Entry 812: Winters, They Will Come And They Will Go

I've been having cotton candy dreams lately. That's my term for dreams that are super intense and slightly unsettling, the type that require you to recenter yourself for a few minutes after you wake up. They aren't nightmares necessarily, but they aren't sunshine and lollipops either (despite being called cotton candy dreams). They're not like watching a horror movie, but rather a really well-made thriller. Scratch that, they're like being in a really well-made thriller. But one that doesn't make sense. They're like being in a David Lynch movie.

I call them cotton candy dreams because once on a podcast a guy was talking about his friend who was on medication, and this friend found that if he ate a certain brand of cotton candy, he could only ever find at CVS, right before he went to sleep, it interacted with his medication in a such a way that it would give him the wildest, most intense dreams. For some reason, this little anecdote has always stuck with me (it could have been the part that CVS sells cotton candy and that a grown man buys it--that sounds utterly disgusting to me), and since then I've referred to such dreams as cotton candy dreams.

I don't have cotton candy dreams often, but the past week, I've had them nearly every night for some reason. One through line is that there is almost always a celebrity involved, and in my dream I'm friends with this celebrity, and then when I wake up, it's always a bit of a letdown that I'm not actually friends with them. (Most recently it was Larry David, surely because they showed him so much during the broadcast of the last Knicks-Spurs game.) Another through line is that I live in a shitty place. That's my version of the "naked in public" anxiety dream. I live in some overcrowded group house or dingy studio apartment, and then when I wake up it's a relief to be in my king-size bed next to my lovely wife, in my beautiful house, in my nice neighborhood.

Anyway... speaking of dreams, I've mentioned before that I think "Dreams" by Fleetwood Mac is basically a perfect song. So, I was pleased that the choir at Lil' S1's school sang it during his "moving up" ceremony. I did wonder, however, when they started it, if the subject matter was appropriate for a middle school graduation, you know, being about a man who wants to exit his current relationship so that he can philander more. However, the choir director anticipated such misgivings and changed the lyrics to something more apt for the occasion, so "women, they will come and they will go" became "winters, they will come and they will go." To which I say, well done, choir director.

It was a fine ceremony overall, even though I got to it late. I had to go into the office that day, and it's a bear to get from my office back to DC anytime from like 3pm to 7pm (which is why I usually go to the gym for a few hours after work). Also, the thing I most had/wanted to do in the office didn't start until 4pm and the doors for commencement at Lil' S1's school closed at 6:30pm. I gave myself what I thought was ample leeway, leaving so that my expected arrival time was 6:10 (accounting for traffic), but it wasn't good enough. At some point along the way, my ETA jumped from 6:10 to 6:23 to 6:32 in the span of about 30 seconds.

By the time I final got to the theater, it was 6:35, and the first speech was under way. I waited for it end, and then I slipped in and sat in the first open seat I saw. I quickly realized I was in a special section reserved for faculty, which is why a seat was available so close to the stage. Nobody seemed to mind, but I felt awkward, so between each speaker/performance I tried to find where S was sitting with her sister and Lil' S2. Surely, they had saved me a seat, right? But where were they? I could not spot them, even though it's a relatively small theater. So, I just sat in the faculty section the entire time, trying not to feel weird about it. I was cursing S in my head for not saving me a seat and sending me a text saying where they were sitting, but she actually did do that, but the text didn't go through until much later in the night for some reason. The highlight of the ceremony for me was Lil' S1 reading a funny poem he wrote. It was a pleasant surprise, as he didn't mention it to either S or me beforehand.

Alright, I'm just about out of time, but let's do a quick lightning round before I go.

• I seem to have successfully gotten rid of the houseflies on our deck... for now. They will probably come back at some point, but I haven't seen one in weeks. I've seen other gnats and midges (which I spray down immediately lest they grow into something bigger), but no houseflies. Knock on wood.
  
  
• But not all is good with our deck. There is a leak in the ceiling now. I got up on the roof today to see if I could find the source, and immediately it was like, There's no way I'm finding this damn thing. The entire outer layer of the roof is full of cracks and splits, and it's impossible to know which one exactly is leading to the leak. I did however notice that the leak is by the skylight, so I bought some waterproof sealing tape, and covered up the edges of the skylight. Will it work? Maybe, maybe not, but for $17 plus an hour or my time, it's worth a shot.
  
  
• We got rid of our trampoline today. It's the end of an era, but, now that I think of it, it was a bad era (we bought it at the beginning of the Covid shutdowns), so maybe it's good ju-ju to get rid of it. It was time. The thing was falling apart, and it made me super nervous, safety-wise. The protective netting tore to shreds over the years, and I couldn't figure out the right replacement, so the new one didn't fit right and was constantly falling off. Then we kept losing springs. When I saw some six-year-old neighborhood girl I didn't know bouncing on it, I was like, Yeah, we're gonna get sued if I don't get rid of that thing. So, I broke it all down by hand, wrapped up the piping and springs in the jumping mat, tied it off and dragged it out to the front curb for bulk trash pickup. It was a bitch. It took me like four hours, and I was drench in sweat and my hands were sore and blistered when I was done (for some reason I didn't think to put on gloves until I was like 75% of the way through). But it's gone now, so mission accomplished.

Until next time... 

Entry 811: Repeat Champions... Not!

It's the 5th-grade flag football league title game. The Seahawks are trying to repeat as champions. They have the ball, down three, at the 40-yard line (which is actually about 20 yards from the end zone). There are a mere 15 seconds on the clock. The Seahawks coach (aka me) calls the play. Seahawks QB Lil' S2 takes the snap and scans the field. He fires the ball to his buddy and main receiver Z running a crosser. Z makes the catch! He snakes his way past some defenders, across the goal line! Touchdown! Seahawks take the lead with mere seconds remaining! They will be back-to-back champions!

But wait... the referee throws his penalty marker. It's a flag-guarding infraction on Z.* No touchdown and a ten-second run-off of the clock. The game is over. The Seahawks lose. Many players on the team break down in tears. The coaches shake their heads and mutter curse words under their breaths, wondering what on Earth would possess a referee to call that ticky-tack bullshit on the final frickin' play of the championship.

*Flag-guarding, if you're unfamiliar with the rules of flag football, is when the ball-carrier uses their arms to block the defenders from pulling the flag. Usually, it's not called, especially at this level, unless the player intentionally and obviously uses a chopping motion to deflect the defender's hand, which, I will point out, Z did not do. I think he was holding the ball kinda low, but he always does that and almost never gets called for flag-guarding. This was the type of thing, where if the ref doesn't call a penalty, nobody thinks anything of it. I don't think flag-guarding was even on the mind of anybody on either side of the field until the ref threw the flag.

So went my Sunday evening. It was such a gut punch, and I'm legitimately bummed about it. I know it's just elementary school rec football, but that doesn't mean you can't care. It's good to care. Caring is where all the satisfaction and fun and personal growth comes from. I'm glad I still care about things. One of the biggest downsides of growing up as a Gen Xer was getting pummeled with the notion that it's uncool to care. Nothing could be further from the truth. Caring is the best. So, yeah, you can care about winning and losing in kids sports. 

You just can't be a psycho about it. But I'm not. I never am, and I wasn't in this instance. I didn't say a word to the referee; I didn't gesticulate in an aggrieved manner; I didn't even do that thing coaches sometimes do, where they complain to other parents on their sideline, but in such a loud manner that, in effect, they are complaining to everybody at the game, including the referees. I did none of that. I took my place in the high-five line, congratulated the players on the other team and their coaches, and then sat down my team and gave them a short talk. I told them that they just didn't get the call. That's it. They did enough win, and probably should have won, but the call went against them. It doesn't take away from how well they played in the game--all season, really--and they should all be proud.

I don't know how much solace they took in that. But one of the dad's from the other team came up to me, and said he thought I said the right things to the kids. He also said it was a bad call and that he wished there was a way we could have had one more play to decide things in a noncontroversial manner. I appreciated that especially since there was no reason for him to say anything to me at all. It's not like we were sitting next to each other at a dinner party. I had no idea who he was. He just started talking to me. But it was really cool of him to do that. 

Lil' S2 took it hard.* He was sobbing after the game, and he rode home with S (we had to drive separately), presumably because she's the more comforting of us two. He already got his "life lesson" spiel from me and probably just wanted some unconditional sympathy from his mom. He played really well though. They hold the semifinal and final on the same day in this league, so we had two games, and he was almost perfect on the day. We had two QBs, but one recently broke his finger, so Lil' S2 had to take every snap for us, and he was throwing dots. In the first game, we ended every possession we had with a touchdown pass. In the second game, he threw a bad pick-six at the end of the first half (his one big mistake) and put us behind the 8-ball, but we battled back, and he threw the go-ahead touchdown with 1:10 left on the clock, and then after they quickly scored to retake the lead, he immediately drove us downfield and threw the aforementioned nullified game-winner. It was cool and very reminiscent of Kurt Warner in Super Bowl XLIII.

*He seems fine now, though. One of his buddies who's also on the team came over, and they seemed to be happily playing video games when I peeked through the ajar door to check on them. That's one nice thing about kids: They heal quickly and not just physically.

So, I'm sad we lost, but it certainly went better than our baseball playoffs. We got thumped 15-4, and it was somehow less competitive than the score indicates. Lil' S2 had a terrible game, with two strikeouts in two plate appearances (is it worth mentioning he fouled off a few pitches? probably not, but I did it anyway) and a quasi-drop in right field (it wasn't an easy play, but a decent little leaguer makes the catch). After the drubbing, Lil' S2 said he wished he had "skipped the game," and proclaimed that he didn't want to play baseball next season. Fine with me, but he also said that last year. So, we shall see.

Alright, that's all for today. Just an update on flag football that literally nobody wanted. But I needed to get that all out there. Thanks for being my sounding board.

Until next time... 

Entry 810: Running Out The School Year Clock

The end of the school year is nigh, and it feels like a year's worth of events have been saved up for the next two weeks. With Lil' S2 it's the worst because his school is so noncommunicative. Like, he'll tell me on a Thursday evening that he needs $80 in cash by tomorrow morning for a field trip, and I'm like, What? I haven't heard of this? And then I start panicking a little bit, thinking I dropped the ball on something. That is, until my phone starts pinging with a hundred messages from the parents' WhatsApp group, and everybody is asking what the deal with the field trip is and why hasn't anybody heard of it. Inevitably, somebody will post a screenshot from a Class Dojo message from a random teacher's aide, but almost nobody saw it, because Class Dojo sends you roughly 50 alerts a day and 45 of them are trying to get you to upgrade to the paid version.

I'm sure that just about every parent complains about their kid's school to some degree, but Lil' S2's has been plagued by some serious dysfunction, like to the point that the principal resigned earlier this week, perhaps to avoid being fired. I won't get into the details, in part because I don't feel completely informed on them--I mean, nobody is, that's a huge part of the problem--but I've been especially tuned out to it all. We've got a month left, and then that's it--we're done with elementary school for good. I'm just trying to coast to the finish line, and once we get there: not my monkeys, not my circus.

Although, I will say one thing on the matter because it's kinda funny. There was a parents-only Zoom meeting a few weeks ago to discuss the state of the school and the current leadership. I didn't attend, but apparently a "parent" named "Patrick" did, and in the chat, "he" was stridently defending the administration and arguing with parents who were expressing misgivings. Given my quote marks, you can probably see where this is going. Patrick was not, in fact, a school parent, but rather its assistant principal. Her name isn't Patrick*, and apparently she isn't very good at covering her tracks on the internet (also, all the parents know each other, and they were like, Who is this Patrick person we've never heard of?). She was immediately put on leave after this came to light, and I will be shocked if she's back at the school next year.

*This was not actually her fake name. I'm using a pseudonym for a pseudonym. 

So, like I said, we're just trying to ride out the next few weeks, and also like I said, there's a lot to ride out. Over the past three days we had a talent show, two sleepovers, a birthday party, two baseball practices, a baseball game, and today we have volunteering, an exhibition project, and a flag football game, and that's just Lil' S2. With his brother, you can toss in two D&D sessions*, a sleepover, cookie baking for some reason, a programming internship, and a friend's dance recital. It's too much. I mean, it's literally too much, so we had to make cuts. We said no to Saturday night sleepovers (actually Lil' S1 preemptively said no to his friend because he knew he had a lot to do, while Lil' S2 was very grumpy about it), and we skipped all the baseball stuff. 

*In which no D&D is actually played. They used to play, but they stopped for some reason, and now they just hang out, but everybody still calls it D&D.  

Speaking of baseball, there's a good chance Lil' S2's career in the sport is over. It's the playoffs right now, and the team isn't very good (1-10 record), so if they lose, which is likely, they're out, and that's the season. He says he doesn't want to play again in the fall, and if he doesn't play in the fall, he's not going to be good enough to play in the Spring when he would age into a higher league. He's actually been improving a bit, and if he practiced, like at all, he could be half-decent, but he shows little interest in practice. So, I don't feel bad about him not going to the game today. He's not one of the better players on the team, so we're not letting anybody down by missing it. In flag football, he's currently our only quarterback (our other one broke his finger and is out for the season), and we're trying to repeat as league champion, so it would be a big deal if he had to miss a playoff game. In baseball, it might even be better for the team if he doesn't go, as then his spot in the batting order will get skipped, and, even though he's been improving, he still usually makes an out. I don't think his coach was too broken up about it when he saw we RSVP'd "no".

To completely shift topics, I randomly watched Fargo the other night, and it's so damn good. I hadn't seen it since it came out 30 years ago, so I'd forgotten a lot of it. I wish they still made movies like this*--no CGI, no superheros, no talking animated animals, just a great script, great performances, and a runtime under 100 minutes. That last one is key. Everything is just too damn long now. I thought about watching Marty Supreme instead but it's two and a half hours--for a ping-pong movie? Why? I mean, I haven't seen it yet, but still I ask, why? 

*One thing to consider is that I think a lot of would-be movies are now turned into prestige TV shows, and a lot of them are really good, so that's cool. But still, I wish these great shows were being created in addition to great films, instead of in place of them.  

Alright, times up. Until next time... 

Entry 809: Rainy Day Weekend

The weather has been brutal here in DC this holiday weekend. It would have been the perfect time to stay in and watch movies--and maybe we will do that later today--but we had a lot to do these past few days and couldn't let some gray skies stand in our way. Plus, I'm used to this type of weather, growing up west of the Cascades. In all my memories of playing outside as a child, it is raining. I'm shooting a wet basketball at a wet hoop that sprays mist every time the ball hits the rim, or throwing a waterlogged football that's twice as heavy as it should be, or riding my bike through puddles as mud spatters from the tires onto the back of my sweatshirt. This is very much that type of weather. Usually out here we get thunderstorms, where it comes down in buckets for a half-hour at a time, and then the clouds break, and the sun comes back, and you wouldn't believe that it was just storming if not for the drops on the trees. But this weekend it's just been a Tacoma-esque steady dreary drizzle, and it's not forecast to clear up until Thursday.

Our first order of business this weekend was to get a new car, and we succeeded in that regard. We got a Hyundai Ioniq 5. It's pretty nice. After the first 24 hours, we don't have any buyer's remorse, at least. We wanted an EV, and this seemed to be the best one that wasn't a Tesla and wasn't like $60K. We actually started to waiver a little bit and considered getting another Tesla, just because it's so easy, and the prices have come down a lot over the past few years (which actually hurt us with our reimbursement from the insurance company), and we already have all the infrastructure--accounts, apps, chargers, etc.--for a Tesla. But I really like the idea of being out of Elon's World, and I was very unhappy with the Tesla service center the last time I had to take the car in, and some of the technological "enhancements" on the Tesla are kinda silly and actually more inconvenient than their more primitive counterparts, like, I'd rather just open the glove box with a handle than use a tablet. So, we were at the very least going to check out other brands of EV.

The first place we went was the Hyundai dealership, and I was sold very quickly on the Ioniq 5. It's cool looking and drives smoothly and takes the Telsa charger without an adapter, which is a big plus. Also, the sale's rep was really good, very nice and knowledge (even though he looks like he is 14), and not very pushy, which I appreciated. The car we wanted came with a pretty good corporate rebate,* and I would have just said yes and driven it off the lot, because that's how I roll, but S wanted to shop around a bit more, so we also went to the Kia dealership, but we didn't love what they had to offer. They felt more like gas cars that had been refitted to be electric, rather than originally-designed EVs. The salesman also wasn't as good. He wasn't bad, but he didn't seem to be going above and beyond like the other guy--or maybe is just as good and correctly assessed us as being very unlikely customers, so he was polite, but didn't invest too much time and energy in us. Whatever the case, he didn't get our business. The next day we went back to Hyundai and drove home in our new car. (Well, I drove it home, anyway. S drove our old car, which we came in.)

*In order to get the rebate, we had to finance a loan--we couldn't just pay cash--but the minimum length of the loan is only 90 days, so we can just pay it off in full after that if we like. Being that the rebate is $10K off the sticker price, it's a no-brainer. I was wondering how this makes business sense for the company, and I think just getting people into loans works out in the long run because of the interest. Although, you can pay it off in full after 90 days, a lot of people probably won't, the same way a lot of people won't pay off their credit card in full each month or won't cancel their subscriptions once the free trials expire.

Along with the car buying, we had a very social past few days. Saturday evening we went to some friends' house, who have two kids the same ages as ours, for a dinner party, in which the older kids made all the food. They've done once this before and it's really cute. They made homemade hummus, bean and tomato soup, these beef pocket bread sandwiches that you dip in yogurt sauce, and then a cookie cake for dessert. It was really good. The only downside is that I drank too much, because the hosts are big social drinkers, and the husband just kept filling up my wine glass, and I kept drinking it because I almost subconsciously just eat or drink whatever people put in front of me. I did catch it, however, before it got completely out of hand, so I wasn't super hung over the next morning or anything like that. I just felt a little extra logy. Nevertheless, I managed to bang out The Murph the next day, a traditional Memorial Day workout: 1 mile run, 100 pull-ups (I did chair dips), 200 push ups, 300 squats, another 1 mile run. It felt good and tiring, and I tweaked my back later in the day, which is super annoying. It's not terrible, but it probably means a week of no weights.

Actually, there was one other downside to the dinner mentioned above: Our other friend-couple thought we were coming over to their house for dinner instead. S was texting with the wife about us coming over on Sunday, and the wife thought she meant Saturday, and nobody every clarified which day they were referring to, so then I got a text from the husband asking what time we were arriving, and I'm like, "Uh... tomorrow." They had already bought all the food, and our kids were going to sleep over at their place, so everybody on their end was disappointed and annoyed, and even though it wasn't really S's fault--it was more of a two-way miscommunication--she felt bad and invited them over to our house on Sunday. So, instead of a kid-free night, which is what I thought I was getting, I got a four-kid night, and of course it was on me to put them all to bed, because S goes to bed at 9pm when she isn't jet-lagged. I finally got them all down around midnight, which actually isn't terrible, and I when I got into our room to sleep, and S is out cold with white noise pumping through her phone. 

Anyway... one last unfortunate thing to relay: The flies are back. You probably didn't even know they were ever gone, but I actually got rid of them temporarily. There were four straight days where I didn't see a single fly in our deck. But then I saw a few, not many, but not zero either. What's worse is that S saw them, and she convinced me to open the screen for a night to "let them all out." So, we did that, and today it's like we are back to where we were before our few glorious fly-free days. There are so many of them, and a lot of baby ones too, which means they definitely are breeding somewhere within the confines of our deck again. I wish I had never agreed to open the screen up. But I kinda had to, to prove my point that it wouldn't work, mainly to S, but also a little bit to myself. And now we seem to be back to square one. So, disheartening.

On that note... Until next time... 

Entry 808: Flies Frequently

I made a crossword puzzle once where the theme is that some clues have missing commas. So, for instance, one clue is "All for one" and the answer is LAUNDRY DETERGENT. Get it? The clue is supposed to be interpreted as "All, for one", and then the answer fits since All is an example of a laundry detergent. (There is a revealer later in the puzzle explaining this to help the solver along.) Another clue is "Flies frequently" and the answer is ANNOYANCES, since putting a comma in the clue would indicate that flies frequently are annoyances. I've been thinking about this puzzle lately since flies have become annoyances in my life of late--more than annoyances, actually. They've become the bane of my existence. Okay, that's an exaggeration. They are somewhere between annoyances and the bane of my existence.

The story starts with a different flying pest: mosquitoes. They are in abundant supply here in DC because the city was built on a swamp.* In certain pockets of the district, including our yard, unfortunately, mosquitoes make going outside for a prolonged period of time completely unbearable, unless you bathe in deet before hand, which is a step up from being eaten alive, to be sure, but still isn't very pleasant. So, to have a backyard we can actually enjoy, we bit the bullet during the Covid lockdown and spent a hefty chunk of change to screen-in our previously open-air deck. We then used it frequently, and it was great.

*This is a fact you will hear again and again if you live in this area, but I've never actually fact-checked it. It's probably not even true. I'm going to Google it right now... and what do you know?

But that was six years ago, and over time the screen has frayed and gotten some holes in it. This means a few more bugs get in now, particularly houseflies. They land on the screen and walk along it and maybe chance upon a hole and slip in. It used to not be a big deal because it was just the odd fly, every now and then. But a few weeks ago, S texted me while I was at work that there was a whole swarm of flies in the corner of our deck.* So, I bought some Raid and a bunch of different housefly traps on my way home, and I sprayed the swarm down and set up the traps and patted my hands together as if to say, Well, that's the end of that.

*Of course, she didn't try to do anything about it, because as a man this is my job. I also had to clean up the dead squirrel in our yard, even though I wasn't home at the time it was discovered.

And... the next morning they were back, even more of them before. I mowed them all down again, and then I checked the traps and came to realize that those things are mostly snake oil. There were dozens of flies around, and presumably they had been there for hours, and yet some of the traps didn't have a single fly in them. I started monitoring them, and I would watch a fly approach a trap, sometimes even land on it, and then not go in it. It was infuriating. The only thing that kinda worked is this multicolored adhesive stick. It had four or five flies stuck to it, which was better than the baited water trap, which had one, and then the light bulb trap and the other adhesive trap had zero. Their only stated purpose is to catch flies, and they couldn't catch a single one of a massive swarm.

Since it was clear the over-the-counter traps weren't up to the task, I called our pest control company to have them come out for a special visit. It wasn't quite a complete waste of time. He sprayed some industrial strength poison, which did almost nothing, the flies were back almost immediately, but he did explain that they were probably not getting in through holes, but rather breeding within the screens of the deck. For some reason, I never even considered this possibility, but it makes perfect sense. There is no way they could all be coming through the tiny, sparse holes in the screen. There is way too many of them for that. What must have happened is an inseminated female got in, laid her disgusting fly eggs under the floorboards, and started a colony. Our screen wasn't keeping the flies out; it was trapping them in. This was a they-weren't-flashbacks-they-were-flash-forwards Lost moment for me.

But what to do about it? I considered just opening the screen and letting the flies leave, but then what? How would I know if they were gone for good? When would I close the screen again? If they were still breeding under our deck, then that wouldn't solve anything. And it would let all the mosquitoes in, which is worse, because they suck your blood. Instead, I decided I would just have to wipe out their colony. Kill them all and let God sort it out. So, I bought out the entire stock of the multicolored adhesive sticks from the local hardware store (which was only three) and hung them up around the deck, both inside and out, and I made a plan to check the deck every half-hour or so and spray every fly I saw, no exceptions.* I had to get them before they could reproduce.  

*Thankfully we still have a few boxes of N95 masks in our old "Covid drawer," so I don't have to directly inhale the toxic spray. It does dissipate quickly, though, and I've gotten good at using just a tiny amount. You just need to hit those annoyances with a little shot, and then they can't fly temporarily, so you can knock them off the screen with a blunt object (I use a flat, light shoe) and bop them, hard enough to kill them, but not so hard it makes it mess. It's takes a deft hand to do it perfectly.  

Since S has been gone this past week, I've been working from home, which gave me a good opportunity to carry out my plan. I think it's working, but not quite as well as I would prefer. I have yet to go a day without killing a fly, but the number has definitely gone down. At first, I would see a half dozen or so every time I checked. Then it was two or three. Then it was two or three every other time I checked. Now it's one or two a few times a day. Progress, but it's still not good enough, and it's not linear. Sometimes I won't see any for hours, and I'll see one and go out to get it and realize while I'm out there that there are four more buzzing around. That's very disheartening. 

Hopefully, this seemingly unending struggle will in fact end soon. I can't continue to live my life this way. It's not just the time investment, it's also the psychology and physical strain. I'm like Walter White in his "contaminated" meth lab. My blood pressure goes up every time I see a speck of gunk on our screen. The other day I ran out to spray a fly and realized it wasn't a fly, but a spider, and I sprayed it anyway, which is completely counterproductive, given that more spiders mean less flies. I also don't love killing a massive number of living things. I mean, we all do it every time we wash our hands with antibacterial soap, but we can't see that. I can see the flies on the ground writhing around, hopelessly flapping their little wings and kicking their little legs. I know that this is the only way to get rid of them--it's not like I can shoo them away or transport their nest to the woods--but still, it doesn't make me feel awesome.

Alright, that's all for now. I've been talking about flies so much, I'm starting to feel like Jeff Goldblum (in Independence Day, weirdly, not The Fly). Until next time...

Entry 807: Airbags Deployed

Scary moment Friday evening. I was at home and had just gotten out of the shower and noticed there was an alert from the Tesla app on my phone. I didn't have my glasses on so I couldn't make out what it said, but I didn't think much of it. We frequently get Tesla updates on our phones for unimportant things, like "Update available" and "Your car cabin is now at the desired temperature" and whatnot. Plus S had the car, so I figured whatever it was, it probably didn't apply to me anyway.

Not thinking anything was out of the ordinary, I got dressed at a normal pace and put my glasses on and noticed that the alert was written in a much more attention-grabbing manner than usual. I don't remember if it was all caps or a font change or the use of scarier icons, but something about it made me think: You need to read this now. So, I did, and my heart sank a bit when I processed what it said: ACCIDENT DETECT, AIRBAGS DEPLOYED, 911 CALLED. That's scary, obviously, but it was slightly less scary than it might seem because I had another alert on my phone telling me I had missed a call from S, and that one came in after the one from Tesla. So, I figured, S had to be alright, at least somewhat, or else she couldn't have called me.

That's something, but it's not a lot, so I called S, but it went through to voicemail. I then sent a text but didn't have the patience to wait a reasonable time for a reply. I could see where the car was on the app, and it was only a few miles away, so I told Lil' S1 I was leaving, without saying why--no need to get everybody scared for no reason--and set off in S's direction. Thankfully, S called me before I got too far and explained what happened. She felt completely fine, which was the first point of order--the airbag had done its job--but she was audibly shaken, understandably so. She was going through a very busy intersection, with a green light giving her the right-of-way, and somebody turned left into her path, and she smashed into him. It was completely the other person's fault (as indicated on the police report). He was making a left and didn't yield to oncoming traffic. He is also 78-years-old and was in a different accident just a month ago, so I hope he's done driving now. First, I hope he's okay--it's unclear to S exactly what condition he was in after the crash--and then I hope he's done driving.

S told me to go back home and wait for her to call for a ride home. She said she still had to talk with the police (very helpful and kind, by her account) and wait for the tow truck. I said I would come out there to help with that, but she said that there wasn't much more to do, and she didn't want the kids to be alone. (Lil' S2 was about to return from baseball practice.) They're fine to be by themselves for a bit--we leave them home alone frequently--but I think in the state she was in the thought of her children being home alone really stressed her out, so I turned around and came back home. I thought about calling her sister to stay with the kids, but I didn't want to needlessly freak her out, and I also didn't want to introduce more logistics into the situation.

I got home about the same time as Lil' S2, so I told the kids what happened, and then S called about a half hour later and said she was ready to be picked up. Lil' S2 wanted to go with me because he wanted to see the smashed up car, but I told him it was already towed away, and then he wasn't as interested. When I went to pick up S, I had to make the same left turn as the other driver, and it's not a great turn. There's no left arrow, and they really need a left arrow. It did cross through my head, how ironic it would be if I replicated the accident picking up S from her accident, but of course I didn't do that.

Even though S wasn't feeling any physical effects from the crash, I took her to urgent care, per the recommendation of the paramedic who came to the scene. He said your adrenaline can mask your injuries in the immediate aftermath of an intense situation. Thankfully, however, all the tests came back clean, and the clinic is very close to where S's sister lives, so S called her, and she was able to come and keep S company.

Our car did not get the same clean bill of health. There's a good chance it's gone for good. I'm of two minds about this. On one hand, it's a really good car. It's an EV, and I've grown accustom to how easy it is. Everything just works. Also, it kept S safe and automatically called 911--that's pretty cool. On the other hand, we bought it right before Elon's full-on heel turn, and I've never felt good about it. So, I'll be fine either way, which is good, because I don't have any control over it. 

Alright, that's all for now. Oh wait, one other observation, I've noticed that if you tell people that you (or in this case your spouse) got into a car accident, they will listen very sweetly and very genuinely, and then they will tell you all about the worst car accident they've ever been in. I'm about 10/10 with this so far.

Alright, now that's really all. Until next time... 

 

Entry 806: Baseball Parenting And The Kentucky Derby

I have a few minutes alone on a weekend in the middle of the day, which is a total rarity. Lil' S1 is walking to a friend's house to play some D&D (he's not the dungeon master in this campaign, which is nice, as if he was, he would have to bring a bunch of heavy manuals and would probably hit me up for a ride), and S took Lil' S2 to his baseball game. Typically sports are my milieu, but S volunteered to do it, and I let her because Lil' S2's baseball games can be kinda brutal. His team is terrible--they haven't won a game all season--and he's not very good himself. He can't hit, because he never practices (and hitting a baseball is something you need to practice to be able to do at all competently), and he shows little interest in pitching, even though he could probably be decent at it with a little focus. He just doesn't seem to actually like playing baseball, and he's only on the team to goof off with friends, which is fine, I suppose, at his age, but baseball is a rough sport for parents if your child isn't really into it. You sit around for hours, usually on uncomfortable bleachers, watching your kid stand in the field, hoping the ball doesn't get hit to them (although Lil' S2 isn't a terrible fielder; I wouldn't say he's good, but he's not terrible), and then when they come up to bat, you steel yourself for what is almost guaranteed to be a strikeout. It's not at all enjoyable, so I took S up on her offer to handle baseball duties this morning.

S is leaving next week on a work trip, a longer one than usual, which is why she volunteered (if you were wondering). She feels guilty about leaving and tries to take on more of the parenting responsibility before she goes. I appreciate it, but in theory much more so than in practice. For one thing, it's completely unnecessary, as far as I'm concerned. She already does more than enough, while she's in town, and she's leaving for work, for money, which everybody in the family benefits from, including me. For another thing, it doesn't really work. I don't actually get much of break. I mean, I do, around the edges, like maybe I get out of the things I dislike the most, but they just get replaced with other responsibilities. For example, this morning I had to take Lil' S1 to get his haircut during his brother's game (a more laborious task than it might sound), and that's something that S would normally do, because I would be at baseball. 

Also, there is an element of want-to or feel-obligated-to with your kids that you can't turn off just because your spouse is willing to do more. Sometimes I want to take the kids places, or I would rather help out than sit there and do nothing, even if S says it's okay if I sit there and do nothing, because it makes me feel like a deadbeat dad if I sit there and do nothing, and I don't want to feel like a deadbeat dad. The only way you can really get away from parenting is to literally get away from it, to go somewhere away from home. And even then you're likely to get bombarded with text messages saying somebody wants permission for more Netflix time.

In other news, time just jumped, and it is now late evening as I write this. Lil' S2's baseball game is long over. His team lost 18-4, but he told me he got a "hit," which means he made an out, but not a strikeout. He made contact and put the ball in the play. It was a ground out to first, apparently, but still, that's progress. I think that's the first time he hit a fair ball all season. 

We went to a Kentucky Derby party at a friend's house today. It was fun, but I got a bit of a stomachache from it. I guess eating fried chicken and drinking mint juleps can do that to you. I had two mint juleps, and I probably should've quit after one, not because of the alcohol, but because of the syrup. Well, it was both, really. Somebody else made me the first one, and it was very good and proportional. But then I made the second one, and I suck at making drinks, so I put in too much syrup, and then I tried to even it out by putting in more bourbon, which meant I now just had a giant sugary (but still strong) drink, and I felt compelled to finish it because I always feel compelled to finish my drinks.  

In general, derby parties are pretty fun. You can get there before the race, hang out and eat and drink for a bit, and then watch the race, which is only two minutes, and everybody gets super into it, and has this intense experience together, and then you go home. Our friend does a big betting pool every year also, which makes it even better. I very much loathe the pervasiveness of gambling into all facets of sport, but some betting is fun. Like, if everybody is throwing $5 into a pot once a year on a big race at the center of a social event, then that's good. If you're compulsively tapping away on an app, alone in your apartment, betting your rent money, unmotivated to do anything else, then that's bad. Context matters.

I didn't win big tonight, sadly. Horses were drawn randomly and mine was a 75-1 shot going into the race. That means the oddsmakers thought it had about a 1.3% chance of winning, and it showed, as early on it was in the back of the pack. But then it made a furious push and was in the lead down the final stretch, before getting passed by two horses that were even further back and coming in third. Pretty good for a horse with such low odds, but not good enough to claim a winner-take-all pot. My horse's name was Ocelli, which is the plural of ocellus, the eyespot of a peacock. I told this to the woman sitting next to me at the party, and her reply was, "How do you know that?" which was exactly the response I was going for.

Until next time...