Entry 604: Unstructured Play

Busy weekend, this one, despite not really doing anything. It's all the kids' activities. They are always doing something, and this is after we made a conscious effort to cutback on signing them up for things. It's funny because I feel like I did way less formal activities when I was a kid, and yet I feel like I was exposed to more things. I've been trying to reconcile those two seemingly contradictory things. One obvious answer is that I'm misremembering in some way, and that is definitely a possibility. But I have a different theory, and that is that the way children interact these days limits their exposure to different types of things. Parents are so much more helicoptery today than they were when I was a kid (myself included), and so play time is more formal and focused. There isn't as much unstructured play where kids just do shit on their own.

Let's take sports, for instance, because that's what I was into as a kid. Just about every memory I have about playing as a child involves sports in some way, and yet I played very few sports formally pre-high school. It was pretty much just soccer and baseball, and then I took swim lessons during the summer. I played so much football and basketball and did a ton of bike-riding and wrestling, but I just did this stuff with the kids in my neighborhood -- my parents didn't sign me up for it. They didn't need to sign me up for it because I was already doing enough of it on my own.

It seems like that pick-up game culture just doesn't exist to the same extent anymore. My kids and their friends certainly don't partake in it, and I don't see kids out on the street or in the park playing sports very often either, unless it's as part of a formal league. This might not be such a great thing. Rec leagues are cool and all, but they come with a lot of overhead and restrictions. You need to have time, transportation, money for dues, uniforms, etc., and then they are overly structured, in my opinion. There's too much of a focus on pedantry and not enough on fun. You have to teach the children "the fundamentals," when all they really want to do is run around. It's a lot of drills, taking turns, and standing around, not enough scrimmaging and playing.

As an example of the logistical problems, Lil' S2 asked me if he could play flag football. His friends happen to be playing in a league, so I went to sign him up, but it's at the same time as his soccer. So, then I looked at a different league, and it's at the same time as his karate. (It's especially annoying because they only overlap by a few weeks, but that's like a quarter of the season.) There's another league but it would be a 45-minute drive each way, and we've already devoted enough weekend time to our kids' activities. So, I passed on it.

That's the other thing: Scheduling too much burns out everybody, parents and kids alike. But, as a parent, you feel compelled to sign your kid up for so much stuff, because it's now seemingly the only way to expose them to a lot of different types of things. Like, if Lil' S2 played football in the street everyday like I did at his age, then I wouldn't feel bad about him not getting to play in the league. But he doesn't do that, because that's just not how things are done anymore.

It could be that sports are just less popular now, and kids are doing other things, and I don't doubt that that's part of it, but even non-sport play seems to be much more structured now than it was in the past. Lil' S1 doesn't really like team sports, but we still set up a lot of his "play dates" for him. He's almost 10, and at that age, I rarely had my parents set things up for me (though I needed their sign off, of course). I would just knock on people's doors, or I would call people and see if they could play. And maybe that's a big part of the explanation -- there's no such thing as a family phone anymore. Kids don't have phone numbers, so they have no choice but to have their parents facilitate.

Anyway, not to sound like "back in my day" guy --the kids will probably be alright -- but I do wonder if we're setting our children up for an increased likelihood of isolation and loneliness by structuring so many of their social interactions for them. Are they going to have the social skills needed to make and keep friends once their parents aren't around? Throw in a few formative years spent in the midst of a global pandemic and the rise of social media, e-commerce, and telecommuting, and it's definitely a recipe for a new social order that doesn't sound very appealing to me.

Well, there are a few heartening things. Lil' S2 actually does have some neighborhood friends whom he plays with just about every weekend. He can just go over there and see if they're home and they can do the same. (Although we often do text with the mom, just to save a trip.) This really has been a saving grace for us. It gives him something to do, and it gives us a break. He can only entertain himself for so long.

As for Lil' S1, he doesn't really have anybody like that in the neighborhood (sometimes he'll ride his bike to his friend E's house but not very often), but he does seem to have a lot of friends, or at least he's friendly with a lot of kids. He's pretty bold when it comes to interacting with others, and he seems to have no airs to him. He says "hi" to everybody. I sometimes worry that he's too naive -- I mean, not everybody is going to like him and be nice to him -- but he'll figure it out. It's tough to get through middle school without a reality check of how mean your peers can be.

Until next time...

Entry 603: A Six Pack of Quick Hitters

I'm low on time and blogging energy this weekend, so I'm just going to do a few quick hitters and call it a post.

-Our Tesla came in, so we've been driving it. It's pretty fuckin' sweet. Aside from it being electric (the biggest draw), it's just fun to drive. I've never really owned a "nice" car before, and I gotta say, you get spoiled by it really quickly. Now when I get into our other car, I'm like What, I gotta put a key in and adjust the seats on my own? And how am I supposed to back out without cameras? You mean I gotta turn my head?

-There are downsides, of course -- the payments, most notably, but also the stress of trying to keep it in pristine condition. If you drive and park in the city a lot, which we do, your car is going to get dinged up a little bit. I used to watch cars parallel park from my apartment window, and drivers act like they're playing bumper cars if they don't think anybody is looking. Plus, we've got two kids, so the inside is going to get trashed pretty much no matter what we do.

-As an example of stressing about the car, we are going to a Holi celebration tomorrow, at which we will get caked in a bright-colored corn starch substance. Our other car just started making a weird grinding noise (speaking of stress), so we don't want to drive it until we can get it looked at. I'm already nervous about getting this color stuff all over our Tesla. S and I are diligently planning it all out -- We'll bring a change of clothes and towels and lay down blankets in the backseat... But you know that's not going to totally work. It's like going to the beach and expecting not to track sand everywhere.

-I hate being a guy who stresses over material things, but sometimes I can't help it. I had another ordeal with that damn treadmill. A few weeks ago it just stopped working. So, I had to spend another umpteen hours on hold to do a virtual diagnostic session. Then I had to wait a week for some replacements parts to come. Then I had to make a bunch of phone calls and spend more time on hold to get a technician to come out. It got fixed and everything is under warranty, but it was such a hassle, and I'm nervous it's going to crap out again. I would be more pissed about it all, but it might have been my fault. I didn't read the manual carefully, so I didn't know I was supposed to use a surge protect. I plugged it directly into the wall, which apparently is a no-no.

-My anxiety levels were especially high at the beginning of the week, but they've come down a bit since then. I don't really know what causes the ebbs and flows. Sometimes I do -- there will be a big life event that will really get the butterflies going -- but most of the time it's just kinda normal events. I mean, there's never a time in your life in which you have all your problems solved and can totally relax. It's one shitty thing after another until you grow old and expire. Life's a bitch and then you die. This sounds dour but I actually find it comforting, because it makes me think -- you might as well just enjoy life now because there's no better time. Go ahead and grab (and give) joy whenever you can do so; don't wait for the perfect moment because there's no such thing.

-To that end, I've been watching a lot of basketball -- March Madness mainly, but also this new HBO show called Winning Time about the 1980s LA Lakers. It's so good. John C. Reilly as Jerry Buss is fantastic, and this guy Quincy Isaish they got to play Magic Johnson is excellent too -- totally believable. They've only released two episodes so far, but I'm eagerly awaiting the rest. Apparently Adrian Brody joins the fray later as Pat Reilly, which sounds like another bang-up casting job. It's even got a bit part for my girl Molly Gordon of Booksmart and Good Boys fame.

Well, it's late; that's all. Until next time...

Entry 602: Travels and Travails

I went to Palm Springs for a work conference this past week. As far as conference locales go, you could do worse than Palm Springs this time of year. The conference was pretty good. The talks were on the dry side, but the overall experience was enjoyable. The hotel was nice, the weather was mostly pleasant, and it was fun to hang out with my colleagues. Also, I set the high score at pop-a-shot at the end-of-conference reception (they had a bunch of arcade games there), so that was cool. I'm not being facetious. It was legit cool. A crowd of 20 people or so were watching me play and rooting for me as I annihilated the previous best score (it was 48; I got 106). Then a random guy who was playing it a bunch proclaimed in a German accent: You are the champion, tonight. It was like something out of an '80s movie. Badass.

[This is what I left]

[This is what I came home to; pretty good snowman though by Lil' S1]

The travel was pretty brutal though. There is no direct flight from DC to Palm Springs, so I had to book a layover, which I hate. I find the airport experience super stressful (doesn't everybody?), and layovers double this stress because they double the number of airports. I was scheduled to leave on Monday, but my flight got delayed, which would have caused me to miss my connection, and there was nothing else available, so I had to rebook for the next morning. Of course, it didn't get delayed until after I had already arrived at the airport and went through security. To make matters worse, I (stupidly, in retrospect) checked a bag, so I had to go to baggage claim and have them put in a request to pull my bag, which they did, but not until my scheduled flight actually boarded, which was almost two hours later. I left for the airport around 1:30 pm and returned back home at 5:30 pm -- four hours for a trip I didn't even take.

And I had to wake up at 4:30am the next morning to catch my rescheduled flight. But that, thankfully, went smoothly. Although I hate getting up that early, it does make the traveling process so much more tolerable. There are so many fewer people on the road and in the airport, and you're much less likely to get delayed because there aren't as many flights before yours to mess things up. I also learned from my previous mistake and didn't check a bag. I downsized from a hard-case roller-board to a medium-size duffel bag, and that's the way to go if you can swing it. You can always find room for it in the overhead bins -- pliability, see.

It's the dilemma of the short trip: Is it more inconvenient to check a bag and have to wait for it at baggage claim (and run the risk of getting separated from it somehow), or to not check it and lug it around with you and possibly fight with other travelers for overhead space?

Now my answer to that question is that it is much better to not check it if you have a layover, and it's about the same if you don't have a layover. But this, of course, is also contingent on your cargo. I typically don't have anything that can't be a little smushed or that isn't allowed through security. I always just bring all my normal toiletries -- normal-size toothpaste, deodorant, etc. -- and then if they tell me it's prohibited I just throw it away and buy a new one. But that almost never happens. On this trip, I even brought a razor blade through security, both on the way there and back. I didn't even need to shave. I just forgot it was in there.

I don't really like doing anything on a flight other than sleeping (half-sleeping really; I can never get comfortable enough to totally conk out) and watching, so I always load up the iPad with movies before I go. I watched four of them combined on my flights there and back.

Free Solo: Alex Honnold climbs an insanely treacherous rock, thousands of feet, without any security ropes. It's truly nuts, but, I gotta say, kinda awesome. I've been meaning to watch this for years, in part because a guy I played lacrosse with in high school is in it. He's a mountain climber/cameraman, and he's part of the film crew, who are part of the movie, because part of the movie is about the ethics of filming somebody doing something that could easily result in them falling to their death.

Minding the Gap: I guess I was in the mood for documentaries about extreme sports. Although, this one is really more about boys coming of age in less than ideal circumstances than it is about skateboarding. Very good, but maybe a tad -- just a tad -- overrated. I mean, 100% on Rotten Tomatoes from the critics -- really? The audience's 91% is a more accurate reflection, IMO.

Lady Bird: Really enjoyed it. I'm a sucker for this type of character-driven teenage dramedy. Such a great cast too -- Saoirse Ronan, Beanie Feldstein, Timothée Chalamet, Laurie Metcalf, etc. Metcalf was especially impressive to me, because she pulled the Bryan Cranston. She made me forget that she's the sister on Roseanne. That's why I said Cranston should have won every TV acting award every year he did Breaking Bad. His entire case was just Remember, this is the same guy who was the dad on Malcolm in the Middle. I know it's true, but I still never believe it.

The Ballard of Buster Scruggs: Fantastic. A delight from beginning to end. Those Coen brothers don't make a bad movie now do they? Well, actually, yes, they do -- I found Intolerable Cruelties irksomely convoluted and Inside Llewyn Davis is flat-out boring -- but this one was excellent. It's a series of six western vignettes, and there wasn't a dud in the bunch.

Well, I was going to also write about a weird dream I had, but I ran out of time. It's just as well, to quote Built to Spill:

No one wants to hear
What you dreamt about
Unless you dreamt about
Them

Until next time.

Entry 601: Daily Stream of Depressing Ukraine News

The title of this post speaks for itself. Everyday I wake up and check the headlines in the Washington Post, the first half-dozen of which are always about Ukraine. It's progressively worse news. There were some relatively heartening stories in the beginning about the Ukrainians surprising the Russian military with their willingness to fight back, and there is still an element of that going on, but it might be just delaying the inevitable, a total occupation and take over of Ukraine by Putin's force. It might not be, but it might be. I'm far from an expert on the subject, and even the experts aren't clairvoyants. It just seems to me that Putin is pot committed at this point, and he isn't going to stop unless he's compelled to by force, and the Ukrainian military and the makeshift militias are probably not strong enough to do this.

This raises the obvious question: Should NATO countries send in troops to help the Ukrainians repel Russia? NATO hasn't directly intervened militarily (though they've sanctioned Russia heavily and provided weaponry and other supplies to Ukraine), and I think that's the correct call. As difficult as it is to watch a sovereign nation get senselessly steamrolled by a regional bully, it's still preferable to WW III and/or nuclear warfare, both of which would be distinct possibilities if a NATO country, particularly the US, were to get involved directly on the battlefield in Ukraine. There's a bit of a trolley problem element to this. No decision the US and our allies make now can prevent massive death and destruction. It's all a series of very sobering least-bad tradeoffs.

But what's in it for Russia? That's what I've been trying to figure out. I said in my last post that it's about Putin's ego and inferiority complex, and I still think that's it. I've read other analyses, even a few that put a lot of the blame of the US for expanding NATO so rapidly and making Russian feel boxed in and existentially fearful. Invading a neighbor like Ukraine to prevent it from becoming too pro-US and possibly joining NATO is, under this philosophy, an understandable defensive move by Russia.

But this idea of defense just doesn't hold up upon examination. For one thing, Russia's hostilities toward Ukraine over the past decade are, in large part, what have made it more pro-US. If Putin would have respected Ukrainian sovereignty, the people of the country probably would not be so keen on joining NATO and the EU (polls results back this up). For another thing, the US and western Europe have major incentives to maintain friendly (or at least neutral) relations with Russia. We import a ton of their energy (especially Germany), and we are tired of fighting and western imperialism, in general, after the mostly failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Warring with Russia would not have been a consideration. They weren't even really on our radar. (Mitt Romney was an outlier when he called Russia our biggest geopolitical threat back in 2012. But dude was prescient, I guess.) So what if Russia lived next to a "western" country? What were we going to do, set up bases there to attack Moscow? That would have been the last thing we would have wanted to do. I mean, the Republican party was an unabashedly pro-Russia party until like two weeks ago.

That's the thing about the defensive self-interest argument: Invading Ukraine has done the exact opposite of advancing those goals for Russia in almost every regard. Russia could have just kept their head down, stayed off their neighbors' land, sold their energy, maintained amicably trading and diplomatic relations with the US and the EU, and lived their best lives in peace. The only way this war makes any sense to me is to view it through the lens of a dictator with an inferiority complex who is obsessed with projecting power. I think he thought the Ukrainians would be a pushover (or even welcoming to Russia), and now that they aren't, he's going to double-down on the brutishness rather than admit he's not as strong or as smart as he pretends to be.

And what's the endgame? That's the part I've heard nobody been able to even answer with any confidence. The stated goal of Russia is to "denazify" Ukraine, which isn't really a thing, considering it wasn't overrun with Nazis before. Russian can probably take control of the entire country militarily, but then what? They are then going to govern a war-decimated country in which the only people who haven't fled or been killed hate their guts? And they are going to do this with their economy at home severely weakened because of sanctions? That doesn't seem very realistic to me.

I dunno... and I also don't have my endgame worked out with this post, so I'm just going to stop here.

Until next time...