My in-laws (including sister in-law) have come and gone. They were here for nearly a month, and they left a few days ago. S also is out of town -- she went on her first post-quarantine flight to visit some friends in SoCal -- so it's just me and the boys. When they're in school or asleep, it's just me, and it's weird to go from such a crowded house to such a quiet house. I prefer the crowded house, even if it is a bit, well, crowded.
When S's mother is here, she takes over the kitchen. Half her luggage is food and cooking supplies (seriously). Overall, I don't mind, on the contrary, I like it, because she's such a good cook. But of course there are times when I just want to quickly make some coffee and get on with my day, and then it's nice to have the place to myself. Also, she will leave behind insane amounts of leftovers and ingredients I don't even recognize, let alone know how to use. Like, there was a Tupperware of this sticky, flaky brown stuff on the counter, and I was thinking, "What am I supposed to do with this?" Usually I slough it off to S (who often doesn't know what it is either), and I let her either toss it or freeze it. Our downstairs freezer is about 75% unmarked ingredients for Indian cuisine. Sometimes I get annoyed if we're low on space, but ultimately it's okay with me, and, like I said, I benefit from, more than anybody, actually. When she's in-law is in town, I consume about as much of her food as everybody else combine.
S's dad is usually nice to have around also. He's good with the kids, and he showed me this interesting math problem. (I figured it out, and tried to explain to him why it worked, but I think I failed mightily in that regard.) He does do that old-man thing, however, of listening to the TV (or in this case his iPad) way too loudly. S's sister said she suggested once that he use earbuds, and he told her he didn't need them because "it's not that loud." For him, that's probably true. I suspect when you're closing in on 80, nothing is that loud.
We all watch Jeopardy! together, and I call out the answers*, because I am pretty good at Jeopardy! and obnoxious about it (in my defense, what fun is it if you can't call out the answers). And S's dad always says, "You should go on this show." He says it as if it's a volunteer operation and not a super competitive process undertaken by all the best trivia players in the country.
*Yes, I know, technically they're questions.
S's sister, Sw, brought her dog with her, and I realized that I like having a dog around. If you never have to feed it, clean up after it, or be home to take it outside, having a dog is great! Sw's dog is relatively small and doesn't shed a whole bunch, which is nice. Also, she cleans up his poop immediately after he goes, and I greatly appreciate that. I can't stand having doggy bombs around my yard, even temporarily. When I was a kid our dogs just shit up the backyard, and then once every six months or so somebody would scoop them all up with a shovel, and it was absolutely disgusting in the meantime. (The worst is that the fresh logs would grow mold on them.) To be sure, our backyard was not a pleasant place to hang out, anyway -- it was basically a small overgrown patch of grass and a sticker-bush ditch* -- but the ever-present dog crap certainly didn't help.
*My parents have since landscaped it and built a deck and a bunch of rockery, and now it's quite lovely.
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With S out of town, I'm trying to think of a movie or two to watch with the kids that she wouldn't want to watch with us. I have a whole list of perfect mom-is-out-of-town movies, but I think they're still a little too young for most of them. If Lil' S2 was Lil' S1's age, then I would be fine with it, so probably in a few years. Here's my top three:
3. Conan the Barbarian
2. The Best of the Best
1. Bloodsport
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Update: I did not, in fact, show them any of these movies. Instead we watched a bunch of episodes of this show Bluey and all laughed hysterically. Bloodsport, Bluey -- we got range in this family.
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The kids have started playing baseball and it has been a mixed bag thus far. They're kinda into it -- they don't throw fits when it's time to go -- but they don't seem to love it. They never ask to play catch or take swings at home, which I think is a good measure of interest: Do they want to play in their free time? So far the answer is "no" for both them.
They aren't terrible though. If they would practice, even just a little bit, they might be among the better kids on the team.
I'm the coach of Lil' S2's team, and it's going pretty well. At that age it's just about keeping the game moving without anybody wandering off in the meantime. There is not a whole lot of actual instruction going on. There are a whole lot of bullshit safety rules you have to follow, however, especially with Covid still a consideration. I'm all for real safety regulations, but so much of what we have to do is just CYA window-dressing. For example, all the kids have to wear batting helmets when they bat, even though it's coach-pitch with mushy balls lobbed at approximately five-miles-per-hour. Nobody is getting seriously injured by a pitch, even if they get hit in the head. I mean, the kids throw harder than the coaches pitch -- and they have worse aim. It would make more sense for them to wear helmets while playing catch, to be honest. This is not a big deal, in and of itself, but when you take a bunch of these little rules in aggregate they can be really annoying.
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One big reason I'm glad the kids are back in school is because I don't think teachers can evaluate students, especially ones Lil' S2's age, properly online. We have gotten several requests to sign Lil' S2 up for special programs -- reading tutoring, summer school, etc. It's never stated explicitly why he's being extended such offers, but it seems like it must be because they think he's behind. This is perplexing to me, as I would say he's about average when it comes to reading and well beyond average when it comes to math.
What I think is going on is that his social diffidence is being mistaken for a lack of educational progress. Unlike his older brother, he's not the type to speak up or answer questions in class, and I imagine that over Zoom this can come off as not knowing. Now, I definitely don't want to be one of those parents who blames all their kid's scholastic failings on the teacher or the system or being bored or whatever. I used to deal with these parents occasionally when I taught college,* and they were annoying and almost always wrong. It really was the student.
But, I don't think I'm doing that with Lil' S2. Like I said, he seems to be right about on pace with reading, and he's way ahead of the typical five-year-old in math. He can legitimately do multiplication. If you ask him, "What's 7 times 4?" he'll think about it for a few seconds and then he will say "easy, 28." With numbers under 10, he gets it right almost every time. He do more complicated calculations too. The other day I said to him, "If we're playing cards and there are 52 in a deck, and we have three decks, plus four jokers, how many total cards are there?"
"158," he replied. I told him he was wrong.
"Ohhh, 160," he then said. "I forgot to add one of the twos."
I don't think that's typical kindergarten processing. Of course, when he has to write down his answers they look like symbol salad -- backward, misshapen numbers, floating haphazardly on the page -- so maybe that's part of the problem. He probably could stand some work on his writing. Actually, we took the school up on their tutoring offering for reading and writing. He was supposed to work virtually with a tutor for a half-hour every week. He did it once about a month ago, and then the tutor cancelled at the last minute the next week, and then we haven't heard from him since. Whatever.
*Yes, I had to sometimes deal with the parents of students in college. I can't imagine how mortified I would have been if my parents had ever intervened like that on my behalf.
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I made an appointment to get my tooth extracted, so I guess this is actually happening -- implant #3. I'm not happy about it. But, then again, my tooth is bothering me (if it wasn't I wouldn't be getting it pulled), and I want it to stop, so I am happy about it if you condition on the fact that my tooth hurts. Also, I found out the periodontist will not have to graft bone from my palate to do the implant, and it will be a bit cheaper out-of-pocket than I was anticipating. But still super expensive compared to the $0 it would cost me if I didn't have to get it extracted. It's all relative.
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Yesterday I was sitting on the sofa reading to the boys and my shirt pulled up a little bit and Lil' S1 yanked it wide open and said, "Daddy, you're seriously getting fat." It wasn't his typical taunting. He said it with a completely somber, concerned tone.
It's true. I'm legitimately putting on weight, and it's almost entirely localized in my belly. I can't stop the expansion. I mean, I can and hopefully will, but I can't do so easily. I've reached an inflection point in my life whereby I can no longer exercise enough to overcome all the garbage (delicious, delicious garbage) I shove down my gullet. My metabolism has slowed down, and my workouts have gotten a little lighter and a little less frequent, but my eating has stayed the exact same. The result is an ever expanding tummy. It was especially bad while S's family was here, we had two birthday celebrations, but there's always something.
I'm vowing to eat better, starting... now. I don't have to make radical changes, just cut the crap. That's it. I can eat all the same things I eat now, except for the three massive pieces of cake, the two cupcakes, the pint of ice cream, and the family-size bag of potato chips I ate over the last two weeks. I just have to not eat that. The concept is simple, but the execution is hard.--------------------------------------------------------
I watched this excellent Netflix show Pretend It's a City. It's a seven-episodes docu-series of Martin Scorsese interviewing Fran Lebowitz. I highly recommend it. Actually, I don't recommend it at all. I very much enjoyed it, but I don't recommend it. It's the type of thing, I suspect, a lot of people would find pointlessly boring, but I loved it. One of my favorite things is listening to smart people just riff on random subjects, and Fran Lebowitz is a master of this genre. She's so quick, so funny, so thought-provoking.
The thing I like about her is that she can be asked about something totally mundane, "Do you have any guilty pleasures?" And then give a five-minute monologue as if she has been waiting for somebody to ask her this question her entire life. The only person I've ever heard who can rival her impromptu wit in this regard is Adam Carolla.
One thing she said that I like is that she can only truly identify with people of her generation. If she meets somebody of her generation she can tell exactly what they're about, what image they want to convey, by how they dress, the slang they use, the music they listen to, so on and so forth. But if she meets somebody who's younger than her, they all seem culturally the same: young.
That's so true for me too. Obviously it's not objectively true -- all generations have their own nuanced subcultures -- but it seems true to me. And here's a scary thought. I now relate more with somebody of Fran Lebowitz's generation than I do with a new adult. The difference in age is almost exactly the same in either direction, and she's 70.
Until next time...
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