The Nineteenth
Mooncakes
Sometimes people leave stuff for free in our building. When I saw the beautiful red bag featuring big flowers and stylized bunnies on the floor of our lobby, that’s what I assumed this was. No sign indicating it was so, but no names or labels indicating who it belonged to either. I picked it up and stood there for a moment, bag in one hand and the just-emptied recycling bin in the other. It took just a moment to decide it should probably go back upstairs with me. I wish I’d deliberated a moment or two longer. Really give it a good thought-session. But I did not.
Instead I came inside and presented it to my family like an ancestor from long ago presenting some particularly juicy berries or hard-to-find clutch of nuts to her loved ones. We immediately opened the bag and the box within it (and the box within that) to discover tiny little mooncakes. Yay! There was uncertainty in my wife’s eye, and a few “did you really find this downstairs?” but it didn’t stop us from digging in.
And they were… okay. Pretty good. I was more excited about all the packaging, to be honest. But still, free food is good food and interesting food is always fun and this ticked both boxes. (And the free boxes ticked a third). And it was a highlight of the evening.
Cut to the next morning and my wife is taking our kid to school and she finds a note on the building bulletin board, mere feet from where my great find— now reclassified as a shitty sort of theft— occurred. She sent me this photo and as soon as I saw it my heart sank.
I wasn’t a cool mom who took the initiative and brought something to her family. I was a thief creeping around the building, running things. We immediately tried to look up where to get a replacement. Google results were not helpful. The closest we got to finding the right brand led to a website entirely in Chinese. I think it was Chinese. The fact that I’m not able to say for sure if it was Chinese tells you how successfully I navigated their website.
ANWAY, the point is that it was beyond our ability to get an exact replacement in a timely manner. At first I thought we had a little time. The box said “mid-autumn” and I was like “well, hey, we’re not even in autumn yet, it couldn’t be that close.” This was in response to my wife expressing fear that we (I) had “ruined their holiday.” I was confident in my deductive reasoning but I searched it up anyway and…. The Mid-Autumn Festival was tomorrow! Oh no!
After dreading it all afternoon, after our neighbors got home, after dithering for too long, we figured out the best way to resolve the issue was the American way: with directness and a wad of cash in our hands.
Our oldest kid called us foolish. And that was true. We didn’t have to own up to our mistake. We could have acted like it wasn’t us. They would never have found out. But we went and confessed anyway. I guess so we could feel good about ourselves? Maybe to act trustworthy so we could assume it in our neighbors? To show our kids that we don’t ask from them what we won’t do ourselves?
The things about having kids is they will always ask you why and so often I don’t really know why. All of that stuff I said above, but that doesn’t explain it fully. It’s more like “it’s what good people do and we want to be good.” Which is just another no-answer. But it works.
In the end, they were very understanding and almost didn’t accept the money. And I almost took it back, lol. My wife literally grabbed my wrist and pulled me away by the arms as we said our goodbyes. She knows me too well. It’s probably why she came with me when she really didn’t have to. A few minutes after we got in there was a knock on the door and it was our neighbor. This time she was offering mooncake to us. Different ones and presumably not stolen. And delicious!
And after all that I realized that maybe admitting our (my) mistake was about making a connection. Having a laugh with our neighbors, bridging the gap in language and culture to say “hey, we might not be able to have long conversations with you, but you can count on us to be honest… eventually”
The Eighteenth
While summer (the season) is barely half over, summer (the vacation from school) is decidedly finished. And with the kids back in school, I have time to focus on the stuff that got pushed back to the recesses of my mind. For example, I accidentally took a long break from updating this website. I note this even though I’m pretty sure no one cares. But I have to pretend. I have to assume an invested audience exists for this to work. And to get myself to do this and continue to move forward. Just as I assume gravity will continue to work with every step I make, even though the only guarantee it will is that it always has before. Gravity always shows up. Maybe an audience who keeps a watchful eye on my writing schedule will show up too. Lol I’d probably hate that though. I’d chafe even under that slight pressure, unable to form a sentence knowing even one person was waiting impatiently on a whole string of them. But I’d be willing to get used to it.
Anyway, I didn’t take a break from writing. Just updating on here. Where I have been writing is on Medium. I did mention I’d be doing that in this post. And in that same post, I also claimed I’d always publish the same stuff on here. Which I did for a while! Here are some examples:
But, well, after a lot of mental back and forth (and time spent formatting everything I wrote twice,) I decided to try a different approach. I’ll be making posts with links to the stories over on a blog dedicated to that (still on this website though). And while they are “Medium-members-only” stories, those links will get you to the other side of the paywall. I’m hoping this new way will help get the ball rolling on Medium but I don’t really know if it’ll work or what. So please, comment your thoughts below: Is the new way annoying? Does the extra click keep you from checking it out? Or maybe you’re a Medium member and now you’re glad to be able to help put a few cents in my electronic pocket? Let me know!
The Seventeenth
17 Names We Applied to Summer School So Our Child Wouldn't Feel Bad About Going
(and we wouldn’t feel guilty for sending them.)
Summer’s here, and for many kids that means hanging with friends, relaxing at home, and plenty of free time. But not for our kid! I can’t get into the details, but, well, we decided that one of them needed a little “extra” this year. Not as a punishment or anything like that. Just a little more structure so we wouldn’t lose to much momentum going into the next grade. And we went to lengths (some may call them great) to find something that wouldn’t feel like such a burden— to any of us! But still. There’s always a certain negative connotation to summer school. So we tried to throw a positive spin on it through the euphemisms. A bit of shine, you know? Put a little polish on (what we really, really hope is not) …a turd.
Listed below, in increasing levels of desperation, are 17 of my favorites:
Summer Activity
Summer Program
Summer Solution
Summer Scheme
Summer Time, and the Learning’s Easy
Summer Learnin’, Have You a Blast.
Summer Learnin', Happens So Fast
Su-su-summertime, Summertime Gladness
Thought Girl Summer (this one works better when you read it)
Three Fortnight’s Worth of Fun (while this one’s better when you hear it.)
Summer’s Cool (this one’s better when you read it, but you kinda need to say it out loud too.)
Skibidi School for the Orphans of Lost Rizzlers
Indoor, Bug-Free, Camping
Your Learning Era
Technically Speaking, June's Not Actually Summer Anyway, School
When I Was Your Age I Had to Do Odd Jobs For Strangers, So You Should Feel Lucky
You'll Thank Us Later Unless You Go No-Contact
The Sixteenth
Attempting to Thank My Daughter’s Fourth-Grade Teacher
My daughter had a truly wonderful year at school. Probably the best she’s ever had. Is that declaration a bit of a cheat, considering about half of her elementary school career was eclipsed by the pandemic (of 2020)? Absolutely. But still. She had an amazing teacher. And so I wanted to thank her (the teacher) with a Target gift card and a thank-you card. Easy, right? Buy the stuff, toss off a little note, then put it all together to have something nice to give her. Shouldn’t be a problem. Shouldn’t. But, like that classic get-rich scheme meme, the middle step was much fuzzier on closer inspection.
Because, you see, I’m not just a writer, but “A Writer.” Or at least I tell myself I am, and the accompanying (foolish) narrative includes the idea that no note is ever “tossed off.” I must belabor the process as I bare my soul to the socially appropriate degree. So, I had drafts. That’s right I had drafts. I drafted the thank-you note. And to get started I ran some practice ones to other teachers who haunt my memory. I warmed up to the task and tried different vibes on for size:
Dear Miss Honey, I’ll always and forever be indebted to you for helping my daughter unlock my magical powers. Your love and support were the bedrock I used to build upon my understanding of my newfound abilities. —Too stuffy while also too effusive
Mr. White— I was surprised to find you were still teaching class, considering all the extra-curricular activities you get up to! Thanks for teaching the practical side of learning science. Good luck with the car wash! (and the cancer). —Too personal
Dear Dr. Jones, Considering how much of the year you spend god knows where, I’ll be surprised you even get this. The girl who sits in the front row seems to love you though. You can see it in her eyes. Thanks for being the teacher we can totally dig— you’re a real… trip. —Wildly inappropriate
Thank you, Mr. Holland, for showing us all your very large opus— Somehow even more inappropriate
Mr. Keating, Oh thank-you my thank-you! —Too surreal
Dear Professor Snape, you might be half-blood, but you’re all heart! —Flippant!
Dear Michelle Pfeifer’s Character from That One Movie. Thank you for being the white person at the white time. —Unnecessarily Racial!
Ms. Frizzle. What can I say? You’re the woman I wish I had in my life when I was younger, the woman I want my daughter to be when I grow up. Thanks for everything you taught, everything you were. Everything you are. This world needs more teachers like you , who can instill —Far too intimate!
Anyway, eventually I turned my attention to the real deal and, after hours of work, furious scratching on scraps of paper, and with the final pick-up of the school year fast approaching, I finally hammered out a draft I thought was the right balance of light, thoughtful, fun, and meaningful. A note to make her smile but didn’t try to imply a level of friendship too deep. Something that summed up neatly all the growth and learning she fostered in my daughter without sounding like my lips were kissing shoe leather. One note to thank them all.
I got out the only card we had and began transcribing my carefully chosen words. And then, somehow, I got lost in thought. Or I’d gotten so entrenched into draft mode I’d forgotten we were doing something else. Whatever the case, I suddenly was going off script. Just freewheeling it! As I began to run out of space my script became smaller and smaller. I frantically searched for a way back to the beautiful ending I’d planned as the path toward it unraveled by the very hand who crafted it. By the end, it looked less like a thank-you note and more like a deathbed confession to a murder.
But the only thing I killed was my pride. And of course, by the end, I wasn’t happy with what I wrote. I think even if I had faithfully copied my final draft, I’d find fault in it— probably feel like it was soulless and too effortful. But whatever. I got it done and (awkwardly) handed it to her, and that’s what matters. Sometimes you just have to put your stuff out there and move on to the next thing, whether you’re ready to or not.
The Fifteenth
I often want to write when I can’t. And when I can, I don’t want to. That’s been my struggle lately.
It is a common complaint within many artist circles that one often gets ideas when it’s an inconvenient time to do one’s art. So I'm in good company. Or in company, anyway.
Finding oneself in the shower is the most oft-used example of this disconnect because it’s hard to imagine a much worse time to be suddenly struck by inspiration. (Though ironically “inspiration” is probably the best thing to be struck by in the shower. Psycho would be a much different movie if Janet Leigh had been attacked with a good idea.)
So one of the things I’ve been working on for like the past 6 months has been to drag the version of me who is excited to write into when I have the time, while also trying to make “when I have time to write” more in line with that version of me who feels like doing it. I arrange chance encounters. I tell myself I need to be a better person and sometimes even believe I can. I wake up a little earlier to enact my plans. I do a lot of cajoling. There are farcical misunderstandings. I leave little notes to myself to get things moving. It’s like a romcom has been slowly playing out in my mind for the past half year and I’m starring in the leading roles!
What could go wrong?
And as I coaxed the me who isn’t in the mood to create into trying crazy new things like “writing when the house is empty” one of the many (oh so many) difficulties and distractions I faced was steeling myself to be alone. With only myself for company! And I didn’t like it. Or maybe, more correctly, I didn’t like the anticipation of it. But I had to face it. Because there needs to be at least a moment— maybe more than a moment, but at least one moment— that exists after I turn off or away from whatever was keeping me company and before I immerse myself into writing. A short space in the time between taking media in and making a bit of my own. But I began to dread it. I don’t know why, but the thought of it became… I want to say unpleasant but it’s deeper than that. It’s like an irrational fear of what might happen during that transition. As if the sudden loneliness might be too much for me to bear and I’ll collapse in a heap of despair.
I cling to the stream of noise that keeps me company: shows, podcasts, audiobooks, TikToks, Reels, or (god forbid) YouTube shorts. Even music can feel like I’m clutching at a voice outside of my head. The longer I watched or listened the deeper that dependency grew, and the harder it was to turn it off. And I don’t have an answer as to why I get into that mental place. Not yet. I don’t know if there is one, for me. Not one that is immediately evident, anyway. Instead, I developed something like a solution. A simple mantra:
Embrace the stillness.
I like it. It’s a nice little phrase. Easy to remember. And it’s also a reminder that often the hardest part of getting stuff done is starting. Sometimes the worst part of working out is getting to the gym, the worst part of swimming is getting used to the coldness of the water, and the worst part of writing is being completely alone with myself.
So I’m practicing. Discovering how to make that transition less daunting. Building up a habit. Getting so used to beginning that I don’t think about the time in between leaving my comfort zone and getting started. Learning how to dive in without dwelling on it. And embracing the stillness.
The Fourteenth
Writing to write
Justifying the habit
As I pose here near the window, near the end of this lovely spring day, as the bed I rest on holds me aloft just so, providing a comfort that lends itself to concentration, as a gentle breeze stirs the floral print curtains, as the sounds of the distant commuter traffic of the streets mingle with those of the nearby foot traffic of my family, I can’t help but think: If I’m not writing, I really ought to be helping with dinner.
It’s more about the vibes than the view.
The Thirteenth
As I prepared to begin this, getting into my website so I can recklessly (dangerously!) write using software that doesn’t automatically save, I realized I didn’t publish that last post when I thought I did. That is, when I came to my weird little website that doesn’t quite know what it wants to be, I found a draft waiting for me, waiting to be made to the public.
But I forgot! I guess I was too busy, maybe? Too busy planning to publish stuff on Medium. I have no plans to publish anything there that I won’t also publish here, so if you’re not a Medium Person. no worries. Be whatever size you want! Not like I think anyone worries about missing my posts anyway, but you never know. People are strange.
Anyway, I’m making this little announcement, to mark either when I began to make a little money through writing or when I finally began to understand just how far away I was (am?) from meeting any financial goals whatsoever in this way.
I realize that most of the posts on this website center around the subject of writing. It’s not by choice so much as it’s just what’s on my mind. I like writing about writing (I’m even a fan of a FB group with that name) but at the same time, there’s something cramped and stifling about it. It’s too much like drinking stagnant water. Incestuous, almost. Or like performing improv alone, which is almost worse. (Shoutout to my idea of performing comedy under the name “I’m Provalone”.) It feels like there needs to be more. Call it a flow from an external source, a diversity of voices, or a deeper gene pool. But when the loop is too small, the poor results can become baked in the (in)bread.
It’s an idea we can’t get enough of!
I tried writing about books, but it’s not for me. Not in a way that I’m often excited about sharing outside of Goodreads. I think my reviews about books can be occasionally interesting, but I don’t necessarily want to get good at it. I like making notes about what I read, but polishing it up to make it something worth reading to the casual visitor to my site is beyond me right now. There are a handful of reasons why this is true, but suffice it to say I have a hard enough time feeling confident sharing opinions about things in general, I don’t need the extra pressure entangled with talking about someone’s book. I’ve never written one, but even the bad ones seem like they take a lot of work!
And while I have lots to say about my children and parenting, it’s a limited subject. The main problem there is my kids are people. Full-on actual people, with thoughts and feelings and everything else. Whom I love. And if I’m worried about hurting a stranger by saying something negative in a book review they’ll never read, you can guess how I feel about using my kids as fodder for blog posts. Yes, I do talk about them, but I need to be careful to respect their privacy. Especially now that they’re older and they, or someone they know, might come across these someday soon. It’s not likely but you never know— and they didn’t sign up to have their personal lives lived in front of an audience.
So I focus on what I do and feel being a parent, and less about what they’re up to. And when I do talk about what they’re up to, I try to be vague or change facts (though I am proud of our new whispy special little guy named Casper, whom we adopted from the 1930s— he just won first prize in a turnip eating contest!). But of course, injecting carefully-constructed lies into our lives diminishes the point of writing about them in the first place.
If you’re like me, you’re probably wondering: what is this post about? I’m not sure. Maybe it’s a reminder to myself that as I commit (once again) to write and publish more often I also need to commit to getting out of the house more often and doing something different more often. Even if I don’t want to.
The Twelfth
There’s a red button on our vacuum cleaner. Actually, there are two or three, Each one, when depressed, allows the user to detach one part of the vacuum from another. Pretty common feature on most models, even if the button is a different color, and I wager if you’ve spent any time cleaning a house, you’re familiar with them. We’ve had our vacuum for about ten years. It’s a big ole thing with a clear plastic canister so you can see all the gross shit that used to be all over your floor. Truly delightful. Anyway, for the past five years or so, one of the buttons stopped working right. It’d allow the base or “foot” of the vacuum to detach from the, ah, torso, far too easily. To the point where you’d have to be careful how you picked it up so as to not let the vacuum’s foot crush your own. It was annoying but not a big deal. You just had to be patient when you were using it or putting it away.
And then last week the unthinkable happened. I picked up the vacuum, just as gently as I’d been doing a hundred times before, when the red button popped off. The shoe dropped. The foot fell to the floor and I was certain the vacuum’s days were numbered.
More out of curiosity than belief it could be done, I tried to fix it. I wanted to give it a good-faith effort so if we had to get rid of it I’d know I was doing it in good conscience. I found the red plastic cap and the little spring that had popped out along with it. I lined it all up but could see the plastic was a little bigger than the whole through which it broke loose. It didn’t look good. I could push it in, but even if I was successful it’d be likely to crack or maybe even snap in two. But I had to try. I arranged it as best I could and began to work it in. If this was gonna happen, it was gonna happen with a little finesse.
It took a few minutes, a bit of force, and a lot of luck, but I finally heard that satisfying click. It was in! Firmly. So firmly that when I attached the foot, it seemed to fit better than it had in half a decade. Amazing. I tentatively lifted the vacuum. The foot stayed on. I gave it a little shake. The foot stayed. I gave it a good shake. The foot shook too and it remained attached! Hallelujah! Not only had I fixed it, but I made it better to boot!
When I began writing this I thought maybe I’d end with a “hey sometimes shit needs to get worse before it gets better” sorta thing, But I don’t like that. I suppose it’s true in some cases, or else the phrase “it’s always darkest before the dawn” wouldn’t sound familiar. But it’s always more unnecessarily fatalistic than true. I guess it’s meant to be comforting. But to my ear it rings of encouragement to wait for something worse to come by in the hopes that something better will be pulled up along behind it. So instead, I’d like to wrap this up with a corollary to the classic “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”:
“If it’s a stinker, it’s time to tinker.”
…which isn’t great, I admit. But it’s better than “if something ain’t right, grab a light (to shine on the problem so you can take a look at it),” which was my first attempt, and it’s far better than nothing else I came up with. So go look for the red buttons in your life. Maybe snap ‘em back into place before they pop off in your face. You just might end up better than where you started.
The Eleventh
Procrastination doesn’t need a plan. It’s the silent chaos of inaction. It’s the evil twin of meditation. It’s the slow leak of inattention.
This is another reminder (to myself, but you can use it if you’d like) that one step forward is infinitely more than zero.
As I transition away from the mindset of stand-up and try to develop into a writer I’d like to read, I find that my biggest struggle is getting my stuff “out there.” And it makes me miss the external force built into stand-up. Because what most people see as the scariest part of being a stand-up— public speaking— now stands out as the perfect cure for my worst tendency: the fear of sharing my work.
I can write all day, never publish a word, and still be a writer. I could fail to share my work with a single soul and still claim the title for myself. As long as I put pen to paper or fingers to keys, I’ve done it. I checked the box. It’s a gray zone I can just sort of live in. No risk, all reward. A thin, meager, sort of reward that doesn’t stretch too far, but it’s there.
That’s not true for stand-up. You aren’t a stand-up if you don’t perform for an audience. It’s pretty black and white. There are people who talk about doing it, but never get up there. They might have an outline of what they would talk about on stage and maybe even have written some jokes. But that’s about as far as they get. They’re not stand-ups. They may have put hours and hours of work into it, but for whatever reason, they can’t take that last step. But that divide is kinda great for someone like me. There’s no escaping the fact that if you want to call yourself a stand-up you need to perform, and once you perform there’s no escaping how the audience feels about you. So when the goal of being a stand-up is met, learning how to be good at it is already there ready to shake your hand. For better or worse you get immediate feedback (and the better stand-ups learn how to use the worse feedback).
But with writing? You can spend a lifetime in the purgatory of your mind.
Lol I guess I’m saying I wish you couldn’t call yourself a writer until you began to show your work. Maybe before that, you’re just a drafter? And I miss the undeniability of stand-up. There’s so much I’d be happy to never return to, but I do long for a little more of the clarity it offered— though the more I think about it the more aware I am of the delusions and blinders specific to pursuing success in that craft.
Anyway, I’m posting this. I’m sharing my work, And maybe someone will read this and comment and I’ll learn how to be better. Probably not. But the chances are infinitely better than if I don’t post anything at all.
The Tenth
I miss the days when parenting was simpler. I’m not waxing nostalgic for the good ole days or writing out a dog whistle for the maga-minded. I’m talking about when my children were babies and toddlers and I didn’t find myself getting swept up into questions of what is right or good. For all the sleepless nights and endless work that babies entail, at least I wasn’t constantly asking myself existential questions on a daily basis. There’s no ethical question raised when you change a diaper. There is no moral quandary involved in feeding time. Sure there are decisions to be made vis a vis disposable vs cloth diapers or how soon should you switch to formula, etc. But these are largely “one and done” situations and don’t need to be reconsidered every time the baby needs to be changed or fed. The work was physically demanding but the greatest toll it took on your mind was the sleep deprivation.
But now? Almost a decade later? Every day provides a new opportunity for me to wonder what the hell I’m doing and why the hell I’m doing it.
Like for instance when my kid is sick and wants to stay home from school, and it’s not obvious that they’re sick. Missing school is bad. But forcing yourself to go in when you’re sick is also bad. I should push for a school a little bit, just in case they’re exaggerating. Right? But not too much. If they’re sick I don’t want them to feel guilty. But if they’re faking I don’t like that either. I don’t want to be the fool. But I also don’t want to show a lack of trust in my children. Also, what does it mean to say they’re “faking”? If she says she’s sick but she doesn’t have a cold or fever or anything along those lines, that’s faking. But maybe she’s saying she doesn’t feel well enough to go to school because she’s sad or stressed out and just needs a day to recover. Is that valid? Is that “enough” of a reason? Do I question her on that? If I try and she wants to talk, am I being a good listener? Or am I listening like a lawyer, waiting to hear the piece of information that will seal the deal and prove one way or the other? What am I doing at that moment? What role am I fulfilling? A friend or a truancy officer? A parent is something of both and yet neither one of those things at all. And what if she doesn’t want to talk? Do I get mad? Sad that she doesn’t want to share? Sure, maybe. I can’t help how I feel. But I shouldn’t show it. Should I? Probably not too much. I want her to talk to me because she feels comfortable with doing so, not out of any sort of guilt or obligation. But I can’t hide it all either. I am a human person, not an empty automaton.
Really makes me yearn for the days when the big question was if I heated the milk enough. And that question was answered by whether the baby was happy drinking it.
***this is a chunk from a longer thing that became too unwieldy for it to be the quick bits of writing this blog is meant to be. Might someday put it all together but today is not that day***
The Ninth
Every once in a while I'm rudely reminded that life isn't like the movies. I’m disabused of the thought that I’m gonna live one way and things are gonna move in a certain direction, unfolding neatly, until a satisfying conclusion is reached. Because that thought isn’t based on reality. It’s not from any experience I’ve had. It’s all based on stuff I’ve seen on a screen. Scripted stuff, performed by actors, lit up and made up just so, and then edited toward perfection to tell a story.
You could argue my entire adult life has been a series of small readjustments as I accept that what I’ve known to be true reveals itself to be so much smoke and so very many mirrors. But every once in a while the smoke gets in my eyes and I run headlong into the mirror and I feel the need to complain about it.
It was called a "Night of Ideas" at the library. A spectacular name for a wonderful night at one of my favorite places. A special late-afternoon to late-night party with lots of fun things to do for the whole family. A chance to stimulate our brains and strengthen our bonds as we found new ways to interact with the world, express our thoughts and feelings, and interrelate with each other. We'd explore the many floors of that beautiful building as we explored our imagination. We'd run into old friends and make new ones. We'd bring paper and pens and make notes to ourselves so we wouldn't lose a drop of magic to forgetfulness.
Or so I imagined.
What it should have been called was “An Over-Crowded Day in a Government Building.” Lol maybe that’s too mean. It implies that somehow the people who work there didn’t put together a great event. And they did! I’m sure a lot of people had a good time. Not anyone who lives here at this house, but still. It was fine. It was what all of these things are like: I read the ad copy. I looked at the carefully chosen pictures. I…. bought into the story. And then I doubled down on that mistake by assuming it was for us. Because I wanted it to be what the copy said it would be and I want my family to be the kind of family it’s for. I want to be like a family in a story. But we’re just not. We exist in reality, outside of the bright lights of a set and
And also I didn’t just buy into what their copy said. I extrapolated. I put a shine on it. I thought about the best possible version of what they offered and polished it up with my own vision. The prime example of this being the number of people there. In my mind, there would be the perfect amount of people in attendance. Not a private showing, because that would be weird and awkward and put too much attention on us. No, not a private showing, but not too many people either. Just the perfect amount of people to fill in the spaces around us, allowing us to blend into the crowd but not be blocked or hindered by it in any way. In a movie, they would be the extras, and they would conveniently never be where we wanted to go.
I also created a movie version of my family. This is where it gets complicated. (And I’m reserving the right now to get into it more deeply at some other time.) The movie version of my family is very similar to their real-life counterparts. They look the same. They have the same personalities. But they’re more receptive to going out and doing things. They’re not perfect, but all of their problems can be reliably solved by a little time and some heartfelt conversations. And… they really fucking love books.
Alas, alack, etc, and so on, my children are not the avid readers I hoped they’d be. That’s just a fact. I don’t know if any parent can (in a healthy way) make their children into anything they’re not, but I tried. Well, I tried to cultivate whatever natural attraction they had to books. And maybe I was successful. Maybe they’re more into books than they would have been in the care of any other parent. It’s impossible to know. The world of counterfactual imaginings is infinite and easy to get lost in.
My wife is not what I’d call a “reader” though she probably reads more than the average person. My kids are literate. They read, but mostly only when they have to. Books are not the source of joy, comfort, wonder, or solace that they were and have been for me.
******************time jump in writing******************
I began this a few days ago and I’m rereading this and I' just don’t know where I’m going with this. If you read this far I congratulate you and can only offer my heartfelt thanks and apologies. All I’m saying here is we brought our kids to a thing we were pretty sure they wouldn’t like and I was disappointed to find out I was right. I love reading and books. My kids don’t, not nearly as much as me anyway, and that makes me kinda sad and I don’t know how to deal with it. I honestly don’t get what movies and TV shows have to do with it. Do movies ever feature families who just can’t get enough of books? Do TV shows ever have more than the one “nerd” character with a nose in their book? What am I even talking about?
I’m posting this anyway, despite it going off the rails because I think it’s kind of interesting how I was deep in my feelings about not being able to share my love of reading with the kids and it manifested as some weird meandering post about how film messed with my mind. Plus it fits my overall intent with this blog: to post on a (somewhat) weekly(ish) basis, sharing what’s going on in my life, and focusing on timeliness over polish.
I guess it all goes to show that you should be careful when leaving a night of ideas— you don’t want to come out holding on to the wrong one.
The Eighth
The Internet is getting too small for me.
The default settings are too hard to see.
I didn’t necessarily want to begin this with a cute little couplet, but I’m not against its presence, either. A cute little couplet to mark the beginning of my body’s downfall. A small rhyme to ring in my (hopefully slow) decline. Not that it’s just beginning only now. It’s been in the works for a bit now. Maybe a bit longer than a bit. Since my 20s my teeth have been gradually transitioning from the traditional organic “tooth” material to a more modern blend of metal, resin, and porcelain, thanks to bad genes and even worse habits. In my 30s I discovered that “bunion” is not an adorable portmanteau of “bunny” and “onion” but what the growing disfigurement on the side of my foot is called. Or, more accurately, on the sides of my feet. And of course, there’s the relentless tug of gravity tirelessly pulling my body ever closer to the grave.
Here in my 40s, it’s my vision. At first, it was just needing reading glasses. More of a distinguishing accouterment than anything else. Just a little accessory to add to my charm. Something, I liked to imagine, that made me look a little sophisticated when I read. I only need them when I begin to get tired or if the light is a little too dim. I assumed. I don’t think that’s what the doctor actually said but I feel like that’s what she meant. I can read between the lines when the printing is big enough. But now? Well now, it’s not just books I need my glasses for. Now the writing on my phone screen looks blurry pretty much whenever I pick it up.
What had before been a falling apart of my body— terrifying enough in its own right— has become something deeper: a severing of my consciousness from the world. An assault on my very senses! It’s morphed from my inability to affect the world to my inability to detect the world (I’m such a sucker for a rhyme.) And that shift made me feel like I was beginning to truly understand what it will be like to slowly sink into death.
Or it would have, anyway, if I hadn’t suddenly remembered that it’s been a while since I could have a decent conversation in a club. Or bar. Or, really, any party or public place where music is playing. Why? Because of my— what?— hearing. It’s been a long time since I could hear well in noisy spaces. Probably a decade or more, making my vision impairment the second severing of my consciousness from the world.
Or it would be, anyway, if I hadn’t suddenly thought about the fact that forgetting about a decade-old ear problem simply because I’d gotten kinda used to it is a clear sign of cognitive decline (but not for rhymes). Which pushes the vision thing to the third severing of my yadda yadda yadda.
Anyway, I was thinking all of this because the goddamned dog ruined my reading glasses. Again. I forgot to put them away and I didn’t hear her chewing them, although I should have seen it coming.
Things go wrong with my body quite often
As I transition into a coffin.
The Seventh
I never like reading a post or watching a video that begins with “hey, sorry I haven’t posted in a while,” or any variation on that theme. It always makes my eyes roll.
Half the time it’s from a creator I’ve never seen before. It’ll be the first time I’ve encountered anything of their work and I have no frame of reference. It’s like a stranger showing up at your house party saying “sorry I’m late.” My reaction is the same: This could very well be the one and only time I ever see you, let’s not worry about your punctuality just yet.
And the other half the time, if I am familiar with the writer or speaker (or whatever)? … I usually don’t care then either. Unless I’m waiting for a juicy part 2, I’m good. Take your time, tardy king. There’s other stuff I could have read or watched while you were away. We’re here now, don’t waste my time or your breath, let’s just get on with it.
But now, after having stepped away from updating this blog and through to the other side of this matter, I kinda get it. Yes, that’s right, here I was getting exasperated with all of these kettles until I suddenly realized that the hearth fire has hardly left me unscathed either. But this might just be the pot talking. Because, while the apology is for the reader and viewer, it’s also for the creator. Because an apology isn’t just an atonement but a break from the past. Because sometimes the next step is erasing the last step. A clearing of the air, a blanking of the slate. It’s an intention to do better, in whatever form that takes.
So I guess all I’m saying here is “hey guys, I’m back. Sorry it’s been a while.”
The Sixth
Sometime near the end of October I thought to myself, “hey I’m really falling behind on all of my writing goals and the holidays are coming up, why don’t I undertake a labor-intensive, time-consuming writing project?”
So, with little thought and even less preparation, I embarked on an attempt to write 1,667 words a day, 30 days in a row, for the entire month of November, at the end of which I would have produced a messy first draft of a novel(la).
In other words, I participated in the National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo) this year. I liked it. I failed miserably, but… did I? Definitely sort of. But I also succeeded in a way. “How did it go?” you might ask. It’s a fair question. And it’s a question answered differently depending upon which version of me you ask.
Strictly speaking, I lost. I came up woefully short of the 50,000 word goal with just over 30,000 words.
But then there’s weasel-me, who would like to point out that I also wrote at least 750 words every morning in my Morning Pages, which, in an “every word counts” project, could maybe sorta be added, in a quasi-technical way, to my total. Those 22,500 words would put me over the finishing line, and on record as having one of the most repetitive yet meandering collection of words daring to call itself a novel(la).
Then Sour Grapes Natasha will tell you that 50,000 words hastily written in 30 days in an “every word counts” frame of mind is gonna be bad unless you’re Stephen King, and probably even if you’re Stephen King. To act like hitting a fairly arbitrary number of words in an equally arbitrary number of days is synonymous with writing a novel(la) is silly at best and insultingly hubristic at its ugliest. So maybe I didn’t want to win this stupid thing anyway.
And before that line of thinking goes on for too too long, Pollyanna Natasha steps in and mentions that, hey, I wrote a lot more this month on one project than I probably ever have before, and if that’s not something, I don’t know what is.
I also learned a lot along the way: I seem to work best in short intervals and when my goals are focused on the time invested rather than on the amount of words written. The “critical” aspect of me that needs to be put aside while I write doesn’t just latch on to the quality of my work but also the way I work. I can just as easily get hung up on something like how long it takes me to do things as much as how clunkily a sentence can stumble around before it get to the end of itself.
But I’m okay with losing. I’m also fine with letting that weasel part of me have just enough of my ear to tell me “but you did hit the goal and win.” And it’s true that even if I had kept up the pace and won, whatever I had produced would have been a wreck. It would have needed that much more of an overhaul to get it working. But I had fun. I enjoyed the plunge. I don’t regret my choice to try it. To get into it and then stop and take a day to make an outline. Get stuck, Take the time to look up things like “verb tenses”and “establishing pov.” Get unstuck. Feel the way a scene can unfold as you write it. Do research on “how moons work.” Lose enthusiasm. Keep writing. Play with timing in a written medium. Find enthusiasm. Keep writing. Get discouraged. Write some more.
So I’m glad I did it, even if I lost, but I shouldn’t have, and it was stupid anyway.
The Fifth
I had an idea, at the beginning of summer, to put up a little shelf at the end of the hallway where it opens up into the “big room” of our home. A little shelf with a few plants on it. Small plants. Maybe even just some cuttings hanging out in water.
Sometimes I dream of creating a better, more vibrant, safer world. Sometimes I dream of creating a new place to put a glass of water with a stem stuck in it. The human mind is truly a multi-layered place. The big dreams are exciting. The small ones are much easier to put into practice. Both are energizing in their own ways.
So, it occurred to me to do it and I immediately liked the idea. When I realized I’d already found the perfect glasses (someone left a box of eight perfectly fine ones and one absolutely shattered one in the “free area” of our building,) I loved the idea. I did a little measuring and a little searching and found the shelves online. Great. The only problem was that the shelves weren’t quite expensive enough to trigger the free shipping. And I’ll be damned if I’m gonna pay for shipping. So now there was a sub-task to complete. A little side quest, if side quests were a necessary component of winning the game. I had to find something else to buy. Something I needed, or at least “needed,” that was fairly cheap. It took a little bit of thinking on my part (which can take a lot of bit of time), but eventually, I came up with… Frames? Sure! We had a handful of printed-out photos we were planning on putting up someday. Why not in the next few weeks, potentially? So now all I needed to do was figure out the number, size, color, and material of the frames we wanted on our walls. Fine. Another sub-task. Fathom that. I just needed to collect all of the aforementioned pics, measure them, etc., and then I’d be ready to get my virtual shopping cart full enough to get that free shipping I insist upon having.
Except I really wanted to mount the new TV on the wall first. It felt like I really should make sure the preparatory items were in place before I bought more stuff. What if I’d accidentally discovered the world’s only unmountable TV? What if it turns out that the wood of the walls had rotted away or shady contractors had secretly used styrofoam to build our home? Unlikely, of course, but if any of those things ended up being true I certainly didn’t want a bunch of new frames to deal with on top of a structurally unsafe home.
So I had to buy a mount.
At this point, the more active readers among you may be saying, “hey why don’t you just get the mount instead of the frames?” That’d be a great idea if the shelf and frame place was also a mount place. But it was not. I had to go to the place that rhymes with Shamazon to get the mount, but I like to shop elsewhere when I can, even if it’s less convenient (which in this case it most certainly was).
While I waited for the mount to arrive I got the space ready. A little rearranging, cleaning, vacuuming, and then further rearranging, and soon I’d be ready to mount the TV so I could buy the frames that would get the shelf shipped (for free) for the glasses, with the stem and the water, in the hall, way up high.
Why did I want the stems up so high?
Perhaps I’ll die?
I don’t think I’m unique in needing to get multiple things moving at once in order to get any one of them done. Or maybe I am unique in that. It doesn’t matter because the hurdle here is that I’m embarrassed about what I need to do. I feel dumb about the way I get things done , and I think it’s because it’s my way of getting things done. It has my stink on it. And I instinctively devalue anything identifiably mine, which is (at least in part) why I’m so reluctant to share my art. And that reluctance is, in turn, why I find stand-up to be, not easy to do, really, but a much easier process in those terms. When I tell jokes on stage, I get warm reassurance or cold resistance in the form of immediate and continuous feedback as I create. And that’s something you don’t get from writing— or many other art forms I can think of.
Except maybe bullfighting?
What a gorgeous picture.
But here, 700-odd words into this post, I have no idea who’s still with me. It could be just me. Maybe no one else will ever even read this. Here, writing at the kitchen, it’s impossible to be sure. At least when I do stand-up I know if I have the audience or I’m just alone talking to myself under a picture of a bull.
Welp, when the conversation turns to my love/hate relationship with stand-up, I know it’s time to wrap it up, which I’ll do in the following sentence:
Eventually, the mount came in the mail. I put up the TV, decided the rest of my plan was a go, bought the frames and the shelf, and finished the project.
Ta-da?
.
The Fourth
Almost every time I drop off my kid at school, we’re a little further away from it than we were the day before. The first day I tried to walk with her all the way up to the door of her homeroom but was stopped at the bottom of the stairs, inside the school, by a staff member. Every subsequent time, it’s been her who drew the line. The next day it was outside the door of the building. Then it was inside the schoolyard, 3/4s of the way to the door, then halfway, a quarter… eventually I wasn’t even making it into the school at all, just watching her go in from the side street as she made her way to the entrance. Now, less than a month into the year, I’m all the way back to the main street, hugging her goodbye on the corner, looking on as she disappears into the mass of blue jeans and hoodies.
But this is the way of life. This is what’s been happening since they were born, slowly, unevenly, moving away from me— from us— and toward their independence. It’s the natural progression of growth from one generation to the next and it’s to be, if not enjoyed, at least expected and accepted. And I get to see it happen like a time-lapsed video, the years of a childhood symbolically played out in a matter of weeks.
Or maybe it’ll be months. We take the train down there and the big leap will be when she lets me know she’s ready to take that ride without me. And it’s possible she’ll like the morning company for a while before we take that step. But we’re getting close to me getting off the train simply to hug her goodbye and then turning around to wait for the next train to go back home.
I’ll have to be prepared to let go of our morning travels. I’ll miss that time we have together. We’re often silent. We’re not morning people. I can fake it, force small talk when I need to. But I don’t push her to be that way. I’d rather her be comfortably herself, especially as we make our way to a place that so aggressively demands conformity from her.
Plus, I know that picking her up from school is when she opens up and has a lot to say— relief and joy from the day being over fueling her enthusiasm.
Of course, I also know that those trips are reflections of the morning. They’re just as short-lived. Once she doesn’t need or want my company on the way there, she’s not likely to want it on the way back. But we’ll see. I won’t know until it happens, and until it happens, I’m going to enjoy it as much as I can.
I’m on Threads, Instagram, the Website Formerly Known as Twitter, Facebook, and, of course, Bluesky.
The Third
We had an exhausting weekend— that spilled over into Monday and Tuesday— of recovering from Covid. I feel bad for whoever says that having Covid is just like having a cold because they must have some really messed up colds. For me, it’s like someone replaced my core with some cold, mushy celery or like I have some sort of heat-sucking mold lining my insides from the back of my throat all the way down through.
The uncertainty I alluded to in the previous post, as to whether or not we all had Covid, lasted longer than I’d anticipated. The tests we ordered were delayed in their delivery. I was reminded of a time when the tests were super easy to get. Especially if you had kids in school. Their backpacks came home stuffed with the damn things. We were taking tests “just in case” because it was better than letting them expire unused. We even tried to give one to the dog to see what would happen. She tested positive for Covid K9-teen. (oh my god I’m so sorry I made you read that.)
These days, unless we happen to have some on hand (and they haven’t expired), we’re stuck paying and waiting a few days to find out how long we’re supposed to put our lives on hold before we can rejoin society, guilt-free.
But now we’ve made it. We’ve gotten the “all clear.” We’re a week behind the rest of the city in returning to school but we’re finally there.
Here!
And I can feel hopelessly regular again. I live for these times of beautiful mundanity, when I slip into the rhythms of regularity. When things are like they are on TV. When my vision for the future is reflected in the event of today. Kids at school. My wife is at work. I’m writing. The dog is napping next to me. I can hear the kittens playing. It’s a classic moment. It’s the opening scene of a sitcom. It’s the base level of life before the action begins. It’s what the characters return to when the story is over. It doesn’t last long. It can’t last long. Just a moment you hope gets to go into syndication.
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I’m on Threads, Instagram, the Website Formerly Known as Twitter, Facebook, and, of course, Bluesky.
The Second
Friday night and everyone in the family is recovering from Covid and/or having Covid-like symptoms. Somehow only some of us have tested positive. Seems unlikely that only some of us have Covid since our home isn't particularly spacious and we all kind of live on top of each other— when all of us are home most of us are in the same room— but unlike a wide swath of people on soc-med, I’m not an epidemiologist. I don’t mind the uncertainty but it’d be nice to know for certain who among us has the extra bit of immunity for the next few months.
So, this first week back to school was kind of a bust. Only one of my kids went and that was for just the day. But we got to the middle school! We did it. It feels like a milestone, even if it was more of a soft opening than the real thing. Two days out sick and now a weekend. Monday will feel like a bit of a reset but that’s okay. I say things like “that’s okay” when there’s really no solution but to accept it, roll with it, and keep moving forward:
I don’t know if I have Covid for sure, but that’s okay.
My kid spilled their entire dinner on the floor, but that’s okay.
The whole world seems to be going to be woefully unprepared for the ravages Climate Change is only just beginning to wreak upon it, but that’s okay.
It really covers a wide variety of topçics. And so much classier than its immature little brother, “shit happens.” “It’s okay” is the middle-aged answer to the countless insults life hands you on a regular basis. I had to bring in our dog to the vet because she was having trouble peeing (I’ll spare myself the effort of going into detail and spare you the discomfort in reading it). During our visit I reluctantly agreed to let the vet do really expensive tests on our dog. Tests that, in hindsight, she probably didn’t need. Or at the very least we could have waited until the first tests didn’t turn up anything. But that’s okay. What’s $500 and the uneasy feeling you might have been treated unfairly (ie scammed) between you and your dog’s doctor?
I don’t have any big plans for the weekend, what with the pestilence and whatnot. But…. I’m already frustrated by both of our kids' schools and will use the next few days to steel myself for another year of poor communication. I’m learning that the problem isn’t particular to the elementary school, which makes me feel better about the school, but much less confident about the district, which I already found to be lacking in certain ways over the course of the pandemic. But that’s another story.
And honestly, I don’t feel like getting into full-on complain mode, so I’ll just sketch out the details as briefly as I can and you can decide for yourself if it’s annoying.
The middle school had an orientation at 6 pm on Monday. They sent out a reminder text. Great! It was at 5:42 pm.
The elementary school sent out an email reminding us that the school is enforcing the school uniform policy this year. The last few years have been very lax, and the vibe had been that that ship had sailed, with all of the uniforms on it, the white shirts and navy blue bottoms sewn together to make masts. So I was surprised to learn that not only are the uniforms back but that the students won’t be allowed to attend class without them. You can guess how I felt receiving that email the night before school began, giving me 12 hours to somehow redo back-to-school shopping. But it’s okay.
It’s all okay.
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‘If Hilary makes it up to the Bay Area that’ll technically make it a "hellacane."‘
“Did you hear about the bad writer who lived an abnormally long life? She had a run-on sentience.”
I’m on Threads, Instagram, the Website Formerly Known as Twitter, Facebook, and, of course, Bluesky.
The First
School starts this week and I’m gonna act like that’s the reason why I’m beginning this new blog. But really I just happened to decide to do this a few days ago and am finally getting around to it just now. It’s just a coincidence that “now” is also the day before we once again bend before the unyielding structure of public education. This will be looser and more frequent than any of the other blogs I’ve maintained here, on my website. Hence its name: Semi-Bi-Weekly-ish Check-In.
The general outline of an entry, as of now, is to share a bit about what I’ve been up to, maybe talk about how I feel, throw down a few words about what’s coming up, and then I guess I’ll wrap it up with one or two of the better (or at least newer) posts I’ve made on one of the soc-med sites I haunt.
Last weekend we took the girls and some of their friends to Santa Cruz for the day. A very long day, which I’m still processing. I’m still processing the end of 5th grade for my oldest, which was 10 weeks ago, so there’s something of a waitlist. The day was bookended by two odd encounters with a little “OPP.” OPP, how do I explain it? Simply! It’s an acronym for “Other People’s Progeny.” Waiting in line to go on our first ride of the day, I watched a 7 or 8yo girl, waiting to get off a ride, burrow in her nose for a hidden treasure. The rim of her nostril was red and angry looking. This wasn’t the first intrusion of the day. I watched, fascinated, as she dug for the mother lode. then, having succeeded, she quickly dipped her finger in her mouth for a snappy finale and I immediately decided that I was done people-watching for the day.
But you can’t choose what you hear.
Much later, when the sun had almost set and the smaller, gastronomically-challenged humans had been taken home, I found myself the neighbor of a young man on another ride. I didn’t get a good look at him as I was keen to avoid what I’d seen earlier, but I guess he was about 13. As the ride gets going I hear him exclaim, almost panickedly, “Oh Daddy, oh Daddy!”
And I think to myself, “he seems kind of old to be afraid and calling for dad but maybe he’s developmentally chal—”
“Oh Daddy, HARDER, Daddy, HARDER!”
“wut.”
“Oh Daddy, OH DADDY, HAR—”
And then I finally got it. He was being edgy. (I hope.) “Funny.” (Right?) He (definitely) wanted attention and also he was probably (ugh) horned up in that early teen way that early teens can get and here he was, expressing it. A foot away from me. Honestly, this incident might have been the reason I finally started writing on here again. Because what else do you do with an experience
Anyway, I’m thankful no one I was with noticed either of those kids do those things, nor the two high schoolers who cut through swaths of people to get on the “Big Dipper” roller coaster faster.
Where none of them were ever seen again.
But all those kids behaving questionably did get me anxious about the girls starting a new school. I keep imagining the worst, like all the kids there will be like the ones I described above, etc. I know it won’t be like that. But still. I’m a worrier. I’m a worrier but also I’m a ridiculous optimist. So I have hope that this is the year that a certain subject or teacher happens to spark something inside of her and she finds some real joy in learning at school. She has her own interests, and I think she liked, on an interpersonal level, most of her elementary school teachers. But I feel like she’s missing something. Or missing out on something. I’ve never seen her running home to work on a school project the way I’ve seen her excited to see her own plans to fruition. But maybe I’m romanticizing things. Misremembering my own time in school and conflating it with 80s movies and sitcoms. I don’t know. I just want her to be happy and thrive. She might already be those things, in her own way, for all I know. And either way, maybe I should just be content she’s not treating her face like a self-service snack bar or pretending to act out a sexual encounter on a ride full of confused strangers on a beach.
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“Unless it's meat from a cow that was actually born in Hamburg, Germany, it's just sparkling beef.” As shared on Bluesky
“It's 10 pm somewhere, do you know where your alcohol is?” As shared on Bluesky
I’m on Threads, Instagram, the Website Formerly Known as Twitter, Facebook, and, of course, Bluesky.