Entry 313: Christmas Edition 2015

Another year, another Christmas.  Man, they are really flying by, aren't they?  It seems like just yesterday I was sucking on Lifesavers with my siblings, flipping through the Sport Magazine that came in my stocking waiting impatiently for my parents to wake up so we could get to the "really" gifts.  But that was, what, 25 years ago?  Closer to 30.  I still have all my Sport Magazines in a box in my basement and the earliest one is 1986.  It has Walter Payton on the cover.  He died over 15 years ago.  Crazy.

[Some cool old footage of Walter Payton playing quarterback (!)]

But this Christmas has special meaning because it's the first one in which Lil' S1 really gets it.  Last year he was still a bit too young to fully comprehend what was going on, but this year he's all about it.  And he's still very much in the "me" stage of his life (only about 22 more years to go on that one), so he's a little monster right now -- an adorable little monster, but a little monster nonetheless.  He thinks every gift is his and gets pouty when we tell him it's for somebody else.  He also has no appreciation for or perspective on anything.  The first gift he opened was this cool play set with spinning blocks from his Ava and Thatha (it was actually for his baby brother, but like I said, he's convinced everything is his), and he got all mopey upon seeing it and said, "I wanted an Octonauts present."  At school they teach the kids a saying, "You get what you get and don't get upset," so I repeated that line to him, and he started crying and said, "Don't say that to me!"

But the flip-side of that coin is when he finally did open the Octonauts present he erupted in ecstasy that would have warmed the cockles of even the coldest heart: "Oh!!!! Octonauts!!!  See!  I told you so!  I told you it was an Octonauts present!  Oh!!! Captain Barnacles!  Peso!  Look at all my Octonauts!"  And then he went to sleep last night (we exchanged most our gifts on Christmas Eve) with two pieces of track from a snap-together Octonauts set.  Out of all his gifts those are the ones he wanted to sleep with -- not action figures, not cars, but two long plastic pieces of track.  I tried to talk him into something else because I didn't want to lose those pieces, but that's what he wanted, so ... whatever.  He was in bed and happy -- that's a win pretty much anyway you slice it.  Taking care of a three-year-old is a bit like hanging out with somebody who is manic depressive.  They go from bouncing off the walls with joy to lying prostrate on the floor bawling in distress to bouncing off the walls again in the time it takes you to put something on Netflix just so you can have a moment of peace.

[I have a theory that Captain Barnacles from "Octonauts" and the doctor from "Downton Abbey" are the same creature.  It's even better when you hear them both speak.]

Christmas for me, personally, is going pretty well so far.  Both in-laws are in town, which is nice, but it means I have to sleep on our lumpy futon in the basement.  (Actually, tiered is a better descriptor for our futon than lumpy.  There are two halves, separated where it folds, and one is several inches higher than the other.  So you have to pick a level, or if you, like me, are too big to fit on any one side, you just have to sleep straddling the tiers in a very unsatisfying position.)  We are one bed short, and we can't get Lil' S1 to sleep on a mat or on the carpet yet.  Well, we can, but halfway through the night, he invariably climbs into bed with us, and since all three of us don't fit anymore, one has to go, and that usually means me.  So I generally skip the 3:00 a.m. round of musical beds and just go to the basement straightaway.

Tonight we are going to our friends for dinner and then tomorrow S and I are going to see Star Wars with some other friends.  We saw The Martian over Thanksgiving, and seeing two movies in the theater in a span of less than a month is a holiday miracle.  For one thing, it's very difficult to conjure up the time and energy to see a movie; for another thing, it's difficult for S and I to see something that we both might like that she hasn't already seen.  Yesterday she wanted to rent a movie, and we had the following conversation:

Me: Okay, what about Nightcrawler?  It's got Jake Gyllenhaal in it.  It's supposed to be good.
Her: I've seen it already.
Me: Alright, American Hustle?

Her: I've seen that one too.

Me: How about The Intimidation Game?

Her: The one about Stephen Hawking?  I've seen that one too.

Me: No, you're thinking about the other one.  The Intimidation Game is about the English mathematician Alan Turning.  He helped cracked the Nazi's code during World War II.

Her: Oh, right.  I've seen that one too.

Me: [Shake my head and walk away]

I actually was legitimately annoyed.  It's admittedly a petty reason to be annoyed, but she's always talking about how we should watch more things together instead of zoning out into our own computers at night like we usually do, but then she watches everything I might have a slight interest in by herself.  She does the same thing with TV shows.  Now, in her defense, she had a lot of down time on maternity leave and often just wanted to watch something while she rocked the baby to sleep (also she went on a work trip to Africa earlier this year and she watched like ten movies on the flights), but still -- just set aside two or three things we can watch together.  That's all I ask.

Alright, I should go now.  I can hear Lil' S1 upstairs arising from his nap.  It's only a matter of time before he comes downstairs, sees me on my computer and starts bothering me: I wanna press the buttons... I wanna see the crossword puzzle game... Hey Daddy, how 'bout we print something?  How 'bout that?

Have a Merry Christmas!  Or if you, like me, are a nonbeliever, just enjoy another day on this world.  They come in limited supply.

Until next time ...

Entry 312: Another Crossword Puzzle

Hey everybody, I got another crossword puzzle published at the New York Times.  You should check it out.  I would link to it, but the daily NYT puzzles are behind a paywall.  The best way to get it (if you don't have an online puzzle subscription) is to buy a dead-tree version of today's New York Times.  As always, I put up a post about it at my puzzle blog.  Because of this I'm not putting up an entry (other than this one) at this blog this week.  Here's the link to my puzzle post (warning: contains spoilers).

And here's a picture that may or may not help you with 1-Down.

Entry 311: 'Tis the Season

'Tis the season...

[Bah, humbug!]

And here at the G & G household that means, well, not too much.  We usually visit my family during the summer and S's family for Thanksgiving, and by the time we get done with all that, we have little, if any, vacation leave to spend on Christmas.  Plus, I'm not sure if we are really going to celebrate Christmas as a familial tradition.  I mean, we will celebrate it, but I don't know if we will celebrate it.  We haven't quite worked it out yet.  S never celebrated Christmas growing up, and while I did, and it was one of my favorite days of the year, I now realize it wasn't because it was *Christmas* (Jesus Christ never even crossed my mind during Christmas as a child -- I was just in it for the material goods), but because it was a special day I spent with my family.  If we celebrated Arbor Day, I'm sure I would have fond memories of Arbor Day.

But Lil' S1 already knows that Christmas means something different to most people ("Look! Look! Christmas time!" He said when we saw a big decorated tree), so we might start doing something for the kids' sake.  This year on Christmas Day we are going to some friends' for dinner and then probably doing a gift exchange over Skype with my family, which seems like a decent enough amount of yuletide activity.  We haven't put up decorations or bought a tree or anything like that.  Dealing with pine needles and rotting tree trunks is a bridge too far at this point.

We also bought Lil' S1 some gifts this year, but S mistakenly opened the shipping box in front of him thinking it was something else.  His eyes got huge as he saw a bunch of Toy Story action figures, and he went into full-on spazz-out mode: "Buzz Lightyear!  Is that mine, Amma?  Is that Buzz Lightyear mine?  That's my Buzz Lightyear, right?!  Amma, can you open it?  That's mine!  Is that my Buzz Lightyear?  Hey!  There's Woody too!  Amma is that my Woody? That's my Woody, right? That Woody is mine ..."  What are we going to say at that point?  That bell cannot be unrung.  Best just to let him have them a few weeks early and avoid a Three Mile Island-esque meltdown.  

[This movie came out "only" 20 years ago!]

This year Christmas Eve and Christmas Day fall on a Thursday and Friday, respectively, which, at first blush, seems like a good thing.  However, upon further consideration, it's probably not, because it means four straight days trying to entertain two kids, one of whom is at the age where temper tantrums still seem like a keen negotiation strategy.  I'm not sure what we are going to do with our kids for that long weekend, but I assure you that going into the office on the 23rd will be far more relaxing than the holidays at home.  A bunch of my coworkers will be on vacation; my workload will be light; it will be peaceful and quiet; and there are always holiday related goodies in the office.  I can sit at my desk, sip coffee, eat a cookie, do a little work, eat another cookie, do a little more work, have some more coffee -- aah! -- I'm enjoying it already.

One possible saving grace is that it has been unseasonable warm here in DC, so if this weather holds, we can take Lil' S1 to the park over the long weekend.  Being able to do stuff outside makes having young kids so much easier.  Anthropogenic climate change might be quickly making the Earth uninhabitable for human beings, but I'll be damned if 68 degree temperatures in mid-December aren't incredibly pleasant.

In other news, S went back to work this week after being on maternity leave for the past four months.  It's been going relatively well, truth be told.  S's mom is staying with us again, which really helps.  She's the "shutdown corner" on the baby, which allows S and I to play zone against Lil' S1 and occasionally give her mom help over-the-top (sorry for the strained sports analogy; I've been watching too much football lately).  Oh, S's mom also cooks.  She's a shutdown corner who cooks.  She's like Richard Sherman, if Richard Sherman made really good masala dosas.

Also, I got a gym membership, which is good.  Maybe I can finally start exercising regularly again.  We took Lil' S1 to this sports-plex place over Thanksgiving break, where they have trampolines and bouncy houses and pits full of foam bricks and stuff like that, and I went on a trampoline and instantly hurt my back, and then I tried to climb up a rope and struggled to even get off the ground.  Back in my wrestling days ("only" 20 years ago!), I could climb up a rope without even using my feet.  So the fact that I could barely do the equivalent of a pull-up was very distressing to me.  I'm going to start hitting the weights a couple times a week, and I'm also thinking about taking a boxing or maybe a kickboxing class.  What I would really like to do is MMA (I think I could be the next Holly Holm), but I don't think they offer it at my gym.

It's nice because S has been into the gym lately, and they offer cheap childcare, so it's something we can do as a family.  You know you are married with kids when your "family time" consists of you and your spouse listening to Serial on separate iPhones, while you run on adjacent treadmills, as your kids watch SpongeBob, while a 19-year-old gym employee trying to work her way through community college student supervises them.

But, we are doing pretty well, all things considered.  Lil' S1 is at that age where like 75% of what comes out of his mouth is comedy gold, so you don't even appreciate how funny it is anymore.  I think starting school -- real school, not daycare -- is really helping his really helping his development.  I can see why Obama is so big on universal early childhood education.  Of course, I have plenty of complaints about Lil' S1's school (I have complaints about everything, although I like to think of them as "constructive criticisms"), but overall I like it a lot.

One thing I don't like is that they get homework.  I've become pretty anti-homework in general, but especially so for PK kids.  They're just too young for it.  They don't appreciate the responsibility of it yet, and obviously they can't keep track of anything, so basically homework just becomes an assignment for the parents -- as if we don't have enough on our plates.  What keeping my kid safe and fed and healthy isn't enough? I also have to get him to scribble something on a piece of paper, so that we can turn it in the next morning and say he did his "artwork?"  No thank you.

Actually, I take issue with homework on a larger scale, but I will have to get to that another time.  Now I gotta hit the gym.

Until next time...

Entry 310: Joe Pancake

I will admit, I have been really struggling to find time to post to this blog the past month or so.  This is due to a few things, but the primary reasons are my young kids, my job, and the fact that I need to sleep more than three hours a night.  So once my sons grow up, I retire, and I start taking speed, I will have plenty of time!  Until then I will just have to make due with what I got, and this weekend it is not looking like I got much.  We are booked with toddler birthdays, dinner dates (i.e., meeting another family at Nandos), and personal training appointments (not me, my wife, but the obligations trickle down to me).

So it's three-and-out for me this evening.

1.  Yet another mass shooting.  Sigh.  I hate guns, and what I hate almost as much as guns are the pro-gun arguments of people who love guns.  They are, by and large, awful, simplistic, childish arguments.  I certainly don't have time to really get into it now, so I'll just take down one particular argument.  Every time one of these shootings happens a chorus of anti-gun control people pose some variant of the question -- "Don't you wish one of the potential victims had a gun to stop the shooters?" -- and I never like the answer people, even pro-gun control people, give.  So here is the correct answer:  A) It depends; B) The question is incomplete, and when you complete it, the answer is no.  

A)  If this fabled "good person with a gun" has training with a firearm and has battle training to handle stressful situations (e.g., a police officer or a soldier), then, yes, I do wish that.  If this person is some yahoo who thinks taking a little target practice with an assault rifle at a shoot range makes him (or her, I suppose, but usually him) Bruce Willis in Die Hard, then, no, I don't wish that, because they are just as likely to exacerbate the situation, than they are to fix it.

B)  Wishing somebody has a gun does nothing.  Somebody actually has to have a gun for the John McClane theory to work, and in order for this to happen, since these shootings happen at completely random places and times, this means almost everybody has to have a gun with them at all times.  Christmas party -- gun!  English class -- gun!  Taking your kid to school -- gun!  Get your wallet, get your keys, get your cellphone, get your gun!  And so the complete question to ask is -- "Don't you wish almost everybody carried a gun with them at all times so that we could stop mass shooters?" -- to which my answer is an emphatic "no!"  Mass shootings casualties might go down, but gun accidents would sky rocket.  Think about how irresponsible most the people you interact with are, now think about them guns.  Pleasant thoughts?

2.  Once upon a time, I was against gun control (but then I grew up -- zing!); I wrote an essay about it in eighth grade.  For the essay, we had to list 10 different sources.  This was back in the day, when sources were difficult to find.  They came from little cards in the library, not from Google.  I only had about seven, so I started making up names of authors and books.  I told my friend SH that our teacher wouldn't even check them closely, so to prove it to her, I put ridiculous names for the made-up authors.  One of them was Joe Pancake.  Years later, she reminded me of this, and we had a good laugh.  Since then I've adopted it on occasion as a pseudonym for commenting on websites (particularly crossword puzzle websites), and I've renamed my blog about crossword puzzles and Scrabble "Joe Pancake."  This is particularly relevant because I just published a puzzle at BuzzFeed.  You can read about it here if you so wish.  (And you can solve it here first, if you wish.)

3.  R.I.P. Scott Weiland.  I didn't really like STP when they first came out, because I thought they sounded like a bad Pearl Jam imitation, but I really grew to appreciate their music through the years.  I saw them in Newcastle, Australia in 2011 during their brief reunion, and I was half-expecting a money-grab, mail-it-in, we're-old-and-strung-out-now show, but I was pleasantly surprise.  They fucking rocked!  It was super fun.  Weiland's death surprises nobody, but it sad all the same.

Until next time...