Initial reflections on becoming a father (or 'yes it finally happened') Part 1

Recent I said this to Mrs T while washing dishes and or tiding something up around the house:

'Love, did you ever think about how anal I would be if I didn't have a disability?'

If your reading this and you don't know me, take it from me, the idea of yours truly being anal about tidiness or housework would seem hilariously far-fetched to most people that ever saw, for instance, the flat in which I lived before Mrs T came along and insisted upon de-clutter, fumigation and shock-horror even things to put on my erstwhile bare-white-bacheleor-walls, y'know, pictures and stuff- that kind of thing! Chores or getting mundane tasks have just never come naturally to me.

There are a number of elements that contribute to this situation. First, the combination of being an architypal Man and the impact of CP mean that I have next to no ability to be neat or organized. Add to this the inherent challenge of multitasking. Multitasking is difficult because it requires quick,orderly thinking in many directions at once and part of my disability includes the cognitive processing issue discussed in the previous post. By way of example, the following scenario is not uncommon - I very easily get sucked into whatever task is my number one priority on my to do list and cannot complete another, by definition for the time being less important task, until the one at hand is complete. In practice this means that I might procrastinate unsuccessful through the task I have set myself without being able to change to focus on a new task. Thus while I labor to get one thing done inefficiently other important tasks go by the wayside. Adding to frustration and decreasing productivity.

There is one final component that combines to produce the perfect-storm of non-anal virtual inability to get chores and little jobs around the house done to what most other people (ok, really when I say 'most other people I mean Mrs T) consider an acceptable standard. Let me be clear (he said defensively), it is not that I dont care about getting a job done, its just that my barometer for getting something done is exactly that. Very often living with my disability means showing the resourcefulness to figure out how to get the job done, whether it be it get my shoes on, get my cup of hot tea or coffee across the apartment unaided. As long as I can successfully complete what I need to do,  the aesthetics of the situation are irrelevant. 

Put simply in my life nothing has to be beautiful, it has to be functional.

Yet despite all this, lurking in a very repressed corner of my being - is someone who is overwhelmed by a desire to be clean, tidy and orderly- to be anal! This 'someone', may be a stranger even to those who know me well, but he does come to the fore occasionally.

All that went before is essentially a very lengthy preamble to which the headline is: Our son was born on the morning of July 1. Since then my orderly, efficient, productive alter-ego has come to the fore in a way that I have found both satisfying and surprising. 

My initial plan was to write all my reflections in one post. However, this now a much longer entry than intended, I have much more to mention and its already late, oh and also there's a nappy that needs changing urgently.

Basically, we'll speak again tomorrow....