Blog

  • Bedtime/Workout

    I don’t do well with bedtimes. In fact, I really don’t like going to bed. What I do, or what I would do if I didn’t have a job, would be stay up as late as possible.

    Last night worked out differently for me, and I have to admit that I went to bed when I felt tired and slept.

    It’s about not having enough hours in the day, and getting older, and having to do things and wanting to do things.

    I need to start working out again, and my preferred mode is to run. I guess that I can admit that I am a runner.

    The wife and I have been saying to each other for some time that we have to get back to working out. That the kid can’t have two lazy, out of shape parents.

    If I start to go to bed earlier, and get up earlier, then I would have the time in the day to work out.

    I am a lazy man.

    To make changes in my life is one of the harder things to do.

    The biggest change I forced myself to make was quitting smoking.

    This is sort of along the same lines.

    Change means things will be different, and that is the fear of the sedimentary old man; I like things the way they are – even if the room is on fire, it’s fine.

    The fear of becoming old, and useless.

    Retain what has moved to the past…

    Or at least try to lose the pot belly…

  • The Parent Fail

    I have begun to notice a type of posting from some of my friends lately that I think proves that we are only repeating the mistakes of our parents. This type of post is mostly coming from my friends who are married, and also have children. It is the post that stats something to the effect of that today’s world is awful for (Insert reason x y and z,) and things were much better (Insert the decade the poster was born, or the decade before the poster was born.) I have written before about nostalgia, but I think this is a litter more sidious and deceptive.

    The reason I say that is because I can clearly remember my parents and their friends telling me how great and better things were in the 50’s and 60’s. (Strange, none of them said anything nice about the 70’s.) And by the time I was in high school in the 90’s, I started to question this logic. Such as, I was well aware that there were a great number of people who didn’t look at the past and see the Good Old Days. Being a woman wasn’t better in the 50’s. Being a person of color wasn’t better a few decades back… The past wasn’t that great, the present isn’t so bad, and the future might be pretty awesome.

    So, when I see friends posting that that the 70’s and 80’s was a better, more honest, connected time for people and families, and children… I kind’a feel like they are continuing the lie of the past. They are falling for the parent trap of telling their kids they missed out, and nothing was as much fun as yesteryear. I think that creates a situation where you instill in your children that they have missed out, and also it doesn’t allow parents to see they world from their kid’s point of view, which is new, exciting and full of possibilities.

    What I remember is that being a kid was fun, but the 80’s sucked.

  • I Dress Like a Conservative White Guy

    I have had this thought in my head for a while now… I have started wearing khaki pants more than jeans. I own just about the same number of button down shirts as I do t-shirts. I do wear a tie and blazer to work, but I don’t have to… I choose to do it. And the thing is that I feel very comfortable in these clothes. I can honestly admit, dressing this way does make me look like a conservative white guy. Rather vanilla.

    How did I get here?

    First of all, I do work on the business end of the arts industry, and I was raised that if you do business, then you wear a coat and tie. My father went to work in a suit every day, though I’m not really sure what he did. Something with computers and utilities. We are creatures of examples, but a suit seems to formal even for me. Hence the khakis, button down, tie, and blazer. I do still wear a pair of black low top All-Stars with the get up.

    Being in theatre, and especially with all the time I spent working on costuming, do understand and respect the role clothing can make in defining a character. With this knowledge, I know that I am making an impression with these clothes, which is straight laced, predictable, non-confrontational, as well as collected, and mature. When the dress code in the arts is casual clothing and being comfortable, then a coat and tie does make you stand out.

    Okay, maybe that’s it; I’m just counter programming the people around me.

    Am I dressing for the job I want? Is the clothing defining the person? Can the costume begin to influence the thinking of the character?

  • One Sick Kid

    Over the past two weeks, me and the wife have been dealing with our child’s first truly difficult illness. The kid is three, and we have battled some colds, and teeth cutting that involved some fevers. This time around, we got a full on high fever, vomiting, and diarrhea. It wasn’t the flu, which we all got the vaccine for, and when she first got sick, we had the test run to eliminate it as a possibility. Her fever got so bad at one point and wouldn’t come down, that we went to the emergency room in the middle of the night. It was just a virus that was in her lungs, and we were told the same thing by every doctor; it just has to run its course. Though true, miles from comforting.

    It was two miserable weeks for the three of us. Juggling sick kid, work, and all the other complications that life can throw at you. Finally, this weekend, the kid-o started to return to normal. We the parents are still wrecked, over tired and feeling on the verge of getting sick ourselves. The other unforeseen ramification from all of this is that the kid has back slid on potty training, and it pretty much feels like we have to start over.

    The other thing is that illness makes you have to harshly confront is the limit of your power as a parent. That there is so much out there that you cannot control and stop from happening. Some nights, all we could do was snuggle her and hold her until she fell asleep.

  • Everything is Just Disgusting

    It would be nice to live in a world where people played fair and approached things like an adult. I speak of what has happened since the Florida shooting. (The killing is too disgusting in its own right, and so many have done better than I ever will in capturing its horror.) The students of that high school have every right to demand change, to call BS on politicians, lobby their government, and march. To me, nothing could be more American. But, let’s be honest, the adults in the room aren’t doing their job, and they should be held to account for that.

    What is disgusting to me is the reaction, or reactionary response from the far, and I mean far right, to the students. I have an uncle who is very extreme in his beliefs, and his reaction to the high school students is that if they are pro-choice, then they are not allowed to demand changes to gun laws. (Now brain hurts…) I think what my uncle is saying is that if you are for killing fetuses, then you have to be for killing high school kids. He cannot fathom a moral structure wherein the opposite is true. What hurts my brain more is that I don’t think he owns a gun, so I don’t know why he cares so much for protecting gun rights in the first place?

    The other thing that is turning my stomach about the reaction to the high school students is the conspiracy theories that are flying around right now; False flags, paid actors, government operatives. Not everyone believes this, I get that, yet there are people out there that look at intelligent, focused, and driven kids as a pure impossibility. No way that high school kids could organize themselves… Never…

    I don’t know if this effort will succeed. It may fail like all the others, but I will be at the NYC march, and I will encourage others to do the same. We have to have hope, and these high school students seem to be the only ones providing it.