Entry 543: To Peachtree Corners and Back

We are back from our trip to Hot-lanta, which at this time of the year is more like Chill-lanta.  The whether was about the same there as it was in DC, somewhere between 35 and 45 degrees for most the day.  We weren’t actually staying in Atlanta proper (ITP, as the locals say: inside the perimeter), but rather in a city called Peachtree Corners which is OTP north.  It was a relaxing, cozy getaway.  S’s sister, Sw, has a nice townhouse that isn’t too cramped with all of us (plus her little dog) in it.  It was a lot of lazing around, watching TV and movies, reading, drinking coffee, eating cookies -- the best type of vacation, if you ask me.

On Christmas morning, we FaceTimed S’s parents and opened gifts -- or, in the case of the adults, we watched the kids open gifts.  They’re at the age when the opening is much better than the actual getting, and they aren't big on patience, so they tore through everything (literally) in short order.  Often a gift wouldn’t even be completely out of the wrapping paper before they would move on to the next one.  The whole thing was done in, like, ten minutes.  We did another FaceTime with my family later that evening, and the kids didn’t even save anything to unwrap.  It was just as well, though.  It was a very frantic call.  Given the opportunity, Lil’ S1 will dominate the screen (often with his cousin Q), making it almost impossible for anybody else to speak (or hear).  If the adults actually want to talk, we have to put the kids on their own call and let them blather about Pokémon or Bakugan or what have you.

We did get to do a few things outside the house; we walked quite a bit.  We went to the botanical garden (see pics), which was bittersweet.  It was cool, but we weren’t able to get tickets to the evening lights display, so the whole time I kept thinking about how much better everything would look all lit up.  We went through a different drive-through lights display, which was fine, but not nearly as cool as the garden looked.  To make matters more annoying, Sw had tickets from her work for the botanical garden show for the night before we arrived, but they wouldn't let her exchange them for a different night, so they just went to waste.

[It was an Alice In Wonderland theme]

We also went to the zoo (see pic), which was fine.  We go to the zoo so much here in DC that I’m pretty much permanently zooed out, but at least they have some different animals in Atlanta, like giraffes and rhinos.  They also have pandas, which we have in DC, but they are often hard to see, because they’re the main attraction, and there are always, like, a zillion people crowded around their exhibit.  At the Atlanta zoo, you can just walk right up to their cage and look at them.  I couldn’t believe it.  I guess, that’s the difference between paying and going from free.  (The National Zoo, like many attractions in DC, doesn’t charge an entrance fee.)  I’d rather have things be free – everybody should be able to enjoy them – but it is nice to not have to fight the crowds just to catch a glimpse of Mei Xiang sleeping or Tian Tian chewing some bamboo.

Speaking of chewing, I certain did not go hungry this vacation.  I ate so much, I’d wake up and still be full from dinner the night before.  We really mixed up the food types – Mexican, Indian, Thai, and, if you count frozen pizza as Italian, Italian.  And then a massive amount of cookies – I probably ate 25 cookies in four days, no exaggeration – and even a cupcake for good measure.  It was so gluttonous and so glorious.  The walking is the only reason I didn't gain 50 pounds (although the belly is protruding more than I'd like it to; I really need Covid to end so I can get back in the Krav studio regularly).

For entertainment at night, I got the kids into Cobra Kai.  Season 3 releases on Friday, so I wanted to get them caught up on the first two seasons (and I wanted to rewatched them myself).  S wasn’t too happy about it.  There is some bad language and adult humor in it, and she is much more sensitive to that type of thing than I am.  But I won over a key ally to my side, Sw, who got hooked on the show, so it was four against one, and S had to cave or she'd be the Grinch.

It’s a great show.  It has the perfect amount of nostalgia and self-parody without being completely farcical, and the fight scenes are marvelously over-the-top (especially the final one of season two).  Also, the general premise – bullied kids who become the bullies – is interesting.  Lil’ S1 gets most of this, I think, but it probably goes over Lil’ S2’s head.  He’s just in it for the fighting.  That kid loves any sort of roughhousing.  He walks around the house going “Ike! Ike! Ike! Ike!” punching and kicking anything that gets in his way.  (Occasionally this is S, which doesn’t go over so well.)

Yesterday, he challenged me to a boxing match (he has a little pair of gloves), and then when I went into the room he had set up a ring using blankets, and he had gone into my gym bag and laid out my gloves and my headgear and mouthpiece.  It was cute.  (I actually wear headgear and a mouthpiece too, because he can hit legitimately hard now.)   We will see if he’s still like this as he gets older.  He took karate for a while, but he was too young/shy to really participate.  I think we will try again once Covid is over.  I’m not trying to turn my kid into a little badass, but I’m not not trying either.

I do have to rein him in from time to time, however.  Yesterday, while punching me he said, “C’mon, you pussy!”  And I was like, “Whoa!  You cannot say that!”  That’s definitely a Cobra Kai thing.  I told him it’s a bad word, and then I told him that if his mom hears him say it, she won’t let him watch the show anymore.  That did the trick, I think.  He switched to calling me a “weakling” after that, which is still not great, but acceptable.

[Some cookies we decorated over Zoom with my family before we went to Atlanta.  They turned out very nicely.]

In general, S and I have different views about this.  I don't mind them hearing bad language or seeing sex scenes (within reason), because I think it's a good chance to teach them about those things.  S's view is that they are going to repeat it at inappropriate times, but I think that's actually less likely if they know what those things are and what they mean and learn the context for which they are appropriate.  I mean, they're going to learn those things anyway, and I'd rather it be when I'm around, so that I can explain it to them and educate them on what is and is not appropriate and when.  For example, Lil' S2 now knows that p-word is a bad thing to say and that he'll get in trouble if he says it, and so he hasn't said it again.  That's a good thing.

The things I don't want them watching are the things that could be potentially traumatizing or give them nightmares.  But four-letter words and sexual innuendo aren't that.  In short, as long as they aren't watching pornography, YouTube propaganda videos, or, like, Silence of the Lambs, I'm okay with it.

Alright, I think I have to wrap this one up about.  Have a Happy New Year!  If you want to celebrate the end of this terrible year, by all means, go for it.  Personally, I'm reserving most my good cheer for January 20.  That's the real end to 2020, as far as I'm concerned.

Until next time...

Entry 542: Christmas Vacation

We are headed out of town early tomorrow -- going to visit S's sister in Atlanta.  I'm not super keen on traveling right now -- you know, with this raging pandemic and all -- but we're being quite safe about it.  We all got Covid tested last week; we are driving, so we won't be in a busy airport or anything like that; and we will pretty much only be with S's sister, who is super safe herself, and lives alone.  (And we will mask it up, when necessary, as always.)  From an exposure standpoint, it will be no more risky than just living our usual life here.  In fact, it'll probably be even safer, since the kids won't be in their pod.

But still, traveling just doesn't feel right to me at the moment.  It's like, we're probably almost done with this thing.  I feel like we should just hunker down and hang in there for a few months, until we can get this vaccine thing going in full force.  Traveling 600 miles down the country is the exact opposite of that.  But S really wants to go, and her sister presumably doesn't want to spend Christmas by herself, and the boys really want to go, and under normal circumstances I would really want to go, as well.  So, we're going.  I'm sure once I get there, I'll be able to relax, and it'll be great.  But I'm not there yet, so that's not how I feel now.

Anyway, as I said, we're getting up early tomorrow, so I should try to get some sleep.

Until next time...

Entry 541: A Song Of Ice And Aggravation

It has not been a great week thus far.

It started out well, the Electoral College voted Biden for president, as expected, but things quickly deteriorated in the G & G household from there.  Our boys are in a pod with a little girl, and Tuesday evening, we got a call from her mother telling us she (the mother) had been around somebody recently, who, unbeknownst at the time, had Covid.  It sounded like a very low-risk situation -- mostly outside, mostly masked -- but, still, we all figured we should play it very safe, so we canceled the pod, including the babysitter, until she could get tested.  And since it's Christmas break next week, anyway, we just canceled it for the rest of this week.  (She got tested and she's negative, if you were wondering.)

Without the babysitter, it's so difficult to do remote schooling.  Lil' S2 isn't old enough to navigate his schedule by himself, so you pretty much have to sit near him the entire day.  Lil' S1 can do everything on his own, but you still have to check in to make sure he's on task.  He's got some slacker in him.  He's a strong reader (a bit of a bookworm), and his math seems to be okay, but he puts such little effort into his other work.  Anything that requires actually writing out answers to questions, he just doesn't want to do.  His handwriting is atrocious and he's a surprisingly poor speller given how much he reads.  It's a lack of practice, and it's difficult to get the reps in when almost all your work is done on online portals and nobody is really holding you accountable, anyway.

I was working with him today, and when I work with him, it almost always leads to a tantrum (from him, to be clear), because I don't let him slide.  He has to do it right when I'm around.  I don't mean he has to get the correct answer every time; I mean he has to put in the right effort.  He has to use complete sentences that start with a capital and end with a period and use lower-case in between (on his own, he just capitalizes and punctuates things willy-nilly); he has to fully erase his mistakes, so that somebody can actually read his work; he has to write along an approximately straight line; so on and so forth.  You need to get those things to become second-nature or else you'll really struggle to progress to the fun stuff.

The other thing he does, which, to be fair, pretty much every kid does (including me when I was that age), is argue tooth-and-nail about doing something he doesn't want to do, instead of just doing it in half the time, at half the effort, it takes to argue it.  As an example, today he was doing a worksheet in which he had to give examples of antonyms for certain words, one of which was BOLD.  The answer he wrote was LISINS.  We then had the following conversation:

Me: What's this?  What's LISINS?

Him: It's "listens."

Me: That's not how you spell it, and that's not an antonym for bold.

Him: Yes, it is.

Me: No, it isn't.

Him: Amma said it is!

Me: No, she didn't.

Him (revving up to tantrum mode): Yes, she did!

Me: Well, it's not right.  Let's try to think of something else.

Him (full on meltdown): Amma said it is!  I don't like it when you help me!  I like it when Amma helps me!  She said it's right!

Me: *Sigh*

The thing is, though, once I get him to actually calm down and put some effort into it (usually by threating to take away his iPad time), he'll just do it.  He won't fight me, and he even seems to enjoy it.  He's like a wild horse that has to be broken or something -- I don't know.

By the way, I found out later that S really did tell him it was okay to put listens as an antonym for bold, which... I don't even know what to say about that.  I mean, it's the wrong part of speech -- listens is a verb and bold is an adjective -- but even aside from that, it still doesn't make any sense.  Being a good listener is not the opposite of being bold.  Those two words don't exist on the same continuum.  It's like saying swims is the opposite of adamant.  I have no idea how the connection was even made.

I tried to ask S about it, but she made it clear I shouldn't.  Normally I wouldn't be able to leave well enough alone -- I'd have to know what the thought process was behind signing off on listens as an antonym for bold -- but this time I didn't push it, because we are both quite stressed right now.  Not only are we both trying to work full-time and tend to our children in the midst of a raging pandemic, but our roof has a leak in it, and few things in life are more aggravating than a roof with a leak in it, especially when a massive storm of wintery mix blows through town.  Hopefully, we can get somebody out to look at it ASAP.  Will keep you posted.

Until next time...

Entry 540: Fort Washington Outing

The crazies came to town again yesterday.  There was a MAGA rally here in DC, in support of the "Stop the Steal" campaign.  Ironically, the powers-that-be are doing exactly what the protesters are asking: They are stopping a lame-duck president from stealing an election he clearly and definitively lost by 74 electoral votes and over seven million popular votes.  But I suspect the irony is lost on the red-hatted, mask-eschewing, democracy-hating mob.

The Proud Boys were here, of course.  They never miss a chance to embarrass themselves, cosplaying as White-Boy ISIS.  Seriously, they wear paramilitary gear, brandish weapons, attempt to suppress others through intimidation, and rally for their (wannabe) strongman leader to remain in power against the will of the people -- that is some serious ISIS shit right there.  They claim to be a pro Western civilization movement, and yet all they do is act out the worst parts of the anti-American extremists they supposedly hate.  Again, I suspect the irony is the lost on them.

They did some truly vile things last night, desecrating historic Black churches, burning their personal property in a manner than not-so-subtly evokes Klan-like terrorism, and being involved in some manner (it's unclear exactly how) in some stabbings outside of a bar called Harry's, which has sadly become a de facto alt-right clubhouse (it used be a fun after-softball-games dive bar).  For the most part, however, the police did an admirable, unenviable job of keeping them separated from the counter-protesters.  Although it's tempting to want to see these ugly people confronted, it's not worth it.

This all happened miles away from my neighborhood, by the way.  I only know about it from reading the paper.  I'm torn, too, on what the best way to handle this type of thing is.  Is it best to call it out head-on and stand up against it, or does that just give the terrorists oxygen?  Is that just giving them what they want -- the notoriety, the legitimacy?  Is it better to de-platform them, ignore them, as much as possible, and just live your own best life?  I genuinely don't know.

But let's pivot to the latter, because it was a lovely day yesterday (a product of global warming, no doubt, but lovely nevertheless), and the G & G family took a fun little excursion to Fort Washington Park.  The views are remarkable, and it's cool to walk along the massive barricades of the fort.  ("It's like a mini Great Wall of China!" proclaimed Lil' S1.)  It makes me nervous though.  I'm a bit of an acrophobe.  Not really for myself (although I wouldn't say I love heights) but for my kids.  Even if they're on firm ground, behind a barrier they would have trouble breaching if they tried (and why would they try?), I get irrationally scared they're going to fall off.  I get so uncomfortable I try to get everybody to go somewhere else.

S isn't like this, but she has her own thing: water.  At one point, the kids were playing on the bank of the Potomac River, walking along the rocks, tossing stones, and she was as nervous as I was on wall.  The thing is, though, if somehow they fell off the wall, they would be dead; if they fell into the river their legs would get wet.  It's not that deep by the shore, and we could easily pull them out if need be.  On the flipside, they could realistically fall into the river (Lil' S1 at least got his shoe wet), whereas it would be nigh impossible for them to fall off the wall.  So, I guess it all evens out.

Anyway, let's hit some pics and call it a post...

[Views of the Potomac from Fort Washington Park]

[I heard somebody official-sounding say that this is the George Washington Masonic Memorial -- the story checks out] 

[The Washington Monument from a distance]

[Although it kinda looks like my boys are climbing on the wall, which would be very weird, given my commentary above, the cannon is a good 30 feet back]

Entry 539: Dish Brushes and Other Stuff

I got a new dish brush this week.  I mention this not because it's a particularly exciting life event, but because of what it reveals (or doesn't) about my psyche.

I do the dishes pretty much every night.  S is usually busy with other things, and I don't like the way she packs the dishwasher, anyway.  (It's as if she's trying to fit the least amount of dishes possible.  She's obviously never studied the bin packing problem.)  I use one of those scrub brushes with the soap in the handle for all the pots and pans that don't go in the dishwasher.  It's a convenient implement that usually lasts for a while.  The one I had been using, however, got a leak in the handle, so every time I used it I got soap on my hand -- not a lot, but enough that I'd have to rinse off my hand periodically.  It got to be really annoying, and I hated using it.

So what did I about it?  Nothing.  I just lived with it, and kept using it for weeks, months even, while it leaked soap on my hands.

Why did I do that?  I don't know.  That's what I've been trying to figure out.

Eventually, I did order a new one.  It came, like, a day later (Amazon Prime), and I threw out the old one and started using the new one.  When no soap got on my hand, I just thought: Why?  Why did I wait so long?  Why didn't I do this the instant I noticed the leak.  It's not like the notion of getting a new brush completely escaped me.  I thought about it every time I washed dishes.  I told myself -- you should get a new brush -- but I didn't do it for a preposterous long time.  Again, why?  It took, literally, less than a minute to order on my phone and cost $9.99.  So, it wasn't time or money.  It was something else.  Maybe I spent so many years as a cash-strapped grad student I conditioned myself to always make do with what I had; maybe it's just the power of inertia; maybe it's something else altogether.  Like I said, I don't know.

In other news, I've been plowing through some content I put off until after the election.  I listened to Slate's Slow Burn podcast series on David Duke.  The parallels between Duke's rise to power and Trump's* become very apparent in listening to series trailer, which is why I put it off until after the election.  I told myself I'd only listen to it if Trump lost; otherwise, it would have been too depressing for me to handle.

*The ways in which they are the similar: the constant playing of the outsider, anti-media, us-against-them card; the big, unhinged, be-aggrieved-be-very-aggrieved! rallies; and the constant, unequivocal lying that their supporters defend, paradoxically, as "telling it like it is" or "saying what other politicians are afraid to say."  A big difference between the two, however, is that Duke was (is, I should say, he's still around) way more ideologically driven than Trump.  I mean, he's ego-driven, without question, but he also sincerely believes his white supremacist garbage.  Trump, on the other hand, is more amoral and seems to be completely in it for himself.  There's no larger cause or great good with him.

I also started a book about the USFL, a professional football league that was around in the mid-'80s.  It was a legit league that actually stole some good football players away from the NFL (Hall of Famers like Steve Young, Reggie White, and Jim Kelly) and had a decent following.  I was a little young at the time (I was only seven when they folded), but I remember watching their games.  I almost certainly would have been a fan had they stuck around.

But they didn't.  They originally played spring football, so as not to compete directly with the NFL, but then one of the owners convinced the league to move to a fall schedule in 1986.  His hope was not to actually grow the USFL (which he infamously called "small potatoes"), but to somehow parlay the fall move into a merger with the NFL, so that he could own an NFL franchise, which is what he really wanted.  When it all fell apart -- very predictably so -- he got the league to sue the NFL.  They "won" the lawsuit, were awarded $1 in damages, and promptly went defunct.  The commissioner of NFL at time, Pete Rozelle, reportedly told the owner who spearhead his league's demise that he would never own an NFL franchise as long as he (Rozelle) or any of his descendants had any say in the matter.

Who was the rogue owner who led the promising young USFL on a suicide mission for his own personal benefit?  Yep, you guessed it: Donald J. Trump.

The funny thing about it too is that a bunch of the owners knew that taking on the NFL was an insane plan that would never work.  But they went along with it anyway.  (A few were smart and got out before the ship went down.)  That's the weirdest thing about the Trump phenomenon: All the people who admit how awful and incompetent he is, but still vote for him.  I used the word funny above, because that's what it is.  I just wish I wasn't inexorably caught up in the joke.  As I've said many times: January 20 can't get here soon enough.

Until next time...