I got a Spotify account and it has kinda changed my life -- or at least the exercise portion of my life. Back in the day, I had this little iPod that I would listen to whenever I went running. I curated my exercise list over many years, but then I lost the iPod in the transition from Australia to India to the US back in 2011. I never backed up my music library, and I didn't want to pay for yet another streaming service, so after that I switched to listening to podcasts while I ran. Podcasts are okay, but I missed music. I realized that during exercise was pretty much the only time I listened to music regularly, so by moving to podcasts, I almost eliminated music listening from my life all together. I then tried free Pandora for a bit, but I hated the ads, and I hated not being able to pick the actual songs myself. I also tried listening to the few songs in my iPhone library, but it got old quick. So, I just stuck with podcasts.
But then, a few weeks ago, S realized we were paying for an unused Spotify account because she bought a family plan so that she could have music and the kids could listen to all their podcasts. I took it over, and now I have music again while I run. It's so awesome. There's an art to building an exercise playlist. The mistake people make is only getting hype music. You need that for sure, but if you're, say, running for 45 minutes, as I usually do, you simply can't keep up that mental "go! go! go!" pace the entire time. You need softer stuff in there too, so that when the harder music comes on it actually has an effect on you. If it's all Rammstein all the time, you become inured to it.
What you really want are songs you get lost in, so that you don't notice the pain. I also like to go really eclectic -- lots of songs from lots of different genres. I want to have no inkling as to what's coming next and then when I hear it be like fuck, yeah, this song rocks!
Here are a few of my staples:
- "Big Pimpin", Jay-Z
- "Only in Dreams", Weezer
- "Du Hast", Rammstein
- "Cake By the Ocean", DNCE
- "I Wanna Be a Girl", King Khan and the Shrines
- "Coming Home Baby", Skeewiff
- "Murderers", John Frusciante
- "Bag Full of Thoughts", The Flaming Lips
- "You Keep Me Hangin' On", The Supremes
- "Hey Bulldog", The Beatles
To that last one, I realized that I might actually be a John guy. About a year ago, after I watched all eight hours of the documentary Get Back, I broke down my Beatles fandom and determined I was a Paul guy. But I actually misattributed "Hey Bulldog" to Paul. In researching it, it's seems to be more of a John song. (They both sing on it which, makes it hard to tell by ear.) That might push John over the edge for me. I dunno, though. They're both so good. As I heard somebody say once, "It's like the Beatles had Michael Jordan in his prime, and then another Michael Jordan."
Anyway...
S flew out of the country again today. I got the kids to myself for another week. It's never too bad, but there's always something. Lately, it's been eating. It's so, so difficult to get them to eat anything even remotely healthy. (It's a universal problem with kids, I know. I went out with some dad friends last night, and we were all commiserating over our kids garbage eating habits.) They're both bad, but Lil' S1 is worse, and he's way less active than his brother. With Lil' S2, he'll eat chicken nuggets (the meaty "adult" kind) and baby carrots and drink a cup of milk and then go run around for a half-hour. I can live with that in good conscience. But little Lil' S1 only wants nachos or pasta with cheese (no sauce) or a bagel with cream cheese or pizza. Basically, he just wants cheese on top of empty carbs, and he doesn't do much to burn them off. He does kinda like mushrooms and apples, and he'll begrudgingly eat sweet peppers, but you have to monitor him or else he'll "forget" to eat them.
He made me so mad tonight. I made him this chicken with mushroom soup and rice dish that he will usually eat, and he took two bites and then said he was full. I was like, "Okay, but that's your dinner. Don't ask me for junk food later." Smash cut to five minutes before bedtime, "Dad, can I have I some chips? I'm so hungry." He did not get any chips. I have no problem sending my kids to bed hungry once in a while (plus, he got an apple, so he wasn't totally famished). That's where S and I differ. I think her biggest fear in life is that one of her kids his hungry for longer than 30 seconds.
The most frustrating part is that even if you're a total hard-ass, your kid is still going to eat junk if they want. They could just get it at school. (Last time I saw them serving breakfast it was a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, a Go-gurt, and a chocolate milk.) Or he could get it at a friend's house. And even if you clamp down on those avenues, you have to worry about turning snack food into the forbidden fruit (snacks). The kids who had the worst diets freshman year of college were those whose parents forbade them from having any junk food. Once they had open access to snacks and desserts without their parents around, it was like Rumspringa. What you want is for you kid to develop sensible, long-term eating habits, but that seems like a near impossibility given how crap-centric our society is when it comes to food.
I wouldn't worry about Lil' S1's diet so much if he was more active. But he has a very sedentary lifestyle. He does swimming every Monday and walks home from school a few times a week, but it's not enough to overcome his physical torpor the rest of the week. During the weekend he sits on the sofa almost the entire time. Like, even when Lil' S2 isn't really doing anything, he's moving. He's kicking a ball or trying to punch me or just running around for no reason. Lil' S1 isn't like that. He's pretty much just reading, listening to a podcast, or looking at a screen the entire day. Today I had to bribe him with extra video game time to do calisthenics with me for ten minutes. And he barely he even tried. Although it did lead to a funny exchange.
Me: Come on, man, you're not even trying. Do you want to be somebody who can't even do a single pushup your whole life?
Him: Why not? Plenty of successful people can't do a pushup.
Me: Really? Name one.
Him: Bill Gates.
Me: Actually, you might be right about that.
And I think I'll leave it there, as it's late and I'm tired.
Until next time...
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