Entry 298: Short on Time and Energy

Probably a quick post this week.  I'm short on time and energy.  Things have gotten a little better since my last entry.  Lil' S1 was much, much easier this week during bed time.  He even slept in his bed a few nights, which I far prefer to him sleeping in my bed with me.  Once we get things "settled," we will make him sleep in his bed full-time, but for now it's fine if he sleeps with me, as it keeps him out of S's hair, so that she (and her mom) can tend to the baby at night.  If he gets into bed with me in the middle of the night after I'm already asleep, I actually don't mind at all.  The problem is when he starts in my bed, because then when I get in, I have problems falling asleep, because he kicks me constantly.  Somehow even when he's in a deep sleep, he reflexively digs his feet into my back, no matter what position I put him in.  Last night was particularly bad.  I was SO tired and couldn't fall asleep, and then I started fixating on the fact I couldn't fall asleep, which only made things worse.  Then a bird started chirping and annoying me, and pretty soon it was 2:30 a.m., and I was still wide awake.  Hence the lack of energy today.

We took Lil' S1 to a little community festival last night, which was really nice.  A bunch of kids/parents from his daycare were there, so you could just let him go and relax -- well, almost relax.  With Lil' S1 you always have to stay within "striking distance," because it's likely at some point he's going to get himself into some sort of predicament that requires quick action.  Like last night, he squeezed through this make shift barrier and got out of the festival area, so I had to run around this building to keep him from running into a busy street.  (I think he has enough sense at this point not to do that, but I don't want to test it.)  But for the most part he does really well in "social" situations.  He is very high-energy, but usually pretty well-behaved, and he seems well-liked by the other kids and their parents.  That's the thing about him.  He seems to be fine everywhere but at home with us.  I guess that's good, in a way.

And of course there are redeeming moments, even at home.  The other day he was really stressing us out (S has been getting it worse than me lately), so we put him in his room to play by himself for a while, and when I went up there 15 minutes later, he had opened up this card game that's for older kids and organized all the cards into color-coordinated piles and then matched them up with their corresponding racks.  And then he said, "Look, Daddy!  Purple, purple.  Red, red..." and showed me what he had done.  I felt genuinely proud.  It was really cool.  Of course, the next day he crawled under the futon to poop in his pants and got his head stuck, so ... gutters and strikes.

In other news, S's dad came to visit this week.  It is nice to see him, but honestly it will be nice to see him go too.  (He leaves tomorrow.)  He's just not very helpful at times like these.  And it's not just that he's not helpful, he's anti-helpful.  He adds to the stress, because he's one more person S's mom has to take care of, and the only thing he can do to help is watch the baby when he's not being fussy, which pretty much anybody can do.

The other day he really annoyed S by complaining about his iPad, when she and her mom were trying to feed the baby.  And he really annoyed me by telling me I needed to cut the grass in front of my house between the sidewalk and the road.  That actually really set me off, because the timing could not have been worse.  S's parents were supposed to take Lil' S1 to the zoo yesterday morning to give us a little break.  But he started crying in the car on the way there, and instead of just dealing with it, giving him a snack or just ignoring it for a few minutes (he would have immediately stopped once they got to the zoo and it's only a five minute car ride), they turned around and came back.  S wasn't around, so I had Lil' S2, and he was being fussy, so I'm trying to calm him down, and then I got bombarded with a hysterical three-year-old, who's bawling and trying to climb into my arms while I'm already holding the baby.

So it's a double-kid whammy, and all I want to do is make some coffee and take a dump.  And then in the middle of it all, S's dad asks me if I have a lawn mower, because the grass by the sidewalk looks bad, and I should cut it.  All I said was, "it's fine."  What I wanted to say was, "First, that's not even my property; it's the city's.  Second, even if it was my property, I still wouldn't really care about it.  Third, WHY ON EARTH ARE YOU BRINGING THIS UP NOW?"  Infuriating.  I will say, however, in his defense, last time he was here, he did some minor yard work, which he can't do now because he hurt his shoulder.  If he didn't have the injury, he probably would have offered to cut it himself.  But still, just have some general awareness of the situation.  That's all I ask.

Anyway...

In other, other news, I went out with some friends on Friday for my birthday.  It was really nice.  I hadn't been out like that in ages.  Actually, S and I went out for dinner beforehand (at 5:30 -- old people time!), and then she went home to take care of the kids and let me meet up with my friends.  So, it was a pretty good birthday ... until the next morning.

And with that, until next time ...

Entry 297: Death By a Thousand Aggrevations

First things first: Baby is doing well.

Baby's daddy, not so well.  I mean, in the grand scheme of things I'm doing fine.  But this blog isn't about the grand scheme of things.  This blog is about whatever I want it to be about, which often means it is about me griping about relatively small things -- like, for instance, the fact that my older son (whom I am now calling Lil' S1 on this blog) is completely wearing me out.  He's just SO hyperactive, and he doesn't really understand basic concepts like "stop" and "no" yet.  Oh, and also he isn't potty-trained; in fact, he seems to be getting worse.  He's gone from telling us when he has to go poo from roughly half the time to about ten percent of the time.  He basically has an "accident" every night now.  (I'm using quotes because if it happens every night, you can't really call it an accident -- can you?)   So taking care of him -- which is what I do in the evenings now, since S and her mom have their hands full with the newborn -- is exhausting, frustrating, and messy.

Now, I already know your response: "uh ... yeah, he's a three-year-old."  But that's not it, or that's not just it.  I've been around many three-year-olds, and they aren't all the same.  Yes, pretty much every little kid can be difficult, but it's a spectrum -- or maybe more like a normal curve.  There is a mean "difficulty" measure, and most three-year-olds are concentrated around this mean.  But then there are outliers on either side.  S and I happened to get a kid who's an outlier on the difficult side.  (Or maybe we've inadvertently shaped him to be this way -- who knows?  I've found "Nature or nurture?" to be an impossible question to answer.)  There are boys in his class, the same age or younger, who have been more or less potty-trained for months.

But the worst thing about caring for Lil' S1 right now -- even worse than the "accidents" -- is that he absolutely refuses to go to bed under any circumstances.  It used to be that he refused to sleep in his bed (he preferred the guest room bed, or our bed if we were too tired to argue).  Now he refuses to go to sleep in any bed.  We actually want him to sleep in our bed with me, because then S and her mom can each have their own rooms, and then they can actually sleep in peace while the other one is up with the baby.  (Although I get out of middle-of-the-night baby duty, I have to sleep with a toddler's knees in my back, so it's no treat.)  But it's like an hour-and-a-half long process.  I put him bed; he requests milk; he requests a story; he gets out of bed to play ("just three minutes," he assures me); I put him back into bed; he gets out again; I stand by the door so he can't leave the room; he collapses on the floor and screams and cries and bangs on the door; I wait and wait; he cries and cries; I calm him down and put him back into bed; he gets out again; lather, rise, repeat.  Eventually he does go to sleep out of sheer exhaustion, but, damn, there has got to be a better way to do this.

S and I don't really know what to do at this point.  We are going with "cry it out," by default.  We just don't have any other ideas.  We've tried being stern; we've tried be nice; we've tried being regimented; we've tried being lax; we've tried talking to him about it; we've tried ignoring him; we've tried giving him food and milk right before bed; we've tried not; we've tried stories, videos, playtime, tuck-ins, stuffed animals...  What else is there?  I guess, you just tell yourself it's a phase, and tough it out.

But I was so jealous this weekend.  I took Lil' S to a classmate's birthday party, and I was chatting with another dad, and I asked him if his son had problems sleeping, and we had the following conversation:

Him: No, not really.  He's pretty good.  But we are going to take the crib part off his bed next week, so we will see how he does in an open bed.

Me: What?  He still sleeps in his crib?!

Him: Yeah, we're taking it off soon, though.

Me: Doesn't he climb out of it?

Him: Nah ... He can, but he doesn't really want to.  He climbed out of it once a few months ago, but he hasn't done it since.  We put him in there, and he pretty much just goes to sleep until we take him out in the morning.

Me: ... [Staring at him as if he just told me his kid had mastered integral calculus.]

To makes things worse, S and I have been getting into a little bit, over stupid things.  Well, they aren't stupid to us, but they probably sound stupid to the outsider.  But I probably shouldn't get into any of this in too much detail.  Every now and then she actually reads this thing.

Alright, that's enough complaining...  Wait, one more thing: Windows 10 sucks.  I upgraded the other day hoping it would solve the problems I've been having with Windows 8 -- namely, slow internet browsing and a confusing interface, but it only made things worse.  Now, I can't stream videos at all using the Windows default browser, and I can't shut-down my computer or put it into sleep mode.  If I'm away from my computer for too long, the screen goes black, and the only way I can get it to work is to power off and power back on.  So I basically have to restart my computer every time I need to close it for a few minutes.

What makes this most annoying is that I have a seven-year old work laptop that runs XP, and it works great.  Why is the old, outdated technology far superior to the hot, new technology?  This is the problem I have with Microsoft products.  Their new stuff, instead of making things easier for the user, always makes things more difficult.

Microsoft must think people are moving away from laptops and into tablets, because Windows 10 (and Windows 8) is all app-based.  In fact, the keyboard can detach from my computer, and it can become a touch-screen tablet.  This sounds better in theory than it is practice.  I, literally, have never once used it as a tablet.  Because the thing is, the annoyance of having to keep track of two things (keyboard and screen) outweighs the benefit of its dual-function versatility.

In general, I think Microsoft is making a miscalculation with their new Windows products.  I want a tablet to be a tablet and a laptop to be a laptop.  What I would greatly prefer to an app-based OS is one that is just a little better than the old one.  Why not keep the XP framework in place and just make it a bit better, a bit faster.  That's what I want.  But, maybe I'm just fast on my way to becoming an out-of-touch codger -- maybe Microsoft is right to try to court the new market with all this app-based garbage.  I don't know.  But I do know that people of any age prefer a computer that works properly to one that doesn't.  Is it time for me to make the switch to a Mac?  Perhaps.

Until next time ...

Entry 296: Hungry Eyes

I had a great entry planned this week.  I finally figured out the meaning of life, and I was going to share it with everybody.  But something more important came up -- namely the birth of my second child -- so I am going to write about that instead.  I'll get back to that meaning life thing on another occasion -- or not.  To be honest, I can't really remember what it was anyway.

On Thursday afternoon, I got a call from S, while I was at the office.  She asked me to step outside into the hall for privacy, which meant it was something important.  She prefaced her next statements with "Everything should be alright..." which simultaneously put me at ease and made me anxious (should?).  She then proceeded to explain that, at a checkup appointment, her doctor noticed an abnormality with our unborn child.  Specifically, she could not detect blood flow to one of his testicles.  Apparently, this is very strange, not only that it happened, but that she noticed it.  She said that it could be nothing -- maybe everything was normal, and, for whatever reason, she just couldn't detect blood flow.  Or it could be that the blood flow was actually being restricted, in which case there was the possibility that, if we didn't act fast, he could lose the testicle.

Faced with those possible outcomes, S booked a C-section for the next morning.  She told me to wrap up everything at work and talk to my boss, because I was going to be taking some time off.  Then five minutes later, she called back and told me to come home ASAP because the C-section was happening tonight.  "Holy shit!" I said to nobody in particular and hustled home.  I was revved with adrenaline, but I was actually quite relieved that the operation was happening immediately.  I was not looking forward to the sleepless, apprehension-filled night that was surely on the horizon, if it was not happening until the morning.

To make a long story short: The baby was extracted and everything is completely fine, with both mother and child (well, mother has a sizable gash on her belly, of course, but it will heal).  They had a specialist on hand to make sure everything was OK with his testicle, and it appears that it is.  ("His jewels look fine," the doctor told us with a thick African (Nigerian?) accent.)  And now we have another happy and healthy baby boy: Lil' S2.

I have to wrap this entry up now, as Lil' S and I are going to visit his baby brother and his mother in the hospital in a few minutes.  Last time, we got a private suite, and I slept at the hospital too, but this time we got a shared room, so I can't stay the night.  It saves us some money (quite a bit actually -- those private suites aren't cheap), and I need to be home a lot to watch Lil' S, anyway.  S's mom is here, and she's a huge help, but, to be honest, I only feel comfortable having her watch Lil' S for short periods at a time.  Part of this is my own paranoia; part of it is that she has arthritis in her knees and literally cannot keep up with him -- she can hold her own, she has her grandma tricks to keep him in line, but still, it makes me nervous.

When Lil' S was born, I distinctly remember "In the Air Tonight," by Phil Collins was playing in the operating room.  So I made it a point to listen to what was on when Lil' S2 popped out.  It was "Hungry Eyes." by Eric Carmen (they must just put it on the '80s station), which prompted the anesthesiologist to make a crack about our baby being the next Patrick Swayze and then tell us all about a really bad Patrick Swayze tattoo he saw online.  He was a bit on the chatty side.  But, he was nice, and I think S appreciated his verbosity.  When somebody is cutting into your abdomen to remove a human life that has been growing in your body for the last nine months, perhaps it's refreshing to hear somebody talk about something as silly as a tattoo of Patrick Swayze with a centaur body in a Chippendales outfit.

Until next time ...

Entry 295: Another Installment of What I Would Like to Say on Facebook

The premise is simple.  Since I make it a policy to avoid political or social conversations on Facebook (Worst.  Forum.  Ever.), I save posts that catch my eye, and comment on them here, in the comfort of my own blog.  I did one of these before and nobody complained, so I figured it's time for another installment.  Here we go!

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To start, it's disingenuous to claim soldiers make less than minimum wage ($7.25 / hour).  That's only true if we assume a soldier is at the very bottom of the pay scale, working at least 48 hours a week, taking no vacation or sick days, and we don't include any compensation other than basic pay.  As explained on the Army's web page, basic pay is only one form of compensation.  There is also drill pay, special pay, bonuses, and most notably allowances for food, housing, clothing, and a cost of living adjustment.  If fast food workers didn't have to pay rent or buy groceries, they wouldn't need a higher wage.  (But typically a huge percentage of their checks go to rent, and they aren't even allowed to take home food that would otherwise be thrown in the trash.)  Furthermore, soldiers also get healthcare, life insurance, they can earn credits for higher education through the G.I. Bill, and they can earn technical certifications on-the-job and thus free of charge.  Overall, military members are much better compensated than fast food workers, as they should be.
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Second, if your point is that soldiers are still underpaid, a position to which I'm sympathetic, how does disparaging fast food workers demanding a living wage help your cause?  How much somebody slapping a burger on a bun makes is virtually independent of how much tax money we decide as a society to allocate to compensate members of our military.  How does shitting on somebody worse off than you, make your lot in life better?

Last, you might have seen this before, it's made its way around social media, but if you haven't, you should read it, and try to take it to heart.  It's a fantastic response to the backlash against an increase in minimum wage from those making just above minimum wage.

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My Facebook Friend: Asshole!

In my head, the maker of this card is dining alone, because I can't imagine anybody wanting to hang out with him -- or her, I suppose, but I think it's a man, and I also think he's a big Ayn Rand fan.  And probably not a real economist, because from what I understand (caveat: I'm not a real economist either) the real-life dynamics of wages do not follow Economics 101 rules of supply and demand, because of the human element.  For example, when unemployment is high and job opportunities are scarce (worker supply is high, demand is low) businesses do not cut salaries to the point where the supply and demand curves meet, because, among other things, humans get really pissed when you cut their salaries.  

With that said, I actually agree that a higher minimum wage should make the requirement to tip obsolete.  Tips just are not a good form of compensation and shouldn't be used in place of a living wage.  For one thing, tips allow workers to skirt paying income tax, which isn't a good thing (unless you are the one doing the skirting).  For another thing, tips are, by and large, not based on how well you do your job; they are based on how much your patrons want to fuck you.  And for yet another thing, most people tip either because they feel obligated (most people), or because they want to have power over the server (a few assholes) -- neither of these are good reasons to me.

Instead of tips, I would like to see more restaurants do what this one does -- assess a fixed service charge in lieu of a tip.  Once people get used to the idea of this, it will be a win all around.  If you set it at something between 10% -- 15% of the bill, then most patrons would be paying no more than they would with tips; the workers wouldn't be losing money because they would have a higher base pay; and the money could be doled out in a more equitable way as determined by the restaurant (instead of almost all of it going to the server, the kitchen staff could get a taste, as well).  Also, worker pay is still tied to service (the more you sell, the more you get paid), so the typical conservative tropes about "incentive" and "innovation," aren't an issue.  (Plus, as I mentioned earlier, tips aren't really about quality of work anyway.)  The one loser in this whole ordeal is the obnoxious asshole who won't be able to hold the threat of a revoked tip over his server's head.  But for (mostly) men who get off on having financial power over (mostly) young women deigning themselves to servitude, just trying to make a living, there is always the strip club.  At least there, the terms are explicit.  And if you fail to live up to your end of the financial agreement, a 300-pound dude in a black tee with an earpiece politely shows you the door.

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Gay West Point grads turn the table on homophobic attacker

My Facebook Friend: Just desserts.  I have to admit, it made me smile ....

Actually, the saying is "just deserts."  One of the definitions of the word desert is a "reward or punishment that is deserved."  This is a mostly obscure definition today (aside from the idiom), which explains why many people think it's "just desserts."  But it's not.  That's a too-cutesy name for a trendy cupcake shop.

Although we haven't spoken in roughly 15 years, we were always friendly (if not outright friends) back in the day, so I hope you don't my pedantry.  Good day, sir.

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My Facebook Friend: I've never understood how saying "Radical Islamic Terrorism" get huge applause lines... #‎justsaying

My Facebook Friend's Friend: ‬Because no one in obama's administration can ever utter the words terrorist unless there talking about Americans they don't agree with

To my Facebook friend of a Facebook friend:  You don't know me, and I don't know you.  But I do recognize your name.  You were in the same high school class as my friend's brother, and he used to tell not-so-flattering stories about you.  I have a very good memory (or at least I had one, it's starting to slip a bit as I reach middle age), so I remember your name.  All this is to say, I know you are not being sarcastic, which is a shame, because it means you are very likely an idiot.   (And your misuse of they're/there would have been a nice ironic touch -- a bit of a cliché, though.)  You have posted something on-line, in earnest, under your real name, which can be completely refuted in about three minutes.

For example, here is a link to Obama calling the Boston Marathon bombing an act of terrorism.  (Although technically speaking Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was an American with whom Obama surely disagreed, so you aren't wrong.  Oh wait, his brother Tamerlan was not an American citizen, so you are wrong.)  Also here Obama calls ISIS terrorists.  And then here he calls the people who attacked the kosher deli in Paris Anti-Semitic terrorists.  So, you are absolutely, unequivocally wrong.

I'm assuming from your post that you are Republican.  Well, remember when Bobby Jindal said Republicans need to stop being the "party of stupid?"  Maybe you should give that a try...  And yes, I know, Mr. Jindal himself utterly failed at this, but that doesn't mean it's not a worthy goal.

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Yes!  When will the good-looking, white, Christian man get a fair shake in America?!  I mean, stop the persecution already!

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Quick:  Who won the Arthur Ashe Courage Award last year?  Or a more general question: Who won any ESPY ever?  I'm a huge sports fan -- huge! -- and I can't name a single person to ever win an ESPY.  And you know why?  Nobody gives a shit about the ESPYs!  They are a promotional event put on by a major media corporation.  They aren't the Nobel Prize.  They pick candidates and winners based on who will draw the most viewers.  I mean, A-Rod was up for Comeback Player of the Year, and he was coming back from a drug suspension!  ESPN just wanted him in attendance to get some eyeballs, so they gave him some bullshit nomination -- which is a redundancy because the entire ESPYs, almost by definition, are bullshit.  I've never heard anybody ever complain about an ESPY slight.  That is, until a transgender person wins one.  Hmm... curious, no?

Also, there are different types of courage.  What Noah Galloway did/does requires physical courage -- valor, perhaps is a more accurate adjective.  But what Caitlyn Jenner did requires social courage -- and a lot of it.  And if you think it doesn't, then I have a challenge for you: Do it.  Come out as transgender -- just for a year or so.  Start dressing as a member of the opposite sex, come up with a new name for yourself, start referring to yourself with opposite-gender pronouns, sell it to everybody.  Tell all your friends, coworkers, family, tell everybody you know that you are transitioning, keep the ruse up for a year -- just as a social experiment.  Okay, now, how about instead of that you have the alternative option to compete in a Crossfit event.  Which one are you choosing?  That's what I thought.

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Why woman working $95K job in Manhattan quit to pick up ice cream-scooping job in Virgin Islands

I don't care.  And frankly I'm tired of seeing this woman in my feed.

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Until next time ...

Entry 294: Baby Almost Here

We are getting to the final stages of Lil' S2's gestational period.  It can't come to an end soon enough, frankly.  This pregnancy has been really difficult on S -- she's carrying around more extra weight than last time, she has a groin injury (described as a "shooting pain") that forces her to lie down frequently, her blood sugar is high, it's hot as Dante's Inferno outside, her jimmy leg is constantly acting up, and she has a three-year-old whom she can't keep up, and who gives her hell, because he doesn't really understand any of this.  Also, unfortunately, she has a husband who isn't very sympathetic.  It's not that I don't want to be; it's just that I suck at sympathy.

I've said before that S and I have the same two or three fights over and over in different forms.  The "tone fight" is probably number one on the list (although it's getting better; we haven't had that one in a while).  But the "sympathy fight" is a close second.  This is where S finds herself in a position where she is struggling and just needs somebody to listen to her -- a shoulder to cry on -- so naturally she turns to me, but this is probably a bad idea, because I'm not a good crying shoulder (I'm the anti-Edwin McCain).  My natural disposition is to treat things analytically and dispassionately and try to "solve" them.  But in some cases there is nothing to solve, because the only real problem is that S is feeling unhappy or stressed, and just wants somebody to say "I understand" and rub her back.  Sometimes I can recognize this and act as such, but most the time I don't, because that's just not the way I'm wired.  You can only fake the funk so often, for so long.  Eventually you are who you are. And so sometimes -- usually when one of us is hungry and/or tired -- everything boils over into a big explosion.  It sucks, but it happens.  We are married, therefore we fight sometimes.  I think that's as true an axiom as there ever was.



Anyway, plenty of other things going on in the world.  Another unarmed black man was shot and killed by a police officer for a minor offense.  Ho-hum.  A big difference between this case and others, however, is that the offending officer was almost immediately arrested and charged with murder.  This shows what happens when America's two worst qualities -- its racism and its trigger-happiness -- meet.  We seriously need to work on these things, but we won't, at least not the way we should, because there are too many people who are in total denial about these problems.  I could (and probably should) write twenty more paragraphs about this, but I'm not going to, because Lil' S is going to wake up soon and there are other things I want to get to...

...like "Rowdy" Roddy Piper.  He died.  It's unfortunate.  I just heard him on the Sklar Brothers podcast a few weeks ago, and it was a fantastic interview.  He was not that old (61), and he had a wife, and kids, and grandkids, and sounded like a decent dude.  (If we ignore that one time he painted himself half-black to mock a biracial opponent -- speaking of racism, check out some old WWF story lines.  It's not very surprising the biggest star from that period has little qualms throwing around the N-word.)  Sadly, Piper is another in a long list of dead wrestlers.  As a kid I always dreamed about being a professional wrestler.  (My name would have been "The Greco God," and my shtick would have been that I was a master Greco-Roman wrestler, who eschewed legit wrestling aspirations to beat up WWF bad guys.)  But now it's probably a good thing those dreams were never pursued.  It's a brutal gig (and obviously it attracts people more prone to self-destruction).  Here's an account of the staggeringly high number of people who died who participated in Wrestlemania VII.  It was less than 25 years ago.  We can add another one to the list.

Anyway...

In other news, happier news, a friend of mine from high school was featured in an article in San Diego Magazine.  She's a chemistry professor, and one of the things she talks about is our culture's absurd fear of "chemicals" (later she calls out Jessica Alba for her phony "honest" brand -- though I must say, they make a solid diaper).  An excerpt:

Everything we eat, the air we breathe, everything in nature, and everything man-made is made of chemicals. People are very afraid of chemicals today, so much so that they spend large amounts of money on supposedly “chemical-free” food and household products. In reality, chemicals are neither good nor bad. Some are toxic in extremely low doses (like hydrogen cyanide), while others are only toxic in very high doses (like water). Moreover, “natural” chemicals (that is, chemicals derived from nature) are not intrinsically any safer than “artificial” ones (those made in a lab). People could save themselves a lot of anxiety (not to mention thousands of dollars) if they understood that!

Preach, girl!

Uh-oh, I think I hear something stirring upstairs.  Better wrap this up.  

Until next time ...