The Cell Phone Ban, Yeah Right

On April 1st was introduced "The Cell Phone Ban" where drivers were now forbitten from using a cell phone while at the wheel, there was an uproar followed by a raising of shields by all kinds of people's rights defense groups and a lot of media "blah blah blah" about it. They even had experts on the television show what kind of bluetooth apparatus would be legal, and what kind would not.

Like there's a class given in CEGEP called Techniques de Legal of The Cell Phone Behind the Wheel There-La...

So now it's over a month later, people have had ample time to acquire earpieces, wired or not for their cell phones but why is it then that every single day while I'm on the road, I see at least three or four drivers using the cell phone the traditional way, by holding it up to their ears?

I'll give you the answer to that one:

It's because the SQ and La Police De Montreal (and Quebec, and Sherbrooke, and etc.) don't have the manpower to stop normal road delinquents, the REALLY dangerous ones who speed, cut in and out of lanes, pass on the right, tailgate, illegally change lanes where there is a continuous line, run stop signs, red lights, etc.

Imagine if they were going to start wasting their precious little time by stopping delinquent cell phone users.

We should've known.

Really you'd think we would've seen this coming.

All it does is aggravate people like myself for whom driving with a cell phone is not a problem because we never made a habit of it and only did it in emergency situations. Only now we see other drivers, some of who I'm sorry but clearly wouldn't know a steering wheel if it jumped up and bit them in the ass, drive around like sissies, with a cell phone in their hand, held up by their ear.

Now that it's illegal all it does is frustrate us all.

All the Transport Ministry has done with this bill, is make bad matters worse.

"You Look Like Crap!"

About six months ago I changed jobs, I got a better job. Not a higher paying job, the hours aren't even any better than my old job but it does have some perks like paid holidays and sick days as well as some medicinal coverage, etc.

I was supposed to start relaxing, enjoying life, my wife and daughter, my car, my house, my "stuff".

Instead I started getting anxious. Not that it's a particularly stressful job, well, it is rather stressful but it's nothing I'm not supposed to be able to handle, compared to my previous job this is a walk in the park.

A piece of cake.

Like taking candy from a child.

Putting toothpaste on a toothbrush.

Easy.

Like comparing a trip to Mars and getting the newspaper from the mailbox in the morning.

But still, I got anxious. Maybe it's not related to my work. Possibly, it's related to the overall stress of society and frankly, regardless of what the reasons for my anxiety are, I'm going to fight it.

Some of the effects of this anxiety is my difficulty to stay asleep.

I've always had trouble sleeping.

As a child I remember countless hours spent in bed staring at my night light, waiting to fall asleep.

As a teenager I remember complete nights spent on my computer - this is before Al Gore invented the Internet - programming or playing video games.

I also remember starting to have migraines. Awful, full blown classic migraines complete with loss of vision, speech impairment, loss of sensation and tingling of the arms and legs, vomiting, alien anal probing sensation, etc. I used to have one per year, sometimes I'd even skip one year.

Last week, I had two. I was quasi-bedridden for three days.

So this week I went to see my doctor and the first thing he tells me is: "You look like crap!"

I explained to him the extent of my problems, well at least the ones that concern him. I started a few months ago to have serious trouble sleeping. My wife - God bless her little soul and her big heart - snores a bit, ok, at times more than just a bit but still, I've lived with her for 15 years but now, all of a sudden she prevented me from sleeping.

I'd go to bed and start listening.

I'd actually pay attention to her breathing, watching for any sign of her snoring.

Then when she'd start, I'd take my pillow and my alarm, and walk over to the couch, preferably in the basement and sleep there.

Of course, sleeping one night on the couch won't change your life.

Sleeping every other night on the couch though, starts to take its toll on your morale and frankly I started growing fatigued.

This got me anxious.

Anxious to fall asleep.

I'll go to bed and start thinking, God, what if I can't sleep again?

What if she starts to snore? Do I stay in bed or go sleep elsewhere and risk alienating her?

Of course the direct effect of this is that I immediately would not fall asleep. In fact I simply sat there, listening for snores...

Then the headaches came, and when they did I made like any red-blooded man of age would;

I took to the bottle.

This had the direct effect of putting me to sleep...

...sometimes for up to three hours.

But then I'd wake up and stay awake until dawn. Sometimes, I'd fall asleep moments before my alarm went off.

So I decided to stop drinking. Which I did. I tried to completely and utterly not drink for two full weeks. Nothing, not even a beer.

Still, I'd take forever to fall asleep only to wake up 45 minutes later to the sound of my precious little wife of 85lb snoring.

I refused to elbow her or nudge her. What would be the point of that? We'd be two of us, sitting there like morons, not sleeping.

The thing about my wife is that she's so lovable, pretty, all good things, and snoring is just out of place on her, like an Australian Wombat in Alaska.

At first it made absolutely no sense to me that she, could snore that loudly.

So I took to the sofa again. (and started drinking moderately again)

This week-end I caught myself vacuuming under that sofa, opening its hide-a-bed and cleaning that as well.

Basically getting the hide-a-bed ready to be unhidden.

So back to the doctor, after listening to me for a few minutes he diagnosed me with anxiety.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder he called it.

He said lots of people have that and apparently it was supposed to make me feel better.

He prescribed two different kinds of medication:

-Something to "help me fall asleep and apparently stay asleep", not really sure what it's called.

-Something for the anxiety, called Effexor XR.

I went to the drugstore after seeing him and picked up my prescriptions.

However last night I didn't take them.

At first I figured I'd wait for the week-end so I wouldn't have to miss work, again, in the event of some weird, rare, side effect like growing a third nipple on my forehead, or a second, fully functional penis, in the palm of my hand complete with testicles and an urethra.

Also I wanted to read up on them, mostly Effexor which he told me was addictive and would need to be weened off of.

After picking those up, I went home, changed the oil on my wife's car, replaced two burned out parking lamps on it, re-adjusted the push bars, did some touch ups on her front grille and skimmed my swimming pool.

Then I cleaned both our car's soft-tops with Armor-All and wiped off the windows.

Really. I did. I do that sort of stuff. I'm a do it yourself kind of a guy.

I've got a filter and some oil ready for my own car. As well as spark plugs to replace the ones in my wife's car at the first sign of a free hour or two.

I've also got some 50lb test Spiderwire brand fishing lead ready for me to sew the convertible soft top back into shape, as it's showing signs of fatigue at some of its seams, complete with a leather sewing kit.

But I digress...

After doing that, I went in the house, emptied the clean dishes from the dishwasher, had supper - some pasta with the sauce I prepared on Sunday - along with a single beer.

Then we had a surprise (and annoying to me) visitor, although my wife enjoys her company, I took a shower while she was visiting, after which I played Rock Band with my wife and daughter for a while, then watched some HDTV documentary on the relationship between Corals and their predators in the Indian Ocean, their cross-breeding and migration patterns based on oceanic currents and how they only evolve when they reproduce sexually but not when they reproduce by cloning...

I then brushed my teeth and went to bed.

I fell asleep, the last time I looked at the time it was 10:02PM.

I woke up at precisely 10:44PM. My heart was racing and I was sweating.

I listened to my wife snore for 10 minutes or so, then made like a coral, and migrated downstairs to sleep on the unhidden hide-a-bed. I brought the luxury of two pillows with me as well as a blanket.

I fell asleep close after 11:00PM.

I woke up a minute before my alarm rang at 5:30AM, sleeping a whopping six straight hours.

Now the question is what should I do?

Should I talk to my wife? Explain to her that for a week or so I'd like to sleep in the basement.

Nothing personal, I Love her dearly. To the point of spelling I Love her with a capital L.

And to ponder what I should be doing.

However. I need to sleep and I don't want to start taking medication just because I feel guilty for not sleeping in her bed?

In the mean while I read up on Effexor and I have to say it's nothing to encourage me to take it. Gems include (for men) painful erections (!), impotence, delayed ejaculation, although after some thought on the subject that last one might be a good thing, addictiveness, anxiety (!), drowsiness, dry mouth, weight gain which might be another desirable side effect for me, and I could continue for there are dozens more.

There's even a petition to get the manufacturer to acknowledge that their drug is addictive and can be destructive in some cases.

So I'm gonna see. Although I might take that drug to "help me stay asleep" only as a test this week-end, I seriously doubt I'll be partaking in Effexor for now and until June. It's just not me.

I'm going to leave those cyber-designer drugs up to Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and their peers.