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... 

Entry 805: School Daze

I thought the title for this entry was an homage to a 2001 stoner movie starring Method Man and Redman, but it turns out that movie is called How High. School Daze is a Spike Lee joint from the late '80s starring Laurence Fishburne. I've never seen either film. The latter apparently is a musical comedy-drama based in part on Lee's own college experiences at Morehouse. As for the former, well, I'll just quote Wikipedia directly:

The film follows two cannabis users who gain admission to Harvard University with the supernatural help of a deceased friend whose ashes were used to fertilize a marijuana plant. 

I now want to see this film. It has strong funny-in-a-campy-sort-of-way vibe to it. I don't know why, but for some reason, the first thing that popped into my head for comparison is Weird Science, and as I recall I thought that movie was entertaining even when I rewatched it as an adult.

Anyway...

The end of the school year isn't quite nigh, but it's in sight. It's a bigger deal this year than usual, as each of my kids will be graduating to a new phase of life. Lil' S1 will be done with middle school and moving on to high school in the fall. Lil' S2 will be starting middle school and leaving elementary school. For S and I, this means we are just about done, officially, with the little-kid stage of parenting. The annual elementary school gala is tonight--it would be the final one for us--but we aren't even going. S's friend came into town from Boston to visit, so she doesn't want to go, and I would maybe go stag, but I got invited to dinner with some puzzle people, so I'm going to go to that instead. I'm not really that bummed about missing our last gala. It's a fun event, but we typically just talk to the same people we see all the time anyway.

The big topic of discussion in our household at the moment is where Lil' S1 is going to go to high school: his current private school or the in-zone public school. I want the public school, but I think I'm going to lose this one. Although Lil' S1 showed a willingness, a desire even, to switch to the public school earlier this year, he has become pretty resolute recently in his wish to stay at his current school. S is mostly with me, in that she wants him to go to the public school, but if he really doesn't want to go--and it seems he doesn't--then it changes things. As she put it to me, "I want him to want to go there."

So, I think the fear of the unknown will be too great, and she will ultimately push to keep him where he is, and then I'll have to fold or face two people mad at me in my family. I'll probably fold. Also, it's honestly not a huge capitulation on my part. I think he will be fine at either school. I hate paying tuition to an institution that I don't think it is that great, but if I don't look at our bank statements, it's not that bad. The thing is, I just don't know what we get from this private school that is worth the money. I guess from my perspective I have to tell myself that's it's for family harmony, marital bliss, peace of mind, and those things are worth whatever you can afford to pay for them.

Speaking of Lil' S1's school, there was an "incident" this past week that caused quite the hullabaloo among this little community. What happened is some teachers were trying to come up with groups for a grade-wide project, and they wanted to match kids with other kids with whom they would work well. To do this, they created a spreadsheet with the kids' names and some information about them--their race, their interests, their friend groups, etc.--and in so doing, they used informal, somewhat disparaging language about the students. Then they accidentally saved this document to a drive to which students have access (doh!). A few kids saw it, took screenshots, and showed it to their parents, and then all hell broke loose.

There were really only two demeaning descriptions in the doc--the teachers characterized somebody as a "mean girl" and said another kid was "small and very ADHD" (and even that is more infelicitous than pejorative)--but that was enough to set off an email chain of seemingly infinite length, prompt an open letter to the school, and lead to not one, but two Zoom meetings--one with the school administration and a parents-only prep before that.

What exactly got resolved? I'm not sure. I don't think anybody got fired or disciplined, but maybe that's coming. Hopefully nobody loses their job over this. It doesn't rise anywhere close to that level, in my opinion. This is more like an-apologize-and-move-on type of thing. My big takeaway is that everybody should be under the assumption that anything they write to anybody online could be made public at some point, and so they should act accordingly. I don't really care that the teachers sometimes categorize their students in less than flattering ways (they're humans and that's how humans communicate), but it shows terrible judgement to put this down in writing. That should be the lesson for the kids: Every time you send a text or an email or share a document or otherwise communicate in a way that leaves a record, you have to think, "What would happen if this gets out?" If the answer is, "It would lead to public humiliation for me and possibly be cause for discipline from my employers," then maybe don't send it. 

On that note, until next time... 

 

Entry 804: What Does The Fox Say?

No entry last weekend, you might have noticed, because I went to a crossword puzzle tournament and had no time for blogging. It went well, and I had a great time. I don't compete but rather help administer the competition. I also hang out with a bunch of people I quite like but only see once a year: my ami-puzzlers. I'm trying this new thing where I use the prefix "ami" to indicate a friendliness--actually beyond a friendliness, an adoration or bond, perhaps, there's no good word for it, which is the problem--for people I like a lot, but I'm not quite friends with. I've come to realize that the English language is completely bereft of words or succinct phrases to indicate a relationship between an acquaintance and a friend.

It's weird too, because we probably have way more people in our lives that fall into the "ami-" category than we have actual friends. I have a decent number of actual friends, people to whom I am not related (neither through blood nor marriage), whom I hang out with semi-regularly, whose phone numbers I have and could text anytime for trivial reasons without it seeming weird, whose children and spouses I know, whose careers and interests I'm familiar with, etc. But I have at least twice as many ami-folks in my life, people who don't fit the friend criteria I just laid out, but whom I still very much like and enjoying spending time with and wish nothing but the best for, people with whom I might very well be friends in the future or would have been friend with under slightly different circumstances. A lot of coworkers fall into this category, also a lot of neighbors and parents of my sons' friends. I've been going to the same gym for over seven years now, and I've gotten to know a lot of the instructors and other patrons, and it would be nice to have a way to convey this more elegantly than "this guy I'm friendly with who goes to the same gym as me."*

*Sometimes you can convey this by putting how you know the person before the word "friend," my "gym friend," my "work friend," etc. Weirdly, doing this indicates that you aren't actually friends. 

That's where "ami-" comes in. You can just attach it to the beginning of any relationship, and it instantly conveys a friendliness that goes beyond mere acquaintance. Oh, hey, there's my ami-barber... I was getting lunch with my ami-colleague... An ami-dad and I were talking at our kids' baseball game... It's beautiful, and I recommend you all start using it too, especially since there is a decent chance I will never mention this topic again. I'm very good at ideas; I'm not so great with the follow-through.

In other news, before I left, I had to retrieve a baby fox that had trapped itself in our window well. In our backyard deck, we have this little pit, about five feet deep, that leads to a basement window. It's usually covered with a iron grate and deck furniture, and we don't even think about it. But late one night, about a week and a half ago, I heard this weird noise--a sort of high pitched sound, somewhere between a screech and a yelp--and I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. I finally decided it was a weird bird call and went to sleep.

Then the next night I heard it again, but more intensely, and it was super clear right when I walked by that basement window. Thinking maybe it was an animal merely occupying the well, not stuck in it, I banged on the window to chase it away. It was silent for a bit, and then started making the noise again. So, I shined a flashlight through the window (which took a tiny bit of courage--shining a light into a dark area not knowing what you're going to see is a bit nerve-wracking) and saw a frightened little fox. It clearly was wandering around under our deck, had fallen into the pit, and now couldn't get back out. My first thought was Shit, now I'm gonna have to go get this thing, followed by so, that's what the fox says, it's not actually "hakki-hakki-hakki-ho".

Weirdly, S was still awake even though it was about 11:00pm, so I told her what was going on, and she got out of bed, and we went out to the deck together. It's an effort just to lift off the grate, but we (mostly I) managed to do so, and then I tried unsuccessfully to scoop up the kit (that's what you call a baby fox) with a snow shovel. It had the instincts to call for help, but also the instincts to evade that help at all costs. I was going to have to go in. It was visibly terrified and trying to run away from me, but it had nowhere to run. I was worried that it would try to bite me, so I kinda trapped it against the wall with a bucket and slid it up until it could reach the ledge, at which point it vanished under our house. We put the grate back and that was that.

Well, almost... The whole time I was doing all this, I was trying to remember who actually sings "The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)," and I kept thinking it was The Elvi's, but I knew that wasn't right, because that was a local band I used to see flyers for in college. So, I had to look it up before I could sleep in peace. (Ylvis, that's right, so close.) I told this to S, but she couldn't have cared less and just wanted to be back in bed as quickly as possible. That's the difference between her and me.

Until next time...

Update: I came home tonight after meeting up with some friends and saw this guy hanging out in my neighbor's yard. Too big to be the one I saved, but maybe a relative?

 

Entry 803: Death and Taxes

There's a cliché that the only constants in life are death and taxes. I had my fill of both this week. Well, the death part might not have happened yet, but it seems imminent. My elderly neighbor collapsed twice in the past three days and is now in the hospital for some sort of emergency procedure. I'm no medical expert, but I feel confident stating that the recovery rate for a man in his mid-90s from whatever it is that ails him is not super high. And he was almost bedridden before this. He seemed to be chair-ridden. He would get up in the morning, make his way to a chair, and basically sit there the entire day. S and I are just waiting for the grim, inescapable word from his wife. He might be able to make it back home, but if he survives to see autumn, I'd be surprised.

And when he goes, there's a good chance his wife will join him shortly thereafter. She has already had a stroke, about a year ago, and I saw this with my own grandparents, where my grandma, who was hanging on decently, deteriorated extremely quickly after the death of my grandpa and died just a few months later. It's like she just didn't want her husband to be alone, and once that was no longer a possibility, she surrendered to the inevitable.   

I would say that all this is sad, but I think that's the wrong word. It's more hard. I don't feel melancholy; I feel a sort of helplessness. As the Flaming Lips put it, "Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die?" (Great song, by the way.) Since moving into this neighborhood, inhabited by a lot of elderly people, I've definitely realized this. Two people in the house to one side of me have already died in the past five years (and a third one is close), and now, it seems, two more on the other side are well on their way. I lived the first 45 years of my life without ever once being asked to lift an old person who had fallen and couldn't get up, and now it seems to be a semi-regular occurrence.

It also doesn't help my general mindset on this matter that my parents just came out to visit last week, and my mom spent most the trip in her PJs lying in bed or on the sofa. She got hit with a bug, and although she recovered, it really laid her up, and it had me slightly concerned. My parents aren't yet at the same stage as my neighbors, but they probably aren't that far behind. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, I'm not that far behind, as I don't think we are going to crack immortality in the next 40 years, despite what you might find from "life maxxers" on YouTube.

Maybe that's a silver-lining of being focused on the nonexistence of others. It distracts me from thinking about from my own departure from this mortal coil. It is so much worse to think about your own death, not just because it's your death (though of course that's part of it), but because you lose your frame of reference. There's still something when somebody else dies. When you die there's a good chance there's just nothing, and contemplating nothing will mess your head, even if it's not in the context of your own demise. An existential freakout is a double-whammy: You are going to die, and you will never understand why you (or anything else) ever even existed in the first place. It's no wonder religion is still pretty popular these days.

Well, at least I'm gainfully employed while I still exist, as I was reminded when I did our taxes a few days ago. As I've said before, I get so resentful every tax season, not because of the amount we pay, but because of how ridiculously confusing and time-consuming it is to figure out how much you owe. I used TurboTax, and the estimated time was one hour and 45 minutes. It's been over twice that, and I'm not even completely finished yet. Maybe we need to go back to having somebody do our taxes for us, like we did last year. But the thing there is that you still have to spend the time gathering all the necessary documents, which is a large part of the overall workload. I imagine the CPA is basically just entering all the stuff into a computer program the same way we are. That's not nothing, but it's also probably not worth the relatively hefty fee, especially considering we paid almost the exact amount last year as we did the year prior when we did our taxes ourselves. Also, if I do our taxes it gains me some emotional capital with S. That's also not nothing.

Well, that about does it for this morbid entry. Until next time...