Tag: mythical

The best month ever, fin

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In spite of the mental troubles I went through earlier in the month, I came to the realization that October truly was, one of the best months ever, as far as my life is concerned.  I have my child, I have my wife, and I have my mother under the same roof throughout the entire month, and I’ve been getting free childcare from my mom while I’ve transitioned back into the rhythm of working virtually. 

Additionally, my fridge has literally never been so full so often, as my mom is basically a machine when it comes to insisting that I be eating more Korean food, and I’m more than happy to oblige as much as my appetite can accommodate.  It’s actually been kind of humorous the pattern of her complaining about the lack of fridge space when it’s she who’s constantly buying more food to re-cram in there. 

But the last weeks have been an enjoyable pattern of me getting to work with piece of mind that my daughter was with her grandma and in the best of hands that aren’t her parents.  The two of them bonded pretty immediately, and it makes my heart swell every time I see them together, both of them smiling and enjoying each other’s company.  My mom bringing a lot of old world parenting to the forefront, with my child responding just fine, as long as she was being cared for and given attention.

The thing is, I had a harrowing thought in my mind throughout the month that I’m not entirely sure if I’ll ever have the opportunity to spend this much time with my mom again in my life.  She’s in good health, and takes pretty good care of her lifestyle, but she is in her 70s now, and we live in a country where basically a plague that preys upon the elderly is still running rampant.  I feel like my child kind of revitalized my mom a little bit to where she was capable of babysitting for her throughout the working weeks, but it was clearly taxing by the end of each day, and I can’t assume that this will be able to be the case again in the future if I were ever to have a second, but I also don’t want to imply that grandma’s biggest value is solely in babysitting, because she’s still a mom to me.

Needless to say, the realization that these are the days that should be treasured the most is what helped me pull my head out of my ass, because there’s no guarantee that I’ll ever have time like this ever again in my life.  It’s been a truly incredible month for the most part, and I’m happy that I was able to capitalize and memorialize a lot of the times with my actual camera, because it was really important to me that my daughter have lots of photo evidence of her time spent with halmoni on dad’s side.  Because she’s been hitting home runs every single day while she’s been here, and as our month winds down to a close, I wanted to write something about it so that I too can look back fondly at this time of my life and remember that in a year where everyone is bemoaning as the worst in history, I had one of the best months ever.

Everything is inadequate

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The following are health bars from Left 4 Dead 2.  The way the game works, the only time a player will be at 100 is at the very start of a game, and once they take any modicum of damage that brings them down from 100, you will never see 100 again, no matter how many health packs you use.  It’s kind of an appropriate analogy to life itself, that once damaged, it will never be unblemished, no matter how much repair and fixing goes into it.

Note the partial bars that are to the right of the solid colored bars.  These are what the zbs community refers to as “decaying health” or “pill health.”  It’s health that counts towards your overall hit points, but also ticks down over time, unlike the solid bar health.  In spite of the tropes and memes about L4D out there, you can take pills as often as you can find them in order to keep your health high, but it will always be temporary and degrading over time.

L4D health bars are a good analogy to how I feel my life is going these days, and often times why I feel like I could use some therapy.  I’m long past the point where I’m probably closer to 50 than I am 100, and much like in L4D, I don’t think I’ll ever see 100 again any time soon.  Right now, if I had to guess, my solid bar probably maxes out at 60, and if I ever want to be any higher than that, I’ll have to down a jar of pills to get up into the 90s, but that time will be temporary, fleeting, and will come back down naturally over time.

I realize that this makes me sound like I’m thinking that I need a lot of medication to get through my days, which couldn’t be any further from the truth, but from an emotional standpoint, I definitely could be in much better shape and I can’t really figure out why I’m in such a dark space in my head so often lately, when I really shouldn’t be.

But today, I am frustrated, sleep deprived and completely over basically everything and I feel like this is the culmination of weeks of a thousand cuts and I’m having a day where I want pretty much nothing but to be left the fuck alone and to have a little bit of time to myself. 

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New Father Brogging, #024

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Today marks seven months since my daughter was born.  Since then, she’s over doubled her birth weight and creeping closer and closer to ten inches grown.  She’s gone from being a NICU baby that struggled to feed from a bottle to being a strong independent infant that doesn’t need mom or dad to hold the bottle for her to wolf down a full feed in eight minutes.  She’s now eating solids, and has been a very good eater thus far, consuming pretty much everything we’ve put in front of her.

It’s difficult for me sometimes, to not get emotional over every little step she takes and the growth that we watch happening right in front of our very eyes.

But last night was a particularly difficult pill to swallow, as it was the first night in which mythical wife and I both slept apart from our child, as we have begun the transition into having her sleep in her own room.  Monitored, obviously, but sleeping in a room outside of ours.  The reality is that she has basically outgrown the Snoo bassinet that carried her throughout the first six months of her life, and she needs room to turn and maneuver, otherwise it leads to a very grumpy and unhappy fussy baby.  Combined with teething, it led to what was basically the worst sleeping week of our lives over the last week and change.

Gradually working in her crib for naps has proven to be working that she can sleep in the crib, and it’s proven that the crib and its space is proving beneficial to our child’s sleep, so we finally pulled the trigger and had a few test nights where she stayed in the crib overnight, while I slept on the futon in the room as a safety net.  It only took two nights to really prove that she was up for it, and as of last night, we had her sleep in her own room by herself for the first time.

It was hard to not feel emotional going to sleep myself, watching her on a monitor, instead of knowing she were mere feet away, and I would be seconds away from swooping in to get her if there were any sort of discomfort or need to physically pick her up.  I had some unpleasant flashbacks to the NICU days, where mythical wife and I only had the comfort of a webcam that had limited times in which it would be on, instead of 24/7 real-life accessibility as we’ve had over the last seven months.

Ultimately, we know this is for the best, and is the natural progression of growth for children.  Obviously, she was never going to be sleeping in the same room with us forever, and it was only a matter of time before she’d eventually be in her own room.  This was always part of the plan.

Still, it doesn’t change the fact that it makes me all sad and emo-ey knowing my child is growing so fast and it feels like it’s only a matter of time before she’s asking me for $100 at a time so she can buy some frivolous crap, or will eventually be asking me for advice on which insurance plan she should be picking at work.

Seven months have flown by, and it’s going to be hard to not feel a little choked up when I have to pack up and move our $1,200 bassinet out of our bedroom and into storage.  As much as I’ll be glad to never stub my toes on the legs of it again soon, I’m going to miss like hell, the days of our sweet little warm baby sleeping right next to our bed.

Quarantine Hair

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The last time I got my hair cut was January 10, 2020.  Obviously, I looked up old bank statements to find out precisely when the last transaction was made to my barber, but I knew it was way back a while because I remember the disgusting growth of my hair throughout the weeks into months after my child was born and ‘Murica descended into the endless pit of pandemic.

For obvious distancing reasons, this could not be rectified at all for a period of time, and I genuinely had concerns that my barber, who is a one-person independent operation, might actually be in jeopardy during the initial onset of coronavirus and the sheer nightmare it was wreaking on small businesses across the country.  I entertained the idea of experimenting with my own clippers and perhaps doing something on my own, especially seeing as how I rarely leave the house as it is and nobody would see any abominations that might’ve happened before it could grow back in, but with a kid in tow and life getting turned upside down, my hair was barely a concern.

As some might recall, Georgia was basically the first state to rashly drop most distancing guidelines and our idiot governor was very quick to allow for haircuts to be one of the services to be allowed back, regardless of the endless spike of infection cases throughout the country.  Despite the fact that I had a green light to go get my hair taken care of, there was a large part of me that simply refused to go along with it, because I frankly did not agree with the notion that barbers and salons were “essential;” they were more catering to the vanity of people who feel the need that their fucking hair is worth putting human lives in danger.

So, for months, my hair has been growing and becoming quite unruly throughout the process.  For a while, I was still able to keep somewhat of the spiky faux-hawk look that’s kind of become my general look, but eventually the length began to defy gravity, and it started to become the long wavy mess that it becomes when it gets too long. 

A part of me was tickled at the idea of trying to grow a man-bun since full disclosure, I actually don’t mind the way a lot of them can look.  But that would likely have required longer than a year to really accomplish, and frankly when I get flustered, anxious or stressed, hair getting in my face is one of the easiest triggers of aggravation there could be, which is why I went short every single time I even thought about letting it grow out.  Plus, my hair is really thin to begin with, so even with tied up, it’s a small yield of fluff that doesn’t seem worth it.

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New Father Brogging, #019

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s days like today where I really realize that I can never be off.  I’m on paternity leave, but still managing to feel overwhelmed and like I have no time to myself, which I personally think is something that should be essential to all parents new and old.  By no means necessary am I holding it against my child for taking up so much of my time, the whole point of paternity leave is so we can spend all this time together.  But there are mornings in which she wakes up earlier than usual, and the day begins earlier than usual, and the day’s entire cycles are thrown off, and at some point in the day she’s going to be ready for bed earlier or screaming her head off because the schedule’s not lining up and then my blood pressure is probably spiking.

All throughout the day, I’m feeding her, trying to keep her entertained, as well as working on the development of certain physical milestones, such as being able to sit up on her own.  Some days she’s more tolerant of things than others, but then there are days in which she has no desire to lay on her back on her play mat, or no desire to be laying on her stomach working her little abdomen muscles, and is instead screaming her head off in dissatisfaction.  Times like this, the only thing that really placates her is being held, which I’m happy to do, but at the same time I’m wondering if I’m boring my child and wasting opportunities to be stimulating her somehow.  I can only read so many books, and mythical wife and I have agreed no screens for a while, so we’re definitely not going to be parents to plunk her in front of the television, but that limits the options for things to do.

It’s too fucking hot out still, so I’m reluctant to go out on long stroller walks with her, and I really wish that it were like October or something instead, so the weather would be drastically more pleasant to take her out in, for the both of us, and her awake windows aren’t necessarily long enough to really explore going to the pool without making her outright miserable.

So what really ends up happening is that there’s a lot of time spent doing the same things repeatedly, trying to chew up time, which makes me feel like shit that I’m sometimes counting down minutes until the next nap time so that I can get a brief reprieve to do whatever I want for at least 30 minutes, which is usually never anything particularly productive, because seldom do I do anything that feels remotely productive in the span of 30 minutes.

All this adds to my general feelings of anxiety as of late, and leading me to wonder about therapy as I had talked about in a prior post.  I want to be the greatest dad I can be, but there are times where I end up feeling like a selfish asshole for wanting time for myself, and when I get time for myself, sometimes I’ll just scroll through photos on my phone which are 95% of her, and wonder why I’m not having tremendous amounts of more fun with the real thing than wistfully staring at photographs.

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The day that everything changed forever

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

March 5th, 2020.  It was a Thursday.  I woke up at 5:58 am like I do every work day.  I brushed my teeth and went downstairs, poured myself a bowl of cereal, but instead of eating it immediately, I went to let the dogs outside, because I like my cereal a little bit soggy.  I prepared my wife’s breakfast smoothie, like I had done over the last two weeks, because she wanted to switch things up from the bacon, egg and cheese English muffins that I’d been making her every morning for the last month prior.

Mythical wife and I left for our respective jobs, and as is always the case, I went straight to the gym first.  This was a cardio day, where I spend my entire time running on the treadmill.  6.9 speed, no incline, for 20 minutes, and then I push it over the last five, before giving myself a five minute cool down and then hitting the showers.  I always think twice about what I change into after cardio days, because I tend to keep sweating even after a shower after doing cardio.

Afterward, I return my gym bag to my car and head up to the office, as is the norm every single working day.  I plop down at my desk and feel the existential dread of the inevitable emails of people pointing out my flaws as a worker or people in other departments making their problems become my problems, and then I contemplate why I stay with this company before realizing how much worse I could have it elsewhere, and then try to think positively about my reports and the people I work with as bright points in an otherwise deteriorating opinion of my job.

But more importantly, I set out to tackle my biggest concern of the day: how to get more 10K eggs in Pokémon Go.  I had made a point to use a bunch of incubators to hatch away several 5K eggs, because 5K eggs are like herpes in which you get saddled with them, and there’s no way to get rid of them, except for getting them to hatch.  They hog up your limited inventory and prevent you from getting the more coveted 10K eggs.  I had cleared up four valuable eggs slots, and wanted to figure out if there were any way to hedge my bets and get 10K eggs in their stead.  I searched on the internet and I asked the community on the work’s Slack channel because there are a few hardcore types who work for the company.

Then, I get a text message from mythical wife: she’s going to the hospital.  She’s feeling otherwise fine, but she was appearing to be leaking fluid that was in all likelihood not urine.

Uh oh.

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How to reflect on a decade

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This year ending isn’t just an ordinary ending of a year, because it’s also the end of a decade.  Naturally, a sentimental person like me tends to want to reflect on an entire decade, because much like individual years, a decade is a nice round chunk of time that one might think it would be easy to reflect upon, but in the greater spectrum, it’s ten full years we’d be trying to look back onto.  Now I like to think I have a good memory, but even without the aid of my trusty brog, it’s difficult to really look back at an entire decade.

Regardless, that’s not going to stop all the self-important jobbers of the internet who will try their darnedest to speak with authority and copy and paste all the same milestones the major news outlets will when it comes to trying to summarize and reflect upon the entire decade.  The funny thing is that most of the internet savvy generations probably aren’t that much older or younger than I am, which means that in the grand spectrums of our respective lives, we’ve only really lived through 3-4 decades, whereas I’d probably estimate that 1.5-2 of them are pretty invalid, because we’re simply not articulate and/or educated enough to have the capacity to reflect on entire decades.

So combined with the advent and growth of the internet, and the notion that everyone has a voice, I’d wager this is probably, at the very most, the second real decade of the modern high-speed internet that people really care to really reminisce about; and I’m being generous by calling it the second, because DSLs and cable internet didn’t really flourish until nearly the mid-2000’s; I couldn’t imagine people trying to use streaming, auto-refreshing social media on a 56K modem, so frankly I see this more as the first real decade that everyone and their literal mothers on the internet are going to be writing about.

Anyway, I’m going to attempt to try to recollect from mostly just my own memories, and stick to things that are more relevant to my own little world, and not the big gigantic depressing one we live in.  If I had any readers, they can google any decade in review, and probably find more worldly and probably more high-profile shit than the things I have to say about the things going on in my own little life, like the start and finish of Game of Thrones, Pokemon Go, the sad state of American politics, all the endless mass shootings, and Bill Cosby being outed as a rapist.

And the reason that I disclaim the whole “if I had any readers” because one of the most devastating things that occurred for me is the fact that despite my WordPress going online in 2010, at nearly the very start of the decade, midway through the decade my brog went down indefinitely, when my brother relocated from one part of the country to another.  A lot of hardware changes meant no more place to host my brog, and despite having the supposed backups, I simply haven’t taken the time or allocated the funds necessary to get my site up and running again.

If I were the type to do New Years resolutions anymore, I think I’d resolve to get my site back up and running again in 2020.  TBD on if that will actually occur, and frankly with the things I have on my plate going into the next decade, I don’t want to commit and then fail to deliver.

In spite of the brog blackout, that hasn’t stopped me from writing.  Even to the day my site went down, I have been writing on a fairly regular basis, taking no more than two weeks off before the internal guilt gets my fingers flying across the keys again, and I’ve got at this point, hundreds of folders of dated and timestamped Word docs, all awaiting their day in which they can be posted retroactively to a brog.

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