Entry 248: Birthdays 2 and 37

My birthday was Thursday.  It was fine.  I don't really like making a big deal out my birthday because -- I just don't.  I'm not into gift giving or receiving, and parties in my honor make me feel uncomfortable, which is weird because I'm pretty narcissistic.  (I know, I don't really understand it either.)  Plus, this is the time of the year in which everybody is out of town.  Last year, at S's urging, I set up a birthday event at a nearby bar -- just a hey-let's-all-meet-at-this-place-at-this-time type of thing and out of the 15 or so people who were invited, exactly one person (other than S and I) could make it.  So we just canceled it.  That's what I get for trying.

Come to think of it, we should have gone through with it, and then when our one friend showed up, and asked where everybody is, we could have said, "Oh, it's just us and you."  That would have been kinda funny.  It reminds of this time I went with my friend RB to a bar for the birthday of a random guy on her flag football team, and we were the only people who showed up.  I felt bad for the dude.  He was only like 25, and he was this big gangling, awkward kid.  He was a nice guy, but it was pretty obvious that social interaction was not his forte.  And now for his birthday the only people who came were a flag football teammate he barely knew and her friend he didn't know at all.  To make matters worse, we just stopped by for a quick beer on our way to a different party.  We invited him with us, but he felt compelled to stay in case other people came.  So we just left him at the table by himself with a gigantic drink in a novelty glass the bartender gave him when she carded him and saw it was his birthday.

I look at all the lonely people ... where do they all come from ...



Anyway, the in-laws are in town right now, so I got dosas on my birthday, which is a pretty good birthday meal.  Also, our friends E & M stopped by for a little while.  E is horrified by the notion of somebody not being properly celebrated on their birthday, so she brought over a little ice cream cake, which was very nice of her.  It said my name on it and everything.  I love ice cream cake.

S and I had plans to see a movie tonight, but the movie I want to see (Boyhood) is three hours long and the only showing we could go to is 8:30, which means we wouldn't be getting home until like midnight, and that's way past S's birthday, so we bought tickets for a matinee show tomorrow instead.  The thing about staying out late is that not only does S start to get sleepy, but I start to get anxious.  With work and Lil' S and everything I get so little time to myself to just nerd-out that I absolutely crave the few hours I get before I go to sleep at night.  Sometimes when we're out, I'll start itching to get back before it gets too late.

Actually, what I really wanted to do tonight is go to the Nationals-Mariners game with King Felix on the mound, but the game is in Seattle so that would be quite a commute.  I suggested we go to a bar to watch it.  S refused initially, but she relented once I played the birthday card.  But the game starts even later than the movie (10:00 pm our time) and could potentially be longer, so we'd probably get kicked out of the bar because S would be sleeping at the table.  Plus, I don't feel like drinking because I actually get to sleep in these days (here's to early-rising, doting grandmas!), and I don't want to sully my good sleep with alcohol.

In other birthday news, we had a party for Lil' S's last Saturday.  It went well.  We were worried initially because it was supposed to rain all day -- and it did -- and our plan was to have all the attendees hang out outside, and then when the rains came, we weren't sure we could fit everybody inside comfortably.  But it all worked out.  S booked an entertainer -- a woman who sang and made balloon animals and shit like that -- and so she took all the kids and a few parents downstairs and the rest of us hung out upstairs.  So we were all spaced out nicely.  I gave S a ton of grief over hiring the woman too, so I had to eat crow on that one.  She saved us.  I have to rein S in sometimes for getting too elaborate and biting off more than she can chew, not only with planning parties, but with life in general.  But this time it really worked out to our advantage.

Alright that's all I got.  Until next time ...

Entry 247: Brooklyn

The trip to Brooklyn went well.  It was tiring -- the drive up on Friday, drive back on Sunday weekend blitz is always a bear -- but it was really fun.  I gave myself a stomachache with my terrible eating, however.  My main meals were pizza, sausage and beer, hamburger and french fries, and pizza again.  Even in the morning, at the free continental breakfast from our hotel, I ate chocolate-filled croissants for breakfast.  It's weird, they had oatmeal and hard-boiled eggs, which is what I normally eat, but somehow since I wasn't in my house I felt justified in eating crap.  Then on the drive back I started to get drowsy (meanwhile S and Lil' S were sawing logs in the backseat), so I stopped to get an iced coffee at a rest area, but the line at the Starbucks was so long that I got annoyed and got a Coke instead (it was a Cherry Coke Zero, if you want to get technical).  It was my second soda of the day, and I normally don't drink any soda, so it made me feel like my gut was rotting.  It felt like -- you know how there's that urban legend that if you put a penny in a glass of Coke and leave it overnight the penny will be completely dissolved in the morning (or something like that)? -- well, my stomach felt like that apocryphal penny.  So now I'm in "junk food detox" for a few days, which has been quite hard, as one of my coworkers who makes pastries as a hobby (very deliciously, I might add), decided to bring in a giant pan of blueberry cobbler on Monday morning, and a tub of vanilla ice cream.  I love pies and cobblers a la mode.  I pretty much had to avoid the break room.

But anyway, about the trip.  We got in to NYC Friday afternoon, and we first went to Manhattan to meet one of S's friends who had a baby a few months ago.  We met at a cool park, and I realized that New York is a good place to take a toddler in the summer because there is seemingly a decent park on every other street corner.  Lil' S is almost to the point where I can just set him down and watch him with one eye, but he's not quite there.  He still gets stuck sometimes climbing, and I have to steer him away from swinging things (like swings) lest he get knocked over wrecking ball-style.  But he's pretty good.  I know I've said it before, but that kid can climb.  He did this monkey bar thing, fairly easily, that this little boy who looked twice his age could barely do.  The kid's dad was funny, once he saw Lil' S do it, he became determined for his son (Leon, I learned) to do it too.  He started passionately coaching him in a foreign accent I couldn't discern: "Go Lee-Own!  Go Lee-Own!  Go all dee way to dee top!  Put down dee flower (the kid was holding a leaf) and GO!  All dee way to dee top!"  But hey, credit where credit is due, the kid made it all that way to the top.

[Here's Lil' S going up a ladder: "I climbing, Daddy!  I climbing!"]

Later that night we went over to our friends K's and B's place to eat pizza and see their adorable 11-week old boy.  It was babymania.  Then we went back to the hotel and went to sleep.  Or rather S and Lil' S went to sleep.  I stayed up and read depressing articles about Ferguson on my iPad (free wifi at the hotel -- at least that wasn't depressing) and followed the Mariners game on my phone.  Speaking of depressing, is there anything more pathetic than treating the ESPN GameCast display as if it's a live-action telecast?  I'm following the blip on the screen, screaming to myself, "C'mon!  C'mon!  Get out of that stadium icon!"

[C'mon, ump, are you blind?  How is that second pitch a ball?  It's right in the zone!]

The next day we met some friends for brunch.  And then at night we met my brother and his family -- just barely.  One thing about being a visitor to New York is that it's easy to get stymied by transportation logistics, especially if you have a toddler.  But after some difficulties -- missed calls, wrong subway trains, cranky kids, hungry wives, selves that had to pee -- we all made it to Brooklyn Bridge Park, where we met my bro A, his wife M, their kid Lil' Q, and M's dad L.  We moseyed around the waterfront, talking and herding our children for an hour and a half or so, before we had to start heading back to the hotel -- it was almost 8:00 pm, after all.  Much of the time we we walking around, we were half-looking for a playground the Internet said was near us, but we couldn't see.  And of course, as soon as we start to leave we notice that it's on the other side of some bushes roughly 20 feet from where we spent the bulk of our time.  Oh, well.

[Brooklyn Bridge as seen from Brooklyn Bridge park]

We made plans to go to Coney Island the next day, but those plans got scrapped because S didn't really want to go.  This caused a mini fight, as although I was fine with not going, I didn't understand why she didn't say something earlier; I was under the impression that she wanted to go when we made the plans.  So then she said, "Fine, let's just go then."  But then I didn't want to go because I didn't have my heart set on it in the first place, and so if she doesn't want to go, then we're going when one of us doesn't want to go and the other one doesn't really care one way or the other, which doesn't make sense.

So I made new plans with A to meet in the morning at a park that is about a mile from our hotel that we could walk to.  But then those plans got scrapped because the forecast was calling for rain and S didn't want to get caught pushing the stroller in the rain.  This caused another mini fight (one other thing I noticed about having a kid: vacation fights go up approximately 375%; back in our carefree Vanuatu days we almost never fought), so we changed the plans again and just met A and M at their hotel.  And actually it all worked out quite nicely.  It did rain, heavily, so S was vindicated.  But it was just a quick cloudburst, and then it got beautiful, so we had a nice day to enjoy.  And as it just so happened there was a cool playground right by A's and M's hotel (I'm telling you, there is one on every other corner), so we got to let the kiddos run around, and in Lil' S's case get soaking wet (Lil' Q was a bit unsure of the splash area).  We also ate lunch (pizza), and a great time was had by all.  The end.

[Fowler square in Brooklyn.  We ate "brunch" (sausage, kraut, and a pilsner for me) at a delicious nearby German pub.]

Well, not quite the end.  We still had to drive back to D.C.  There was traffic almost the entire way, and it took five and half hours.  It sucked, and I was annoyed the entire time.  OK, now it's really the end.

Until next time...

Entry 246: Long Weekend, Long Week

Short entry tonight.  I'm leaving (with wife and kid) to NYC for a long weekend early tomorrow morning.  It should be a good time, which is good.  I could use some fun.  News this week has been pretty shitty, huh?  The big thing, of course, is the tragedy that unfolded (and is continuing to unfold) in Ferguson, Missouri.  I have neither the time nor the energy to get into my thoughts on that.

The other thing is that Robin Williams died.  Williams death made me much sadder than a typical celebrity death.  This isn't because I was a big Robin Williams fan.  On the contrary, I was ahead of my time with the "Robin Williams: Not that Funny" fad.  Relatively recently, he started to get called out a bit as being overrated or whatnot (Family Guy did an entire episode satirizing him), but I was saying it back in 1993 when I saw (and didn't laugh at) Mrs. Doubtfire.  He's just not my style of comedian.  Even his old stand-up that other people who didn't like his movies swore I would like, I didn't like.  But personal comedic styling aside, he seemed like a pretty good dude; he was obviously incredibly talented and beloved; and he was, in my opinion, an excellent serious actor (I have a big soft spot for Goodwill Hunting).  It's a shame he's gone so soon.

His death affected me for two reason:

1) He was one of the first celebrities -- maybe the first celebrity -- to come into my consciousness.  Some of my earliest memories are of watching Mork & Mindy on a big transformer-sized TV we had in our basement.  His death reminds me how long ago that was and makes me think of my own mortality (and now that I have a kid that gets ratcheted up tenfold).

2) He committed suicide and suffered from depression.  Mental illness is an area where my views have changed drastically over time.  Back in my idealistic (and unrealistic) libertarian teen years I thought it was basically BS, and that people could be happy if they were truly willing to fight through it.  In college, when I actually became friends with somebody who had depression issues, it just confused me ("But you have an awesome girlfriend, how can you be sad all the time?").  And now I understand that it's a disorder like any other disorder.  You can't fix it by "fighting through it" anymore than you can diabetes.  You need proper treatment.

As mental illness becomes less stigmatized (even among tough guy athletes) and more and more people open up about it, I realize how many people I know -- how many people I love, family and friends -- who suffer from it in some form or another.  Many of these people I had no idea about and wouldn't ever have suspected had they not told me.  Outwardly everything seemed fine.  And so when I hear about somebody who ostensibly had a great life committing suicide, it hits home a lot harder than it did in the past.

And on that somber note, I have to split.  Until next time ...

Entry 245: Better

Before I start my entry, I wanted to give everybody a "life hack" I use a lot.  It's a small thing, but it saves me a lot of time and grief.  If you are like me, you do fair amount of copying and pasting text from webpages into Word documents or from an email into a blog post, that type of thing -- moving text across different platforms.  Use Notepad as a go-between and the formatting is less likely to be all messed up.  For example, if I cut-and-paste something directly from Gmail into Blogger, the format gets all wonky (weird carriage returns and things like that) and I have to do a bunch of reformatting, but if I first cut-and-paste into Notepad and then cut-and-paste into Blogger -- perfecto! -- everything works, no fuss, no muss.  So there you go: Use Notepad.  The more you know.

And now for the featured presentation.

I had a much better week this week because Lil' S had a much better week.  He's still not sleeping through the night, but he's usually pretty easy to get back to sleep when he does wake up, and he's not getting up super early anymore.  And even if he does wake up before my alarm, sometimes he just chills in his room on his own.  This morning he was just sitting on his chair looking at a book when I woke up; I have no idea for how long.  When I went into his room to get him, he smiled at me and said, "I reading, Daddy".  It was a heart-melting moment.

His birthday is coming up -- he'll be two in a few weeks -- and we're having a party for him, which is one of the many activities we have planned this month.  It's shaping up to be a busy month of August (and even into September).  One of S's really good friends (A of the infamous Routeburn Trail trip -- still one of my favorite, and surely one of S's least favorite, anecdotes) is getting married tomorrow.  In fact, S is at the rehearsal dinner right now.  It's funny, when I'm watching the little man, S will often try to persuade me to do the things with him that she would do, even though I have no interest in doing them.  For example, she wanted me to take him to a music festival tonight that sounded like way more hassle than payoff.  And on Saturday morning (my weekend morning with him) she always wants me to go to the farmer's market.  But I don't like markets, farmer or otherwise.

"He loves it, though," S argues.
"Well," I counter, "he also loves pouring water down his pants, and we can do that in our backyard."

I mean, c'mon, who's the one who really loves it?

[Random Routeburn shot]

Tomorrow our friend RB is coming over to watch him during the wedding, which might be interesting, but hopefully won't be.  Interesting is bad when it comes to babysitting a toddler.  It will be the first time a non-family member will have to put him to bed.  Intuitively, it seems like it should go badly, but I'm guessing that it won't.  My rationale is explained in the following.  I've learned from talking to Lil' S's teachers at daycare (through S, of course, I generally just say hi and bye to them) that he acts differently around us than he does around them.  He's much fussier around us, and in particular, he's much, much fussier around S.  Why?  Because S will indulge it.  She, admittedly, will cave.  (It's at the point where I have to get him every time he wakes up because if S gets him, he won't go back to sleep without huge production of milk and pacifiers and hugs and cuddles.)  The people at daycare don't indulge his crankiness (I try not to, but I cave sometimes too), and so he doesn't do it with them.  My hope is that he'll treat RB like he does his daycare teachers and more or less just be a good kid.  Plus, he knows RB well, and likes her, so I think the "freak-out factor" is pretty low.  I think it will be fine.  We shall see.

My back is also feeling a little better this week.  I got some anti-inflammatories that I think are helping.  I was suppose to review the MRI results with a specialist on Thursday, but they canceled the appointment because the doctor I was supposed to see quit the practice.  Not only that, but they don't have another doctor on staff who does what he does, so I had to find an entirely new clinic.  At first I was incredibly annoyed (How unprofessional is it to quit while you have patients scheduled with no contingency plan for them?), but I found a place close to my work, and I wasn't that impressed with the other clinic anyway.  So ... whatever.

[And another one]

In other news, the Seahawks played their first preseason game last night against the Denver Broncos.  Don't worry, I'm not going to blather on about the Seahawks; I have a whole other blog for that, and I hate preseason football, anyway.  I'm bringing up the Seahawks strictly as a segue to talk about an underrated aspect of being a sports nerd that doesn't have much to do with sports.  As you get older, which I am doing, sports associations become a great way to mark time.  For example, I know my oldest nephew was born in 2005 because that was the year the Seahawks made it to the Super Bowl (the first time), and I remember watching games from that season while holding him as a newborn.  Also, I know I went to summer camp in 1989 because I remember talking about Mike Tyson's fight against Carl Williams with the other kids.  And I know we took a family vacation to Ohio in 1988 because I remember reading about the Reds' hot rookie Chris Sabo at my grandparents' house.  I could go on and on and on.  My batting average (pardon the pun) of knowing when life events occurred is very high because I associate them with the sporting news of the day, and sports happen in fixed, easy-to-remember seasons, and even if you forget a year, you can look it up in a second.

I was thinking of this today because I was thinking of my ninth grade dance for some unknown random reason.  I took a girl named J who was only in our school district for half a year.  (Because she came late, her picture was at the end of the yearbook with, as it so happened, all the special ed students.  So my friend JY's favorite joke was to point to the picture next to hers, an obviously "challenged" young man, and proclaim, "This was DG's date to the ninth grade dance".  Not a very sensitive joke in retrospect.)  On the night of the dance I went over to her house and hung out with her kinda charming, kinda dickheaded dad while she finished getting ready.  He was watching baseball and drinking beer.  I remember he had a half-empty six-pack sitting on the table next to him, which is a good tipoff he probably had a drinking problem.  When you don't even bother to refrigerate your beers because you will be drinking them so quickly -- that's a bad sign.

Anyway, I remember him getting really excited because Dave Valle drove in a run.  Based on this information I decided to try to figure out the exact game we were watching.  And I believe I did.  It was actually really easy to figure out.  I knew the year (1993), the approximate month (May or June, since it was at the end of the school year), the approximate day of week (Friday, maybe Saturday, but very likely Friday), and the approximate time (5:00 pm, we ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant beforehand, so it had to be on the early side).  From there, I looked at Dave Valle's game logs and found just one candidate (click here if your inner baseball nerd is making you curious).  It was Friday June 4, 1993.  The game was in Baltimore which means it was a 4:30 West Coast start time, and Dave Valle delivered an RBI single in the 4th inning, which would have been right around 5:30.  It all fits perfectly.  This has to be the game.  It looks like a tough one for the Mariners too, as they blew a two-run lead in the ninth before losing in the tenth.

Usually I would've been home watching the Mariners, but on that night, I had better things to do -- by which I mean, I went to a junior high dance with a girl who actually seemed to like me (a rarity in those days), and then I chickened out when it came time for a good night kiss, and then I never saw her again.  But hey, we will always have Moctezuma's and Vanessa Williams.



Until next time ...

Entry 244: Feeling Down

I'll be honest.  I'm feeling a bit down heading into this weekend.  Typical life stuff.  It doesn't always go the way you want it to, now does it?  Something is up with Lil' S -- just a phase hopefully -- but he's been Little Mr. Crankshaft the past few weeks.  He might have a lingering bug or something.  He's been getting a temperature seemingly out of the blue at night, and then it's gone in the morning.  Then it will come back at night three days later.  It's weird; I'm not sure what's going on.  Whatever the case, his tantrums have been off the hook.  If the smallest thing doesn't go his way -- like, you peel the paper off his crayon all the way when he only wanted it half-way -- he starts bawling and goes into conniptions.  And he's gotten super clingy with S, so the only way she can get a break is to leave the house or hide (and even hiding doesn't always work -- he's perceptive now about that type of thing, "Amma! *cry, cry, cry* Amma downstairs! *cry, cry, cry* Amma downstairs!").  As you might imagine this is really wearing her out, and when she gets worn out, I get worn out by proxy.  Also, he constantly wants the iPad ("Bubble Gu-p-p-ies *cry, cry, cry* G-e-orge *cry, cry, cry*) or a pacifier, and we've been trying very hard to limit his exposure to both of these things.  The iPad is meant to be a once-in-a-while treat, and pacifiers are now only for bed time.  Partly this is because these things aren't good for him in large doses, but also it's because I want him to get used to hearing "no" sometimes.  I don't want him to expect to get everything he wants the moment he wants it.  This is good parenting, right?  Eh ... who the hell knows?  Everybody just makes it up as they go.

He's actually been sleeping more consistently lately, which is nice -- to put it very mildly.  S and I have been, well, not well-rested, but not abjectly sleep-deprived.  It helps a ton.  Dealing with a perpetually cranky kid is like being trapped in a house by a crazy woman.  Not getting any sleep while dealing with a perpetually cranky kid is like having this crazy woman hit you in the knees with a sledgehammer.  It makes everything way, way, way worse... And I have no idea why I decided to reference a good-but-not-great 25-year old horror movie here.  I just did for some reason.

The consolation line for people when they're singing the blues is often "well, at least you've got your health".  But even that isn't true for me at the moment.  It's my back.  It's just nagging me.  It's not a serious injury -- at least it doesn't fell like one.  I can still do all the physical activities I want to do -- jogging, weight lifting, yoga -- no problem.  But then I'll randomly twist the right-wrong way and pain will shoot through the right side of my lower back.  I keep waiting for it to go away, but it's just not.

So I broke down and saw a specialist, and he sent me to get an MRI, which I did today, and then I have a followup with a different type of specialist on Wednesday.  We shall see.  The MRI was a pain, and I mean that literally.  It hurts to lie in a hard plastic box for thirty minutes without moving.  You realize about eight minutes into it that some part of your body is in a slightly awkward position, and then eight minutes later that awkwardness becomes severe discomfort, and then eight minutes later that severe discomfort becomes full-fledged pain, and you spend the last few minutes in utter agony.  It's tortuous -- almost literally.  You're crammed into a box in an uncomfortable position.  If there was no medical reason for it, it would actually be considered torture.  One thing that would be nice is if there was a "shot clock" on the inside of the machine you could watch.  Knowing how much time I have left to suffer really helps.  (Unless it's like that Homer Simpson clip where he's getting pummeled in a boxing match by Drederick Tatum, and looks up and sees six seconds have ticked off.)

One good thing about this MRI: It didn't take all that long.  Well, it did, but it was my fault.  I forgot the scrip from the specialist who ordered the MRI, and they couldn't do the procedure without it because it contains specific instructions.  (It was definitely my fault, but the office assistant at the specialist's who set up my appointment could have done me a solid by underscoring how important it was.  She just stuck it in with a slew of other documents, many of which aren't important.)  So I had to drive home and pick it up and drive back.  This bumped me down in the queue a bit, but to the clinic's credit, they handled it pretty well, and got me in without too much wait time.  The man running the desk was competent and helpful, which made me happy.  It's amazing how much more smoothly things can operate when that's the case.  It's also amazing how conditioned we are to deal with incompetent, unhelpful people in positions like this.  Why is that?  Are there just not enough competent people in the U.S.?  Or do many people in these types of positions just quit trying at some point?  I'm not sure.

It's a good thing there wasn't a long wait because, well, because waiting sucks, but also because the place was packed and the only chair was in front of a bench that an old man was sitting on with his legs spread, so I had to sit in direct proximity to his crotch.  And then they didn't get very good cell service, so I had to settle for an old Sports Illustrated (although reading the "Five Reasons the Broncos Will Win the Super Bowl" was rather amusing) and the local news on the waiting room TV for entertainment.  At one point a story came on about a black man who was asphyxiated by NYPD, and they showed some cellphone footage of him being put in a very excessive-looking choke-hold by an officer.  All the people waiting tsk-tsked and shook their heads.  I looked around and realized I was the only white person in the office (I was also the only person under the age of 55 for some reason), and I briefly contemplated standing up and pronouncing, "Hey, everybody, I think that's just as fucked up as you do!"  But I didn't because that would have been really, really weird.

The other big story was about a supposed trend in which teenagers light themselves on fire and then post it on social media.  If this is true it's absolutely insane, but I suspect it's not true -- meaning it's not actually a trend, but rather something a few stupid kids did (as everybody knows, there is no paucity of stupid people doing stupid things on the Internet), and then this news station thought it was just the right mix of intrigue and terror for fearful parents, so it might grab some eyeballs.  Well, it didn't work because after continually teasing it, they had technical difficulties, and their prepared bit wouldn't play.  So instead a caught-off-guard anchor had to ad lib for a few minutes about something he clearly didn't know anything about, "See ... uh ... what they're doing ... uh ... is they're ... uh ... lighting themselves on ... uh ... fire ... and then ... uh ... Facebook ... uh ... yeah ... uh ..."

Well, that's about it.  Until next time ...

[Update: I finished putting Lil' S to bed, and he was really good all night.  Maybe the phase is starting to pass.]