Entry 576: A Week Later

I'm feeling much better now than when I wrote my previous post. I'm not quite 100%, but I'm close. Plus, what even is 100%? Have you ever felt 100% a day in your life? It's like, if I feel tired and sore and a bit of congested is that the lingering effects of Covid, or is that just how I am most the time? It's impossible to say.

Whatever the case, I'm glad to be mostly out of the woods. It was awful. It didn't feel like being vaccinated even helped. Maybe it did -- I dunno. I'm still alive and never even considered going to the hospital, which are the two most important things. It's not unheard of for Covid to kill a seemingly healthy man about my age. But it's also not unheard of -- in fact, it's the majority case -- for vaccinated people to not contract the disease even if they've been exposed to it, or to not get sick if they do contract it. I'm a first-hand witness to this. S actually came up positive in a retest, but other than feeling a little crummy one night, she was completely asymptomatic. So, I seem to have gotten a raw deal, if not the rawest of deals.

Amazingly, the kids tested negative two times, and they never show any prolonged symptoms. Lil' S1 got sick and was bedridden, but just for one day, and Lil' S2 had a bit of a cough, but that was all. As weird as it sounds, I really think they caught a different bug at the same time we got Covid. It's the only theory that really makes sense to me. There were too many people exposed to one another to get sick and test negative for it to be anything else -- our friend's youngest child, both the boys, and also S's sister, who's staying with us, tested negative but got knocked out of commission for a day. That's four people and seven total negative tests (everybody but S's sister got tested twice). There is just no way there were that many false negatives.

S, however, is convinced that Lil' S1 (and possibly Lil' S2) had Covid and somehow eluded a positive test. It led to the following conversation.

Me: I can't believe the kids got through this without getting Covid. They were locked in a car with me for seven hours while I was positive.
Her: Well, I think Lil' S1 got it.
Me: But he tested negative, twice, and it wasn't the rapid testing.
Her: Dr. C said that those tests can still be wrong.
Me: Yeah, but even if they're not totally accurate, it would be pretty unlikely, probablistically, to get it wrong twice. Plus, he only got sick for a day, and a bunch of other people got sick and tested negative. You think those tests would be wrong for everybody?
Her: I dunno. I'm just telling you my opinion. That's how I feel. You can't argue with how I feel.
Me: It's not your opinion! It's medical testing! 

This gives a good glimpse into how totally normal people can be anti-vaxxers. S is not an anti-vaxxer and she is usually much more rational than the average person, but even she can get locked into a position that is probably not true. It's usually a combination of a few factors. One is that you see something bad and weird happen first-hand, maybe to somebody you love. You know what happened to your son, because he's your son and you were there, not the doctor or the government bureaucrat. It's like the dad in the documentary Bigger, Stronger, Faster* who is convinced steroids made his son commit suicide because he saw it with his own eyes. (Never mind that, say, untreated depression is a much more likely cause of suicide among teens.) Personal narrative, especially among parents, is a huge anti-science driver.

Another factor is that the science is often legitimately unknown or confusing. How many different things have we been told about Covid since the start of the pandemic? Don't wear a mask, wear a mask, wash your hands, hand-washing isn't that important, don't be around people outside, it's okay to be around people outside, vaccinated people aren't likely to spread the disease, vaccinated people can easily spread the disease, etc., etc. It's not illogical for people to be skeptical of the latest thing they are hearing. (But skepticism does not mean blanket distrust.)

Also, most people are terrible at assessing and evaluating things in terms of probabilities. It's totally possible Lil' S1 got Covid and the tests were wrong. It's just unlikely, so far as we will ever know. But most people don't think in terms of unlikely or likely. They have three modes -- is, is not, might be. Something either is true, it's not true, or it might be true or not true with roughly 50-50 chance, so both sides are equally valid.

Lastly, the "dig-in factor" is huge. People just don't like being told what to do or told they're wrong, even when they are (and maybe deep down inside they know it). If I caught S in a different mood maybe she would have just agreed with me, but for whatever reason, she pushed back, and once you push back you often find yourself really pushing back, even if it's something you don't even have strong feelings about. I see this all the time online in stupid comment wars. I have even done it before myself. I've gotten caught up and made silly arguments I didn't even believe in, because I couldn't "let the other side win." Nobody is beyond this, and it's one reason I quit Facebook and almost never go on Twitter. We all know a huge reason right-wing conservatives are less apt to get the Covid vaccine is because left-wing liberals are almost uniformly in favor of it. That's the power of the "dig-in factor." Many would rather get Covid than give in to "liberal tyranny" (i.e., a pandemic-free society).

By the way, if you want a good life-hack here's one: Evaluate ideas based on their merits, not on the politics or identity of the people pushing them. Concerning Covid, I was an early adopter of being in public as long as you are outside. Some natural experiments (e.g., the BLM protests) convinced me that this was relatively safe. That's why when a bunch of people, primarily on the left, were scolding governors, primarily on the right, for keeping their beaches open, I was not among them. I figured beaches were some of the safest places to go. Just make sure if you do go that you aren't sharing a house with a kid who has Covid.

Until next time...

Entry 575: Fuuuuck... I Got Covid

Despite being fully vaccinated, I got Covid. I don't mean I asymptomatically tested positive for the virus, which is not that uncommon among the vaccinated; I mean, I got Covid. I have been quite sick the past few days, and I'm still not 100%. I'm apparently in the body-aches phase of the sickness. My back is killing me, and a friend who also got a breakthrough case told me the same thing happened to him. I do feel cheated, if I'm being honest, getting vaccinated and still getting sick, but maybe it would be worse if I didn't. I mean, I've had pretty much every symptom imaginable -- cough, headache, body aches, sore throat, running nose, sneezing, exhaustion -- with the notably exceptions of chest pain and shortness of breath. If I stay alive and out of the hospital, the vaccine worked? I guess so, but I would've preferred it worked better. I also was lamenting the fact I got the J&J vaccine instead of waiting to get one of the other ones, but my aforementioned friend got Pfizer and ended up in a similar boat. So, it's probably just a product of a vaccine -- any vaccine -- being good, but not perfect. Nine out of ten is great for society as a whole; it's awful for that tenth person.

It also goes to show how dangerous the delta variant is and how it changes (or should change) the safety heuristics we adopted in the spring when we were all getting vaccinated and it looked like we might be on our way out of this thing. I don't know for sure I got delta, but I strongly suspect that's the case. What happened is, we got a beach house on the Outer Banks with some (vaccinated) friends, and our second night there, they got a text saying one of the kids in their six-year-old's camp tested positive for Covid. Apparently, they live in a delta hot spot. In retrospect, we should have asked that their kids got tested before we shared a house with them. But this didn't occur to me because the safety protocols are so different in our DC neighborhood than they are in southern North Carolina where our friends live. Here it's just a given that kids have been recently tested because they test them every ten days at camp or school. It's not like that everywhere in the country (although it should be). I also didn't bother to check what the case rate was like near where they lived. So, it was mostly bad luck, but we were a little bit complacent

Anyway, after getting the email, our friends' other son, a toddler, started hacking and wheezing, so everybody got scared, and the families stayed apart for the rest of the night. They got rapid tests the next day and their older son came back positive (but weirdly not their younger son, who was the only one actually showing symptoms). They then left.

S and the boys and I all felt fine but figured we should play it safe, so we left the next day (Wednesday). That was a good move as during the drive home we all started feeling sick -- a lot of coughing and sneezing. We got tested Thursday and kept our distance/wore masks as we waited for the results. S and Lil' S2 seemed to be okay, but Lil' S1 and I were laid up in our rooms all day.

I was convinced the two of us had it at least, but then their results all came back negative. This made me think I didn't have it, as I probably just had whatever Lil' S1 had. But then I got my results and I was positive. I haven't really left my room since then. It's so strange that I would get it, being vaccinated, and Lil' S1 and Lil' S2, who aren't, didn't, especially considering they were in direct contact with this boy much more than me. Lil' S1 shared a bedroom with him, and Lil' S2 was grabbing and wrestling him every chance he got. But I would much rather have myself get it than my kids.

Thankfully, we have a house that can accommodate my quarantine. We actually have an entire basement that's like a separate apartment, but S's sister is staying there at the moment, so I can't use it. But it's a net positive overall, as she can help S with the kids, which is much more important than me having space. I mean, how much room do I need to nap and watch old football games on YouTube? (Plus, my bedroom is significantly bigger than a studio apartment I lived in for a year in Bellingham, WA.)

At the moment, I'm just focusing on getting better, but we are going to have to make some decisions very soon, because we have a trip planned to the PNW to visit my family. In theory, we could still do it within the stated safety guidelines. Thursday will be ten days since contracting the virus, so we could all get rapid tests on Thursday and, assuming we are all negative, fly out Friday. It would be just as safe as if I never got the disease -- safer even, because we would have gotten tested the day before.

In practice, I don't know if it will work out that way. I don't even know if we will feel like traveling, and I don't want to spook my family. It's not totally rational, but not totally irrational either. If nothing else, this is a reminder that the delta variant is no joke and there is still reason to tread cautiously. Maybe it's better to wait until things calm down -- I've heard some epidemiologists posit that the delta variant is going to burn out in the next few months, as everybody either gets it or gets vaccinated (or both, as the case may be).  And the vaccine for children under 12 is coming soon... right?

On the other hand, what happened to me was a low probability event (and assuming I get better in a day or two, as expected, ultimately not that bad). How much do you want to base your life decisions on low probability events (that ultimately aren't that bad)? It's a confusing time, to say the least.

Until next time...

Entry 574: Warm-Up Vacation

In a few weeks we are leaving on a jet plane (my first one since Covid hit) to visit my family in UP. I consider that my "real" vacation. But before that, on Sunday, we are driving to the Outer Banks for a few days at the beach. It's our warm-up vacation. I've used hardly any personal leave the past few years (that'll happen when you're quarantined with nothing else to do but work from home), so I've got a decent amount accrued, and I could definitely use the R&R. It should be good. The beach is always nice, and we are meeting another family there, whom we get along with pretty well and haven't seen in a few years.

We actually have a house reserved starting Saturday night, but we are going to a wedding of a friend of mine that night, so we aren't going to the beach until the next morning. Not surprisingly, S didn't check the calendar carefully before booking our trip. It's just how she does things -- she charges ahead with abandon and so mistakes are not uncommon. Like when she buys garlic pretzels instead of regular pretzels (and still tries to make dessert with them). Or the one that really blew my mind. A few years ago, when she was looking for a new job, we were watching TV, and she was casually browsing listings on her laptop, and she said, "Ooh, this one looks perfect!" And then she just filled out the application on the spot, even the parts requiring you to write actual sentences, not just fill-in-the-blank, and attached her c.v. and submitted it, just like that -- between challenges on Project Runway or whatever. I couldn't believe it. If that was me, applying for a "perfect" job, I would have locked myself in a quiet room and spent a solid half-hour checking and double-checking every last thing.

But she's a pretty successful person, career-wise, so it seems to work for her. It drives me crazy sometimes (like when she, say, books a beach house for the same night as a wedding), but I just let it go now. You gotta take the bad with good with people, especially spouses. Also, if I complain, I'll get an earful about how she does all the planning, and that's basically true.*

*The big stipulating factor here is that she often plans things because she doesn't like the way I do it. So it sometimes becomes a game of "you plan this thing this time... but do it exactly the way I would."

Like I said, the beach will be a welcome get-away. My anxiety levels have been manageable, but they have definitely crept up over the past few weeks. Reading the news is basically just doom-scrolling these days. Delta variant! Global warming! Inflation! I'm still employing my "mullet strategy" -- news in the morning, entertainment at night -- to stay informed but also sane. But the latter takes a little more effort right now.

The Olympics are still a big part of my nightly routine. As I mentioned in my last post, it's surprising how much I've been enjoying them. Pure comfort-watching. I wish the USWNT (soccer) had won the gold, but anybody can slip up in a knockout tournament. They lost to Canada in the semis but took out Australia to salvage the bronze. Megan Rapinoe scored two goals, in what was possibly the last Olympics game she will ever play, and now she gets to kick back and cheer on her wife, Sue Bird, in the women's basketball gold-medal game. Not a bad consolation prize, huh?

There have been a lot of great moments, but I think my favorite so far is Gable Steveson, a 250-pound freestyle wrestler, scoring two take-downs in 13 seconds (!) to win the gold-medal match in buzzer-beating fashion, and then celebrating by doing a back-flip. Beautiful.

As I write this, the US men's basketball team is about to tip-off against France in the gold-medal game. France actually beat them in the group round, but I think the US will win. They're not really the "Dream Team" anymore -- the rest of the world has made up a lot of ground in the last 30 years and many of the top Americans sit international tournaments for one reason or another (LeBron James and Steph Curry are notable absences this Olympics) -- but they are still the heavy favorites to take gold when guys like Kevin Durant agree to play.

I'm going to watch the game, but before I do, I want to brag on Lil' S2's latest mathematical achievement. He won the bottle of snacks seen below in a "Guess How Many" competition at his camp. He guessed 600 and there are 610. Now, this could be total dumb luck. But I suspect it's not, I suspect he looked at it and sized it up and came up with a reasonable guess. I mean, I would think your typical five-year-old would be just as likely to guess 100 or 100 million as they would to get the correct answer. Getting within 10 takes some numerical acuity, I have to think.

Until next time...

Entry 573: I Gotta Admit, The Olympics Are Still Pretty Fun To Watch

I've got a new nighttime routine that involves watching the Olympics.  It's on in the background right now, actually.  I wasn't especially excited going about these games going into them -- if anything I was soured on them because of the whole holding-a-massive-international-gathering-during-Covid thing -- but I'm a sucker for good competition, and the Olympics, for all it's faults, can still deliver on that front.  It's ideally timed for me, as the live events are on at night after S and the kids are in bed.  Plus, the YouTube highlights are the perfect five-minute break during the workday.  That's when I like the Big Brother algorithms: Why yes, I would like to watch Chen Meng winning the women's table tennis gold medal.  How ever did you know?

The big story of this Olympics is gymnastics G.O.A.T. Simone Biles withdrawing from competition.  My take: It's fine.  I don't think it's particularly brave or an amazing display of leadership or anything like that, but I do think it's good that she's prioritizing mental health.  I see it similarly to somebody turning their ankle or pulling a hamstring.  If you're brain is not right and you can't perform well because of it, it should be okay to sit out and heal the same way you would if your body is not right.  Plus, Biles gave her teammate Jade Carey a chance to compete that she wouldn't have had otherwise, and she was there to support her other teammate Suni Lee, who, by the way, just won the gold in the all-around.

Obviously, I have no idea what's going on in Ms. Biles' head, but if I may speculate recklessly for a moment (and I may because it's my blog), I think there was at least a tiny bit of f-you to the powers-that-be in her decision to withdraw.  It's no secret that she doesn't have much love for the administrators of the US women's gymnastics team (understandably so, to put it lightly, given the rot they let fester for way too long), and NBC was basically hyping these Olympics as "SIMONE BILES and some other stuff," advertising on her name for free.  I think part of her was just sick of doing all the work, taking all the stress, while others profited off her and then just put more stress and expectations on her.  In short, she was feeling used, and, consciously or subconsciously, she just said screw it.  Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't blame her for feeling that way if I'm not.

One thing Biles offered as evidence that she's having mental struggles is that she couldn't nap.  To some people this might seem like a small issue; to me it does not.  I recently wrote about my own sleep problems, and I can attest: There are few things worse mentally than needing to sleep and not being able to.  It's its own hell.

I'm still having issues, by the way.  Sunday was another death-spiral, literal-one-hour-of-sleep nights.  But I found a secret weapon: Tylenol PM.  Okay, that's not secret; in fact it's pretty obvious.  S takes it sometimes, but I never wanted to, because I didn't want to become reliant on it, and because I was worried that I still wouldn't be able to sleep and then I'd be even more out of it.  But Monday night, when I still didn't fall asleep right away, I got desperate, so I popped a couple pills, and they worked -- a little too well.  One hit and I'm hooked!  I took some last night too.  This is exactly what I don't want.  I'm a fussy enough sleeper as it is.  I definitely don't need to add drug-taking to my laundry list of bedtime requirements.  Now that I know it works, I'm limiting it to emergency use only.

In non-Olympic sporting news, I won the "King of the Ring" championship in my wrestling class on Tuesday.  At the beginning of class, I was feeling sluggish and my right groin muscle hurt (my latest injury), so I figured I would just take it easy.  But then the instructor came in with a WWE belt and told us we were going to have a competition for it, and immediately I was like, Screw that!  I'm gonna win that toy belt!  And so I did.  In the semifinals, I took down last week's champ (I wasn't at class last week) who probably has about fifty pounds on me.  And then in the finals, I beat this other dude relatively easily.  I did a front headlock snap to get him to his knees and then I just plowed him on his back with my hips.  That's a sweet move -- very demoralizing to the opponent because it's just pure imposition of will.  Straight-up bully ball.

As it turns out, the belt didn't even fit around my waist, and I only got to hold it for a few minutes before I had to give it back, but still.  I did a Ric Flair "Woo!" and strutted across the mat and it was cool.

Until next time...

Entry 572: A Hodgepodge of Topics of Varying Importance

The delta variant continues to be in the news.  It's concerning, but I don’t know what I can do about it personally.  I got vaccinated.  Everybody I know well enough to discuss vaccinations has been vaccinated.  I live in a city that is around 75% vaccinated, and in my neighborhood that number is almost certainly higher, perhaps significantly so.  What else can I do?  Going back to my old ways of social distancing won’t help much, neither will wearing a mask (although I willingly wear one when asked).  It’s like, I want to do something, but anything I do will be doing something just for the sake of doing something -- hygienic theater.

I suppose I could be more cautious with the kids, since they are too young to be vaccinated.  But they already mask up when in public indoors, and they hang out almost exclusively with kids of vaccinated parents.  We go to the pool a lot, and they obviously don’t wear masks there, but it’s an outdoor, private pool in a mostly liberal area.  I can only also assume vaccination rates are high and risk is low.  My best assessment is that it would be worse to keep them shut away, limiting their social engagement and exercise.  As we've all learned over the past year and a half this carries its own risks to health, particularly mental health.  Plus, I’ll be first in line to sign up my kids for their own vaccinations once they drop the age limit, which can’t happen soon enough.  (Fingers crossed on fall.)

You’ve probably heard that right now Covid is a disease for the unvaccinated, and I think that is right in terms of who is still getting sick and dying, but it’s not true in terms of the disease’s wider ramifications.  Sick people use up resources and put strains on the system that hurt everybody.  They also keep the virus alive and in the news, which freaks people out (even if they are vaccinated and highly unlikely to suffer serious illness themselves) and slows down the economic recovery.  Most worrisome, it allows the virus to mutate in ways that could potentially make vaccination ineffective.  Thankfully (to put it mildly), this hasn’t happened yet, but the possibility of returning to square one with a vaccine-resistant variant is always there, hanging over us like the Sword of Damocles.

Sometimes I can't help but find myself in the mindset of “I’m vaccinated; fuck all y’all that aren’t,” but I try not to stay there long.  It’s a quick off-ramp when I'm heading uncontrollably into a stretch of Covid dread.  The better attitude is, “What can we do to compel unvaccinated people to get vaccinated?”  I’m in favor of persuading people; I’m in favor of punishing people (provided it doesn’t create a counterproductive backlash); I'm in favor of paying people; I’m in favor of doing anything that works.

One thing that definitely needs to be done is the FDA needs to officially approve the vaccines.  Right now they are being dispersed on an emergency approval.  This might seem like a technicality that doesn't actually matter, but I heard a reporter named Derek Thompson on The Bill Simmons Podcast make a very compelling case that it does.  Surveys show more people will willingly get vaccinated if the FDA officially signs off on it, and it allows municipalities, schools, employers, and the like to legally mandate vaccination.  So, let's get on that, FDA.

One thing that definitely doesn't need to be done is any sort of federal laws or decrees.  They will backfire.  If right-wingers feel the Biden administration is too heavy-handed they will be even less likely to get vaccinated than they already are.  It's ironic, isn't it, that the people who clamor the most for "freedom" are the ones most controlled by the actions of their political opposition?  It's just in an inverted manner.

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Never Have I Ever is back with a new season.  I’ve been watching it with S and her sister (who just moved to the DC area, which is very cool).  I love that show.  Apparently, smart, subversive comedies centered on female high school students are my thing.  (See also: Booksmart.)  This one being centered on a South Indian girl born and raised in America only adds to the hilarity.  There are cultural things they reference in the show I wouldn’t really appreciate if I didn’t spend so much time around S and her family.

I also started watching this show called I Think You Should Leave.  It’s pretty good – weird as hell but legitimately funny.  It’s sketch comedy, so there are definitely some swings and misses.  (Is there a less reliably funny form of comedy than sketch?)  But I’ve also found myself legit LOLing watching it by myself.  

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The Milwaukee Bucks recently won the NBA championship.  I watched all their playoff games and found myself cheering for them like I was born and raised an Elm Grove.*  I don't know why they captured my fancy the way they did.  Usually when I come into a sporting event with no routing interest, I subconscious pick a team halfway through and root for them for the remainder of the game, but I don't really care.  I don't have that emotional investment.  This time I did for some reason.

And that reason might be Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, aka, "The Greek Freak."  He's just so awesome to watch, and he has such a humble, intriguing backstory.  How could you not root for him?  Also, the Bucks were playing against Phoenix Suns, led by Chris Paul, and I'm really sick of those State Farm commercials.

 *That, apparently, is a suburb of Milwaukee.

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I heard an interesting interview on The Michael Shermer Show with Whole Foods founder John Mackey.  Mackey is one of those guys whose ideals would probably be described by most people as pretty liberal, but he’s also an unabashed advocated for minimally regulated capitalism, which puts him at odds with, say, hardcore Bernie supporters.  Like, he wants a lot of the same things people on the left advocate for, but he thinks the invisible hand of the market is the best way to get them.  I found myself mostly agreeing with 75% of what he said, mostly disagreeing with 20%, and stridently disagreeing with 5%.  (One thing I really take issue with is his characterization of resentment toward super-rich people as "envy."  To some degree, yes, of course there is envy, but more so I think it's that many people feel, rightly or wrongly, that billionaires represent the injustices of an unjust economic system.) 

Mackey is a vegan, really into animal rights, and he and Shermer were positing that people in future generations might look back on our treatment of animals today with similar shock and horror to how we currently look back on slavery.  I have heard this proffered before, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.  It's not an apt analogy, because killing other living creatures is absolutely vital, at the most basic level (sustenance), for human beings to survive.  For millennia we had to hunt, and even today when we don’t, when we can healthily subsist on a strictly plant-based diet,* we still kill a lot of critters growing food, either accidentally (e.g., crushing small animals with heavy equipment) or intentionally (e.g., spraying pesticides).  I don't think we could grow enough food to support everybody on the planet without doing these things.  So, the question becomes: Is breeding cows for food so much worse than exterminating colonies of weevils for food?  The answer might be yes, but I don’t think it's a big enough yes that future generations will look back on it like we do on past atrocities.

*Although I don't currently eat an entirely plant-based diet, I'm totally down to transition to one as a society.  It's more efficient and much better on the environment.  I think lab-grown meat will really have to take off for us to get there though.

So then, what current widely accepted aspect of society will be judged harshly by future civilizations?  I don't know.  Possibly nothing, at least not at the level of something like slavery.  It seems reasonable to me that it was so awful that we simply don’t have anything analogous to it in today’s society.  One possibility I will throw out there, however, is closing our borders on refugees -- just our treatment of refugees in general.  We can all see how people might look back on "kids in cages" with utter disgust (because most people feel that way now), but even more mundane, acceptable refugee laws are quite terrible if you think about them on an overall human level.  If I were in charge, I would allow in more refugees (more immigrants in general) by a massive factor.  My feeling is, if you can get to this country, you can stay, and you can become an American citizen, end of.

Republicans often claim that Democrats support "open borders," but it's not true -- they don't.  But I do.  Maybe not absolutely 100% open, but pretty damn close to it.  When we get to the point where you fly over the country and see something other than endless swathes of city-less land, then we can talk about the country being "full".  Until then give me your tired, your poor,  your huddled masses.  There's always room in Wyoming.

Until next time...

Entry 571: Sawing Logs and Mowing Lawns

I'm quite tired these days.  The kids have to be at summer camp an hour earlier than they do at school, and I'm the one who takes them to there, so that means I have to wake up and hour earlier.  You might think this would force me to go to bed an hour earlier, but it doesn't.  It just means I get an hour less sleep.  I find it almost physically impossible to go to sleep before midnight on a regular basis (and many nights it is significantly later than that).  I can do it for a little while, or as a one-off "catch up" night, but sure as the setting sun I will eventually regress into my night-owl habits.

It's been that way my entire adult life.  One summer as a college student, I worked stocking shelves at a sporting goods store, which required me to wake up at 5:00 am.  The night before my first day, I got in bed around 9:00 pm set on getting a solid eight-hours of shut-eye.  I laid there for about 20 minutes, listening to the birds chirp, hearing the comings and goings of my neighbors (it wasn't even totally dark out), before thinking, Well, this isn't going to work, and getting up to play Nintendo.  I don't think I slept more than five hours a night that entire summer.

I would, however, often nap in the afternoon on the couch after I came home.  It's the only time in my life I napped regularly.  It was different sleep than I got at night though.  It was like the sleep I sometimes get on airplanes, where I'm kinda still following what's going on, but it's not what's actually going on.  It's some sort of dream-reality hybrid.  At some point it all gets too weird and I pop back into full consciousness -- except on rare occasions, when I don't, and I experience sleep paralysis.  This is an absolutely terrifying state in which one is awake but cannot move or speak.  I don't think there is a literal Hell, but if there is, I imagine it somehow involves sleep paralysis.

S is the type of person who can fall asleep almost immediately in almost any environment, so she doesn't really understand my plight (and, I suspect, is frequently annoyed by it).  "Why don't you just go to sleep earlier?" she asks.  I try to explain that that's like telling a fat person to just eat less and exercise more: Gee, thanks, I never thought of that.  But it works out okay, because she usually lets me sleep in a little on the weekend, and I always rally and get out of bed when I need to, no matter how tired I am.  On Monday, I got the kids to school, put in a full day at the office, and took a Krav class on about an hour of sleep.

This is not an exaggeration.  Sunday night* I got caught in the death-spiral in which you can't sleep because you are anxious and you are anxious because you can't sleep.  At one point, I got up to get water and peeked at the clock (which I typically try to avoid, as it only makes things worse) and it was 4:00 am on the dot.  I went back to bed and finally slept until S's alarm went off a little after 5:00.  I could not get back to sleep after that, around 6:30 I resigned myself to that fact and just got up for the day -- a one-hour sleep night.  I've had them before, and they totally suck.  Somehow I manage to power through, though, and I almost always sleep soundly the next night.

*Monday morning, technically.

In other news, we apparently stumbled into a free lawn care service.  When we first moved to this house, over two years ago, we signed up to get our grass mowed every two weeks by the same company who does our neighbors' yards.  It's $40 a pop, so we paid the main guy cash on the spot the first few times he came over to do it.  But then he quit coming and instead sent his workers, who said they don't handle the money and wouldn't take payment from us.  Since then, we just haven't paid.  They still come every week, but we don't give them any money.  It's the weirdest thing.

It's also annoying, because we are just waiting for the other shoe to drop.  We probably owe them like $1,000.  I'd say they cut our lawn at least 25 times since we last paid.  I was keeping track for a while, but I've now lost count.  Are we going to get hit with a huge bill soon?  I mean, it's been like two years.  A few weeks ago I sent him a text asking him to send us an invoice, and he replied asking for our address, so I sent it to him, and then... nothing.  How can you run a business this way?  Don't you need the cash flow?  How do you pay your employees?  Is this a front business for some sort of shady activity?

Whatever the case, it makes me feel uncomfortable, but I don't know what to do.  I could cancel the service, but if he's not responsive to getting paid, I doubt he'll be responsive to not getting paid.  Also, they do a really good job and are super reliable (ironic, given how many negative experiences we've had with contractors we were paying).  I think I'm going to ask my neighbors what they do.  If they don't give me a satisfactory response, then I'm going to write a check and just give it to a worker the next time I see one.  Either that or I'll just do nothing and wait until a huge bill comes due... or doesn't.  Maybe we will move or die first, in which case -- we win?  I dunno.  I really can't figure this one out.

Until next time... 

Entry 570: Beaten Up But Not Beaten Down

I feel pretty beaten up right now, mainly because I am.  I took two Krav Maga classes each of the previous two nights, and I am feeling it today.  One of the classes is just called Fight and it's pretty much as advertised.  It's a lot of sparring, a lot of grappling, some kicking -- dirty boxing, so to speak.  You don't get blasted like you would in a real fight -- everybody knows everybody has to go to work the next day -- but you definitely feel what it's like to get hit, and it doesn't feel good.  This one dude caught me with a pretty good right flush on the chin.  I think it was payback because I booted him in the side and made him wince.  Turnabout is fair play.

I definitely have daydreams about starting sport fighting in my early twenties instead of my early forties.  I think I'm picking it up pretty quickly, but my body just can't do things it could do 20 years ago.  I'm not as agile, not as fast, and not as confident.  That last one is a big one.  So often I find myself holding back a little bit because I don't want to pull a hamstring or strain my back or fuck up my neck.  These aren't things I ever worried about as a younger man.  During my last class of the week the instructor asked me if I met my class goals, and I said, "Yeah, I didn't get injured."  And I was totally serious.

Then again, even if I took up fighting earlier and more seriously, what would I have done with it?  Almost certainly nothing.  It's not like I was going to be a pro or even an amateur fighter.  I just would've gotten hit a lot more and that's probably not a good thing.  Doing what I'm doing now, cosplaying MMA, pretending to be a badass, is likely the better way to go.  I get to beat up on the patzers and get a workout in the process.  That's a pretty sweet deal.

The workouts have been paying dividends too.  I've dropped about 15 pounds over the past month and a half.  I lost like 12 of those in two weeks, just by eating better, and then it's been an ongoing grind to get off the rest.  The thing is, weight is not a good metric for me, because I don't mind if I add muscle weight, but I don't know what else to use.  Basically, I want to look good with my shirt off, but how do you measure that?  Maybe I'll start an Instagram account and just post weekly pics of myself shirtless and then read the responses.*  What could go wrong with that plan?

*Does Instagram have responses?  I honestly have never been on the site.

Actually, that does kinda sound like a fun idea.  But I'm not going to do it, mainly because inertia, but also because being off social media has really been a boon to my mood and mental health.  I miss Facebook sometimes, because it really did keep me connected, if only superficially, to people I really like, but aren't in my "real" life for one reason or another.  For the most part, however, I just don't even think about it, and that's a good thing.  I was listening to the Slate Political Gabfest podcast today, and they had an interesting discussion about social media.  Here's an excerpt from cohost Emily Bazelon.  The impetus of the dialog is a personal essay in The Atlantic by Caitlin Flanagan about quitting Twitter.  (You don't actually have to read the essay to follow along; I haven't read it.)

You know, what I was thinking about is that one of the things this essay gets at is the difference between quitting social media and desperately wanting social media just not to exist anymore at all. There’s taking yourself out of the game, which for her sounds like absolutely a healthy psychological move and better for her work. And then there is just wishing there was no conversation going on that you then had to feel excluded from or that you’d excluded yourself from. I mean, I really do flirt with the idea that we would just be better off if social media platforms didn’t exist whatsoever.  That they do so much more harm than good even with all of the wonderful celebration of free speech and the way that it has democratized participation in debates, and I see huge benefits to it, including to my children. It also just causes tremendous damage, like apart from ethnic violence and ruining elections, which is like very real. I think that it also makes people really anxious and insecure in unhelpful ways. It definitely has that effect on me some of the time. I don’t think I’m addicted to it, but I can’t quite bring myself to get off it because it keeps going. So it it creates this FOMO. And yet I also have just participated in it less because I don’t like the sharp meanness of it. I can’t figure out how to argue on it without feeling some kind of awful sense that I’m supposed to then go back and see what retort someone has written back to me and I really, really don’t like that feeling through the day. So then I don’t argue and then my feed is boring.

I think this is really well said.  I agree with pretty much all of it, especially the last part about having a boring feed, because of the "awful sense" you have throughout the day when you argue online.  This is also why I almost never post anything even the slightest bit controversial on blog comments -- even anonymously I hate that feeling.

There's also the time aspect of it.  Back when I would go on Twitter regularly, I couldn't get any traction.  Nobody engaged with my posts much at all.  Then I looked at the feeds of other people, who had a bunch of followers, who were no wittier or more poignant or famous than me, to see how they did it, and it was like, "Oh, they tweet all the fucking time."  It's like the only way to make social media worth it is to be on social media constantly, and that totally sucks.  Ergo, social media either isn't worth it or totally sucks.

Alright, I'm already 14 minutes past the blogging limit I set for myself this evening, so I'm going to wrap it up.  But before I do, here's the latest in Lil' S2 solving math problems in his head that would literally (and I mean that literally) stump a decent portion of the adult population.  We measured him a few days ago and he's 46 inches.  So I said to him, "There are 12 inches in a foot, so how many feet and how many inches are you?"  And then he thought about it and said, "3 feet and 10 inches."  I tried it with my height 73" to make sure it wasn't a fluke, but he got it as well: 6' 1".  I'm telling you, he's pretty sharp for a five-year-old.

Until next time...