Month: November 2025

Real talk: my head hurts

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know why I feel like I should write about this, especially since it’s coming from a place of fear and apprehension of the worst, but I guess that if things do go tits up in regards to this, there’s a part of me that I guess wants to chronicle it for the sake of chronicling all of the things in my life that might be a big deal, whether or not they’re bad or good.

But for the last few days, I’ve had a pain in my head, and not the metaphorical kind that comes from a lifestyle of being stressed all the time, compounded with varying degrees of depression and anxiety.  Like an actual dull rolling ache that pulses along the back left part of my skull.  It’s not the worst pain in the world by any stretch of the imagination, but because it kind of throbs and rolls through when it happens, it sometimes catches me off guard and causes me to really wince or if I’m in the midst of doing something, causing an interruption.

It kind of hurts to the touch, but only the first time, and subsequent rubbings of the area don’t really hurt, so I’m not entirely sure if it’s a topical thing or if it’s something going on underneath the skin.

I’m aware that this could be many different things, many of which are no real big deal at all, but me being me, my mind tends to go towards the worst possible scenarios, and given what my family has been through over the last few years as far as people having to deal with different things, I have to ask myself, and hope that it’s not my turn for something bad to happen to.

Needless to say, old single childless me would have just continued to gut it out longer and waited for it to get worse before acting on it, but the married dad me of today doesn’t want to run the risk of it being something that could’ve been prevented from getting worse if it’s something that I can get in front of.  It’s only been a few days, where I had just hoped it was maybe daylight savings-related old man body adjusting to the time change, or just the elevated level of stress in which I’ve been running on, on account of the issues I’m dealing with, with my own dad, as well as a high workload at work, on top of being an active and hands-on dad dealing with my own kids on the regular. 

Unfortunately, the occurrences of the occasional pulsing aches has not really subsided, so I reached out to my doctor for their opinion, and we’ll go from there.  What I’m hoping is that I’m just dealing with excessive stress, compounded with likely blood pressure elevation that I’ve learned runs in my family, and that I just need to chill the fuck out more often than I do, and that it’s not like some aneurism or blood clot or tumor risk I’m running and that I need immediate surgery and utilization of shitty American health care insurance to fuck my family over for the next few years.

However, the point remains that it does have me a little nervous about what it could be, and I’m eagerly awaiting response from my doctor, so I can have some piece of mind of what needs to come next.  It’s the waiting and the unknowns that truly are the killers, but in spite of it all, I do pat myself on the back for breaking old habits and mentalities and just trying to gut things out and hope they go away.  Having one’s own family definitely helps with that, and understanding that my life isn’t just my life, so much as it belongs to others whom I wish to be around for as long as I can.

Daylight Savings blows, 2025 edition

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

At around 5:20 am, I heard #1 outside my bedroom door, panicking in the dark about how she couldn’t find her sister.  The fact that my child was out of her room in the pitch black of the morning was enough to get me to pop out of my bed, but upon hearing that my other child was allegedly missing immediately put me into a state of panic myself.

Worse off, for some reason there was a light on in my sunroom, which I knew wasn’t the case when I went to bed because I’m neurotic and always make sure all lights are off prior to going upstairs; I would later discover that there was a power surge during the night, and since that room’s lights are controlled via remote control, it light switch is usually in the on position permanently, and stuff like power surges or outages usually result in lights coming on upon reconnection.  However, I didn’t know this, and it immediately put the fear of god into me that #2 was in some sort of danger.

I walked #1 back into their (we let them sleep in the same room on weekends sometimes, on the unfolded futon) room to have her wait for me while I would investigate downstairs, but upon entering the room, there’s #2 snuggled up like a little taquito on the futon already, still sleeping.  Relieved, I set #1 back onto the futon as well, covered her, gave her a kiss on the head, reminded her that it was the middle of the night and hope she bought it, and implored her to go back to sleep; she didn’t need to know her circadian rhythm was correct at thinking it should be 6:20 am, when she’s normally up for school on weekdays, because obviously I really wanted to get some more fucking sleep.

Nope, by 5:30 am, I can hear activity on the baby monitor, both girls are now awake, and it’s only a matter of seconds before I hear doors opening and shutting, and #1 is marching back into my bedroom, with moments later, #2 freaking out in the darkness of the hallway, wondering where everyone is.  I bring them both into the master, and get them into our bed, in between mama and dada, hoping they might actually go the fuck back to sleep for a little bit longer.

Naturally, that doesn’t happen, and by 5:40, I give up, get out of bed, usher the kids downstairs, and concede that the day is now beginning.

The thing is, I actually had a tentative plan about this morning, because I figured there would be some monkey business with the time change, and the chances of me having breakfast ready for awakening kids wasn’t going to be high, which was that we were definitely, going to go to Waffle House because who doesn’t love Waffle House?

It’s just I was not anticipating them to be getting up within the 5 o’clock hour, but here we were.

It actually wasn’t that terrible, I got them dressed and we were at Waffle House by like 6:30 adjusted time, and I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that we were not the only customers there.  They were definitely the only kids there, and a part of me was hoping to have seen some other parents under similar circumstances having the same plan that I did, but alas, it was just me who was carting my kids out at this ungodly bullshit adjusted time.

But the point remains, daylight savings remains the antichrist, and it’s abundantly clear that the people in the BC years who came up with the idea were a bunch of selfish fucks who either did not have children, or had the privilege or were bad parents enough to not take into consideration the effects of the time change on parents who did have children.  And I hate them for all eternity and hope their descendants are wholly unimpressive pleebs who have nagging gastrointestinal issues.

I like to imagine that if the originators of daylight savings actually had any children, that they were obligated to actually care for, ranging from ages 0-7 years of age, they would think twice about the whole concept of rolling clocks back and fucking with their circadian rhythms and suddenly having to deal with them at ridiculously early AM hours, while people under most other circumstances would still be getting to sleep, regardless of what hour it actually was.

And as I’ve said before, I didn’t care much for it prior to children, but now that I do have kids, I fucking loathe it, and I like to think I’m pretty serious about sticking to my claim that I’d vote for absolutely anyone who prioritized the abolishment of this bullshit antiquated concept, including, those Somali pirates.

The complaining will likely happen yearly, until either this bullshit program is killed off, or my kids get to the age where they want to sleep in, and therefore my entire house can actually benefit from the rollback instead of bemoaning it.  Not going to bet on the former, though.