Tag: Parenting

  • Not Enough Time

    I am stealing a moment to type this out. I didn’t do my homework last night. My homework being to make a meal plan for the week, a grocery list, and writing a blog to be posted this morning. What I did was binge three episodes of Ted Lasso with my wife, and then fell asleep on the couch.

    So, now I am running behind. I still have to do the aforementioned tasks, but I also have to take the kid to her dentist appointment later today. As this is titled, I don’t have enough time to get everything done.

    And I had two really great ideas for a blog. One was about showing how over the past 30 years homage, parody, and ripping-off in media have become blurred. The other was how I was completely judgmental toward guys who work out all the time at the gym. Both I thought were great ideas.

    But now I have to go.

    Maybe I’ll get to it later in the week.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Playing Dumb, Vacation, and The Next Stage of Life

    When I went to pick up my daughter from school yesterday, she was super excited to tell me all about these new Solar System facts she just learned! How the sun is a star, and Venus is the hottest planet, and Jupiter Saturn and Uranus and Neptune were giant gas planets, and Pluto was a dwarf planet, and on and on. She was bubbling over with how cool space was, and how there is an international space station, and that we send robots to the planets and even to a comet! And each new fact that she presented to me was in the form of a question; “Dad, did you know Pluto is a dwarf planet?” Well, yes I do know that, and I was alive when Pluto was considered a normal, regular planet. But I don’t say anything. I just smile and nod my head because I have come full circle. All the years I went rattling off facts to my parents, which I now see they clearly already knew, but they let me proudly prattle on. Now, I am being prattled on, but I see the excitement of learning in my daughter’s eyes. That feeling of the world being knowable and accessible at the same time.

    I want to go on vacation. As it starts to get warmer out, I have this need to get out of the City. It would be great to get away, even for a long three-day weekend. I like living in New York City, but I also love getting the hell out of New York City.

    Another friend of mine lost their parent last night. They put up a post on social media, and I commented, telling them how sorry I am, and love them. Sadly, this has been happening more and more often with my friends, and this isn’t due to Covid. This is life. Me and my friends are hitting middle age, and our parents are reaching the end of their lives. Before, when a parent passed, it was a rare and unexpected occurrence. Now, it is becoming a bit more common, as, sadly, this is the next stage in life. And these things happen in waves. First, we all got married, and then started having babies, and then there was the small divorce wave, followed by more babies and second marriages. Now, we are at the time when on parents start to leave us. I wish there was more I could do or say to my friend at this time. I do remember when my Ma passed, and I received many posts, messages and texts. It meant a lot to me, knowing that people cared and were still decent. I hope my friend is getting some comfort at this time from all the people that care for them.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Nightmares, Blogging, and Shop Local

    (Some thoughts that don’t involve Tottenham or Alt Side Parking.)

    The kid woke me up at 1am. She had a nightmare, and I tried to get her back to bed, but she was too upset. So, I did what any good father would do, we sat on the couch until we fell asleep watching MST3k. “Mitchell” was on and that calmed everyone down. In the morning, I asked the night what her nightmare was about, and she said that she dreamed she was an artist, and kept failing over and over again to paint a perfect picture. Yikes! I tried to talk to her about how failure is an important part of the creative process as it allows an artist to know what doesn’t work, and to keep trying. I don’t know if it took hold, but I did think she was a little young to be worried about painting a perfect picture.

    I started thinking again about switching to a paid blogsite, and getting away from the free WordPress.com thing that I am on now. I do this every couple of months, and I always get back to asking myself, what is the point? I have written about this on twenty different occasion, if not more, and I can never come up with a persuasive argument for myself, one way or the other. I am continually sitting on the pot over this one. I don’t know how to do what I want to do, which is what I am doing right now, sitting on my couch and writing, and make a living at it. Will a better blog site get me any closer to that goal? Honestly, I don’t think it will. BUT… I do have some free time, and it is something to do. Ahhh… I’ll sit on the pot awhile longer then.

    If you haven’t already, support small local businesses. Help your community not only survive, but thrive.

  • Talking to My Daughter about Ukraine

    It’s been very hard over the past week to talk to my daughter about the war in Ukraine. A hard conversation, but one that I know we need to have. She’s seven, and sees the world as good guys vs bad guys, which I do think makes explaining this war to her a little easier. Putin is the bad guy for starting this war, that’s the easy part. Everything else has been challenging.

    I have found that the “Mr. Rogers Rule” works really well. That rule is simple, “Look for the helpers. When things are bad, there are always people wanting to help.” Luckily, there are still parts of humanity that aren’t garbage, and we have been pointing out how the people of Poland, and other nations as well, are helping with the refugees; giving food, shelter, medical care, and safety. We have even talked about what we can do here, to help all the people over there.

    Now, we don’t purposefully have her watch the news. Most of the time, when we tell her that we are going to put the news on, she will leave the room as that stuff is boring to her. But now and then, she’ll walk into the livingroom and catch something, an image; a building on fire, a blown up tank, or a dead body in the street. My gut reaction is that I don’t want her to see these things, but I don’t want to shield her, nor stop her from asking questions about difficult subjects.

    The one thing that I think she is grasping is that war is not good. Even the “good” wars were still awful.

  • Selfish with My Time

    This past Friday, I mentioned that I had seen a listing for a theatre job that I was interested in, but wasn’t sure if I should apply for. I was going to take the weekend and think about it, but most likely, I was going to submit a resume no matter what, because what do I have to lose.

    Well… I totally forgot about the job. I mean, we did have a busy weekend with Friday movie night, and a birthday party on Saturday afternoon, and then there was the Super Bowl, and by the time Monday came around, we were back in the swing of the week.

    Then this morning, as the wife and I were walking back from the gym (you read that right) she asked me if I sent in my resume for that job. Thus, why I can say I forgot about the job as that was the first time I had thought about it in three days. First, I might not be real “into” the job if I forgot about it. Second, and I told my wife this, I really don’t want to give up my time with our daughter. I don’t like being in debt and feeling stuck, but I’m only going to get one chance have this time with her, and I don’t want to give it away to people who don’t deserve it.