Entry 632: Sunday Scaries

• Apparently, what I call the "Sunday Night Blues" have a "real" name: the "Sunday Scaries". I like my name better because the word scary makes me think of ghosts or serial killers or nuclear war and those aren't the things I associate with Sunday night. It's more a feeling of ennui and sadness, a little anxiety and dread, sure, but not, like, shutter-inducing fear. Now, Sunday Scaries does have the alliteration going for it, but Sunday Night Blues rolls off the tongue more smoothly. Also, you could come up with parody to "Summertime Blues" called "Sunday Night Blues".
  

  Well, I'm gonna feel sad and I'm gonna feel sorrow
  And I'm gonna have to go back to school on the morrow
  Every time I put my feet up and try to clear my head
  My brain says, no way, bud, and fills me up with dread
  Sometimes it feels like a terrible flu
  Cuz there ain't no cure for Sunday Night Blues

• The Mariners lost last night 1-0 in an 18 inning (!) game, which eliminated them from the playoffs and ended their season. It's kinda disappointing, but not totally devastating. Making the postseason for the first time in 21 years was enough to make it a successful season in my eyes.
  
  
• Also, the Seahawks won today to go to 3-3 on the season, which isn't great, but they were supposed to be terrible this year. They traded their superstar quarterback Russell Wilson in the off-season and replaced him with a longtime backup named Geno Smith. Everybody thought this would make them much worse on offense, but in a crazy twist, they've gotten better. They are much more fun to watch than they were last year.
  
  
• Speaking of football, Lil' S2 is playing flag football right now. It's going pretty well. He's actually a grade ahead of the other kids in the league. I signed him up for the 1st grade league (he's in 2nd grade) because I wanted him to play with his friends who are in 1st grade. He's right on the grade cutoff anyway. He's decent, but he has yet to catch a pass this season. There have been only two completions total on his entire team. The coach is the QB, and he's not great at the short passes the kids can actually catch. He has them running too deep. I'm watching from the sidelines like They're seven years old. They aren't catching the corner post. They don't officially keep score, but it's not hard to do the arithmetic in your head, and they haven't won a game yet. I was a bit apprehensive about putting him in the younger league, thinking if the team was good, other parents might raise an eyebrow, but that should have been the furthest thought from my mind. Lil' S2 seems to like it though, and he's pretty good, and he's always bothering me to play catch with him, so it's working out okay.
  
  
• Derry Girls is back with a new season. I love that show.

That's all I got today -- busy weekend, so short entry. Until next time... 

Update: I was reading the Wikipedia page for Derry Girls after I wrote this, and I learned that two of the actresses who play high school girls are 35 -- 35! I know that it's routine for actors in their 20s to play teenagers -- Ralph Macchio was 23 when he made Karate Kid, for example -- but 35? I've never heard of that. Not even Gabrielle Carteris was that old on Beverley Hills: 90210, and it was a huge joke how old she was back in the day.

No shade by the way. As I said above, I think the Derry Girls is great, and it's a testament to their acting ability that they can convincingly play teens. It's just surprising is all.

Entry 66: Three Day Weekend

It is Sunday of a three-day weekend. I took a day of leave on Friday to spend some time with S, because we thought it was going to be her last day in Australia. She was planning on going to Bangladesh yesterday for a work assignment and then on to India to prepare for the wedding, but there was a delay with her visa, so she likely won’t leave now until Tuesday or Wednesday.



The last day of a three-day weekend is a double-edged sword. On one side, it’s a day off from work, which is always good. On the other side, the I-have-to-go-back-to-work Sunday blues (which start at any early age as the I-have-to-go-back-to-school Sunday blues) are intensified, because they have been building up within you for an extra day. Also, you usually have more on your plate when you return to work, because you took an extra day off.

Speaking of double-edged swords, it’s nice that S’s visa was delay, because we get to spend more time together, but it’s not nice because she (i.e., we) lose a day of pay everyday she’s here, and she starts to get antsy and bored when she’s here with nothing to do.

Our thing lately has been battling over the thermostat. S likes the extremes so during the summer she always wants the air conditioner on full-blast and during the winter she always wants the heat on full-blast.



The thing that drives me crazy with this is that I’ll come home and the apartment will be at 75 degrees and S will be walking around in short sleeves without socks. Infurating. Not because it’s costing us money (it is, but we can afford to turn the heat on, for now, at least), but because it just doesn’t make any sense to me. She’s completely skipping a step in the temperature moderation process. First you put on warmer clothing, then you turn on the heater.

Now, S’s version of this is that I’m anti-heat and a thermostat nazi, but I’m not. I don’t mind having the heat on when it’s cold, I like having the heat on. I turn on the heat when I’m home alone. I just don’t walk around with bare feet and bare arms during the winter, that’s all.

And don’t even get me started on the air conditioner during the summer time. Does it make sense to anybody to turn on the AC at full-blast before bed, so that you can curl up and go to sleep under a giant duvet? Didn’t think so.

OK, enough about that. I shouldn’t complain too much. Lord knows S puts up with a lot of nonsense from me, the only difference being, I’m the one with the blog.

Plus, S and I are a great team when the chips are down. Just last night, we banded together to avert disaster in the form of a giant red wine stain on our beige carpet. (We have a very anal landlady and put down a very large deposit on this place, so any damage could cost us a lot of money.)

We were enjoying a fine Cabernet Sauvignon, and S had just asked me to be careful because her glass was on a table near where I was resting my feet. A few minutes later, just like in a bad sitcom, S stands up and *crash* she knocks over her glass. It shatters on the table, and a massive puddle of red wine forms instantly on our carpet.



We sopped up what we could will an old shirt, and then I started scrubbing with whatever cleaner I could find. S googled how to remove wine stains and it said club soda and salt (the same combination Larry David uses in a hilarious episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm). I ran to the store to buy some club soda, and S dumped salt all over the laky puddle. When I got back, we scrubbed and scrubbed some more. We left it to dry overnight and today, I must say, it’s looking pretty damn good. It’s still wet, so we can’t tell for sure, but I think we did it.

[I couldn't find the salt and club soda scene, but this one is similar.]

In other news, we watched Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans last night (not to be confused with Bad Lieutenant). I thought it was awesome – a great performance by Nic Cage. It’s really weird, and won’t be everybody’s cup of tea, but I couldn’t have liked it more. It has a little bit of a David Lynch feel to it, but you can actually follow the narrative in a literal sense. It was directed by a German man name Werner Herzog, who I know best from the documentary Grizzly Man (he was the director and narrator) another great film.

[My favorite scene in Bad Lieutenant.]

In other other news, I’ve been having a lot of bizarre and unsettling dreams lately. They aren’t really nightmares, because they aren’t scary. They are just unnerving and frustrating. The classic example is when you are in a bad situation and need to run, but you can’t move. I’m not having this dream specifically, but the mood is the same. The weirdest thing about these dreams is that I’ll often wake up in a state of confusion and anxiety, but I have wood. What? A creepy dream about my friend being hit by a train conducted by my old PE teacher arouses me?

I’m not sure why I’m having these dreams. I mostly chalk it up to randomness, but maybe there is something deeper to it. I do have a lot of unsettled things going on in my life right now: wrapping things up here in Australia, preparing for the wedding in India, finding a job, moving back to the States, etc. It’s a lot to have going on at one time. It’s not like I’m constantly stressed out about these things, but I do get anxious from time to time. I guess it’s not out of the question this could be affecting my dreams, but who really knows?

The last thing I want to mention is that there is some sort of street fair going on outside our apartment -- vendors, music, dancing, etc. Unfortunately, the noise from the preparations woke me up at 9:30, about an hour earlier than I wanted to get up. I’ve been trying to shift my day back a little bit, because I have to do some interviews with a company in the States soon, and due to the time difference, I have to do them really late at night (11pm-1am ish), so I want to get used to being awake and functioning at that time.

Well, since I’m up now, I may as well go check out the fair.

[A few shots of the street fair.]

Entry 435: Ain't No Cure for the Sunday Night Blues

The Sunday Night Blues are in full effect tonight.  You know that feeling of ennui mixed with sadness you get as a kid on Sunday night because you have to go back to school?  Well, I get that as an adult too.  It was really bad in grad school, because, like Susanna Hoffs, Sunday was my fun day.  It was the only day of the week I took a prolonged break from my research, and I would go to my local water hole and watch football with my friends all day.  When I returned home, I was still two-thirds drunk and crashing hard from my high of Miller Lite and Buffalo wings, and that's when the blues would creep up with a vengeance.  After getting married the feeling wasn't as intense, and since having kids I don't notice it as much (Who has a time to wallow in languor with kids?), but it still returns from time to time.

Today the conditions were perfect for a unwanted visit -- specifically, the weather.  Just like Scott Weiland, I think so much depends on the weather, and it has been brutal this weekend -- a relentless downpour.  It came at the worse possible time too because as I mentioned in my last post, I have Lil' S2 by myself right now, and not being able to go outside makes things so much more difficult.  Yesterday morning, we went to the park, even though it was very soggy, because it was the only two-hour block in which rain wasn't in the forecast.  As it turns out, we didn't even get that.  We got caught in a cloudburst and had to hurry home.  Only for some reason Lil' S2 refused to ride in the stroller, so we couldn't even hurry.  We meandered home in the driving rain, while Lil' S2 threw periodic tantrums because he didn't want to walk but also wouldn't get in the stroller.  We took about a half-hour to travel a route I could finish in literally three minutes if Lil' S2 would've just let me push him in the stroller.  We were both as drenched as you could possibly be.

Today I didn't even bother to try to leave the house.  It was raining so hard all day, we would have gotten soaked just going to the car.  And I didn't know what to do anyway.  A museum would require street parking (no thanks), and I'm not sure Lil' S2 would go for one of those indoor play areas by himself.  I could envision us going there and him not really being into it, and not interacting with the other kids, and just hanging on my pant legs.  So, we just stayed home.  I tried to make the best of it, but there is only so much you can do, especially when you have a kid who wants to be entertained all the time.  He's usually not like that -- he's the more independent one of the two -- but with S being gone, he's been super clingy, and I mainly indulge it because I know he misses his mom.  So, basically our day consisted of hide-and-seek for 15 minutes, ride scooters on our the deck for 15 minutes, read a story for 15 minutes, watch iPad for 15 minutes, lather, rinse, repeat.

Also, I was constantly checking scores of games on my phone, which is a terrible habit, and such a colossal waste of time.  I can't help it though.  I managed to curb my social media use drastically.  I never check Twitter anymore, and I only lurk on Facebook (I haven't posted in a long time) for maybe five minutes a day.  But I can't shake the compulsion to constantly look at sports scores on my phone.  I am in a super tight fantasy baseball match, which is my excuse today, but there is always something for which I can make an excuse.  At some point I just need to put down my phone and not pick it up.  I somehow managed to make it through the first 35 years of my life as an avid sports fan without having to check my phone every 30 seconds.  It's just so depressing to look at the clock, realize I've been awake for six hours and the only thing I've "accomplished" is following my fantasy teams.  Now, to be fair to myself, it is hard to focus on anything of substance when your primary task is watching your kid(s), but still I could be doing something else.  Taking up crochet would be time better spent than what I do now.

Speaking of sports and time, this website is pretty fun if you're a baseball fan.  It tells you who the first younger player than you in MLB was, and who the last player older than you was.  The first player younger than me was a pretty good third baseman for the Pirates and Cubs name Amaris Ramirez.  The last player older than me is to be determined, because it hasn't happened yet, but it will likely be ex-Mariner closer Fernando Rodney who's got me a by a few months, and is still pitching pretty well.  (The only other option is Bartolo Colon who's 45 and kinda sucky.)  In the NFL, there's a decent chance it will be none other than the ageless wonder Tom Brady, who was born in the same month, in the same year as I was, a few weeks before me.  I feel like we're basically best friends because of this.  Actually, I'm not sure Brady would be such a great hang.  He had a MAGA hat in his locker and called Trump a friend, and he's also into some weird fitness shit -- the sports equivalent of Gwyneth Paltrow's GOOP garbage -- so I'm not sure we would get along.  Although probably we would, I get along with almost everybody.  But given the opportunity, I think I would rather kick it with Aaron Rodgers.  He seems cooler. 

Anyway, I think that's enough of that.  Until next time...

Entry 523: The Danger Zone

You know how when you go to the woods, you will sometimes see a sign telling you the fire danger rating?  I feel like we all need one of those for our anxiety level during "Coronavirus Season" (as my kids call it).  Mine was "very high" earlier this week, in the yellow, approaching orange, but I've dropped off to the blue: just normal "high."  I don't know what causes the fluctuations.  Nothing has happened in either direction that should have affected my anxieties levels.  But, for whatever reason, I felt much more uneasy at the beginning of the week than I do now.  Maybe it's just a learned behavior to relax on the weekend and stress out at the start of the week (an extension of the Sunday Blues).  Who knows?

Our mayor announced DC public schools will go entirely virtually until at least November.  It sucks (obviously), but probably for the best.  I was steadfastly in favor of school returning as normal in the fall, but after hearing a lot of the teachers didn't want to be forced to return in-person, I changed my tune considerably.  They are already overworked and underpaid, and now we are going to ask them to risk their health so that the rest of us can have some relief?  That doesn't seem right.

Although, that's not an entirely accurate way to frame it.  For many parents and students, school isn't just a source of relief, it's a necessity.  If you don't have the resources -- time, money, moral support -- to keep kids home, you really need school.  Not having it is not just an inconvenience (albeit a fucking massive one) like it is for us.  That's why I mentioned in a previous post that I'd be in favor of a school-only-for-those-who-really-need-it model.  Sadly, it probably wouldn't work politically/socially.  We are way too selfish.

Speaking of which, Paul Krugman has a good article up this week titled "The Cult of Selfishness is Killing America", which is about how the reluctance (and in many cases outright refusal) of Trump and his acolytes to take basic precautions against Covid, such as mask wearing, fits into a broader warped world view.  I recommend the entire article, but the final passage is particularly on-point.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying that Republicans are selfish. We’d be doing much better if that were all there were to it. The point, instead, is that they’ve sacralized selfishness, hurting their own political prospects by insisting on the right to act selfishly even when it hurts others. 

What the coronavirus has revealed is the power of America’s cult of selfishness. And this cult is killing us.  

I agree with Paul that this selfishness is mainly perpetrated by those on the right end of the political spectrum, but there is an element of this on the left too -- just not to the same extent and not with the same vindictiveness (and this matters; degree matters, a lot; I'm definitely not trying to "both sides" this).  We have such a look-out-for-number-one, gotta-get-mine mindset in this country.  We are terrible at working toward a greater good, just for the sake of the great good.  Often a greater good happens to be a byproduct of our individual, selfish pursuits (the good side of capitalism), but when this isn't the case, as with this pandemic, we flounder.  It's sad and disheartening.

But, hey, at least we can still have the music of Kenny Loggins.



Alright, I hear the movie I put on for the kids coming to an end.  I better go.  I don't want them to bother S.  She's been really stressed out this weekend.  We are trying to line up some sort of part-time nanny/tutor to help us out when school starts again, and she's not going to be able to relax until that's finalized.  I'm sure it doesn't help that I'm pretty blasé about the whole thing.  (We will find somebody, and if we don't, we will still get by.)  Also, I slept in today, so I think S feels I owe her some emotional capital.  I understand that, but it's not really my fault -- I just didn't wake up and nobody woke me up.  What am I supposed to do, set an alarm for Saturday morning?  Time: 8:00 am.  Label: Make sure spouse isn't annoyed.

Until next time... 

Entry 214: Post-Christmas Non-Blues

Well, one good thing about not getting too excited for Christmas is that you don't get the post-Christmas blues.  You know what I'm talking about, right?  That malaise you fall into when a special event comes and goes.  I used to get it bad as a kid, and it wasn't just for Christmas.  Just a standard Sunday evening was a bit on the melancholy side for me.  I think that's pretty typical, and it gets even worse when you get old enough to go out drinking Saturday evening.  During my single days, there was no lonelier a time than Sunday evening after a night of partying.  I don't get that feeling anymore, though.  Now, I'm too tired to be sad.



Anyway ...

The big event for S and I on Christmas Eve was watching a movie.  But only after a medium-size fight to determine which movie to watch.  We don't have Netflix anymore, so our options are iTunes and DirecTV on-demand.  There are a lot of movies we can agree on, but they're all newish (Dallas Buyers Club, Bad Grandpa, Nebraska, Her), and so they're unavailable for rental (although some of them you could buy).  This led to a lot of back-and-forth over which movie we should watch, and this slowly escalated into a fight when she didn't understand why I was adamantly against buying a movie,* and I didn't understand why she couldn't agree on one of the nearly twenty movies I suggested.  But like most our spats, it all blew over in about an hour after some dinner and time apart.  It's funny how 99% of our quarrels occur when at least one of us is tired or hungry.  Huh.  I wonder if there is a connection.

We ended up watching this movie called Once, which was my choice.  It was on some "Best Movies of the 2000s" list, and it got really good reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, both from the audience and critics, so I thought it would be safe.  I was wrong.  It was not good.  It was painfully slow.  It was also a quasi-musical, and I don't really get the allure of movie musicals. (Isn't being there in person basically the whole deal with seeing a musical?)  I actually kinda dug the ribbon of story that tied the movie together, but the musical bits were just too plodding.  Plus, almost all the songs were John Mayer-y, singer/songwriter stuff, and that's just not my bag, S's neither.  So this one goes down in my movie loss column, unfortunately.  I tried to protest the decision to S -- "C'mon, it was like my 25th choice!  If we would've just watched Scarface like I really wanted to, this wouldn't have happened!" -- but she was having none of it.  I have a feeling we will be watching Don Jon in the near future.

On Christmas, we went to our friend's place, which was nice.  I had a moment with my friend's grandma of the type Adam Carolla always talks about on his podcast, where you make a connection with somebody you think is uncanny, and they just shrug it off.  My friend's grandma lived in Denmark for many years, and when I told her S lived in Denmark too, she just said, "oh", and moved on.  Then she told me her late husband was a math Ph. D., and I said, "I'm a math Ph.D!", to which she just nodded, as if 80%-90% of the population has an advanced degree in mathematics.  Then she said that he taught at Syracuse, and when I told her S went to Syracuse, she said, "yeah" and asked for more Brussels sprouts.  Geez, tough audience.  Apparently three coincidences isn't quite up to snuff.  If her husband and I were both named Ulysses Simpson Grant**, would I have gotten more than a "that's nice"?  Eh ... she's old.

Our friends gave us all Christmas gifts, which was a bit awkward, since we didn't know we were exchanging gifts and thus didn't get them anything.  (We did buy their three-year old daughter something, so we weren't completely empty-handed.)  S felt bad about it, but I didn't care so much.  I've already decided that I want to establish myself as the guy who never gives gifts.***  Once I get that reputation cemented then it won't be weird when I don't bring one.  Like my coworker who never eats sweets.  Everybody knows this, so it's never awkward when somebody brings in birthday goodies, and he doesn't partake.  That's how I want to be with gift-giving.  And by the way this doesn't mean that I'm never going to buy people stuff.  I don't want to be a cheapskate.  I'll happily buy drinks, pick up dinner tabs, pay for cab rides, etc.  I'm just not going to give people perfunctory gifts anymore.  It's my New Year's resolution.


This afternoon we had some friends come over for lunch.  Well, actually they're S's friends -- old coworkers.  I basically met them for the first time today.  It was cool.  They have two kids, a 9-year old boy and a 7-year old girl.  The boy has a mild form of autism, which actually makes him kinda fun, because he's not shy like most kids.  When he first came in, before he took off his shoes or jacket or said hi or anything, he went straight to Lil' S's toybox and started jamming on his Elmo guitar.  Then later he told me all about the TV show Austin and Ally.  It's a show on the Disney Channel set in Miami in which Austin, played by Ross Lynch (he actually cited the actor's name), is a singer and Ally is his songwriter companion.  Austin's best friend and producer is named Dez, and Dez has an "enemy" named Chuck.  They once sang a song called, "I Love Christmas".  I swear to you, I'm not looking any of this up; it's entirely from what he told me (maybe I have a bit of autism, since I remembered it all).  Later, he told me that the One Direction album was called Midnight Memories, just in case I wanted to buy it.  He said that last part a few times, "just in case you want to buy it".  So earnest.  It was pretty cute.  

OK, that's all I got for now.  Until next time ...

*I don't really know why either, honestly.  It's one of the few things I'm irrational about.  I have trouble enjoying something if I feel like I'm getting ripped off, and buying a movie for $10.99 that we only want to watch once is a ripoff to me.  S's argument is -- Who cares if we pay $6.00 more, isn't it worth it to get something we both want to see and keep marital harmony?  My response is -- It should be, but it's not.  I just can't do it.  I can't buy a movie we're only going to watch once.  Like I said, irrational.  Contrary to what my wife might believe, I do have some human emotions.  I'm not all robot.

**This commented was inspired by this weird baseball tidbit I stumbled across.  There was once a player named Stoney McGlynn and once a player named Lil Stoner, and they both had the real name Ulysses Simpson Grant.  Two unrelated players, a Stoney and a Stoner, and they're both named after the same president?  That's weird, huh?

***The Christmas gift exchange with my family is the only exception.  It got grandfathered in.