Entry 490: Welcome to Miami

Getting ready to head out of town.  Early tomorrow morning, we embark on a road trip to Miami, F-L-A.  We are taking our talents to South Beach.  Actually the bulk of the trip will be spent at a retirement community in Tampa (and on the road), but that doesn't sound nearly as exciting.

[This song is so old it can legally drink -- crazy.  Also, an Eva Mendes appearance in the video, before she got big, and way before she collaborated again with Will Smith in the all-time classic "Hitch."  (You forgot that movie even existed, huh?)]

This will be my first trip to S's parents' new place.  It should be good -- relaxing, hopefully.  I'm not too excited about the drive.  We have to break it up into two days, each way, so we're spend four days on the road.  We strongly considered flying, but flying is so expensive this time of the year.  Also, it comes with its own annoyances -- getting to and from the airport, dealing with delays, not having schedule flexibility, not having (or needing to rent) a car in Florida, being limited in what luggage we can bring, etc.  With kids these annoyances are exacerbated, especially dealing with car seats.  I hate car seats, so much.  I mean, it's good that they keep kids safe(r), but they are such a pain when it comes to traveling.  I can't wait until we are done with them.  Although, the way laws are now, you need a booster seat until you're, like, 175 pounds or 25-years-old.  You'd think car companies would invent some sort of standard, adjustable, built-in seat-harness that would work for kids and adults, but they haven't for some reason -- maybe they're in cahoots with Big Car Seat.

Actually, why don't cars have that?  Why aren't the backseats of cars built specifically for kids, considering that's who mostly rides in them?  Then, if an adult needs to sit in the back, you can pop out the standard kid seat and put it in the trunk or something.  Doesn't that make infinitely more sense?  Or better yet, the seat could be adjusted for adults or kids the same way the driver's seat can be adjusted for different sized drivers.  Imagine being able to take a Lyft or ride in a friend's car knowing that your kids will always fit.  What a Utopian thought!

Anyway...

In my last post I said I would give my ranked list of Democratic candidates.  But, then I said I might not because I might not feel like doing it this week, and that indeed is the case.  Well, actually, it's more that I don't the time than I don't want to.  There's so much to do, and I need to do it, in part because it needs to be done, in part to keep the peace.  S can sometimes get, let's say, particular about trips like this.  Basically, she wants to do everything her way, but she also wants me to do a lot of it.  This wouldn't be a problem if I was a mind reader, but sadly I am not.*  This used to cause a lot of squabbles, but I think we're getting better at handling it.  For my part, I just do things my way, and then at least they're done.  For her part, I think she's getting better at not sweating the small stuff.  There's a big out-of-sight-out-of-mind component to this too.  Like, if she's away on business then she doesn't really bother about the kids, because she knows I can handle them.  But, if she's at home watching the kids eat, then she gets all stressed if one of them doesn't finish his milk or something like that.  So, if I just do things and say "don't worry, I took care of it" then things typically go more smoothly.

Well, that's my take on it, anyway.  If you asked S, she might have a totally different opinion on the matter.  But, as I frequently say, I'm the one with the blog, not her, so you necessarily get my point of view.

Until next time...

*Back in, like, 2005 I did online dating, and one of the profile questions was, "If you were a superhero, what superpower would you want to have?"  I put "mind-reading," thinking it was a somewhat interesting, outside-the-box answer.  But, then, like, 75% of the profiles I viewed said the same thing.  It makes sense; in dating the ability to read minds would be very helpful.  Although, thinking about it now, it's a pretty creepy answer.  Mind-reading is a total invasion of privacy.  I wouldn't pick that as my superpower today out of respect for everybody else.  (I might pick to have the brain processing power of a supercomputer.  That'd be pretty cool.)

Also, I'm not sure how helpful it would be to read people's thoughts.  Would you be able to make sense of it or would it come out as a dreamlike stream of consciousness?  And it certainly wouldn't be fair to judge people on their thoughts.  I think some terrible thoughts; everybody thinks some terrible thoughts .  We literally can't help it.  We have no control over what horrendous things pop into our heads at a given moment.  What makes us who we are is how we act (or don't) on these terrible thoughts.  And that we do have control over... I think.

Entry 489: Realpolitik

I figured I'd talk about politics in this post, in part because politics is less annoying right now than my day-to-day life.  My youngest son is wearing me out.  Nothing serious, but he's going through a tough stretch at the moment, for some reason, and he's been a struggle to deal with.  I'd rather watch the impeachment proceedings on endless loop than listen to him whine again.  To make things worse, S is out of the country for work, so it's all on me.  She gets back tonight, and it will be none to soon.

Wednesday was particularly bad.  It was an hour-long temper tantrum before bed.  That's the worst time too, because it prevents him from getting a full night's sleep, which is what he needs most.  He was really tired yesterday morning.  I wanted to let him sleep and take him to school late, but that doesn't work, because I have to take his brother to school on-time, and so he'd have to get up and go with me anyway.  Also, he had a field trip that he would've missed.  That's actually a good thing -- the field trip -- because it's about a 45-minute round-trip bus ride, and kids his age often doze off during bus rides.  He was much easier to deal with last night, so I'm thinking he might have caught some Z's.

He's an odd kid, not in a bad way, but sometimes in an exacerbating way.  He's super particular about the most random things.  It's like he has a mild OCD-ish condition.  I've never known a kid so fastidious.  When he puts his jacket on, he gets really upset if the sleeves of his shirt roll up at all; his socks have to be perfectly lined up on his foot -- seams at his toes, tread on the bottom, pushed down on his ankles; his bed has to be made to his precise specifications before he'll sleep in it -- all blankets smoothed out perfectly across the four corners; and he's always grousing about his pants being too tight or his shoes being too hard or his milk being too hot or too cold or something else that's not exactly to his liking.  Sometimes he gets really upset about it too.  That's how most of his tantrums begin -- something trivial isn't perfect, and it snowballs from there.  I do my best to nip it in the bud, but once the wheels come off, it's nearly impossible to get them back on.  At some point, I just throw up my arms and let him cry about it, because I literally don't know what else to do.  Sorry, kid, nothing in life is ever exactly the way you want it to be.  Go ahead and cry if it makes you feel better, but it's not solving anything.

Which is actually a good segue into politics, because I'm hearing a lot of liberal complaints about the slate of Democratic candidates, and my feeling is: Don't pull that shit in this election.  When people ask me if I'm for Biden or Sanders or Warren or somebody else, my answer is "yes."  Every candidate has flaws, some of them big flaws -- Biden is a past-his-prime gaffe-prone white guy; Sanders is way to the left economically of the median Democratic voter; same with Warren; Booker doesn't excite people; Buttigieg is too inexperienced and privileged; Klobuchar is the female version of Booker; Steyer and Bloomberg are super rich dudes trying to buy their way in; etc., etc., down the long (but rapidly shortening) line.  Fine.  But, we gotta roll with what we got, and we need everybody on board, begrudgingly or otherwise, with whomever comes out on top.  Because it's either them or Trump, period.  Worst case scenario isn't John McCain or Mitt Romney -- that flank of the GOP is dead (in McCain's case, literally, RIP) -- it's a whole new, meaner, more vicious animal.

And, look, maybe everybody will get on board in the end.  It could be people are just fired up now in the primary season, and once a candidate actually emerges, "anybody but Trump" will carry the day.  I hope so, but I'm a little worried -- not full-fledged freaking out (what's the point?), but a bit on edge.

With all that said, I do have candidates I like more than others, of course.  My previous list has totally disintegrated, being that my top candidate is not even in the race anymore.  I'm not going to make a whole new list, but I'll give you the abridged version.  It's based almost exclusively one criterion: most likely to carry the swing states needed to win the Electoral College.  Admittedly, this is not a very good criterion, because it's almost totally unknowable.  We have little idea what will motivate the electorate in the tiny slivers of swing areas to turn out on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November next year.  All we can do is guess, and my best guess, based on the elections -- special, midterm, gubernatorial, etc. -- since 2016, is that we need somebody moderate in demeanor, who will push a slightly left-of-center agenda on economics (expanded Obamacare, infrastructure, stronger unions, higher minimum wage), immigration (expanded legal immigration, humane treatment of all immigrants, reasonable border security), guns (anti the insanity we live with now), climate (less fossil fuels, more renewables), and the military (strong defense, not too hawkish), while being pretty liberal on social issues like abortion, LGBTQ rights, and racial justice.  Oh, and also somebody who is totally charismatic and will inspire tons of different types of people to vote for them -- basically another Barack Obama.

But, there is nobody like that among the Democratic candidates.  So, again, we have to make due with what we got.  As Dan Savage likes to say about love, and it works for politics too: There is no 1, but, there are a lot of .65s that we can round up.  To that end, based on my criterion above, I give my top-five candidates below.  First, however, I want to emphasize that this is not a list of the candidates whose policies I most like.  That list would look totally different.  One of biggest fallacies people make in politics is assuming the positions they hold are also the ones that would be the most politically advantageous to adopt (Mike Pesca once called it MSNBC-itis).   I'm trying not to make that mistake.  The counterargument, however, is that nobody knows what's politically advantageous, so you might as well do what you think is right, and work to make that the popular position.  I understand that, and it could be correct.  I even espouse that philosophy at times.  So, I could be approaching this in the totally wrong way.  We likely will never know, at least not until it's too late.  That's the problem with predicting the future.

Anyway, my list...

Actually, I have to go.  Something just came up.  If I get a chance, I'll finish this post later this weekend.  That's unlikely, however, because we have a pretty packed weekend.  Instead, this will probably sit until next week -- the world's worst cliffhanger.  And that's assuming I even feel like writing about this then.  I might post about a totally different topic.  That's the luxury of having a blog with a readership in the low double digits.

Until next time...

Entry 488: When We Was Fab

I've been thinking about deleting my Facebook account for years.  I'm the person this Onion article is making fun of.  I can't stand Facebook's corporate philosophy and their bullshit "free speech" stance on misinformation, and every time Mark Zuckerberg opens his mouth, I cringe that somehow this fool is one of the most influential people in the world.  He's probably number one on my dumb-smart people list -- my list of people who have amazing mental abilities in one narrowly defined area and couldn't be less impressive intellectually outside this specific milieu.  (Actually, Zuck can't be #1; I just remembered Ben Carson exists.)

However, I never actually push the delete button on Facebook, because there are parts of it that I really like and that directly benefit my life.  It's an easy way to keep up with people you care about, with whom you might otherwise lose touch (and that's a lot of people!).  And even for people with whom you would keep up otherwise, Facebook is a decent supplement.  I get to see pictures of my nieces and nephews and other close family members and friends I otherwise wouldn't see.  For somebody who lives thousands of miles from so many of his love ones, that's important.

Then, there are just practical things Facebook is good for.  My Krav Maga gym has a Facebook page, and I use it all the time to keep abreast of class announcements and things of that nature.  As I mentioned before, the old building exploded, and so things were really up in the air for a few months schedule-wise (they still are, but at least we have a new permanent location), and that Facebook page was a great resource for staying in the loop.

Finally, there's the nostalgia factor, and I'm a nostalgic guy.  I love thinking back on people I knew and things I did in the past.  And it doesn't happen often, but every once in a while I get contacted by somebody on Facebook, and I'll be like OMG!  I haven't thought about this person in forever!  How do they even remember me?!  (Of course, I remember them, because I remember pretty much everybody.  It takes some prompting now, but it's still there!)  This happened to me twice in the past few months and both times it brought me a little bit of joy.

The first was with a guy who was on my rec baseball team as a teenager.  I played on a team with a bunch of kids from a different school, and I felt like I never really fit in.  A lot of them were city kids, whereas I was a suburb kid, so they had a bit of an edge to them, a front, that I just didn't have.  There was one kid in particular who I thought really didn't like me.  He never did anything explicit to make me think this; I just got a dickish vibe from him -- too cool for school.  I was only on the team for a few seasons, and, like I said, I didn't go to school with my teammates, so I never really saw any of them again.

So, imagine my surprise when I got a friend request from this dude on Facebook.  I accepted it (I don't hold grudges and I'm down to be friends with whomever), and I checked out his page, and he seems like a cool, down-to-earth dude now.  It's got me rethinking things.  I mean, maybe he really was a dick back in the day, but he's since matured and change -- or maybe, and this is the more likely scenario, I had it wrong all along.  Maybe he always was a decent guy, and I just never picked up on it.  Sometimes you get a bad first impression, and it becomes a self-actualizing loop.  You think somebody is a dick, so you don't engage with them, and then since they don't engaged with you, you think they're a dick.  There have been numerous times when people have told me that when they first met me they thought I was aloof or super serious, which couldn't be further from the truth.  But, then I was thinking the same thing about them, and that ended up being equally wrong.

Another thing I try to keep in mind is that you never know what type of shit people, especially young people, are going through behind the scenes.  If somebody is standoffish or cold toward you, it could be a manifestation of their own shit and actually have little to do with you.

Anyway, the other person who contacted me is this guy M I went to grade school with.  We didn't really know each other that well, he was a grade below me, but we were in the "challenge program" together, and we were both out-of-district because of it, so we rode the same bus home, and it was a long bus ride.  I think they only had one bus for the out-of-district kids, so it meandered all throughout the city.  As a result, I ended up hanging out with everybody on the bus.  It was a make-shirt nerd crew (and I was the de facto leader).

I remember M well -- he was hard to forget.  He had a big Afro; he wore glasses with an elastic band on them; he was supremely intelligent (the smart kid among the smart kids)*; and he had a serious potty mouth -- even by ten-year-old boy standards.  I saw his profile picture on Facebook one time -- a friend of a friend -- and I was going to send him a friend request, but then I didn't, fearing that he wouldn't have positive memories of me, if he remembered me at all.  He got bullied a lot, and I have this weird recurring thought with kids I grew up with who were bullied a lot that I was one of the people doing it, and I don't remember it.  It's totally irrational, as not only do I not remember being a bully, nobody's ever told me I was one.  I don't know where it comes from.  But, whatever the case, I didn't friend request M.

*He was a perennial contender in the school spelling bee, and I remember one year some friends and I made picks of who we thought would go the furthest, and he was my pick.  He went out super early on MARTYR, and I was so annoyed because I knew nobody else in the competition knew it had an irregular ending, but he just got the unlucky draw.

This was probably a few years ago, and then earlier this week, M mentioned me in a comment about our old challenge class, and a different Facebook friend tagged me in it, and I was pretty surprised by it.  So, this time I did friend request him, and he accepted it, and then he messaged me some random memories from the bus, and I returned with some of my own, and it's been a really nice little interaction.  And there's no way it would have happened without something like Facebook.

Anyway, it's late, and I feel like this post has been more rambling than usual, so I'll wrap it.  But I'll leave you with George Harrison's "When We Was Fab."  According to M, this song came on the bus radio once, and I went on a funny rant trying to break it down and analyze what the hell it was about.  (I obviously hadn't discovered the Beatles yet and probably didn't even know what "fab" meant.)  I have absolutely zero recognition of this, but I do remember the song -- and it immediately transports me to that time in my life.

Until next time...

[In the song he says "long time ago when we was fab."  The Beatles broke up in 1969 and the song came out in 1987.  So, his "long time ago" wouldn't even push us out of the 2000s today.  Nothing fucks with my head more than time.] 

Entry 487: Thanksgiving Break, 2019

It's the last day of Thanksgiving Break, 2019, and it was a mostly successful break.  Everybody got sick at some point, but nothing serious.  There is a case of the sniffles going around.  I've been kinda snotty and sore-throat-y since Tuesday, but it hasn't been enough to knock me out of commission.  It's a slow burn illness.  I worked from home Tuesday and Wednesday, so I haven't been in the office in a week.  The kids didn't have school on Wednesday and S is between jobs (she starts a new one tomorrow), so it's been a full house the past week.

We did our best to stay busy and keep the kids involved with activities -- you know, idle hands and whatnot.  If they're left to their own devices, it's a countdown until they start fighting.  Lil' S1 is old enough now to know how to push his younger brother's buttons, and Lil' S2 isn't old enough yet to know how to ignore it.  Sometimes they have some funny arguments though, such as the following:

Big: Do you know where your Dog Man book is?

Little: It's at Ava and Thatha's.  I lost it.

Big: You didn't lose it if it's at Ava and Thatha's, because you know where it is.

Little: No.

Big: Yes!  How can you lose something if you know where it is?  I left Pokemon cards at Ava and Thatha's so that I can play with them next time we go there.  I didn't lose them, but you would say I lost them.

Little: No.

Big: Yes!  The way you say it, I would have lost them but I didn't!  But that's how you say it.

Little: No!  I didn't say that!  You're making me sound worser!  You can't do that!  That's not fair!

If I had to pick a winner, I'd give this round to Little Brother -- "You're making me sound worser!" was a nice rebuttal, the four-year-old equivalent of "don't put words in my mouth."  He just needs to learn to keep his composure, but I think that's literally impossibly for a kid his age.

Anyway, Thanksgiving day was quite nice.  We hosted what ended up being a pretty big dinner -- 11 adults and six kids.  I made deviled eggs and cranberry sauce, both of which I love making because they are both so easy and yet so delicious.  For the eggs, I mix the yolks with mayonnaise and yellow mustard and sprinkle on paprika -- that's it.  For the cranberry sauce, I mix the berries with (way too much) sugar and OJ and boil it until the berries pop and then let everything congeal -- that's it.  So simple, but always such a hit. 

I also was in charge of the turkey, which was also really easy because we bought it precooked from Whole Foods.  All I had to do was pop it in the oven for an hour and a half to reheat it.  I didn't have to worry about meat thermometers or overcooking or, worse, undercooking it and giving everybody salmonella.  Again, easy-peasy.

I completely gorged myself, naturally, and I've been hitting up the leftovers all weekend.  I "invented" a new sandwich.  It's a grilled cheese with turkey inside, but the bread is coated with mayonnaise instead of butter (try it, seriously), and then once it's done, you open it up and put on some cold cranberry sauce and dill pickle slices.  Absolutely divine.  Friday night, I had two of those suckers, and a massive slice of cherry pie with whipped cream, as an after dinner "snack."  I mean, what's the point of doing strenuous workouts on a regular basis if not to eat like a glutton every once in a while?

[Originally Eric Stoltz was cast as Marty McFly in "Back to the Future", but the director Robert Zemeckis didn't think he was right, comedically, so he put Michael J. Fox in and basically reshot the entire film.  Pretty crazy.  Spike Jonze did that with Scarlett Johansson in "Her" (originally the part was performed by Samantha Morton), but that was just a voice, not a live action part.  Good move by Zemeckis (and Jonze, probably).  I think Stoltz is too emo for Marty McFly.]  

Yesterday we went to the Natural History Museum (technically, the National Museum of Natural History, but I've literally never heard anybody call it that) with another couple and their two kids.  It was a good way to spend an afternoon, even though I've seen almost everything in that museum a dozen times.  (It's the museum I've been to the most in DC, by a large margin.)  There was a new dinosaur fossil exhibit, but the kids, surprisingly, weren't that into it.  My kids really liked the Insect Zoo, where they can hold cockroaches and pet walking sticks, and our friends' kids liked the gemstones.  And of course all the kids liked the Doritos at the museum cafe.

Apart from the museum, it's just nice to go out sometimes and be among the people, especially on a crisp, clear late November day.  It feels so quaint and yuletide.  We took the Metro, which is good for about ten minutes.  After that, the kids get restless and start climbing over the seats and wrestling each other in the aisles and whatnot.  It's fine when the train is nearly empty, but that's usually not the case.

Last night, after the museum, S went over to a friend's house, so the boys and I watched a movie.  Lil' S1 is at the age where he can appreciate actually good films and not just that cartoon crap.  (Lil' S2 is only good for about 15 minutes either way.)  So, I can pick out decent stuff to watch with him.  I thought about Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark last night, but S said it was too violent, so I went with Back to the Future instead.  Lil' S2 loved it, as did I when I was his age.  He mostly understood it too, although I had to provide a running commentary to fill in the gaps.  He's eager to watch part two, but I think I'm going hold off as long as possible on that one.  It's just not as good and not as suitable for kids.  Although, he might like it if only for the hoverboard scenes.

Alright, I'm out.  Until next time...