Tag: birthday

So dismissive, kind of callous, I can’t help but respect it

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Seeing as how my birthday this year was basically borked on account of being endlessly sick throughout the entire month of April, I didn’t really celebrate at all.  I actually still have some gifts that I haven’t even opened, yet, because I’ve been in such a dour plcae over the last few weeks, I want to make sure that I’m in a positive headspace before opening anything that’s meant to be a pick-me-up, and I really don’t think I’ve gotten to that point just yet.

Either way, this is something that I’ve wanted to write about but just didn’t get a chance to and it kept getting pushed back in the queue of things that pique my interest or inspire words to formulate, but I noticed something in the soulless, mostly obligated birthday card that I received from my colleagues at work.

Among the generic and canned-corn hand written messages from my colleagues, I noticed that one person signed via a rubber stamp that simply said “Happy Birthday -Michael”

My brow furrowed, and numerous emotions went through my head at seeing such.  The fact that Michael had a rubber stamp created with the most generic of greetings, was such a sign of dismissal, a lack of genuine care, and an acknowledgment that office colleague birthday cards really are tedious, forced and things that we as people really don’t care about, but feel obligated to participate, for optics.

However, at the same time, I found it to be absolutely hilarious that Michael here had the wherewithal to understand that office colleague cards really are tedious, forced and things we don’t care about, that he created a solution that absolved him of even the littlest of thought necessary to hand write a generic greeting.

Responses from people in my circles whom I shared this with were varied, from wooooowww, to laughing, and if anything at all like me, kind of in admiration for Michael for having such a brilliant idea to have a dismissive and informal stamp to just slap on a soulless Happy Birthday greeting, which includes his name on it, so that everyone who sees it, can see, that Michael feels all of the above.

All the same, regardless of how anyone feels about it, it elicited enough of a reaction from me to where I felt inspired to write about it.  And frankly, that in itself is a gift that’s invaluable, at least to me, and Michael has no idea he accomplished such. 

I kind of want my own generic greeting rubber stamp now.

I’ve never had an April that has sucked more than this year’s has

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Even in the most curmudgeon periods of my life, I’ve always kind of held my breath and walked on eggshells whenever it’s come to the month of April.  Seeing as how it’s the month in which my birthday is, I’m always cautiously optimistic that they can’t possibly suck that much, seeing as how there’s a very concrete day in which the world is obligated to not be too much of a dick to me on, and I always hope that the grace of a birthday has a tendency to permeate through as much of the rest of the month as the fates are willing to grace.

Sure, I’ve had some shitty things happen in Aprils before, and history has shown a predisposition for some real bad shit to usually happen around the time of my birthday, but save for large swaths of the world crying, memorializing or mourning the departed, most of the time I can usually rely on my birthdays themselves to not be the worst days in the world.

Throw all that shit out the window this year, because not only was a really fucking sick on my birthday this year, it’s not a far stretch to say that I’ve basically been sick all throughout the month, and the fact that I can’t seem to get back to being 100% healthy has been mentally challenging, frustrating and demoralizing, especially since I feel like I could handle or have handled a lot of the frustrations of the month better than I have, had I had my health to rely upon to be in good standing through it all.

It’s like, #2 and I caught a cold of some sort early on in the month, that I remember taking almost an entire week off from the office and worked remote, and I kind of got better.  But it’s like neither of us truly got fully recovered from that sickness, and by the time I hobbled back home after my week of exile back up in Northern Virginia to clean up my old joint, both my kids had ear infections, and within a week, such had passed onto me, leading to me spending my actual birthday in a lot of pain and misery of having an ear infection that went undiagnosed by the first urgent care I went to because they suck, leading to me to suffer throughout it for several days afterward before I went to get a second opinion, and confirmation that I had some shit going on.

I’ve never had an ear infection in my life before, so let me just say how much it sucks to get one for the first time.  The feeling of a swollen or burst ear drum, the constant throbbing and being able to hear my heartbeat, the sensation that it’s like I permanently have an AirPod in the ear with noise cancellation on, because I’m hard of hearing through it.  And before I got put on antibiotics, the main was just so dull and persistent, and was absolutely handicapping when I wasn’t on some sort of painkillers.

Furthermore, ear infections are usually byproduct of bad colds, and it’s like I’ve had this one, or maybe two colds all month long, and although I mostly feel fine, it’s one of those bugs where it’s left a Chinese Great Wall of mucus in my chest and sinuses, that is taking its dear sweet fucking time in going away, resulting in a lot of aggravated coughing spells, which is wreaking havoc on my sleep and my wife’s sleep, and I haven’t felt like I’ve gotten adequate sleep almost throughout the entire month.  It’s been like an entire decade since I’ve had this kind of phlegmy misery, because I remember how much is sucked back then, and how much it sucks to have it again now.

The bottom line is that I just can’t seem to get healthy, and it sucks that basically the entire month of April has come and gone with me being sick throughout most of it.  And to add insult to injury, there’s been all sorts of bullshit happenings between my dad, the workload at work, my dad, all of the shit I have to do for my dad, the disappointment of trying to accomplish things but relying on the responses and communication of others, and of course, my dad.

As is often the case, I feel as if I’m being pulled from all sides from everyone in my life, leading me to grow frustrated and wish people would just take the reins and run without having to review everything with me first, and that I’m taken for granted on such a monumental level by pretty much everyone in my life.

And because as much as I’d like to memorialize these folks with individual posts but don’t really feel like I have the energy to do it in remotely a time-sensitive manner, some dudes I enjoyed or revered kicked the bucket this month, just to hammer down the notion that April this year sucked goat ball sacks.  But Darrell Sheets from Storage Wars apparently killed himself, with there being tremendous speculation that it came at the urging of a psychotic online bully stalker.

And although there wasn’t as much scandal behind a 91-year old man with dementia passing, Roger Sweet, the creator of He-Man passed as well, and this is one of those situations where there’s no hyperbole when I say a piece of my childhood just died, because I lived, died and breathed He-Man and the Masters of the Universe growing up, and it is truly sad to learn that that creator of such an iconic property of my childhood has left us.

Needless to say, this April has sucked colossally, and I’m relieved to see it nearing its end.  I try to not put too much stock into arbitrary windows of time, because there’s no guarantee May will be better than April for no other reason than it not being April anymore, but this past month has sucked so much that I’m willing to set my pessimism aside for just a little bit and hope that May doesn’t blow half as much as April of this year has.

More than anything, I just want my health back, and for my ear to stop ringing and to be able to hear like a normal functional adult again.  I feel like if I’m at least physically healthy, it will only help in enduring any other bullshit that might come along and is immediately made worse by my not feeling well.

I still want a re-do on my birthday though.  I haven’t opened any of the gifts I received yet, because I’ve been in such a negative headspace, that I don’t want the good intentions of any presents to be soiled by my negative headspace.

Can I have a re-do on my birthday pls?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I know that I don’t really make much to do about my birthday in the first place, but is it too much to ask to at least not be saddled with a vicious virus on my actual birthday?  Because that’s exactly what happened to me this year, where I spent my entire birthday clouded with brain fog, mostly in bed, barely eating, a trip to urgent care, and still on the hook for some daily obligations.

I went to Starbucks to get at least one treat for myself, since those cocksuckers only give you the actual date of your birthday to redeem a free drink, and they messed it up, giving me a smaller size than I had ordered, and since I was in the drive-thru, I was unwilling to clog the line and wait longer than I already had for them to remake something that wasn’t even going to taste like what I hoped it would, on account of being ill.

The adults in my home had already arranged for me to sleep in on my birthday, but for it to have become mandatory on account of the fact that I was hit pretty hard by this bug wasn’t exactly the way I had hoped it would go.  I know it’s futile to wax poetic about the fairness of life, but to get really sick on one’s birthday is definitely one of those things that just doesn’t seem fair at all.

I just wanted to sleep in, perhaps go for a jog while the weather was nice, go on a mini adventure picking up what very few and scant free shit items that are still offered up these days, and come home, spend some time with my kids, perhaps go get burritos for lunch, and then watch Wrestlemania day 2 in relative peace and health.

Instead, I wake up feeling like a bowling ball is embedded in my head, I can’t breathe through my nose from all the gunk trapped in there, and I can’t think straight at all.  I’ve got chills which means I’m fevering up, and it’s going to take a minute for the acetaminophen to help break it.  My kids, my perfect little children, come to bring me breakfast and coffee in bed and I love them so much, but I feel like shit that I can’t really reciprocate.  Eating feels like a chore and nothing feels like its sitting right, and I can hardly will myself to do anything but lay down and occasionally rotate sides, with hopes that the gunky congestion in my head will gravitate toward the opposite side.

Needless to say, my birthday this year was a miserable ordeal, and I’m not so much putting it in writing because I expect any sort of sympathy, but so I can remember just how bad a birthday really can be, and what I hope for it to not be like in future years.  But it all really sucks that this was my birthday this year, because now I don’t have it to look forward to anymore, and can only look at it in hindsight with resentment and disgust at how shitty it was, and if there were every such a thing as a re-do, this would definitely be one that I’d like to really have one for.

Year six of forever

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Even to this very day, I still sometimes can’t believe that I’m a dad.  I usually have these thoughts in the mornings, when I’m watching my kids eat breakfast, and my mind thinks back to when they were but little babies that drank from bottles, and eventually fed by spoon, and then finger foods, and here they are not only eating with utensils, they have opinions, on what breakfasts I make them that they do like, or if they’re one of their pissy morning moods, and whatever I’ve made is automatically putrid trash.

But sometimes I just quietly watch them while they eat, and I think back to my mom doing the same thing to me, and me thinking “whaaaat???” whenever I caught her staring.  I don’t remember what her answer ever was, if she even answered in the first place, but being a parent myself, I’ve come to understand why she was doing it in the first place, because I have to imagine she was probably thinking the same thing I think whenever I just watch my kids, that it’s still amazing that we have kids and that we are parents; bonus if the kids themselves are pretty good ones.

Today marks year six for my eldest, the one that started me on this path of being a parent, and like I stated above, there are times where I still can’t believe it.  Life as a childless adult feels like such an alien, foreign concept that I’m often flabbergasted when I see people who live such uncomplicated lives for basically nobody but themselves for the most part.  Sure, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the freedom, frivolity and sheer ease of not having to feel responsible for the life of young children, but there are times where there’s nothing like witnessing your own children grow into the world, and feeling somewhat responsible for helping shape them into the people they’re becoming.

Few things make me laugh more than hearing my children using some of the more common phrases that I use, like for example, #1 was getting tired of explaining some Pokémon thing to #2, and she bust out a how many times do I have to tell you, and I lost it right where I was sitting, because there’s absolutely no doubt where she picked that saying up from.  Maybe that’s not the best thing to be picking up to reflect on me, but it’s just an example of just how perceptive and how much of my kid my kids are capable of being, and seldom does a day go by where one or both of my kids don’t bring an avalanche of joy to my heart at some point.

And just like that, my eldest is six freaking years old.

She’s smart as heck, wants to know damn near everything she can about Pokémon, still enjoys reading with dad, and appears to be quite the math whiz, based on the fact that I can count on one hand how many times I’ve seen an incorrect answer on her math worksheets throughout the entire school year so far.

She’s very observant, picks up on everything, and has the marvelously beautiful imagination that only a 5-6 year old can have, whether she expresses it through drawing, coloring or making things out of whatever she can get her hands on; Legos, wooden blocks, MagnaTiles.  I love building things to instruction with her, but it’s most fun when we disassemble a Lego kit, and then she’s free to build whatever she wants, and when she’s done she always has these elaborate backstories to the structures she’s building, and the figures that are living in them.  I’ll tidy up her room in the afternoon, and by the time bed time has come, she’s built an entire town of structures, with origin stories for everyone that’s living in it, and I don’t remember being nearly as imaginative as she is now when I was six.

What I really love is that she still wants to be picked up and carried by dad all the time.  There was one moment I had thought to myself at what age does it seem weird to be doing that, but it didn’t last long because I remembered that there would one day come a day where either she doesn’t want to be held any more, or for whatever reason I’ll be unable to do it, so I put that silly thought to bed, and I’m happy to pick up and carry my kid whenever she asks, because I’d rather get in all my carries and hugs in while I still can.

The point is, happiest of birthdays to my eldest child.  It’s been the greatest honor of my life to be your dad, and I love you (and sissy and mama) with every fiber of my being, and the simple objective of my life has always remained the same, to be the best dad possible to you, always.

Astoria, Oregon and the birthday bucket list trip

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I could easily say that probably for half my life, I’ve always wanted to visit Astoria, Oregon, most prominently known as the prime filming location for one of my all-time favorite films ever, The Goonies.  But seeing as how I live in the southeastern United States, and Astoria is about as far northwestern as they come save for the state of Washington, such has always been somewhat of a logistical challenge.

Adding to the difficulty is the fact that frankly among the people in my life, nobody else has been interested in making this trip.  Mythical wife, nobody in my family, or any of my friends, really has had any desire to go to Oregon, much less Astoria, the small coastal town that’s 90 minutes away from Portland, the closest major airport to get there.  I almost managed to talk several of my friends into it a long time ago when a brother of mine got married in Olympia, Washington, but most of us got so smashed at the reception that we were too hung over to make the daytrip the following day.

So I decided that for my birthday this year, I was going to stop hoping other people would try and wow me with things that I don’t even know would do the job, and to just do something for myself, instead of having another birthday where I end up feeling droll and melancholy when the day winds down.  I decided to make the trip I’ve wanted to make basically my entire adult life, by myself.  I wouldn’t have to inconvenience anyone to make a trip they’re not fully in on with me, and I wouldn’t have to feel bad about any traveling companions’ feelings or preferences that might alter my own.

Months ago, I began my planning, and started making bookings in Oregon; where I was staying, a rental car, and booking an actual flight instead of trying to play the standby game for a trip that I really had my heart set on.  Originally, I had the idea of making the trip on my actual birthday weekend, but it just so happened that my birthday collided with Wrestlemania, and of all the things that could make me want to postpone, that was adequate enough. 

It was kind of surreal when my actual birthday came and went, and I was suddenly closing in on the trip that was definitely a bucket list trip for me.  It was finally happening, I was finally going to get to go to Astoria, and do the whole Goonies thing; see the Walsh home, which I had innately watched throughout the years go from being owned by a tyrant who hated Goonies fans, tarping up the whole place, to being flipped to a Goonies fan, who not only welcomed the fandom, has apparently made it a mission to restore the house to its 1985 camera-ready 80’s-tastic aesthetic. 

Go to the Astoria County Jail which is now the Oregon Film Museum, see the ORV that was always parked out front, and make the journey down to Cannon Beach, to see Haystack Rock, where the opening and closing scenes of the film took place.  And of course, while I’d be there, do some other, non-Goonies/film things like see the Astoria Column, the Astoria-Megler Bridge, and seek out new food and try local beers.

So I’m writing this while sitting in the terminal at PDX waiting for my redeye flight back to Atlanta, and I can say that by and large, the trip was a great success.  I got to do and see all the things that I had wanted to see, and although the weather was a bit on the nippy side while I was here, I planned for it adequately enough and it did not have much bearing on my experience.  I saw pretty much all of Astoria, which isn’t saying a tremendous amount as it is not a very large town by any stretch of the imagination, and there were times where I was like, well what now? because I had accomplished all of the few things I had wanted to accomplish, so I found solace in coffee, beer, relaxation in my hotel room with an entertaining book.

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Can I get a do-over on my birthday?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

So far, I’m having a birthday that has been leaving a lot to desire, and I’m trying my best to stay positive because I don’t want to get down on my birthday no matter how much I try to tell myself to treat it like any other day, but it’s feeling like one of those days where I shouldn’t have gotten out of bed and I should’ve taken the day off from work.

Because it’s naïve of me to have thought that being a WFH day, things would be easier on the workfront and that being my birthday, I would be a little more resistant to bullshit flung in my general direction.

Honestly, it didn’t start off poorly, my kids wished me a happy birthday before they went off to school, and I got some early work accomplished.  I felt like a million bucks when I was able to go to the DMV and successfully renew two cars’ registrations in four minutes because people that typically go to the DMV are afraid of technology and the self-serve kiosk was completely available, easy to use, and I was in and out in a manner that made post a bunch of eggplant emojis to various friends/groups.

I had a good run on the treadmill, and I’ve already come to the conclusion that my home treadmill and the ones at work are two completely different species of treadmills, because a 6.3 speed at home is completely tolerable, but trying anything 6.0 or higher at the treadmills at the office, and I might as well be trying to race Usain Bolt.

And that was really the last positive thing to happen, because, and I blame myself for this one, I really shouldn’t have tried to accomplish selling something on Facebook Marketplace on my birthday, because the failure rate of a sale is astronomically high, but I’ve been desperate to unload this item for months now, and I got a general commitment from this one shithead.

Naturally, he ghosted, so at this point since I had it loaded into the car, I was determined to not return home with it because I just wanted it fucking gone, so I took it to a Goodwill drop, where they claimed it was basically a piece of furniture, and wouldn’t take it, so now I’m pissed, but at this point there’s nothing else I can do about it, so I go get some lunch, so I can try to redeem some free birthday shit.

Or so I thought, despite the fact that I had an offer for some free loaded fries, the restaurant is saying I can’t redeem it because they’re already half off for a FRYday promotion, and that I should save it.  I tell them that I’d rather pay $0 than 50%, and I don’t come here often to where I probably won’t be able to save it until it’s expired, and at this point I’m annoyed that they’re challenging me at all, that I just turn around and walk, and so I end up paying for my own lunch somewhere else nearby, very agitated.

So as I’m driving to my next free shit, I remember that there’s a pawn shop, and despite the racket those places typically are, at this point, I’d take $0-10 for this piece of shit in my car.  Surely, they’d take a piece of fitness equipment right??

Wrong.  Maybe if I had some jewelry, or a gun, or perhaps some spare Air Jordans laying around, I might be able to have done business, but who would’ve thunk that lowly pawn shops have become so insufferably curating, to where they wouldn’t take my crap, even for free?

Which brings me to now, where I’m at Starbucks, amazingly the one place that made it free and easy to get something, where I decided to bring my laptop to where I could check my work email, cruise for the remainder of the workday, and perhaps do some casual writing.

I get my free drink and sit down, and lo and behold, Outlook is blowing up with many emails about new tickets, and shocker of the century, all of the tickets have less than a week turnaround.  I stare at my screen with a  face, and ping my boss that I should’ve taken the day off, and instead of doing the mountain of work that materialized out of nowhere, I opened up Word and started vomiting this colossal failure of a brog post out, because so far, this has been a real forgettable birthday that it’s taking a tremendous amount of patience to not go scorched earth on.

I want to hope that my birthday will get better, but with the exception of myself, my entire household is sick and combating various illnesses, so it doesn’t seem likely that anything but taking it easy at home is going to be on the agenda for the remainder of the day, but honestly, compared to the afternoon that I’ve had so far, that doesn’t really sound bad.

It’s my birthday, where’s my free shit

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

If you’re one of my zero readers and have known me for while, you probably know that I don’t make much of a deal of my birthday at all.  The lower the expectations I have for them, the less I can be disappointed if they’re not met, so I typically try to treat them like any other day of the year, except people typically try to be a little bit nicer to me.

However, the one area in which I do have expectations are the litany of companies in which I have accounts with, or they at least have my email address in exchange for offers, news and occasional free shit; when my birthday rolls around, yeah, I am expecting some free shit, in the realm of some free and/or discounted food.  Even if everyone I know makes me feel inconsequential and invisible on my own birthday, I can still usually take solace in the fact that I can wander off and get a free meal or cobble together some free food from all the places where I’ve willingly volunteered some personal information with.

That is until this year, where it seems like everywhere where I’d hoped to have gotten any sort of offers from, have been circling the wagons and playing defense with free birthday shit.  This isn’t to say that nobody’s giving away anything, it’s just the shit that has been offered, if anything at all, have been way less impressive than in previous years, and at this point, it doesn’t appear that I’m going to be able to fill my stomach on free food, unless I want to go into a diabetic coma afterward.

A few years ago, my favorite burrito joint in the city used to straight up offer up a free burrito on my birthday, one that I always went out of my way to cash in, because fuck who am I to turn down a free Willy’s burrito?  A year ago, it was a 50% off burrito, which I still redeemed, because fuck who am I to turn down a discounted Willy’s burrito?  However, this year, at the 11th hour I might add, the email finally comes with this year’s offer, and it’s for but just a free side guacamole or side queso, and I’m like wtf.  Chips are inconsequential when it comes to my desired burrito meal, and this year there’s no burrito at all attached to the offer.  Pass

Other restaurants where I frequent enough to have apps on my phone, because I embarrassingly order from them frequent enough to warrant it, all I’m getting are offers for free desserts.  I mean, I have a ridiculously high status with Chick Fil-A, and they’ve yet to give me fucking anything at all, and I’m wondering if they’re going to spring something up on my actual birthday, as if I weren’t trying to plot out my day to maximize how much free shit I can redeem.

You know it’s bad when Starbucks is the only company to offer up something of decent value, which is the customary free drink, no strings except that it can only be redeemed on the actual birthday instead of the week, or the month of, as it used to be in the past.  Of course I’m going to redeem this one, seeing as how this year I have the luxury of my birthday falling on my work from home day, so there is even the remote possibility I might be able to chill at a Starbucks to enjoy my free drink while working remotely.

Otherwise, all the other companies in which I’d hoped there would’ve been free shit, all fucking fail.  I don’t ask for a lot in my life, and I don’t have a tremendous want for any material things.  All I really want on my birthday is some free food and not get aggravated too much, because anything else is mostly unreasonable and likely to not happen and disappoint me, and I don’t want to be disappointed on my birthday, no matter how much I try to tell myself to treat it like any other day.

F for all the companies that I generally pour my money into that won’t give me anything substantial on my birthday.  You’re all disappointments with your stinginess.