going to be quite such a shocker. Nobody but SDG&E, that is. There was also this rumor that in the very near future, SDG&E customers would be getting this big check because of a bond that matured early. The power company was very quick to let us know how wonderful this news was, and to expect a substantial credit in the mail. Sure enough, we got one too. Almost $330 dollars! Wow! Wait a minute… That number is awfully familiar. Hey, isn’t that almost exactly the amount extra that appeared on this month’s bill? Now how can that be? What a coincidence!

What in the hell were they thinking down at city hall?! Is every one of our leaders and city planners completely brain dead? Maybe they should just hire a few of the boys at the power company to run things for a while. They are anyway, so why not pay them out of taxpayer money. And this comes at the same time that SDG&E is telling us that the our power grid is too full and that they may have to start rolling blackouts. That’s when certain areas of the city are turned off for a few hours at a time so that the grid as a whole can stay active. Then they rotate the blacked-out areas so that everyone can eat in the dark. Lucky us.

Why don’t we have enough power? There’s LOTS available now that deregulation says we can buy from anyone. But you’re not really buying electrons. You buy a slice of the national power grid, which means that it’s all just virtual. It’s supposed to allow for competitive pricing and such. That’s real neat, except that San Diego is the only one who is deregulated right now, so since the power companies can charge US whatever rate they want, why not boost it through the ceiling?! Hey, rape and pillage while you can! Sooner or later when more cities are involved, they are going to realize how duped they were and want to change the rules again. So gouge them while you can!

But back to the grid problem. So now that we know it’s our LOCAL power stations that are overloaded, the question of WHY arises. How could the fifth largest city in the nation be so blind to such a simple problem? Don’t we have someone projecting usage and what not? Apparently we don’t, for there isn’t even a new power plant in the works. And since it takes AT LEAST five years (more likely TEN) to build one of those puppies, we’re basically screwed.

Here’s an idea. Why don’t the city planers go out to their local CompUSA computer store and pick up a copy of SimCity. Anybody who’s played that game for more than an hour knows that priority numero uno is your power grid. Damn, a ten-year-old could plan this city better than the current staff. And SimCity would also teach them not to build too much of anything without adequate roads and transportation services. It’s not like we don’t have the hellish example of LA right next door to give us a clue about how bad it can get if you just let developers buy you off year after year. How can it be that I’m STILL seeing major housing developments and industrial parks going up in areas where traffic is so bad that it takes 40 minutes just to pass through no matter what day or time it is? And it’s been like that for TEN YEARS! I mean, if there was suddenly traffic there for some weird reason, maybe I could understand. But the worst areas in “beautiful” San Diego have been nightmares since the first day I dropped in behind the wheel. And these are exactly the same areas that are currently getting the most development. DOH!

It makes me just want to go down to city hall and slap somebody’s face. (more…)

Most of you are probably aware of my wife’s story, and her recent personal triumphs. Surprisingly, I don’t regularly read her journal (I get to live it), partially at her request (she hasn’t actually told me not to… It’s just a feeling), and partially because I don’t want it to influence me. And it would. She puts her real emotions and conflicts in there, and I am a major part of those feelings.

Sometimes I’m part of the conflicts, and that’s okay too. But it wouldn’t be if I were to read her journal and alter the way I treat her based on what she had written. She has always deeply valued that we are “real” with each other. We try VERY hard not to wear masks and be something that we are not. It’s not easy. But it would be much harder if I was basing myself on her perception of who I am. I MUST be who I am, even if she doesn’t like it. And the same applies to her. That doesn’t mean that we don’t change. We change ourselves daily. But it’s at the request of the other. There’s a difference. One is based on my interpretation of what she wants, and the other is a spoken need.

Why all of the above? Because part of our story is my acceptance of her as a multiple person. This is not something to be taken lightly. First of all, I have to BELIEVE her. It’s easy not to. Our society wants, even ingrains us to believe in a set of moral, ethical blinders, and that anything outside of the “norm” is fiction or conspiracy. The trauma that causes people to shatter themselves is often horrific in the extreme. We don’t WANT to believe it. If it can happen to “them,” then it could happen to “us.” But more than that, is that I believe in HER. ALL of her.

In order for me to accept her as a multiple, I have to accept every one of her personalities, and everything that they represent. And I have. I believe it with ALL my heart, and no one, not even she herself could tell me otherwise. I have no “proof” that her mind is split into more than one (for there can be none), but I have accepted this as truth and all that it entails. So much so, that I asked each and every personality I could find within her (and that would come out and respond) to marry me individually. This in itself posed many problems since many of her personalities are children. For them, I offered to be a permanent guardian (for the boys, “roommate”). My marriage proposal took about six months.

So now that she has integrated, I find myself within a very odd set of emotions. I am extremely proud of her for even attempting to heal herself in this way. It has taken her nine years of intense therapy to get where she is today, and I have had the privilege to be a part of that healing for only about six. I have seen her fall apart (literally and figuratively), and I have seen her overcome incredible barriers in her healing that would have crushed me completely were I in her shoes. I have held her children as they trembled to some inner terror, and I have stood my ground while one of her protectors threatens my very life with a foot-long carving knife.

She is awesome, and no one, accept possibly Spug, knows her as I do. And even then, my knowledge of her and her personalities is special. I could recognize almost all of them on site, without a single word spoken. I know their “faces” well.

Because of this, I also feel great loss. To me, the integration of a personality means that the uniqueness of that entity is mostly lost into the whole. But these are real people to me. I love them as I would a son or daughter, wife or brother. When they decide to return to my wife, I rejoice with her and in what it means, but I also mourn the loss of someone I have spent six years learning to love and accept. Now that they have all chosen to integrate, I am quite suddenly faced with the loss of an entire family… A BIG family! Imagine if everyone you were directly related to were suddenly killed in an airplane accident on their way to a family reunion. That’s what I feel.

It hasn’t quite sunken in yet, and I have this entirely new person to learn to accept and love. She’s the same, yet she’s not. I see the “faces” of the others in her from time to time, but they’re different. I know I love her, and I feel intimate with her, yet I am constantly finding myself noticing subtle differences.

And some of her new personality changes are not so subtle. The way that she views herself and the world has changed in a big way. Instead of shifting gears into a personality to fit the situation, she now has to come to an internal agreement about issues, ethics and morals. That’s got to be tough! Before, if she encountered something distasteful, say, a rude person, she could either have Gigles come out and wave enthusiastically, or Brooke, to flip them the bird. Or she could just let them decide while her “core” personality continued to have it’s own separate feelings about the event.

But not any more. Now she has to be comfortable with herself and her reactions. In the last week, I have seen her take on a very objective and forgiving set of personal ethics. It startled me a bit when she first chided me for being a bit too passionate regarding an issue that we have both ranted on together in the past. Same person, different paradigm.

How will it all turn out? I can’t say. She is a different person, but then so are all of us, every day, because we re-integrate the world around us into what we know and who we are. In her case, I was used to the stability of definition. Each personality was SO defined, that I now find myself lost in her fluctuating core. She is adapting to her new inner self just as I am adapting to her new outer self. I am confident that I will find her every bit greater than the sum of her parts. (more…)

I can’t figure out how I feel about what is going to happen tomorrow with my wife. It is probably the most significant event in her life, and my feelings are muddy and thick. Part of me wants to rejoice, jump up and down and kiss her until we’re blue, but another part of me is deeply sorrowful. These people that I have come to know and accept as separate entities, are going away, forever. I have befriended them, loved them, been loved by them, made love to them, and listened to them and their pains. I asked them all to marry me, so when they cease as individuals, then a part of me ceases also. Yes, they will be integrated into the whole, but also diminished slightly.

Why is that?

The only answer I have is that I have changed because of them, and when they go, that part of me must remain and go on without them. It is a loneliness that is a little like mourning, only the person doesn’t die, they just become… diluted?

I am very proud of her, my Renee. She is a most excellent woman. Very rare. (more…)

Today my little girl did something profound.

We went to the park as we usually do sometime in the morning hours on Saturday. Most weekends, she fusses a bit getting out of the car, then dashes over to the play gym and joins in on whatever might be going on with the other kids there. She usually squeals and runs and slides and generally watches the other older kids play for about twenty minutes, and then comes over to me and wants to go on the swings.

At our park, there are two kinds of swings. The first kind is for the younger kids. It’s not just a strip seat, but rather a whole diaper-like chair that keeps a child from falling out, even if they should let go of the thick chains that hold it up. It’s the safe swing. It’s the little-girl swing.

The other type of swing is your standard flexible strap kind that allows a child to do whatever they want. It’s not uncommon to see slightly older kids ejecting themselves into the air, arms and legs flailing, while their parents look on in utter horror. These are the same kids that you’ll see walking along the top of a fence, or jumping trash cans on their bikes a few years later. This second kind of swing is the dangerous swing. It’s the big-girl swing.

So today, after her romp on the gym, my sweet innocent little baby walks right up to the second type of swing and looks up at me expectantly. I just stare down at her for a few moments, trying desperately to see something other than what I KNOW I’m seeing in her eyes.

“Don’t you want to go on the OTHER swings, honey?”

“No.” She replies, holding onto the edge of the seat that sits just below her chin.

My fatherly instincts go into overdrive, desperately attempting to justify why I should force her to use the little-girl swings. I have this internal debate that goes something like this:

“DANGER WILL ROBINSON!! You CAN’T let her go on the BIG-girl swing, it’s positively insane! She’s only two… okay, two and a half… okay, almost three. But damn it all, she could fall over backward and snap her neck. It’s, what, about twelve feet to the ground… okay, only two, but that’s ALL YOU NEED to get REALLY hurt! Couldn’t we just put her in the little-girl swing? The SAFE swing? I KNOW we’re supposed to encourage her to move on to more advanced things, but this is… This is DIFFERENT!”

She sees me staring at her, my mouth slightly ajar as I mentally crumble into final resignation. She rubs it in by patting the swing with her hand and smiling.

I could still do it. I could even then pull her away and drop her into the little-girl swing and she would probably cry for a while, but she would stop and everything would be right in the world for another day. But of course, I don’t. How can I not let her try? How can I not give her the trust in this one small thing that may very well be her first sparks of independence? And yet, how can I not stop her? Isn’t it my duty as a father to protect and shield her from possible harm?

It is a conflict that can not be won by compromise.

In order for me to allow her to do this one simple thing, I must accept the possibility, faint as it may be, that she may indeed fall off and break her neck. I must allow her to do this FULLY. I must be willing to let go of everything, if only for a moment.

Without saying a word, I gently lift her and place her tiny frail body into the big-girl swing. Her little hands barely wrap fully around the thick chains and she looks like a doll. I check her, and check her again, and finally remove my hands. She doesn’t fall.

“Okay… Here we go,” I say half to myself and half to her as I so very lightly give her a push. She laughs, and kicks her feet with glee, and I push a little harder. And then again, and again, each time, her arc lengthening until she is happily swinging at the limit of what my fatherly instincts will allow.

As I stand there behind her, pushing her little body on the swing for nearly 45 minutes, I realize, perhaps for the first time, that like every parent I am slowly pushing her out of my life and into her own. (more…)

My wife was talking to a friend of hers who it turns out is pregnant. When she came home, she immediately called me up at work to ask me if we should have another baby.

Of course she didn’t just come out and say it like that. Instead, she talked about her day, and the Bit, and how grown up she was getting. When she started to mention her friend’s pregnancy, I knew what was coming.

“Honey, let’s have just one more…”

One more. That’s like one more atomic bomb. The threat of total annihilation isn’t all that impressive when you’ve already been bombed.

We could do it. It would be hard, financially, mentally and physically, but what child isn’t? There was this crisp silence over the phone for about five seconds where neither of us said a word as we thought about the implications of “just one more.”

“No.” I finally answered in what I figured was my best “male authority figure” voice. I knew that if I wasn’t firm, I could be persuaded. I’m a sucker for my wife’s pouting, even over the phone. She wasn’t buying it though.

“Oh, come on. The bit needs to be an older sister…”

It was tempting. My daughter is at that particular age where everything she does is either incredibly cute, or incredibly insane. It’s those cute things that get you though, and I could really easily see her playing with a little sibling and doing all the things that siblings do to bond with each other. It didn’t help that my wonderfully descriptive wife was painting that picture for me while I sat there all weak and vulnerable.

“No,” I said a little less sure of myself. She saw my crumbling and jumped on it.

“Why not? I promise that I’ll really get real healthy for it.” The last time my wife had a baby, I almost lost them both. Toxemia. Not her fault, but it scared the crap out of me. It scared the crap out of her as well, but she doesn’t remember a thing on account of the amnesiac that they gave her to help her forget the tube they stuffed down her throat to suck the liquid out of her lungs and allow her to breath. I tried to be objective. I put those memories aside. And then it hit me…

“Lover, the Bit is JUST at the age where we are starting to enjoy her. She’s finally communicating with us, and for the first time in almost two years, we smile when we hear her waking up. Do you really want to start over again?”

There was that scratchy silence again.

“Um… Well, I guess not. You’re right.”

Another first.

“But,” she continued, “you better get yourself fixed before I change my mind.”

ZING!

We had been talking about me getting the big V, but other stuff had always come up to distract us. I guess it’s about time to think about it again. Seriously.

So tonight, the Bit was being a little crabby. She was simmering somewhere between “moderate whine” and “fall-down tantrum” so I decided to take her outside and sweep the sidewalk. She loves to hang with me out in front of out apartment and “help” me brush the leaves and berries off our walkway. She even has her own pint-size broom for the task. We were down there for about 45 seconds before she tore off and ran straight through the open door of our next door neighbor’s apartment.

“STOP!” I commanded, using the braking order usually reserved for streets and stairs and such. She heard me. She turned her head, just a little to make sure that I wasn’t in range… Then she bolted.

Having a child is a bit like having one of those exaggerating mirrors in front of you all the time. You can look at your offspring and KNOW what they are thinking, because YOU taught them to think that way. They act just like you, talk just like you, only without any of the cumbersome restraints of unimportant things like ethics, conscience, and safety. So I was already in motion and picking up speed even as I saw that tiny flicker in her eye. But she was halfway into our neighbor’s living room before I snagged her hand and whirled her around without breaking stride.

And I doubt that they ever would have noticed our intrusion had it not been for the blood-curdling scream that my lovely daughter let loose in their foyer. I still don’t think they actually saw us, but it was kind of obvious when she moved into full-fledged, hang-on-your-arm, kicking and wailing until you have to pick her up tantrum. We sceedadled right on out of there, and went straight for the bathtub. Do not pass GO. Do not collect 200 Prozac.

And now, after much fussing and mussing, she is at last konked-out in her bed with her butt in the air (one last act of defiance). We both sigh and settle into “our” time. It’s been a long, but “average” night.

One is plenty. (more…)