The Earthly X

Bedtime, right? That shit sucks.

It feels like you're climbing the steepest of hills, every time.

You're at the end of your day, and you're tired. But for one half hour, you get to round your kids up, force them through whatever means necessary to pick up all their toys and clean up all the messes they made throughout the house during the day, the ones you didn't have the energy to protest and ask them to clean up before.

Protest. That's a good word. Because bedtime is a kid's time to protest. But isn't it so understandable? Why go to bed when there's so much life to live? You sleep a third of your life away!

Aaah, yes, that's what we all tell ourselves in the beginning. But then the responsibilities keep on piling up and before you know it, you're in the middle of a snoregasm. Bedtime, boring. Fuhh.

It's tough, making your kids go to bed. And the day leading up to it isn't fun, either. Just today I started to lose my shit when I was cleaning the bathroom and my kids were out in the living room making a mess, a mess they had already made previously in the day, which I previously told them to clean up.

They were having such fun making the mess, too. It's putting the couch cushions all over the floor. And they looked so not-having-fun when my Mad Dada voice surprised them out of their laughter.

Not only do I have to spend all my mental energy worrying about what which one of my kids is fucking up in the room I'm not in, but I have to make myself seem like a Cleaning Nazi to do it.

You know, Lucy's better about it. She's 4.5 and she's starting to get it. Little 2.5-year-old BB, though... that one is in the naughty phase. Ripping pages, getting into the toolbox, putting crayons in the fan, hiding remotes in the couch cushions, hiding shoes under the couches, hiding pillows and pairs of pants under the tv stand, spilling entire bowls of food not 2min after I gave them to her (underneath the middle of the table, not near the edge, where she was sitting), wiping her food all over her face, the table, the floor, her clothes, not the napkin and wet cloth I just gave her ....

When I give them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which they love and ask for every day, I not only have to make the sandwich, cut it, search for plates, and couple it with milk, I have stand there and hang around to make sure they're not making complete messes of themselves while they eat it. It's way more of a job than just simply serving some food to someone. I mean, yeah PB$J is messy, but ..

All I'm saying is I really am looking forward to the day when they can put themfucking selves to bed, clean up their own excrement, and prepare their own goddam food.

But today I had an epiphany related to this. I was thinking this exact same thing, standing at the sink, over the insane pile of dishes in front of me, staring out the window. I was thinking how nice it would be if my kids were just a little older.

Then it hit me--with their age, comes my age. I'll also be older. And I like where I'm at right now. I'm in my PRIME, man! I'm 31! It's awesome! My body's slowing down just enough that I'm over the kid-ness of growing up, and I can really start asking for responsibility and treating it well in the job market, not just with other kids, but other adults!

But I chose to have kids when I was 27. So now I'm spending the prime of my life cleaning up after kids who do nothing but make messes, don't understand why it's not alright to make messes, and cry at me when I yell at them to stop making messes.

Then they'll grow up, leave my house, and never look back. Exactly what I did to my parents.

Life is circular.

My answer to all this, to myself, was two-fold. First, sleep in the bed you made, man, and stop being a bitch about it. Second, appreciate who your kids are at this stage of their lives, because they're only going to age, and right now they just don't know any better, and you have to teach them!

I think adding to or easing me into my mild freakout today was that I've had two interviews lately and didn't get either job and it's sort of depressing. I'm stressing about money in our household, and feeling like people don't want me to even work for them, that I'll never get out of this financial rut that I'm in, and that I also have to keep up the job search and I'm kind of dreading any more interviews.

But you know what? I'm more than qualified for both jobs I interviewed for. The reasons I didn't get them are reasons that I can stand behind. Ask me if you want further explanation, I don't feel like getting into it right now. I have to go to sleep so I can be a good dad tomorrow.

You know, all I wanted to do today was take a shower. It just didn't happen. I blame .... X.

X can only be myself. It's not my girls' fault. It's not my wife's fault. It's not the job market's fault. I can only blame X. X is myself.

It's the harmonious way the world works. You raise your kids, you propagate your species. You do what you have to to get by. You fill your life with whatever small happinesses you like to experience to compensate for the raw struggle and energy that life simply requires. It is neither good nor bad, not positive or negative. It simply is.

We are all Xs, while the Earth simply turns, and waits. Waits for us all to die so it can go on living without all these germs on its body, building cities and shit.

X is myself. I fully embrace this role. It will do for now. That is, until space travel becomes streamlined, and terraformation a reality.

WHhhhoooshhh, I'm outta here!

Stills: Ian's Last WA Dayz

13.06.23 - canon, a set on Flickr.

My brother spent his last few Washington weeks in a daze of packing, preparing, tying up loose ends, catching up, and saying goodbye. Here are some photos I took during that time.

The blue porch is my place. Ian visited us, for what we thought might be the last time, when he had about two weeks left in WA. But then we were all like, "Gnaw man, this can't be it. Let's go up to Bellingham to help him pack up the last of his possessions and see him off proper, till his last minutes here."

So the second half of this set was taken in Bellingham. We carted ourselves up there to see him off, shacking up at Guy and Laurie's house. Always accommodating, that aunt and uncle of mine.

The pics at the bar were from their oldest kid (our cousin) Jared's 22nd birthday. It fell on the last night Ian could really party in this state.

Article, blog post, my excuses

I'm going to throw a lot at you, for real. Ready?

Bam!
There's an article for you from HuffPost Parents, about things parents should try to avoid saying to non-parents.

Brain Fizzle

Ah, the joys of being a dad. Benefits include reduced sleep, second-guessing yourself at every turn, and pure insanity.

Awake at 3:30 a.m., stressing about what could have happened at Target today. See, the Seattle Target location across from Northgate Mall is really high up in the air, and there's a sort of skybridge from the parking garage leading to the store doors.

Day After Last Day of College (video post)

The Responsible Parenting Issue

I'm a touch embarrassed, reading my last post. Sometimes I've just gotta ask myself if it's worth it to talk about hot-button topics like drugs on a parenting blog. It's so hard to do it and not sound like an idiot.

Weed and 10,000 Hits

Does your kid act like a child? Do you find yourself asking, "How did I get so irritable?" There's got to be a better way!

Jean Fitz's Weblog: The UN-Mathing and UN-Dressing of the Artist: Feminist Asymptopia

Jean Fitz's Weblog: The UN-Mathing and UN-Dressing of the Artist: Feminist Asymptopia

This is my friend Jean's blog entry about women and feminism and math and careers and clothes. She's got some good things to say.

Plus we used to date and you can go, "Wow Glenn, how did you ever get that hottie to like you?"

And I'll go, "Dude! Concentrate on her words, not her appearance!"

But then you get to those pictures at the bottom and you're like, wow I'm in a sort of amorous trance.

Tone

Reading the end of my last post, I'd revise my words and tone to say--it doesn't mean war. It means Megan and I have to become better parents.

So in doing so, we've been reminding Lucy more and more often that the tone she takes should be nicer than demanding, that she shouldn't whine, and that even when she says please she can't yell her question at mama.

Cause she doesn't yell her questions at me. It's really frustrating. She has different behavior for the both mama and I. Actually, that makes sense. It shouldn't be frustrating. I behave differently in front of different people. For her to do it with us is a matter of intelligence, of survival by means of getting along--of socializing.

My Lax Parenting Standards Regarding Television

Lucille and her sister get way more tv than both Megan and I did when we were kids, but also... I don't care. I find a hard time giving two craps whether they have 2hrs per day or more when it's all educational-ish shows like Dora, Diego, Curious George, and basically not what my brother and I watched as kids, which was just... boy-friendly explosion violence stuff in animation like X-Men and ... I wanna say Thunder Lizards?

A big argument for keeping tv time down for toddlers is that it teaches them to not talk--that the tv will just keep talking to them, regardless of whether they respond. Then they lose the instinct to respond when people talk to them. Or.. I dunno, maybe if it doesn't sink in when they're that young, it really has a big effect. Speech stunting.

BB wakes us all up every morning by sitting up in bed and talking to herself. She's talking to Dora right now when she asks her, "Is this the treasure chest?" And BB got it right all three times! "No! ... No. ...yeah!"

One last thing--since we do Netflix for their shows, no commercials. Less bad influence, right? Can we all agree that kids oughtn't watch television advertisements? Further reason to be lazy and let the tv keep them babysat while I jerk off in the bathroom.

Graham Cracker Milk Battles

Let me delve back into parenting on this parenting blog.

Every morning, I give the kids two graham crackers and a cup of milk apiece. They dip the crackers in the milk and eat them, something everyone can appreciate, but they're left with 'graham cracker milk.'

That's what we call it, anyway. Beatrix, the little sister, drinks hers without issue. Lucy, the big sister, absolutely refuses to drink it. But not with big tantrums--with quiet resistance, avoidance, neglect. She'll leave the cup on the table all fucking day, dealing with thirst apparently with aplomb and grace.

Most days I cave--I dump out the milk after I tell her how bad it is to waste food, contradicting the message right before her eyes as it's told to her. So, on days when I'm feeling strong--like I can take her on and not feel guilty about depriving her of what she wants--her and I get into what feels like a fight. These fights consist of quiet acceptance of the others' viewpoint, from both of ours, and an unwillingness to submit to the others' wishes. It involves a lot of waiting. Lucy thinks she can wait me out. I think.

I don't know what she's thinking--she's 4 years old. She can't yet articulate complex thoughts, though she tries and God bless her for it. She'll grow up into an intelligent woman one day, with standards about how men and women should treat her, that I'll pat myself on the back for teaching her.

In a perfect world, right? I'm sure every parent thinks this at the stage of parenting I'm at, even when their kids grow up to let people walk all over them, or to walk all over others. It happens--you know it does. People can be shitty. Usually you can blame it on the parents. So all I'm saying is that I have high hopes for my kids--but whether they're fulfilled isn't up to me. All I can do is be a teacher, a guide, a signpost in the blizzard, a light in the fog.

Today, the Graham Cracker Milk Battle rages. But we're at a point I'm not used to. She spilled the graham cracker milk when I wasn't in the room--then used a kitchen towel to clean it up. Even took her step stool over to the elevated towel rack to get it--I walk into the kitchen and she's ineffectively wiping up her spill.

Earlier in the kitchen, she was quietly shedding tears (which usually makes me cave--quiet suffering is so much more effective than tantrums) because I gave Beatrix a cup of juice after she finished her graham cracker milk. Today, I'm being firm. We don't waste food in my house.

I think that she wanted me to feel proud of her for cleaning up her spill by herself and just get her some milk because there was no more milk in her cup. After all, I did tell her to make it all gone. But she overlooked a few important details.

The first is intent. On her part. What was her intention in spilling the milk? Was the spill intended at all? --that's the first question. I think it was. I think she spilled it intentionally so that she could get out of drinking it and still get the juice--to have her cake and eat it to. But I was out of the room when it happened, so I don't know the circumstances of the spill.

The second detail she overlooked is that I don't want my nice kitchen towels cleaning up spills on the dirty floor--that's for sponges to handle. I have to explain this a little better to her--in the past we've congratulated the girls for grabbing a towel by themselves to clean up their own spills. So I've gotta set a rule or something. I dunno.

How can I say, "No towels to clean up spills"? Usually I get mad when the girls make spills, so telling them to come tell me when they spill is probably not going to work--who's gonna want to come tell their parent about a mess they made, when said parent has been shown to react poorly to messes? Why would someone willingly walk into the teeth of the lion?

So I wiped up Lucy's spill today, intentional or not, while telling her that I suspect she spilled it on purpose, that we don't spill our drinks, and that since she didn't drink her milk, she gets no juice.

+1 point for Lucy: she got out of drinking her graham cracker milk.
+1 point for Dada: he did not give Lucy juice because she did not drink her graham cracker milk.

I gave her a cup of warm water. I didn't even want her water to be cold and enjoyable.

What would you do?

***

Megan just came home for lunch and learned me a few things.
1. Lucy colored a picture on the kitchen table with crayons.
2. Lucy didn't drink her graham cracker milk all day yesterday either.

Additional points against her:
She yells at her mom all the time and teaches her sister the same behavior.

This means war.