Tag: Kids

  • It’s Summer Vacation, and I’m Bored… (Unedited)

    We are on day two of the kid’s summer vacation, and this morning I was told by my daughter that there is nothing to do, and she’s bored.

    Ah, yes. The dreaded but completely expected statement which I knew was only a matter of time before it was uttered.

    I know that this is a sticky debate for some parents. There is one camp which is “Let the kids be bored” as that will teach them to make their own fun. The downside to this stance is that most kids, mine included, will go running to a screen… so not so much a win there.

    The other camp is to schedule the kid to do stuff, and keep the boredom away. The two downsides on this one is that parent is solving the problem and not the kid. The second point is that activities can be expensive.

    I’m trying to find a balance in the middle. I want the kid to solve her own boredom issue without running to a screen, which means that we have to set screen limits. The other side is that this might be one of my last summers to do stuff with the kid around the City, and I don’t want to pass up the opportunity to spend time with her.

    There is one other thing. If I’m spending my time with the kid, that means I don’t get a chance to work on my writing. (I only have four minutes left before I have to go off and make everyone lunch.) I’m trying to figure out a way that we can sit in front of the TV and watch the World Cup together, and I can work on some things, but that is an awful plan as I get wrapped up in talking to the kid, or watching the match.

    I also have to remind myself that the way I grew up, is nothing like the way my kid is growing up. I grew up in a suburb outside of Dallas that was full of families and kids, so every summer, I could run out of the house, and find another kid to go and do something with, and never leave the block. My daughter’s friends are spread out all over the City, and each kid goes to a different type of school, so not everyone’s vacations line up. She really can’t run out the door and play.

    Anyway… Today, we are going to kick the soccer ball in the park and draw on the couch as we watch the World Cup. That should do the trick for today.

  • ODDS and ENDS: World Cup, Working Out at Home, and Saturday at 8:30pm

    ODDS and ENDS: World Cup, Working Out at Home, and Saturday at 8:30pm

    (Life ain’t always what it seems, oh, yeah…)

    Father exercising indoors by jumping, sweat on face, son sitting on couch watching TV with remote
    A father works out in the living room while his son watches TV.

    The World Cup has started, and I fell asleep watching Mexico and South Africa. Please don’t take that as a reaction to a very boring game. No, that is just what happens to me now when I sit down on the couch by myself; within fifteen minutes I will fall asleep. Anyway, Like I thought, Mexico won in a very bizarre red card heavy match. I thought that South Africa’s goalie, Ronwen Williams, was actually pretty good, it was just the rest of his team couldn’t keep their cool. Anyway, I also watched South Korea play and beat the Czech Republic. Korea didn’t look great out there, but they did look competitive, and when they play Mexico, I suspect that match will be filled with fireworks from the aggressive play. As for today, I intend on watching some of Canada v Bosnia and Herzegovinian, and I say some as I have errands that I need to run with the kid before the thunderstorms hit today. The big match will be USA v Paraguay. For me to believe in this Team USA, they have to win this match. They need to win their group and get past the first round of the knockout stage. Just saying…

    So, the kid is now on summer vacation, which for me means that I don’t have to get up at 5:30am. How that translated into today was that I over slept to 7am. Not a big deal, but it did throw off going to the gym, as I had to go and move the car for the street sweeper. This is a very long way to go to say that I had to go my calisthenics at home, in the living room, in front of the kid, who found all the exercises I do very funny. Mind you, I have only been doing this stuff for about a month, but my kid was confused and asked, “If you do all this stuff, why haven’t you lost weight?”

    LET’S GO KNICKS!!!

  • Short Story Review: “Stories” by Annie Ernaux

    (The short story “Stories” by Annie Ernaux, which was translated from the French by Alison L. Strayer, appeared in the June 8th, 2026 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Photograph by Jet Swan for The New Yorker

    You know what I like most about Annie Ernaux’s “Stories”? Well, besides the language, and tone, and ethereal feeling of the loss of a past childhood, or how it feels innocent and menacing at the same time, or the power of words and storytelling, or how the protagonist/narrator doesn’t seem to be a very nice person because she sort of traumatizes a five-year-old. No, my appreciation for this story began to form when I finished reading it, as I was left wondering how fictional was this piece? I know full well that the overwhelming majority of Ernaux’s work is autobiographical, but I was still left wondering, to what degree is this fictional, or factual? For the sake of writing this, I’m going to come down on the side of fiction, as it is in the “Fiction” issue of The New Yorker, but I feel that for this story to work on all levels, Ernaux needs us the believe that this really happened. And not a portion of it; all of it. Even though I am sure this story is based on an event which has been fictionalized.

    See, it’s that last paragraph which might well be the best, and correctly used version of the “Dead chick in the basket” trick. (To explain, “Dead Chick in the Basket” refers to a writing device where the final paragraph of a short story contains new information about a character which is meant to make the reader view the actions, statements, or feelings of that character in a different light. This device was effectively used in J.D. Salinger’s short story “Just Before the War with the Eskimos,” where the name of the device comes from.) We go through this whole story, and then are given this last paragraph which seems to explain that this is all real. Or is it? She is a character in her own story? She wrote this to understand herself, but ended up writing another story? (You know, this just might be an unreliable narrator.)

    I will die on this hill of a fictional interpretation, because wasn’t Ernaux trying to tell us in this story that she discovered she had the ability to create a fiction so powerful that the audience accepted it as reality and had an honest emotional reaction to it? It’s like it’s meta on meta on meta. And we will never figure out what the truth is because only Ernaux knows that.

  • Fatherhood: Baby Teeth Edition

    The kid needs to lose one more tooth and then she can get braces. At least that was what I was told by the orthodontist. As such, we have been going to town trying all the tricks to get that last baby tooth out. Within reason, that is. She’s been eating crunchy vegetables and wiggling the tooth with her tongue. My father suggested the old tie a string around the door handle and the tooth trick, but that one seemed to scare the kid a little. Odds are that the tooth will come out in the next couple of days. I feel the act/desire to have to the tooth out is what is causing the tooth to stay in – as that is how the Universe works for most things.

    In a larger sense, I never imagined how much time I would spend in my fatherhood worrying, dealing with, and caring for the loss of baby teeth. I imagined quite a few scenarios of being a father, but grappling with baby teeth wasn’t one of them.

    I feel like there is a book there, waiting to be written, “Everything I Had No Idea About When It Came to Being a Dad.” I think I have written several blogs about this, though right now, I can’t think of any of those issues.

    That’s the other thing about fatherhood; what was odd and new today, is normal and old by tomorrow.

  • Short Story Review: “Rate Your Happiness” by Catherine Lacey

    (The short story “Rate Your Happiness” by Catherine Lacey appeared in the April 13th, 2026 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Photograph by Tobias Nicolai

    When I finished reading Catherine Lacey’s “Rate Your Happiness” I was reminded of driving a car with a manual transmission. Especially when you don’t put the car in gear and still step on the gas which causes the engine to rev really high, but you don’t go anywhere. In this story, the narrator calls this “meaningless motion” and they’re right. And it’s also very frustrating.

    I understand that the theme of this story was existing in atrophy, and motion that leads to nowhere. Unfortunately, having a protagonist that doesn’t make a decision or choice leaves the ending of the story empty and unsatisfying. There is one sentence in the last paragraph which I think attempts to bring about a conclusion: “Louise returned to the street with real intent, finally carrying her contradictory desires with total clarity…” but I have to say that this sentence is being asking to do a whole lot of heavy lifting for this story. It implies that Louise has made a choice to accept who she is when it comes to how she has reacted to the situations the story has presented. Yet, is it truly a choice when the character is only acknowledging that they don’t make choices? Though an interesting philosophical question, it doesn’t work narratively.

    What “Rate Your Happiness” presents is something that feels akin to the first one or two chapters of a novel. There are a lot of moving parts here, and Lacy does a good job of balancing them in the narrative. No one idea, theme, or character dominates, and it all flows and ripples over each other creating the feeling of a very real and complicated character in the protagonist of Louise. In fact, I enjoyed all the characters that were presented in this story, and wanted to see and hear more from them.

    Like I said, if this was the first chapter of a novel, I’m hooked and I want to see how this plays out. As a short story, the engine is revving up, but we didn’t go anywhere.