Tag: Family

  • Back at the Gym

    Okay, I will say that I have been away from the gym for three months. Somewhere in the middle of June I stopped going to work out. The reasons why I stopped going were a bit complicated: The school year was coming to an end, we had a family vacation coming up that I needed to prep for, and I just didn’t feel like going any more.

    Now, I did go to the gym for at least once a week for five months. As the four of you who read this may know, in all that time, I didn’t lose any weight, nor reap the benefits of working out like better sleep, more focus, positive feelings. I still felt and looked like me, just with more sweat and body order.

    So why go back?

    Because I do know that good things happen when you work out, like living longer and shit. I fell off the bandwagon this summer, but I did take into account that I should eat and drink as much as possible if I stopped going to the gym. I had a “Summer of Ice Cream” if that gives you an idea of how I behaved. But, I do want to spend as much time as possible with my kid and wife, and the easiest way to accomplish that is to work out at least thirty minutes a day for three to four times a week.

    Yeah…

    As you can tell, I was never an “eat your vegetables” kind of guy, but I wanted to make the commitment of going to the gym for a year. I will need to come up with some sort of penance for taking that time off, but I would like to follow through all the way to January 2023, and then see where I am at.

    I know what my problem is. Well, I know what two of my problems are. First, I don’t have a clear goal. I just want to stay alive, but that goal has no bench mark to it other than being able to wake up tomorrow. If I actually said something like, I want to lose twenty pounds, or run a 5k, or fit into my old pants and shirts, then that would mean I would really have to work at it, and not do this kid glove thing. The second problem is that I don’t want to admit that I am getting older. That’s really all this is. I’m middle aged, balding and putting on a classic “Dad Bod” gut. I can only buy so many untucked shirts, and stretchy khaki pants, before I give in to t-shirts and sweats. I never had to worry about this stuff before, and now I have to be concerned about weight, health and shit, which only makes me feel older. (Ahh, the classic self-pity middle aged man. Not just for Updike and Roth novels!) I also know that if I don’t want to feel this way, I should either accept who I am right now, or I should make more of an effort in the gym.

    And I just can’t commit to one or the other.

    So, I’ll keep going to the gym, and hope at some point it will click for me, or metaphorically, I will flip the switch and commit to whatever path.

    I mean, I’m paying for the gym, so I might as well go.

    (And if you would like to commit to something, why not commit to giving my blog a like, or a comment, or even share it with your friends. You know, GAINS!)

  • Sports and Autumn

    Chelsea fired their manager, Thomas Tuchel, this morning. A little surprised, but Chelsea is having a pretty rough start to their season. Their loss yesterday, in the group stage of the Champions league, didn’t help, but still, it’s just the group stage. I would have thought if they didn’t make it out of the group, that that’s when I would have fired Tuchel. This is the one aspect of the Premier League that I don’t understand: you can be a manager with a winning record and still get fired. In the US, you have to lose first, then get fired.

    Enough of Chelsea!

    Today starts Tottenham’s Champions League campaign! Spurs will be taking on Marseille, and… I know nothing about Marseille, other than that it’s a city in France. The match is on at 3pm today on Paramount+, and there is a slight chance that I will be able to watch it. (If it rains today, I will be watching. If the skies are clear, I will be at the playground with the kid.) I’ll see how it goes.

    As for sports, the fantasy football league that I play in is about the start up. I haven’t paid any attention to what is going on in the NFL. And I really haven’t paid any attention to what the Dallas Cowboys are up to. The only thing I head this summer is that the Eagles should take the division, and that the JETS and GIANTS are BACK! Mind you, the local NYC sports news always says this about the JETS and GIANTS every year. Don’t worry, the press gives up on the JETS after the third game, and then they dump the GIANTS about half way through the season.

    The older I get, the more I enjoy the rhythm of sports leagues being rolled out in the Fall. The ramping up of both of the footballs, and the winding down of baseball. Basketball will start soon enough, and I again will flirt with following the Knicks. (My New York friends will talk me out of it.) In one sense, it gives me something to do on the weekends when it starts getting too cold and rainy to go out. I never really thought of myself as a sports fan, but since I moved from Texas to NYC, sports has given me a way to stay connected with friends and family. It’s an easy conversation I can have with people, and it’s also an easy excuse to send an old friend a text message, or when I talk to my dad, we can complain about the Cowboy’s O-line.

    I wonder if any of this sports watching will pass on to the kid? Right now, she finds it boring, but every now and then, she curls up with me and watch what I’m watching. Sometimes she asks questions, most of the time she doesn’t. Maybe what she’ll take away from sports is that it’s a chance to hang out together.

    (Speaking of which! If you are enjoying this, please take a moment to like, share of comment on this blog! I hear it helps needy people like me!)

  • It’s Labor Day

    I feel like I have achieved some sort of accomplishment for making it to Labor Day. Then I’m reminded of the Chris Rock joke, that you can’t be proud of something that you’re supposed to do. Like make it to Labor Day, or not go to jail.

    So, in my achievement/not achievement morning that I am having with my wife on the couch as we watch “The Price is Right,” I am thinking about how we got to the end of June, and I thought that this Summer would never get started or end for that matter. Yet here we are. The wife goes back to work tomorrow, and the kid is in school by Thursday.

    For me, I have to start looking for a job. Or at least, I have to start exploring ways to bring money in to help out the family. Won’t lie, I’m not looking forward to it. Part of it is that I have been out of work for so long, I have a little anxiety about returning. Also, I have this nagging feeling that I have started entering the realm of being just a little too old for certain jobs. And then there is what set of skills do I have? What I can do really only applies to theatre and non-profit arts groups.

    I talked about this with the wife last night, and we are in agreement that though another income stream would help the family, there is no rush for me to go out and take the first job that comes my way. I can take my time and find the right fit. That does help me relax a little.

    But, alas, for today is the end of Summer in our house. We most likely will do nothing but watch TV, and let the kid do what ever she wants. We will give ourselves one final day to relax.

  • Life with My Dog

    We have a little dog that is one tough coward. This dog is great with people and kids, and I have often made the joke that if I got mugged while walking her, the dog would roll over for the mugger. BUT, what makes the dog maddening is that she want to fight and kill any dog we encounter on the street. So, she tried to be a tough little dog.

    And then the rain comes, and she turns into the biggest little chicken. I know many dog are scared of thunder and fireworks, and our furry one is the same. Right now, thunderstorms are rolling through, and she is curled up with me, shivering, waiting for the weather to pass.

    I am taking full advantage of my scared dog. Normally, she is following my wife around the apartment because I guess the dog thinks she’s the alpha around here; Not that the dog is wrong. This means I don’t get a whole lot of snuggle time with the dog.

    Not that I am demanding that the dog spends her time with me. I am a cat person, so I feel like an animal and me should be more like roommates than family members. You know, I respect your space, your respect mine. But now and then, I would like the dog to curl up on my lap while I read. Not a big ask, but I feel it is manageable.

    The one thing I will say (as a person, a person in a relationship, and a person in a family) I don’t think I like the idea of living without an animal. There is something reassuring having a pet in the home, and taking her on vacations, and just another life at the end of the bed.

  • Short Story Review: “Trash” by Souvankham Thammavongsas

    (The short story “Trash” by Souvankham Thammavongsa appeared in the June 13th, 2022 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (Things might get SPOILED)

    Self-perception, self-worth, first impressions, the desire for acceptance; these were all the themes that swirled around and in the very compact and effective short story “Trash” by Souvankham Thammavongsa. The story is about a young female cashier at a local grocery store who falls in love and marries a man in five days after meeting him at the store, and then the man’s mother comes to visit. Mother-in-laws can be tough, and let’s be honest, the mean mother-in-law is a cliché. Hell, even the illustration for the story leads you to that conclusion as well, and as I read the story, I didn’t have high hopes for what I was going to unfold.

    Yet, what followed was a very well-crafted comparison for two self-made women, their attitudes toward the world they occupied, and how they desired the same thing, but attacked it in two very different ways.

    The young woman, the cashier, is from a world of rude honesty. “If they didn’t like you, you’d know about it and they would say it to your face,” the cashier informs us early in the story, “There is no pretending.” The cashier’s parents died when she was in her last year of high school, and she had to drop out to support herself, as there was no one to help her. She took the job at the grocery store, and she came to enjoy the job, and apricate the employment as it gave her an opportunity to provide for herself – an apartment and furnishing that were all hers.

    The mother-in-law, Miss Emily, had gone to college, graduated law school, became a partner, owned her own practice, bought property, worked hard to make something out of herself, as the young woman tells us. Miss Emily’s husband had died several years ago, a sudden heat attack, and she had married him right out of college, as we are told, because having a family was what she really wanted.

    When the women meet for the first time, they go to dinner and Miss Emily tells stories of her son, and when they all are on their way back to the son’s apartment, Emily askes about the young woman’s family, where in the story of her parents death is told, as well as how proud she is for having supported herself. Miss Emily’s reaction is to ask if she would quit the supermarket job now that she was married to her son. Miss Emily wants her to quit the job and go back to school, to make something better of herself. The next day, Miss Emily takes her shopping, so she can have clothes that look like a wife of a man who works in an office. But when they return to the son’s apartment, Miss Emily changes and starts to complain to her about the cleanliness of her son’s place, and that she, as his wife, needs to do something about it. The young woman takes a break, and goes outside of the apartment, and wonders about a mother’s love, and how she wants that as well.

    And it was this ending of the story that broke my heart a little. I could feel through the words how much the young woman wanted to belong, to be a part of this family, and believing that her mother-in-law was doing all of this out of love, and that she wanted to be recognized as a productive member. But I also felt that for the young woman to get all of that, on some level, she would be forced to admit that where she came from, and what she had made herself into, just wasn’t good enough. Heartbreaking for me, because clearly the young woman was just as much as a “bootstrap” self-made woman as Miss Emily, but her achievements were viewed as less worthy.

    It’s the type of story where I want to tell the young woman that she is good enough, and she does have value. But, I also have the feeling that her desire to be loved and validated will lead her to reject all that she has earned on her own. It’s a harsh reality, but also very honest.

    (Say, don’t forget to like this post, or share it, or leave a comment. I got bills to pay, you know.)