Tag: dad

Dad Brog (#143): the surprisingly emotional aftermath

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s not that I’ve gone around and had lengthy conversations about vasectomies leading into my own, but I still feel like there were a few things nobody talks about whenever the subject emerges.  I knew that the type of procedure I was going to have wasn’t going to be bad and in fact was probably one of the more efficient and painless ones, but I’m also someone who hasn’t ever had a surgery of any kind before in my life, so the feeling of being in a medical place for myself and laying back on a table for something done to me was completely foreign.

Not that I didn’t see this one coming, but it’s still very awkward to have people touching and handling your privates, and I found myself staring intently at the tiles on the ceiling and inadvertently holding my breath and feeling my legs go tense from time to time.  Felt like at times my junk were treated like Chinese stress balls the way they were being rolled around, and I get they’re feeling for any things out of the ordinary but was still a completely harrowing feeling all the same.

One thing that nobody that I’ve seen has talked about is the smell; and not from the standpoint that of being downstairs, the first bullet point on my pre-op instructions was to shower and shave fairly close to go-time, but the smell of things that are burned by the laser that my particular clinic was using.  I wasn’t entirely sure if it were errant hair or flesh or blood vessels, I didn’t look down at the procedure the entire time, but despite the fact that the local was doing a good job of nullifying feeling anything other than movement and the pressure of contact, it clearly doesn’t cancel out the scent of burning that emanated from the point of surgery.

However, what it all culminates in, and what serves as the impetus for this post was the surprising wave of emotions that seemed to bubble up after I was done with the procedure, which all in all wasn’t really painful as much as it was just awkward and comfortable as much as your junk being handled for 25 minutes could be.  But when I was done, walked out the door and into the car, I just felt almost like crying.  Don’t really know why, this was all part of the plan and I certainly don’t want to go through the rigors of having another baby, but all the same, this involuntary and reflexive wave of sadness just kind of washed up and I felt pretty sad.

I know I can be a headcase about things, but I feel like I’m kind of on my own here, at least as far as people I know who have also had vasectomies.  I asked a few of my friends if they felt sad afterward, and the consensus is pretty much no, so maybe it is just a me thing, but I’d wager that there are plenty of men out there who can relate, but then against we have people who lose their shit over the opening sequence of Up, and many who don’t too.

If I had to guess, it probably has to do with the sheer finality of the whole thing.  Sure, vasectomies are technically reversible, but it’s one of those things that just because they are doesn’t mean anyone wants to go through with it, and I’m at peace knowing I won’t father any more kids, but it’s just the fact that it’s a decision sealed with a laser that makes it feels a little heavy handed.  For all intents and purposes, this was done to be a permanent measure, and there’s something about said permanence that seems to trigger emotion within me.

Otherwise, what a day it’s been afterward.  Got to go to Willy’s and get some nachos, even if they were prepared horribly by some white guy that looked like Bill Burr, chilled at home while waiting to see if I would have any pain that wasn’t already there from going to the gym for the first time in a month, as my office was shut down due to malfunctioning elevators.  I took a nap for the first time in like forever, and woke up to discover that there was some pretty substantial leadership transitions going on at my company, and that another elevator malfunctioned and we might be back to another shutdown.

But the easy joke is that with me getting to rest, nap and eat rich food brought to me, is that I should have more vasectomies in the future to have these baller kinds of days, but at the same time, I don’t like feeling sad, so it’s really one of those weighing the pros and cons things, and that nothing in my life can happen without there being a correlating reaction somewhere else.

All the same, so ends my lineage as far as I’m concerned, it’ll be up to my kids and my sister’s kids in the future if there’s any hope for my family’s genetics to continue on.

Dad Brog (#142): Ending the pipeline

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not really sure how this post is going to turn out, but there’s inherently a lot of thoughts swirling around my head to the point where I feel like I should write something about it, but I’m getting a vasectomy.

Despite the fact that mythical wife and I are most certainly, definitely, irrefutably done with having any kids, admittedly there’s still something there in the noggin about the sheer finality of getting the snip, and although they are supposedly reversible, the intent is clear – I am not going to have any more kids ever again.  This, was always part of the plan, and yet there’s something, perhaps it’s the fact that I’ll have to have a surgery and I’ve never had any sort of surgery in my life before, or maybe it’s just the finality of the intent and scenario of it that has me feeling a little weird.

Make no mistake though, I don’t want anymore kids.  We don’t want anymore kids, mythical wife and I.  There is a 0% chance that I’m going to chicken out and not go through with it, not to mention the fact that I’ll be out $300 if I did, and I fucking hate the idea of wasted money as much as anything else, but I’d be lying if I weren’t feeling some strange feelings of apprehension and melancholy about what I’m going to go through.

But despite all the weird feelings and emotions, I know it in my head that I’m 100% making the right call and I will have no regrets afterward.  I have my children, they’re perfect and they’re all I want, and I have no desire to father anymore kids in my life.  Despite how many times I’ve been strapped for cash in my life and despite the curiosity and the enticement of getting paid to pleasure myself, I’ve never donated sperm before; I don’t want any mystery kids borne of a random selection in a catalog to a woman I don’t know showing up in my life later on.  As far as I am concerned, my genetics are ending, and if there was ever some form or archaic desire for my family’s genes to continue on, then that’s up to my daughters to do, if they ever so choose to procreate in the future.

Plus, the world is going backwards, and somehow women pretty much have fewer reproductive rights than they did before I was born which is a whole other can of worms that tends to make me feel sad for my wife, my daughters, and all the women in the world that I have care for, so it genuinely feels like I’m doing my part of being responsible, and being an ally by going through with a vasectomy, especially since I am most definitely done with having any additional children.

The last thing my household needs to have in their lives is an oops situation, where corrective measures couldn’t be utilized without becoming a fugitive, and the only legal alternative is to have another child, that wasn’t planned for.  Absolutely not.

So yeah, I’m going under the knife (or laser or whatever), and despite the weird state of mind the whole thing has me feeling as the clock ticks closer to my appointment, I know it in my head and in my heart that it is the right thing to do, and I will have no regrets about it.  I have my perfect kids, don’t want more, and mythical wife has done enough as far as shouldering the pain in the ass burden when it comes to further responsibilities.

Can it be a HIPAA violation to be judgmental pricks?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Like many people (should), I take my health seriously.  I exercise regularly, I’m (mostly) mindful of what I eat, I try to get a consistent amount of sleep each night, I drink lots of water, and I avoid sick people whenever I can, my own family notwithstanding.

However with kids, that last part becomes nigh impossible, especially when we get into the cold and flu season, and despite the fact that I’m not a fan of coughing and sneezing right into my face, they’re my kids, and it goes without saying a lot of times, exposure to airborne illness is unavoidable.

I woke up the other day with a tickle in my throat, and my head feeling like a bowling ball.  It stung when I swallowed, which was consistent from the night before where I began to suspect that I might be coming down with something.  During this time of the year, and especially when my kids are sick, I rinse out my sinuses multiple times a day, which is something I swear by and something I attribute my general ability to avoid getting sick to, but with as much coughing and sneezing I’ve had done in my face, even rinsing 3-4 times a day has its limitations.

My general modus operandi when it comes to the onset of sickness, is to go to urgent care and start medications as soon as I can.  Getting in front of sicknesses has worked wonders in the past, and it’s what I do in order to minimize sick time and more importantly, be up and healthy so that I can care for my kids.

It’s what I did this past weekend, and after my initial vitals were taken, where everything was normal like my blood pressure, temperature, pulse, etc, even I began to wonder if I had jumped the gun too early.  Clearly, I wasn’t the only one who was thinking this, because the NP who had seen me, I could feel the judgment coming from her that I was in pretty good shape to be coming into urgent care, and probably triggering her internal flags that I was probably some medication-seeking junkie or something.

She told me that Mucinex DM would be sufficient at dealing with what I thought was going to be the illness coming, and that over-the-counter drugs should counteract my symptoms.  But probably because I had paid my co-pay and I suspect this clinic has some arrangement with whatever manufacturer produces Prednisolone, they gave me a script for that to deal with the cough, that was just only happening occasionally to me, but #1 sounds like a nightmare, and that’s exactly what I didn’t want to happen to me.

As I was leaving my appointment, I was handed my discharge papers, and I noticed that on the front of it was stapled this little addition that I hadn’t gotten before: Antibiotics Aren’t Always the Answer, which was basically this condescending little FAQ that seemed directed to people like me who had the audacity to come to a place called urgent care, for symptoms remotely nowhere near urgent.

Here’s the thing though, if there were a place I could go to get immediate medical consult, and not have to wait 4-6 fucking weeks, I would go there.  But because there is not, I go to a place where I can get immediate consult, even if it’s called urgent care and my symptoms are not urgent.  Such is the nature of American healthcare, where we’ve been pigeonholed into such limited options.

But I interpreted this note on my papers as the NP’s way of trying to give me a gentle reminder that my issues weren’t severe and that she probably thinks I’m a person chasing prescription medication.  And honestly, I don’t really appreciate it.

She doesn’t know my circumstances.  A lot of people I know don’t understand my circumstances.

I am the primary caregiver for my kids.  I’m the one person who can’t afford to be shelved due to bullshit sicknesses because the world can’t mask up or stay home when they’re not feeling well.  Sure, there are others who can fill in when it’s necessary, but if it’s under my control to optimize my recovery time and get in front of things to stop them from escalating to an addling illness, I’m going to fucking do them.

Nobody else wakes up at 6:40 every single day of the week to make sure breakfast is made and lunches are prepared for school.  Nobody else gets up in the middle of the night when one my kids has a nightmare and needs comfort.  I’m the one who goes to the school for the kids’ activities and I’m the one who takes the kids out to the park or for Friday ice cream, or most anything that requires physical presence.

Needless to say, I wasn’t pleased with the passive aggressive insinuation that I was seeking medical attention unnecessarily.  I paid my co-pay, and I had every right to be there.  Furthermore, at the time I went, I was the only person waiting on any sort of consultation, it’s not like it was a packed clinic full of ailing people that I was cockblocking from getting critical treatment.  If they didn’t feel I needed to be there, they would be more than welcome to let me know this, refund my copay and send me off, with me eating the cost in time.

I do what I do in order to be in as tip-top condition as I can, all the time, in order to be the best dad that I can be for my kids, because the last thing I want is to be the dad that’s always sick, seldom capable, and never present.  Even if it means hitting up urgent care at the first sign of sickness, I’m not going to wait until any shit to get full blown before I pull the trigger and have to wait for medications to kick in, when I can act first and be the one doing any kicking to any ailments.  I’m going to do this every single time, and hopefully with less judgment in the future.

Dad Brog (#141): Role reversal

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There are times in which my kids bring home artwork they create in school, and in the case of #1, budding artistic talent is starting to emerge in the sense that she can now create with a relative objective in mind, and this is a family portrait that she drew, and I’ve been waiting her entire life for the day that she would create something like this.

I am going to frame it and cherish it forever.

But then there are all the other days in which my kids are absolute terrors, full of screaming, defiance, meltdowns, tantrums and more screaming, and sometimes I have to take a lot of deep breaths to try to not snap back at my children, and I ask mythical wife why we decided to have kids again?

In all fairness, most of the aggravating behavior is coming from #1 these days, and for as seemingly simple the supposed terrible twos were for us, it all seems to have held back until the age of four in this case.  I didn’t read enough dad literature to know if this is normal or not, but having a four and three-year old girls definitely has opened the door to its own unique set of challenges that I’m just guessing are a progression of time and growth.

The funny thing is, as much as #1 has become more obtuse about certain things, #2 has more or less reversed roles and become the chill one between the girls, and as often as #1 melts down, #2 is the one that’s usually cool as a cucumber in comparison and disposition.

Interestingly, and I should say unsurprising, a lot of this seems to stem from how much television we let the kids watch, as the vast majority of meltdowns typically start when it comes time to turn off the television and either take a break from screens, or get ready for bath time and bed, which has stretched even later, getting closer to 8 pm from 7, meaning I have even less time on a nightly basis to turn off dad mode and feel like a normal human being, that is when I’m not burning that time resetting the home every single night.

But when we don’t watch television, there’s no conflict over turning it off, and more often than not, certain triggers can be avoided.  But I’d be lying if that’s easier said than done, because sometimes, like when I need to prepare some meals for the kids, or just need a mental break for myself, an episode or two of a cartoon on Disney+ is just what I need in order to catch my breath, or buy time for something I need to do.

Either way, that’s parenting in a nutshell right now, and as I often stated, I don’t want Dad Brogs to only emerge when things are solely negative and I’m just looking for an outlet to vent since I don’t want to burden my actual human interactions to just spout off at how parenting is.

Things could be better, but they could also be worse; I love my kids the same every day, and for all the times they aggravate me with being kids, they also fill my heart’s bucket on a daily basis by just them being themselves, and occasionally bringing me touching artwork.

When I felt like I did something good

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

On our last morning at Disney, we had breakfast at The Contemporary, at Chef Mickey’s.  Mythical wife and I agree that character meals are often great indulgences to partake in, especially with the kids, because it guarantees meeting a number of characters, without having to wait in gigantic lines, all while you get to relax inside an air conditioned place, eat and not be on your feet.

Anyway, I excuse myself to go to the restroom; and the first thing I do when I go into any public bathroom stall, is check the toilet paper.  The last thing any man wants to happen is to do your business, only to shortly discover that there’s no toilet paper or an inadequate amount of toilet paper left.  And it was good that I did this, because the first stall I went into, there was nothing but the roll of cardboard left on the roll.  Poor form for Disney, because usually they’re on top of this kind of thing.

So I go into the adjacent stall, find sufficient TP left, and proceed to do my business.  While I’m sitting there, I hear the door to the restroom open, and I hear the labored breathing.  In an instant, my mind is racing, wondering if this guy is going to go into the stall next to me, and if he does, should I say something to warn him about the conundrum he’s inevitably going to have, but before I could do any more thinking, the guy is already in the stall, breathing like he was just in a race, belt buckle clanging on the ground and he’s sitting and destroying the planet in the blink of an eye.

Seriously, I’m picturing that scene in Dumb and Dumber when Harry has to crap like the apocalypse because Lloyd spiked his coffee with TurboLax hearing what is transpiring in the stall next to mine, and unsurprising I hear an exasperated “ahh shit” come from him, knowing that he’s probably just noticed that there’s no TP on the roll.

At this point, there’s a part of me that’s wondering if I should just stick to men’s room etiquette and keep my mouth shut and mind my own business, but at the same time, I am very much aware that there’s an emergency about to happen right next to me, divided only by an inch-thick metal wall.

There was a time in my life where I would just go the aforementioned route of feigning ambivalence and washing my hands of the situation, and leave the guy to fend for himself, but especially on a trip like this one, at Disney World, it occurred to me that there was a very high chance that this guy was like me, in the sense that he too was a dad, probably had dealt with a metric ton of bullshit, babysitting, kid-chasing and exasperation, and the absolute last thing he needed in the world was to be put in a scenario where he’d have to bare-ass it out of the stall and try to wash his asshole in a public sink and hope nobody comes in and sees it.

So after I was done with my business, I gently extended my roll of paper down low to beneath the bottom opening, and softly said, hey man I think you’re going to need this.  He quickly grabbed the TP and was just like uhhh thanks, and I was off on my merry way back to my family.  Although the interaction was short and very few words were spoken, I felt like I really did a very good deed, and I like to think that this guy knew how lucky he was to have been next to me, and didn’t have to think too hard on whether he should swallow his pride and ask or risk a worst of humanity situation.

I didn’t have to do what I did.  I could’ve just feigned ignorance and left Harry to fend for himself.  But from one dad to what I’m guessing was probably another dad, we endure a lot on these Disney trips, a bathroom meltdown shouldn’t be one of them.  I’m glad I did what I did, and I think I did a really good deed and I applaud myself for it.

Dad Brog (#140): Disney Trip 2024

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Being both passholders as well as Disney Vacation Club, it goes without saying that my family spends a good bit of time going to Disney World.  Personally, I’m pretty long past over most anything in regards to The Mouse, but my wife and kids still enjoy it a lot, and there’s not much I won’t do for them, especially when I have little idea what to do with my vacation time in the first place.

However, the big story of this last extended Disney trip was Hurricane Helene, which I didn’t even know was bubbling up in the Gulf of Mexico until two days into the trip, when suddenly everyone in person and on social media are talking about this megastorm that’s forming, and how it’s not only going to wreak havoc on Florida where we were, but appeared to have Atlanta firmly in its crosshairs, leading me to feel all sorts of anxiety about shit happening to my home while I wasn’t there.

Fortunately for us, the storm conditions didn’t really come into play until the last day of our trip, to which at that point we were pretty bushed and fairly content to spend more time at the resort than more time at the parks, and it didn’t really affect our trip.

In fact, other than watching some serious winds from the safety and comfort of our resort, not only did we avoid the storm in Florida, much to my relief, Helene kind of banked hard east, which we all know by now, really fucked the western parts of Appalachian North Carolina, but as far as Atlanta was concerned, really managed to avert disaster.

It was interesting driving back, because as we traversed from Orlando back to Georgia, there was plenty of evidence of the carnage that Helene brough, even as far central as I was coming from, with trees down all over the shoulders and sides of the road, and pretty much every billboard in the state was stripped and barren.  Piles of sawdust on the shoulders indicated where trees actually affected the highways themselves, and this was the case all the way up into Georgia, and right before getting to Macon, it all kind of stopped, and this was presumably where the storm banked hard east, and miraculously swerved past Atlanta.

Insert ironic joke about how not even category-4 storms don’t want to visit Atlanta.

As for the rest of the trip, I wouldn’t exactly call it a vacation; I knew this was most likely going to be the circumstances going into it.  It was a trip, and there was a tremendous amount of work involved, wrangling the little monsters of mine, who are bursting with excitement and curiosity and the want to run around and explore the vast World of Disney, and as is often times the case, the lion’s share of labor falls to me to do, and I don’t really get to have the same sense of vacation, relaxation, recuperation and entertainment as everyone else does.

There were really only two things that I wanted to do that would have been self-serving and when the trip was done, I didn’t get to do either of them.  Between kid wrangling, the time it takes to do absolutely anything at all, and the weather coming into play, there simply wasn’t any space for anything for me to happen, and the fact of the matter is that as much as I love my kids, if there’s any chance at all for me to not go completely sour on Disney World and the Disney brand, there have got to be some kid-free trips lined up in my future where I can actually relax, unwind and not be a dad for a fucking minute.

I kind of knew what had happened was going to happen, and that it really wasn’t going to be that much of a vacation for me personally.  But my kids and their safety always come first, and trying to keep them in a modicum of line is also high priority, and it’s often times frustrating when trying to stick to good habits while on the road is challenging, and even more so when I don’t really have anyone but myself to rely upon to handle the load of keeping an eye on my kids.

But the girls seemed to have a good time in spite of the weather and some of the challenges experienced while there.  They got to ride a lot of rides, eat a lot of junk food, spend some time with me at the pool, see a lot of characters, eat more snacks, and watch a whole lot of television at the resort and while in the car, so as long as they’re happy, I can take victory from that.

I just wish that I didn’t have to feel like I have to be the one who constantly has to sacrifice everything, because I already feel like I’ve sacrificed just about everything that makes me, me, and there’s really nothing left for me to sacrifice left, except for whatever it is that prevents me from being a complete husk of a living organism.

Dad Brog (#139): the days are getting longer

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I realized that it’s been a while since I did a dad brog, and in spite of my insistence that they weren’t intended to be solely sounding boards for the gripes and complaints I have about the challenges of parenting, there’s no denying the fact that the vast majority of the 138 editions of Dad Brog before this one probably were.  Parenting is hard, yo, and anyone who says that it isn’t is either not as hands-on or present of a parent as I am or they’re rich and/or lazy and have others doing the parenting for them.

That being said, let this be a dad brog that isn’t going to be just one gigantic bitch-fest as much as it’s just catching up on the life of being the parent that I am, because as I’ve stated before, this series of posts doesn’t have to be nothing but complaints and gripes, because as hard as parenting is, there’s plenty to love about it as well.

There are lots of times in my life where I sometimes and just watch my kids being kids, and there’s still a sense of disbelief that one, I have kids, and two that I somehow ended up with two girls.  Some might find it hard to believe considering they’re four and three and therefore I’ve been doing this for a while now, but I don’t know, I’m not going to imagine that I’m the only parent out there that feels this when they look at their kids, no matter how old they are, and it’s during these little moments where I sometimes just smirk and chuckle at the combined absurdity and satisfaction that the existence of my own children bring to my life.

Both kids are in school five days a week now, as opposed to the three-day part-time school schedule they had the year before, mostly on account of the school no longer giving us the option for three-day anymore, so my wallet is definitely feeling the pinch and will continue to feel it for another year, before it gradually starts getting better when #1 begins elementary school and #2 the year afterward.

All the same though, as much as I bemoan the financial burden of private schooling, I feel that the results speak for themselves; my kids are both sharp and intelligent and bright, and I’m often awestruck at some of the things they say or demonstrate that makes me go wtf, at how much they’re developing.  #2 has demonstrated a really great memory, and she has routinely been whooping my ass at the variety of memory card games we play, at her ability to recall the positionings of matching cards.

Just the other day, I was being lazy and was dicking around on my phone a little bit while around my kids; #1 rushed off to the bathroom because she’s fully potty trained now and more often opting to use the actual bathroom instead of the children’s potty we have in the kitchen, while #2 is still working things out.  I started to get up to go help, and she immediately shut me down and told me, “keep looking at your phone, I’ll be okay,” and I was just left there with this flabbergasted look and feeling on my face, where I couldn’t be mad at basically getting shut down by a four-year old, but also low-key called out for being on my phone.

Needless to say, I put the phone away after that.

Staving off boredom is basically the name of the game for me as a parent now, and we’re at the stage where the kids don’t really want to play with toys or read books as much as they want to do physical activities like run around, play tag, hide-and-seek and just burn energy.  It’s frustrating when it’s nuclear summer outside still, and I have to be very mindful of letting my kids play outdoors at the peak parts of the sun and heat, and I’m very much looking forward to the full changing of seasons, to where I might be able to let them go outside and play more, so we can all get a win in that regard.

And inevitable as it is, the kids’ bedtime has begun stretching longer, which means that my window of non-dad downtime has been getting smaller, much to my dissatisfaction.  Whereas we used to have the kids up in the bath by 6:30, in bed by 7:00pm, we’ve been adding 30-40 minutes to the routine now, and by the time the kids are down in bed, it’s nearly 8:00pm if not past it a few minutes now.

Obviously, this was always going to inevitably happen, but it just means that my window of time in which I reset the house, tidy up, clean dishes, pack lunches and anything else, before I can really sit down and relax, is basically becoming non-existent.  I’m lucky to free by 9pm, and if I have any ambitious preparation for the following day, then 10pm more likely.

But it’s really not the end of the world, because I realize these days, I’m so stripped down of everything that used to make me, me, that when I have free time, I don’t know what to do with in the first place anymore.  And with so little time to do anything even if I could, I just don’t; as fatalistic and depressing as it might sound, I’ve gotten to the point where it’s just kind of acceptance and I’m not really mad or depressed about it, it’s just something that I hope that when one day when I inevitably do have more time, I might be able to reclaim some of the things that I’ve had to put on back burners or in storage while I focus on being a dad first and foremost.

My kids are always priority #1, and everything else is a distant second.  The best part is that with their increasing potty control, I’m growing more trust to take them out with me, even if it’s both kids and I, because they’re really not going to learn how to exist in the world if they don’t go out into it, and two-fold, it helps stave off the perils of evil boredom when I can have things planned for them to do with me.

Either way, as I had hoped, in some respects parenting will never be easy, but in many other respects, it really has gotten easier, as my kids have aged.  When I no longer have to worry about any pooping accidents or malicious wetting incidents, I will have even more trust at bringing my kids out more often to see the world around them, and even more will be easier when I don’t have to always be mindful of where the closest bathrooms always are.