Tag: mythical

The worst dream of my life

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t think I’m being hyperbolic about it either, because I don’t think I’ve ever had a dream in my life that upon waking up, it reduces me to breaking down into sobbing, I need nearly 30 minutes to bring myself back to earth, and it proceeds to ruin the entire day because I can’t stop thinking about it, and thinking about it fills up the wells again and it’s moar crying all over again.  Telling my wife about it floods the gates one more time, and I can’t even bring myself to write about it until an entire day has passed because it apparently did that much of a number on me.

So yeah, I think it’s pretty safe to say that this was the worst dream I’ve ever had in my entire life.

In a nutshell, I was dying, which I can’t really say has ever really bothered me in the past, but then I had kids, and the number one drawback to no longer living would be the inability to watch and experience their growth and now the thought of death isn’t something to be so ambivalent about anymore.

But in this dream, not only was I dying, I was basically otherwise alive and fine, but facing an impending, for lack of a better term, euthanization.  I had something that was going to definitively kill me, and for whatever reason, it would be best to be put to sleep lest I suffer a gruesome painful demise.  I had a scheduled death date and time in place, and I was basically spending my time in this dream trying to tie up loose ends, and try and make the transition into the world without me in it, as seamless as possible.

Two specific moments stood out the most that I can recall the most, which was a conversation with mythical wife, explaining that after I’m gone, I am fine if she wanted to ever remarry in the future, and obviously to just keep the girls in mind when looking for someone else.  She was more torn up about the conversation we were having than I was, which is probably not necessarily true to reality, seeing as how I probably shed tears way more than she does on the regular.

However that didn’t last long, because it was the other moment that I remember which ultimately ended up being the breaking point in my dream.  I was on my last day, and while walking around the house with my wife further discussing things to keep in mind and things that were settled, I realized that I only had about an hour left before my death appointment, and I proceeded to have a panic attack about why I wasn’t spending this time with my children. 

I frantically ran down the stairs and it was at this point in which I finally woke up.  It was 5:21 am, and I lay there for a few seconds coming to the realiazation that it was all just a dream.  I wasn’t dying, and I wasn’t going to be taken away from my wife and children.  It didn’t matter though, in the seconds that followed, I began openly weeping and the tears came pouring out, fat, hot and wet down my face. 

I couldn’t get back to sleep after a dream like that, so I went downstairs with the dog to take her out early, since she already perked up knowing that I had awoken.  Afterward, I meandered aimlessly downstairs, and gulped down some water since I had woken up with the driest mouth ever afterward.  Must been the blood pressure medication, which did state such could be a side effect; nothing was mentioned about lucid, horrible dreams though.

I sat in the media room in the dark, just replaying the dream in my head, and crying some more.  I clicked on the baby monitor to feel the most immense relief at seeing my two girls peacefully sleeping away in their rooms, knowing that I’d get to see them in just a few hours when they woke up.

Eventually I went back to bed, since rational thinking finally came back to me and I figured it would be best to at least lay down and try to sleep, even if it wouldn’t come, just so I could be warm and comfortable if anything at all.  I don’t remember falling back asleep, but I do remember being awoken by the alarm, that really wasn’t much long afterward.

My day was effectively ruined after that, and I had to make sure I kept my mind on the tasks at hand, because every time my mind wandered back to the dream, I would begin to feel tears welling up again, and crying in the office wasn’t something that I really wanted to have happen.

Point is, it’s not a difficult reach to say that this really was the worst dream that I’ve ever had in my life.  It’s like I can’t call it a nightmare, because there wasn’t anything unrealistically frightening, aside from the ability to schedule a voluntary euthanization, but the scenario of being a situation where I couldn’t see my kids ever again is something that could very well happen, and that alone puts the fear of god into me like nothing else.

Dad Brog (#119): Sometimes I’d rather not know

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For quite some time, I’ve usually been that type of guy that just never goes to the doctor, unless something is actively wrong.  Never did any annual checkups, physicals or anything other than eye exams or going to urgent care for what always seems like prednisone whenever I go.  I often used to say this stemmed from not wanting to miss out on work on account of the long stretch when I was freelancing and contracting, and when I wasn’t working then I wasn’t earning, but the truth is that even when I had landed full-time work with actual benefits, I still didn’t go then either, even if I were paying for it.

Then I got married, and that didn’t really change, except for the fact that I now had a wife that encouraged me to go, but I still made excuses and dragged my feet and resisted going, because I just didn’t really want to.  I felt fine, I exercised regularly, and I didn’t eat like a shithead too much, so I never felt like it was worth going since I felt fine, strong and healthy.

But then I had children, and I crossed into 40, so I finally relented and made the effort to at the very least, have an annual, just to make sure things were copacetic.  And last year, it was about what I had suspected, I was pretty much fine, with no real concerns.  I had little reason to think it was going to be any different this year, but if that were the case then I wouldn’t be writing this post now, would I?

The TL;DR is that it turns out that I’ve put on a not-insubstantial amount of weight, and my blood pressure is kind of high.  The thing is that despite the weight gain, my clothes all fit the same, save for some tightness in the chests of my shirts, but my pants all still fit, I still use the same rung on my belts, and I don’t really feel any different than I did physically a year ago, or longer.

But I don’t want to be the asshole who gets all “uuhhhhhh muscle weighs more than fat brah” and humble brag that I’ve been hitting the weights, and that my weight gain is solely based on the fact that I’ve been going to the gym with consistency over the last two years, versus the nearly two-year stretch in which I dropped a lot of muscle mass because of COVID affecting my ability to hit a gym.  Of course, I did hit my share of lazy stretches where my household eats a bunch of fast food or dines out/takes out more than we really should, but I do like to believe that some of my weight gain really is having put on some muscle mass back on over the last year.

The bigger thing though, is the blood pressure reading, that was high enough to where the tech and my doctor wanted to point it out as being high.  My knee-jerk reaction was to ask just how much correlation there is between BP and stress, to which the answer was a high one, and I feel like I already know why I’m having elevated blood pressure.

Continue reading “Dad Brog (#119): Sometimes I’d rather not know” →

It’s the little things

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When mythical wife told me that we were going to go on a field trip for Father’s Day, I thought that perhaps we were going to head to the ballpark and catch a game.  The Braves were at home, they were playing hot, and there’s usually some sort of Father’s Day promotion or giveaway associated with the day.  Plus, we haven’t been to the ballpark since like 2021, and a nice day game seemed like a viable option for Father’s Day.

But when I saw her punch in “Columbus, GA” into the GPS, I knew what we were doing.  She probably knew I knew, because she knows how fixated I am on these sorts of things.  Regardless, it very much was a me kind of thing to be doing, but obviously with the introduction of kids into our lives, things like me are fewer and further apart, so it really was a welcome idea to turn the clock back a little bit and do something completely random and time-consuming for what really amounts to so little in the grand spectrum of a day.

We went to the newly opened Tim Horton’s in Columbus, the very first in the state of Georgia. The first of allegedly 15+ to come in the state.  But as much as I love their iced cappuccinos made of crack like they were actually made of crack, I really didn’t have much thought about trekking all the way to Columbus for it, because they’re nearly like two hours away from Atlanta.  Especially since there’s already a proposed location in Atlanta, even if it’s in the shitty Midtown area.  But I was willing to wait out my first ever Georgia iced capp for when they were closer to where I was, and not Columbus, Georgia.

However, mythical wife knows me pretty well, and this is totally the type of thing I’d do in my previous life.  And so we made the journey down to Columbus to the first-ever Timmy’s in Georgia.

I was curious to whether or not the place was going to be slammed or not slammed, because Tim Horton’s is still a Canadian company, and there’s no guarantee that the yokels of Columbus really knew what was going to be put in their little town.  I feared the place would be a shitshow, but fortunately when we got there, it wasn’t that bad.  If we were driving through, it would’ve been a wait, but after the drive down, I wanted to go in and take my time a little bit.

Unfortunately, despite the name and brand being brought down here, the service and performance of the staff were still reliant on locals, and despite the fact that the restaurant was just three days open, and they were overstaffed to the gills, they were still completely overwhelmed, and they took forever to fulfill even the most basic of orders.

And unfortunately, they kind of messed up on my order, by completely forgetting to give me my hash browns, and more importantly, botching up my iced capp, the one thing I really wanted.  Granted, they botched it by making it an Oreo iced capp, which was delicious in its own way, but I still wanted a regular, vanilla iced capp, with no shit in it.  I didn’t notice it until we were gone, because it wasn’t mixed very well, and it wasn’t until I got a chunk of Oreo coming up the straw did it dawn on me, but at least I still got sort of what I was hoping to get.

Either way, for Father’s Day, yes, mythical wife and I drove two hours each way, so that I could get an iced cappuccino.  It was worth it, and I look forward to the next time I can have another Timmy’s iced capp, and hopefully it will be correct then.

But it’s the littlest things that make me happy, and short of my yearly belt photo with my daughters, there’s not really anything else I could have asked for.

Dad Brog (#113): I melted

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

After our little famiry trip to the beach, it appears everyone but me has seemed to have caught something. Mythical wife was laid out in bed for most of the day, and our au pair was feeling below average throughout the day as well.

Prior to dinner, mythical wife comes downstairs and explains to the kids that mama isn’t feeling well. #1 rushes off to get her (toy) doctor kit, and my heart melts at the sweet and considerate gesture and the urgency she demonstrated at wanting to help.  I stop what I’m doing and assist her in making sure to get the stethoscope, thermometer and of course the syringe because mama needs medicine too, of course.

I love my kids so much, and it’s little things like this that break me into pieces at the thought that perhaps I am doing an okay job of parenting, after all.

Yeah I doubt this was an isolated incident

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Veteran maneuver: employee of the year-caliber teacher found to have alcoholic beverage on school premises during school hours

Considering mythical wife’s choice of profession, stories like this always catch my attention.  Frankly, even if she weren’t a teacher, it would probably still pique my interest because of how ironically funny and horrifically frightening it is at the same time.

The thing is, this teacher was caught very recently having booze in the classroom, but I would wager a substantial amount of money that this is far, far, faaarrr from an isolated incident.  Make no mistake, this teacher has probably been microdosing her alcoholism for years, and this was the only time in which she got caught.

It’s the classic suburban white Karen move, of carrying around an innocuous-looking reusable plastic cup with a straw that looks like it’s just water, green drink or some Karen-y shit like Crystal Ice, but it’s really one of those things plus three fingers of Dewars or Ketel One, or it’s straight up a screwdriver or a Sex on the Beach, and the lid helps obscure it.

Except that this broad was a teacher, and doing all of the above, on the clock while being in charge of at least 17+ children belonging to other people, and not smuggling her margarita out of TGI Friday’s in her kid’s sippy cup, which adds to the horrific revelation of this story.

Like I said, the scariest part about this is that there’s no question that she’s been doing this for a while.  Like a functioning addict, her justification to herself is that the booze is probably what makes her as effective of a teacher worthy to be an employee of the year, to where she feels justified to keep doing it.  But I guess she got a little too cocky, too complacent, or a little too tolerant, and she was a little heavier on the sauce than usual to the point where she slipped up and put herself in a situation where she was discovered.

Obviously, she’s gone, and no longer in charge of any other human beings, but the damage in trust has been done.  It’s bad enough there are schools in America that have metal detectors and bag searches for the students, I’m sure security protocols would be thrilled with having to add bottle sniffing onto their responsibilities, not just from the students, but the teachers as well.

Dad Brog (#100): One Hundred Dad Brogs

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Because I’m a neurotic baseball nerd who has a hard-on for nice round numbers, I was always keenly aware of the fact that I was creeping closer to a nice round milestone number of 100 dad brogs, most of which are bitchy, ragey, or coming from a place of frustration.  In my head, I’ve written this post several different times now, but as is the norm for the life of a parent of kids as young as mine, there was never the opportunity to write this until a lot of the feelings in which I’m mentally writing, have already long passed.

This isn’t to say that I don’t love my children, quite the contrary, I love my children and my famiry and would do anything in the world for them, but it’s more of the unyielding truth of just how difficult raising kids is, especially in the circumstances I’ve been under, with two born during a pandemic and being on a path that has never really been explored except by those in similar boats currently charting them as we go.

There’s no sugar-coating it: parenting is hard.  Parenting two that are just 16 months apart is even harder.  I’ve completely lost the ability to feel any shred of empathy for anyone who proclaims their lives are difficult and they have no kids, because I frankly can’t imagine anyone’s life being as hard without kids as someone with them.  In fact, I’ve even turned my nose up at those with just one child, because at this point, I think one kid is a walk in the park, and that I could raise a single child with my eyes closed with the experience I’ve accumulated.

At no point during my journey as a dad, have things ever been easy.  When it was just #1, we had several months of having to deal with an apnea monitor, on top of not knowing what we were doing as new parents.  But once we began to feel that we were getting into a groove and that her sleep schedule was affording us time to begin feeling like human beings again, our world was rocked by the discovery that mythical wife was pregnant and #2 was on the way.

And then #2 arrived, and in spite of all the preparation and thinking we got this, based on all the experience we accumulated from our first go-around, #2 was all sorts of different than her sister, in terms of temperament, sleeping habits, and the presence of colic.  And with their being two kids now, the inevitability of double duty came into play, and let me tell you that there have been fewer points in my life that I have felt so helplessly inadequate as a father, parent, human being, than when I’m constantly falling on my face as a single person watching two kids.

Since then, my daughters have been living up to the tag team dynamic that I’ve given them championship blets for, because since the staffing up of my famiry, they’ve been systematically taking turns, tagging in and out, at which one of them is the difficult kid at any given time; naturally not ignoring any opportunities to get some double-team, tandem offense of both of them being difficult at the same time.  #2’s colic was a devastating time where nothing I did felt like it was right.  #1’s increasing curiosity and the development of defiance and the ability to say the word NO bubbled up as #2’s newborn vices began cooling down.  They’d take turn at being picky eaters, and seldom would eat well at the same time.  #1 started getting sick every single month since the start of 2022 due to our shitty nannies or sending her to daycare, and without missing a beat, when she gets sick, #2 gets sick 3-4 days later and it’s even worse on her because she’s younger and has a lesser developed immune system.  Everyone loves to say that it’s just them growing their immune systems, but I’d rather other parents just stop being selfish fucks and sending sick kids to school all the god damn time.

Continue reading “Dad Brog (#100): One Hundred Dad Brogs” →

Dad Brog (#088): The house of cards that is parenting

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A long time ago, when I was an active member of a baseball community, among the numerous swipes and passive-aggression shown between nerds on the internet, one of the phrases that often times would set people off, was when person X would make a hypothetical transaction, and then person Y would respond with something along the lines of “[Name of baseball team general manager] would laugh and hang up the phone.”

Person X would usually become incensed and defensive at the hyperbolic idea that an actual general manager would find their proposal to be so ludicrous and stupid, that it would result in their laughter before hanging up on them, and I would imagine the Michael Jackson eating popcorn gif in my head before letting them bicker, before I would inevitably have to call timeout on them because I was also a moderator.

The point is, I often times loved how much the phrase, laugh and hang up the phone on you, rose to such a prominent slight within the community, for something so fairly silly and innocuous.

Two weeks ago, we shipped #1 to South Carolina for the weekend, so that all of her grandparents could get some quality time with their eldest granddaughter, and mythical wife and I could have a weekend where we only had to take care of one tiny human instead of two.  It was one of the easiest weekends we’ve had in quite some time, as caring for one infant/toddler is tremendously easier than caring for two.

It was at this point where I realized that I would be extremely critical and judgmental towards parents of one out there that think their lives are at all difficult, because one child is a fucking cakewalk in comparison to dealing with the two that I’ve got.  I would, metaphorically, laugh and hang up the phone on any parents who thinks their singular child is difficult, because they are one or more additional kids away from knowing what true parenting hell is.

However, no good deed goes unpunished in the world of parenting, so as welcome and pleasant as it was to have a more relaxed weekend less one child, when #1 came back, she brought a nasty virus back with her.  Within a day of returning she had a fever, sneezing and runny nose, and I experienced the joy of having to administer my first COVID test to a toddler, who naturally was not a fan.

Fortunately the test was negative, but of course there’s all the doubt in the world that I did it right, or got enough brain juice on the swab to get an accurate test, but because we don’t have unlimited tests, we just had to have faith that it was negative.

Naturally, within the span of a day, mythical wife is sick, the nanny’s kid who is with us daily is sick, and I thought that #2 managed to escape the plague, but much like her sister, there was about a day of gestation before the shit started to hit the fan.  And unlike #1’s two-day bounce back, #2 has been feverish for five days now, been to urgent care once, only to confirm that it’s not coronavirus, it’s not the flu, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’s routinely spiking up to 103F, and on the way back to the doctor first thing in the morning.

And just like that, this is where the house of cards that is our general life comes crumbling down, once again.  My kids are sick just about every single month, it spreads like wildfire, including to the nanny, and her very needed attendance or punctuality takes a hit, which means I have to take a hit with my job, and then I fall behind and feel shitty about my job security. 

Usually, by the time I catch back up to things, the cycle repeats itself with one of my kids getting sick again, passing it onto the other as well as anyone adjacent to my household, and I’m exasperated and repeatedly getting called out by mythical wife for “always being upset.” 

Life is hard.  Parenting is hard.  I love my wife and kids, but everything is hard.  We’re trying our best.  I’m trying my best, and I am not perfect.  I lose my cool and I get upset more than I’d like to admit, but I’m trying.  But damn if it doesn’t feel like there’s occasionally no end to hard mode, and I have to tell myself to not think so hard about circumstances, because there are just a bunch of rabbit holes to fall into, where the outcomes of them aren’t always the best for one’s mental states.