Entry 473: Separate Vacations

Busy weekend, this, so I'll bang out as much as I can in the short time I have to blog.  We're preparing to go away for a few weeks -- the boys and I are going to visit my family in Washington (the state), and S is going somewhere, Indonesia, I think, for work.  The way things worked out this summer, with our move and the boys switching school from a year-round school to a non-year-round school, separate vacations were the most practical course of action when it comes to childcare.  This way I can cover two weeks, and S can cover two weeks (she's taking them to her parents' without me, when we get back), and then we get a month of coverage.  It's just for this summer -- once we have an established schedule, and we replenish our household coffers, we will vacation together again.

It's funny, I was listening to the latest episode of The Weeds podcast, and they were talking about finding childcare for the summer when school is out, and it was like they had secret cameras set up in S's and my house -- Tennis camp starts on the 10th and runs through the 24th; then culture camp starts on the 30th; they have Silver Stars on the 28th; so we will just need somebody to cover that Monday and Wednesday.  I can call Brianna for Monday and work a half-day on Wednesday...  You need a scheduling algorithm just to figure it all out.  The thing about The Weeds is that most the hosts live in DC, so their real-world examples are actually real-world to me.

S tends to get stressed out a bit before we travel, and apparently this is true even if we take separate trips.  I'm the opposite.  She's totally laid-back about the actual traveling, because she does it so often, but she's really controlling with the packing and preparation.  I dread the actual flight (actually it's more the to-and-from the airport I find particularly stressful, not the actual flight itself), and I don't even give much thought to the packing.  She has already made several "requests" about things I put in their carry-ons -- snacks and books and the like -- and she wants to pack the suitcase for them herself.  I don't really want her to -- I want to pack things how I like them -- but it gives her peace of mind, so sometimes it's best to just say "thanks" and then rearrange things to my liking when she's not looking.  Of course, I wish S was coming with us, but there are advantages to solo-dadding.  If you are married with kids, think about how many of your little spousal fights have to do with disagreements in parenting tactics.  It's nice to not have to worry about that once in a while.

Things were extra busy this weekend because we had some friends over to our new house.  It was really nice.  I finally feel like we have the perfect hang-out house.  We have a big open upstairs that leads out to the deck and a sizable backyard.  It's not like our old house, which was sectioned off into small rooms, and the deck was downstairs and across the lawn from the actual house.  Also, we have a big basement filled with toys, so we can send the kids downstairs and have actual adult conversations about important things like playlists at early '90s junior high dances (staples: Boyz II Men, Timmy T, Vanessa Williams).

We also have a decent-sized open kitchen, which is an underrated aspect of entertaining.  People always congregate in the kitchen, at least for part of the night, because it's where the refrigerator is (and so it's usually where the alcohol is) and also because the hosts are often finishing up some food preparation, so people come in to talk to them.  If your kitchen isn't open, things almost always split into a kitchen group and a non-kitchen group.

I think a good time was had by all last night.  I had fun.  S messed up a couple of the dishes, but she noticed it with enough time to fix things, so it was much more funny than it was tragic.  She put too much salt in the potato salad, because the recipe called for "2 tablespoons of salt (used while boiling potatoes)," and she didn't notice the last part, so she put in two tablespoons of salt after the potato salad had already been made.  That is a fucking lot of salt.  It straight-up ruined the entire batch.  I tried it, and it wasn't eh, a little salty for my taste; it was oh my god, it tastes like I chugged water straight from the Dead Sea!  We had to chuck it.  (The second batch was delicious, though.)

Before that she made a peanut butter, pretzel, and chocolate pie for dessert. But some of the kids are allergic to nuts, so she used sunflower seed butter (SunButter) instead of peanut butter.  I sampled it, and it tasted funky, like, really funky.  I chalked it up to the SunButter, but the taste lingered and a familiar flavor started to distinguish itself:

"For some reason, I'm tasting garlic," I said to S.  "It's really weird."
"Oh," S replied, "that's because I accidentally used garlic-flavored pretzels."

Needless to say, that went in the trash too.  We bought ice cream sandwiches instead.

50% of me felt bad for my wife, because she was legit disappointed, at least a little bit; 45% of me just thought it was funny; and 5% of me was annoyed because this is a common problem for S.  She doesn't read things like labels or directions carefully, so she makes more mistakes than she should.  It's a speed thing.  I see how she does things, and she just charges though, without double-checking or verifying anything.  It's the exact opposite of how I do things.  I'm as slow as a Bob Rafelson movie (there's a deep cut), but I almost never make mistakes like this.

The flip-side, however, is that maybe with all the time she saves on a regularly basis, she still comes out ahead in the end, despite the occasional big mistake.  Maybe it's more efficient to race through everything, and then pay a sizable lump-sum price every once in a while.  It's kinda like solving crossword puzzles in a tournament setting.  If you race through as fast you can, you're more likely to make mistakes. But if you solve carefully, then you're more likely to be beaten by faster solvers.  You can't be cautious and solve at your top speed.  You always have to comprise one or the other (or a little bit of both).  And different great solvers do it differently.  There's no right or wrong way.

In conclusion, S gets to make fun of me a little bit each day when I take 15 minutes to load three dishes in the dishwasher (I like it done right), and I get to make fun of her a lot every once in a while, when she puts garlic in the dessert.

Until next time...

Entry 472: Surviving the 4th

My parents and sister and her family are all in Europe at the moment, and I am very jealous of the pictures they are sending.  In part, it's because it just looks like fun; in part, it's because they could easily escape the 4th of July festivities.  It's not a particularly enjoyable holiday these days -- especially not when our Grinch president is doing his best to spoil it for the residents of my current city.  The only good thing is that it rained almost the entire night of the 4th.  Rain always ruins outdoor events like these.  Attendees can say they still had fun, but it's not the same, and they know it.  That's why idioms like "don't rain on my parade" and "cast a dark cloud over" exist.  It makes it not so fun.  But if you don't want the event to be fun, because you are politically and morally opposed to it, then it's good.

I also like it when the festivities get tampered down a bit, because it's not so loud late into the night, so it's easier to put the kids to bed and to go to sleep myself.  I actually like big firework shows, and I could kinda see one through my window (not on the National Mall; it was in Silver Spring, MD, I think), but the kids aren't old enough to stay up that late yet, especially not when they still have to wake up and go to daycare the next day.  So, the past few years, my 4th of July evenings have consisted of me sitting inside while my wife and kids sleep, doing crossword puzzles and listening to podcasts -- pretty much like every other night except with background explosions.  That reminds me of another good thing about rain: Fire safety.

On that point, it's funny to think back on my 4ths as a kid, and how lax things were back then.  We used to go to our family friends' house, and the whole neighborhood would be lighting off fireworks.  I distinctly remember adults doing things like lighting Jumping Jacks from cigarette cherries and throwing them before they popped.  The only safety precaution I remember was a garden hose that could barely reach the street.

I look back on those days fondly, because nostalgia is a powerful emotion, but I'm not one of those things-were-so-much-better-in-my-day, kids-are-soft-and-coddled-now type of person.  It was just different, and it was a lot less safe.  A spark from a firework once burned a hole in my jeans, and another time one singed my eye socket, not enough to do any lasting damage, but enough to put me in agony for a few days, and if it would have hit a half inch over, I might have lost an eye.  I really don't think my kids are missing out on anything major by not being inundate with fireworks on the 4th.

And I think they had a pretty good day.  The weather was actually decent through the early afternoon, so we had some friends over for some grilling of tube meats and some kiddie pool fun.  Then, once the rain started to fall, we went inside and had a huge wrestling battle, and at night we watched Jeopardy!, which has become a new family activity.  Lil' S1 will actually get some of the answers (questions) right.  It's pretty cute.  He got one the other day that I didn't know.  It was Teen Titans, which apparently is a cartoon he's watched, but I haven't.

In other news, I did a number on my left shin something awful.  It started a few months ago when I slipped doing a box jump and scraped it on the edge of the box.  It seemed like a little nick, but it turned out to go pretty deep, and it took a long time to heel.  Then, as it was finally starting to get better, somebody kicked me right on the button, and even though I had on a pad, it cut through and stung me to the bone.  After that, I slipped doing a box jump again and added a couple of new cuts and bruises.  It hurts pretty bad, truth be told.

[It's the bruises that really smart.]

Obviously, I have to be more cautious with the box jumps.  This last one was just me overdoing it.  The exercise was to do a bunch of dead-lifts followed by a bunch of box jumps.  Toward the end of the set, I could feel my legs starting to go, and I should have either gone more slowly or scaled the exercises by using less weight and/or a smaller box.  But I didn't, and this is the result.  That's the downside of "pushing it" that seldom gets mention.  Everything is always "rah-rah," "you can do it," "don't give up."  But this is where it's totally counterproductive.  I'm going to be very limited for a few weeks, and I won't be able to work out nearly as hard as I would if I was completely healthy.  So, because I wanted ten minutes of "pushing it," I've subtracted hours of good, healthy workout time.  That's a terribly inefficient trade-off.

The flip-side, of course, is that you don't know where the line is, and if you don't go hard, you deprive yourself of a lot of the satisfaction (and probably some of the health benefits) that come with vigorous exercise.  When you are actually in it, it's hard to know when and by how much to scale.  That's why when I spar, I don't like training with people who are much smaller than me.  It's hard for me to gauge what the appropriate level is for me to go to make it "fair."

I especially don't like sparring with smaller women.  I feel worse punching them than I do punching similarly sized dudes.  Maybe this is sexist, but so it goes.  (And if the main way I'm sexist is that I prefer not to beat on small women, well, that doesn't sound like the worst thing in the world.)  The other day I had to spar this woman who is really petite, like, close to 100 pounds.  She's an excellent fighter; she's actually an instructor.  Her hands are so fast, and she's technically precise.  She would come in and deliver a flurry that felt like a swarm of bees attacking my head.  So, I had to fight back, but I'm not fast, and I'm not technically sound, so I had to use my advantages, which is really a singular advantage: brute force.  But that's often the trump card.  I kicked the inside of her calf once when she came in, not my hardest, but pretty hard, and after that she didn't come in anymore.  Afterward, she told me that was a good move on my part, but, I dunno, it kinda felt like cheating.

Another time, I hit a woman with a straight left jab and dazed her a bit.  She actually said to me, "Uh... can you not hit so hard?"  It kinda made me feel like shit, honestly.  (Part of me still does, but another part of me is like -- Why are you taking this class then?  There are dozens of other non-contact classes.  This one is literally called "Fight."  What do you expect?)  And I definitely would not have felt that way if it was a guy who said this to me.  I would have been proud, because in this case I thought I was hitting softly.  It would have made me think -- Damn, maybe I don't even know my own strength!

As you can probably tell, I've become overly obsessed with my "training."  I've even been having fantasies of actually fighting somebody in a real MMA-style match.  I mean, I hold my own in sparring, and I've literally never been bested in a single wrestling drill.  An actual match is super unlikely, though.  I'm probably not good enough, and I'm solidly on the downside of my physical peak.  So, I can learn more, sure, but I'm getting older and slower as I do.  I often wish I had started this when I was 19, not 39, but it's possible that would not have been a good thing.  Against hobbyists who aren't really trying to hurt each other, I'm fine; against actual fighters, who actually want to fight, I would surely get bludgeoned.  And getting bludgeoned is not that good for your brain.  So, it's probably good I didn't discover my passion for fighting as a young man.  It's better to be able to think straight long into old age than it is to have once been a mediocre amateur fighter.  But still, a guy can dream.

Until next time...