Category: Life

  • Ants

    It’s spring, and it seems like the world is slowly coming back to life. Flowers are blooming, trees are budding, and grass is greening. And bugs are back. In our tiny apartment, that means the ants are back.

    We get ants in the Spring. And I hate ants. These are stupid, little black ants, which are called Little Black Ant, annoy the shit out of me, especially their stupid, unoriginal name. They are easy to kill, and stop, but man, it’s like two weeks of those little bastards just showing up along the edge of the wall. The kid hates them, and also thinks the ants are out to get her. So, we have to have a calming down moment before she goes to bed to make sure she understands the ants aren’t after her.

    Stupid ants.

    Growing up in Texas, the fear was fire ants, as those assholes are awful. For every kid, there was always a moment when they accidently stood on, or fell on, or kicked a fire ant mound, and those evil guys swarmed, biting the hell out of you.

    I remember my dad buying fire ant killer at the local hardware store in the Spring to deal with them. The stuff he bought was a poison in the form of little yellow pellets that he would spread around the mound. The ants would think its food and bring it into the nest. Slowly, over the course of a week or two, the mound would die off, and a little pile dirt was left in the yard, like the ancient ruins of a civilization. I would dig up the dead mounds carefully, to see the tunnels that they had created. It was fascinating that little things could build such complexity.

  • IKEA Sofa Beds, And Supply Chains

    See, we need to replace our sleeper-sofa, which is from IKEA (Have I mentioned I’m a little obsessed with that place?) and we have been having some issues with ordering a new one.

    As we live in a tiny New York City apartment, we only have so much room for a couch. Also, we want to have a sleeper sofa to allow us an extra sleeping space, just in case. You know, if one of us were to get sick, or the fact that I snore and the wife kicks me out of bed, there will be another place to crash. Anyway, we need a very specific sleeper-sofa, which is FRIHETEN, and we could also deal with HOLMSUND.

    But as we tried to order one of the two sofas online, we kept getting the error message saying delivery was unavailable in our area. Then, when we went to the Elizabeth, NJ IKEA two weeks ago, they told us that they couldn’t guarantee delivery to us in Manhattan. I really didn’t understand their reasoning behind it, but what they offered was for us to book an appointment with their Design Center on the Upper East Side, as that place could order the sofa for us, and guarantee the delivery.

    Last night, we had our remote meeting with a person from the Design Center. She was very friendly, and tried to solve our delivery problem. What we found out is that the sofas we want, which are the only ones that will fit in our livingroom remember, are out of stock everywhere. None are available, and it is unclear when they will ever come back.

    Why? Because there is a foam shortage. Look what Furniture Today has to say about it. Seems like this has been building since last summer, and has been complicated by weather, and, this is my two cents, with everyone sitting at home. There has a been a rush of people wanting a better-quality sofa to sit their butts on, which means foam is in high demand.

    The pandemic is affecting the world in still new and surprising ways. But for us, we might have to go through Wayfair… which makes me feel a little dirty, like I’m betraying a friend.

  • Covid Weight Gain

    I put on some weight over the pandemic. Let’s say it’s close to twenty pounds. And when I say that it’s close to twenty pounds, I mean that it is over twenty pounds. I have put on over twenty pounds. In fact, I just weighed myself, and it’s 21.3 pounds. Mind you, I was a little pudgy around my middle before the pandemic, but that was due to driving everywhere in California, and not walking like I used to do in New York, But, before California, I had added a little weight after the kid was born, that I never took off. So, I’m thick in the middle. I’m a thick in the middle, middle aged guy.

    And I want to do something about it.

    Part of it is that I have been eating my feelings. Especially eating my feelings late at night when I watch MST3k on Pluto TV. (That’s my happy place.) I used to walk everywhere in pre-pandemic New York, like close to 9,000 steps a day without trying. I just looked at my phone’s pedometer, and looks like I walk about 4,000 steps a day. So, not doing too well there, even for the low hanging fruit. To be successful, I know that I have to change my lazy grazing life style, along with doing some exercise, and just moving more.

    But the issue is just getting started. Getting off my ass and beginning seems like a million miles away. I know all the benefits that will come if I just start working out a little, and I can even go the super vein route and say that I want to look good when I go to the beach this Summer. (Since I will be vaccinated by the start of May, I think I should go on vacation.) And not to mention that I should do things to stay alive for as long as possible, family and kid in all…

    But…

    But… The pandemic sure has made me physically lazy.

    No.

    Actually, the pandemic gave me to opportunity to be lazy, and I took full advantage of it.

  • I Got Vaccinated, and I Waited

    I got my first vaccine today. In three weeks, I will get my second vaccine. And then I guess we start living in a post Covid-19 world.

    That’s all good. And I do want to focus on the fact that we are getting close to living in a world where you can go places and see people. That this vaccine will be my first step in moving towards this world.

    I was nervous going to get the vaccine this morning. Anxious, nervous, feeling off, and butterflies in the stomach; all of that was happening to me as I headed out to The Bronx. Everyone is handling getting their vaccine in their own way. I have friends who dressed up for it, others who started to cry when they got it, and still others who took pictures of the whole process, including the nurse who gave the shot. I had brought my journal, as I wanted to write about it, document what I was thinking and how it felt. I even thought about taking pictures.

    And then I got to the hospital and I just wanted to experience it. Just be. Let it happen, and not think. I filled out my paperwork, and sat in the waiting room. My nurse was a real nice guy, and took me back to the room from my shot. He was an easy going person, and the shot was painless, and he handed me a button showing that I was vaccinated, though I don’t think I should wear it until I get the second shot. You know you have to wait 15 minutes, and I set a timer on my phone, and waited. I waited, and I thought how my salvation was being confirmed by waiting. Not doing, just sitting.

  • Sharing Photos with the Kid

    There has been a project that I have been meaning to get started on, which is getting photographs framed, and up on the walls. I have been squirreling away picture frames for some time, because when we go to IKEA, I pick up one or two. (Yes, I have a very unhealthy obsession with IKEA.) With it being Spring Break this week for the kid, I thought this might be fun for us to do together. We went out to our storage space, and grabbed the boxes for pictures and frames, and settled in on this project last night.

    When I started pulling out the pictures from the box, all still in that folder envelope that your pictures would come in after they were developed, the kid wanted to know why they were like that. (She has only lived in a digital world, and will never know that you used to have to wait for your pictures, and even then, you weren’t sure that they would turn out.) The pictures that I had were from Fall of 1995 to Summer of 2006, as after 2006, I used a digital camera, and never when back to film.

    And as I shared these pictures of my early and late 20’s life with my daughter, she had a perplexed look on her face. I remember feeling confused when my parents would show me pictures of their life at Southern Illinois University, or back in their high school days in Kankakee. Little six-year-old me was confused because it was hard for me to fathom my parents had a life before me and my brothers. My parents were fun, but serious, responsible people who ate their vegetables, paid their bills, and went to bed on time. Who were these people with beers in their hands, smoking, captured mid-laugh in photographs? Who were these people?

    The kid looked at the photos of me, with long hair, circle glasses, beer in hand, smoking, and wondered what I wondered when I was her age; who is this guy? Who are these people with Dad? What are they doing? Why is that guy hugging a tree?