Tag: angst

Dad brog (#102): We’ve reached the picky eating stage

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I busted out a dad brog; the last time I had a daddy bitching session, it was because of stage of life in which kids inexplicably decide that biting each other seems like a great idea.  Not much has changed since then, #1 is still biting her little sister and unfortunately #2 has learned how to bite just as #1 had learned from shitbag in her pre-K, but at least I can take solace in the fact that there haven’t been any biting incidents at school that requires mythical wife or I to have to sign any waivers of acknowledgement of said bitings.

No, today’s daddy bitching session is going to be about how my kids have entered a picky eating phase, to which if I’m writing about it, means it drives be bonkers.  And I unfortunately use the terminology “kids” as in plural, as in both my kids, because both of my kids are being picky, by virtue of #1 is the one truly having entered the picky eater stage, but #2 being the younger sibling that copies just about everything her big sister does, has decided to be picky about certain foods too.

It makes little sense to me too, because prior to entering this stage, #1 was a voracious eater whom I applauded being good at eating just about everything other than eggs, products with egg in it, because she’s intolerant, and bell peppers, which are the foods eaten on the same day with eggs to which she’s mentally deduced are just as bad as eggs are, which I can understand because there’ve been foods in my life that I’ve avoided from a bad association.

But she would eat just about everything else we put in front of her; meats, veggies, dairy, American, Korean, Italian; there was little limit to what she would not be willing to power through at least one meal.  As most parenting resources state, variety isn’t just the spice of life, it’s also the building blocks to prevent kids from getting picky, so they don’t fall into the pigeon hole of where they’ll ultimately only want to eat chicken tenders and pizza.

Now though, over the last few weeks, I’d say about 66% of the food I make and present to my kids is usually met with disgust, disinterest, and usually the words “I don’t like this” before #1 decides to eat slower than a Galapagos turtle or just not eat outright, with her little sister soon to follow regardless of how she actually feels about the food herself.

I’m sure this is a shocker, but let me tell you just how infuriating this is to me.  I bust my ass and spend a lot of time in my life cooking and making food for the girls.  I don’t cook for myself or mythical wife a fraction of what I cook for the kids, so when they turn their nose up at most everything I make, or refuse to eat something without trying something, it basically makes my head explode.

And when they’re sick, which is often, then the things they touch and pick at or spit out, I can’t save this stuff, and then I have to throw it out.  For a person who’s as anti-food waste as I am, this kills me every time I have to do it, and I’m left feeling ragey and pissed at my kids for making me have to waste food.  I know it’s not their faults and this is a phase that the vast majority of children go through, but it doesn’t make it any less maddening for those who have to go through it.

All I can really hope is that this really is just a phase, and will eventually pass.  Because I’m developing a complex at meal time, because my kids pretty much hate everything I make for them, where any successful meals feel like scoring a goal in the World Cup, but the vast majority of the time, the reactions are tepid and leave me feeling rejected and inadequate as a parent, which is kind of a metaphor in itself of raising kids.

Permanent damage

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

An email late Sunday night came from #1’s preschool, stating that someone in my my child’s class had just tested positive for COVID.  They were at school on Friday same as my daughter.  But not only was my child exposed, this past Friday was also a special day in which several of the classes had a singing day where they all got together, and parents were invited to watch the children participate on the stage.

So instead of one child exposing a classroom of 13 kids and three adults, this child instead exposed four classes, all their teachers, and all parents who came, including me.  Despite the fact that I still mask up in public places and large groups of people, this doesn’t change the fact that not just one of my kids, but both of them, since I had brought #2 with me, were exposed on top of the nearly 60~ish people that were present on Friday.

Seeing as how #1 was already showing some sneezing, coughing and runny nose that I originally thought was just another run of the mill cold that she seems to get every single month, now it’s probably most likely COVID, but it’s something that has yet to be determined, because trying to swab her nose and run a rapid test is about as difficult as Left 4 Dead on expert mode, and two days past exposure, it’s already too late to try and protect ourselves in the house.

Another email Monday morning confirmed the spread, as both of #1’s teachers had tested positive and class was effectively cancelled, which was fortuitous considering we had already kept #1 home for safety purposes to begin with.

This is the world we live in now, where COVID is still all over the fuckin place, and the vast majority of people just accept the fact that everyone is bound to get it at some point, and they’re somehow okay with that.

And then there are people like me who get pissed and get mad over the spread of a plague that has basically killed six million people since 2020, and we’re the ones told to get over it or accept that it was bound to happen, when people continuously spread the disease like it were the common cold.

No, I won’t accept it or get over it.  I will always be upset, I will always be mad, and I will always be frustrated with how the world is being so inconsistent and cavalier about coronavirus.  And even more so when it afflicts my family, because people are so stupid, so selfish and so ignorant to the fact that we live in a world where a potentially lethal virus is just floating all over the place and we’re okay with not masking up and protecting ourselves because it’s uncomfortable or it’s hot or fogs up our glasses when we wear them.

I’m the one who has to disclaim that I’m the social outlier these days, that I don’t feel comfortable in crowds or clam up when I see anyone sneeze or cough out in public because I want to be safe or keep my kids safe.  And yet, I’m the one who has to be concerned about the optics of not wanting to go into the office or into a crowded conference room, because despite the fact that people and businesses all like to talk a big game about how they take health and safety seriously, hardly anyone is actually demonstrating it in their actions.

It’s frustrating all the people and business out there that pretend like they care about people who try to take care of themselves or their families, but there are all sorts of inadvertent consequences to those who actually do.  It’s frustrating being an outlier who still takes things seriously, and being seen as a paranoid pariah instead of someone who is just trying to be safe.

I think this is what we call some permanent damage on account of the pandemic, and I don’t believe I will ever be able to readjust to a life being like it was pre-COVID, and it’s frustrating that I’m the one who is treated like the weirdo.  Because I value safety.  Seems legit.

Dad Brog (#099): The Worst Parenting Product Ever

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Throughout the last two-plus years, mythical wife and I have come across plenty of products that weren’t that useful, and/or drawn frustration from mostly me.  Things like wipe warmers, butt paste applicators, the 78 different types of sippy cups that mythical wife purchases despite my protests that we don’t need any more god damn cups, can fall into the category of being useless.

Our ridiculously expensive double stroller has been a tremendous source of frustration for me throughout the journey of parenthood, because it was ridiculously expensive, but it’s also absurdly cumbersome, heavy, doesn’t fit into my car at the same time as an extra human being, and taking the thing down to Disney is a sure-fire trip-ruiner based on how often I have to break it down to fold because it’s either fold it to ride a shuttle or a Skyliner or fold it to put into the car to drive somewhere with.  But at least in spite of it all, it provides massive utility as the sturdy, smooth-rolling stroller to both my kids, when we need to roll them around.

But this past weekend, I discovered the absolute worst parenting product we’ve ever had the misfortune of being duped into spending our money on: the SlumberPod.

It’s basically a supposedly portable blackout tent that you put over the sleeping peripheral of a child, so that they can sleep in simulated darkness.  It has vents and even a clear plastic compartment to tuck a camera into so that you can monitor your child still.  The sales pitch of this product is that it’s perfect for you to use in hotels or anywhere where you have to shack up with your children in the same room, and you want to be able to sleep in the dark but not have to give up the convenience of lights outside of it.

But for my kids?  Colossal failure.  The SlumberPod seems like a great way to inflict trauma or cultivate claustrophobia to my kids.  We got it for #2 originally, because she typically needs a nice dark, isolated setting to sleep optimally, and sharing a hotel room with her seemed like a daunting task.  When we finally got it set up and put over her pack and play, it lasted all of two seconds before she was screaming bloody murder, and it didn’t even make it ten minutes before we realize that this wasn’t going to work.

Alternatively, we tried it on #1, to see if it would prove useful with her, but not only did she hate it as much as #2 did, she had the capability to fuck around with the camera compartment, reach outside of her crib to monkey around with the sound machine, and was just overall physically capable enough to jostle the entire thing to where we I threw up my hands and declared this the worst parenting product we’ve ever had.

Sure, there is no one-size-fits-all parenting product that is guaranteed to work on every single kid out there.  That’s not entirely why I’m so disenchanted with the SlumberPod.  My primary point of frustration with the SlumberPod, aside from its bullshit $170+ price tag, is the fact that it’s pitched like it’s this easy-to-assemble jesus tent that will help put your kids to sleep, but the reality is that you basically need the surface area of Lambeau Field in order to have adequate space to put it together.  Works kind of counter to the idea of assembling and using these in hotel rooms with limited space.

It’s a Christmas miracle that I didn’t, or my kids didn’t get hurt by one of the bullshit tension rods that requires an unnerving amount of bend in order to assemble, and I was afraid that one wrong move would result in a violent whiplash of a metal rod whipping the shit out of either myself or one of my kids.  It would’ve probably been violent enough to slash out an eye on a human being, and probably rip a massive scar into drywall.

It’s definitely not easy to assemble, and once it is, it’s this giant fucking blob of useless that you don’t want to break down on a daily basis and have to wrestle with it all over again the following day, so you leave it assembled and let it take up a giant chunk of space in your limited hotel room’s real estate.

And when it doesn’t work on top of the aggravation of having to assemble it, it’s a really easy call to make that this is basically the most useless and regrettable parenting product ever purchased.  Basically, my prevailing thought after having to put up with this failure, is that if you don’t want to have to deal with the stress and struggle of having to share space with a child that requires adequate darkness in order to sleep, don’t fucking travel with them.  At least it wouldn’t cost $175 and an entire weekend of sleepless nights because the kids are struggling to sleep in a shared space far from home.  But fuck the SlumberPod, I hope I’ll be able to recoup anything for it, because I sure as shit don’t want to keep this in my house full of kids stuff any longer.

Don’t even want to consider the meanings behind these dreams

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been having some weird dreams.  And when I say weird, I really mean more like fucked up, in the sense that in these dreams, there’s killing going on.  Someone is out to kill me.  So I feel the need to kill them first.  People getting killed.  Animals getting killed.  Guns.  Strangulation. 

And with each time that a dream like these occur, I wake up feeling relieved that they were just dreams, and I don’t even try to rationalize the notion that dreams are our brains trying to tell us things, because in no world do I want dreams about killing things to have any modicum of involvement in how I operate my life.

But the last dream I had, was also the most vivid one, the one that stood out the most, and the one that prompted actual writing to occur.

I’m in a zombie game.  Basically I’m in Left 4 Dead’s interface, but in this particular zombie universe, the rules are slightly different.  Mainly, those who become infected, do not immediately have a fairly uniform amount of time before they inevitably turn into zombies themselves.  Not all of them.

In this dream, for those who become infected, there is no uniform amount of time left before someone becomes a zombie themselves.  For some people, it might be fairly instantaneous, but for some, it could be a few hours, the following morning, even a week, or even a month.  Maybe longer. 

Regardless, I imagine anyone could see the complications in such a mechanism there, because in all other forms of zombie literature and media, infection usually has a pretty predictable mortality clock on it, ranging from a few hours to several days, depending on the number of bites they’ve incurred.  So corresponding characters typically know that their time with the condemned is limited, and to start making peace with them while they’re still with the living, before having to make the most difficult act ever.

But what if that predictable timeline didn’t exist?  What if when someone was infected, nobody had any idea of when they were going to turn?  Could those bitten, simply continue to live their lives among the living until they would spontaneously expire?  Could those around the bitten cope with living among bitten people, knowing that they could spontaneously drop and return as zombies and threaten their lives?

And that’s where this dream had me placed.  In a zombie-infested world, among the living, several of whom were bitten, and were, at least in this particular shelter, being allowed to live out.  Me wrestling with my own thoughts and concerns over personal safety and the safety of others.  Struggling to accept the fact that there were people who were on death’s door, among us, still lucid, still alive, and still helping as best as they could.

I don’t recall in the dream having to murder a living person, which I suppose is something to be relieved about, but it also didn’t end without me having to pull the trigger a few times either.  Someone had dropped and was convulsing, and in a zombie world, decisions need to be made quick, so I brought up my shotgun, and it was the hardest decision in the world I’d ever made.  The game itself seemed to have a last second are you sure function that effectively stopped my first trigger pull, forcing me to put something over the person’s head before making a kill shot.

But because of the way things were, I’m left wondering if I made the right choice.  What if they were an epileptic and were just having a seizure or something?  What if they weren’t actually turning right then and there?  Why the fuck am I having so many dreams lately of killings going on?

My alarm goes off, and it’s time to let the dog out.  Unlike most mornings, I’m not happy to be woken up, but I am relieved to get out of yet another fucking weird killing dream, and hope this doesn’t mean anything in the grand spectrum of things.

Dad Brog (#097): A brog-worthy bad morning

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

My current routine is to wake up at 7:10 am, every single day of the week, regardless of if I have to work or not, with the objective of having the kids’ breakfast ready to serve by the time I get them at anywhere from 7:30–7:45.  Preferably with me waking them, because if they wake up on their own, it usually means something is wrong, and by something is wrong I mean that one of them has probably shit themselves.

Believe me, there have been mornings where it has been both, and those are wonderful times.

However the thing is, every single morning is kind of a race against a clock that I can’t see and know how much time is left until zero, where, usually #2, wakes up on their own.  Which is never peaceful, or cute babbling on the baby monitor, resulting me in wistfully looking at my youngest with love and admiration.  No, it’s always with crying, and mornings like today, instantly going all the way to 100 on the rage scale within seconds of waking up.

I try not to compare my kids, but it’s unmistakable that on #2’s character sheet, emotional sensitivity is at a 100 out of 99 and that she is without any question, a massive crybaby.  Everything is worth going nuclear over, everything results in screaming, snot and tears, and the only things that can quell them is if one of her parents drops everything they’re doing and probably need to be doing, and picking her up for some snuggle therapy.

Usually at this time, #1 either gets jealous and starts blowing up herself, or she’s capitalizing on my inability to do anything else and runs off and gets into some mischief that I’m put into a Sophie’s choice of stopping my eldest from some form of damage versus allowing the crying machine to explode again, with ten times out of ten usually resulting in putting #2 down to where she blows back up again to stop #1 from hurting herself or hurting something important.

By the time I get the two of them in their high chairs with food placed in front of them, I’m already burned out because my daily allotment of patience has been reduced to a stump over 30~ straight months of waking up to deal with the first shift of parenting, and I’m typically on the verge of a breakdown and chanting to myself that I don’t have enough help and I don’t know what can be done about it and that for just one fucking day, want to not have to do, this.

Continue reading “Dad Brog (#097): A brog-worthy bad morning” →

Dad Brog (#096): Raising children without help is impossible

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Now I’m sure any long-time parent who reads such a statement is probably like, duh no shit, and I’m not going to refute it reads as one of the more obvious statements that can probably be said, and most definitely nothing I haven’t already said in my life a hundred-fold by now.

But in my latest moment of despair, where I was trying to wrangle my two kids, where #1 is sick and screaming for attention, while #2 was getting into shit she shouldn’t be getting, all while I was logged into a virtual meeting at work because I’m still on the clock, but completely incapable of paying any attention to it, and the sitter had already gone home for the day because all paid help watches the clock, I just stood there for a few seconds, and the words formulated in my head, at just how shitty things can be sometimes and that I’m living at a very unsustainable pace, way longer than I probably should have, seeing as how my resolve crumbles so frequently sometimes.

All I could really think about was just how impossible it truly is to raise children without help, not just from a metaphorical standpoint, but how it truly is from all other ways, especially in this current state of the world where inflation is murder, greed and white people are endlessly fucking the country and America is still ‘Murica.

Like you hear about couples where one person quits their job to be a full-time parent; yeah, that shit is impossible now, and probably wasn’t really that ideal in any previous points in time, because unless one half of a couple makes a ridiculous, white man amount of money, let’s just say $175-200K plus annually, most American parents probably can’t afford to raise a child on top of surviving in a middle-class or better setting.

Everything is far too expensive for the average parents to reduce to a single income without some tremendous pain, and expect to live life remotely comfortably.  Therefore, they must both work.  At least that’s the case between my wife and I, our combined income isn’t that bad, but it’s completely dependent on both of us working full-time in order to make ends meet, however that results in us requiring child care, which quite literally half of my paycheck goes towards every single month, because child care is fucking expensive and not at all that great, but still a very necessary evil to have to endure.

And let’s not even really bother to analyze single parents, they most certainly need all the help they can get, be it childcare or free care from family.

The point is, as obvious as it is, more so put out in writing, is that it is truly impossible for any family unit to raise a child without any help.  It’s often popularly said that it takes a village to raise a kid, to which truer words can’t really be said, but it just isn’t possible for those to do so without said village.  Logistically, mathematically, financially, there just isn’t a way to do it without some third party hands getting involved somewhere along the way.

Dad Brog (#095): An unsustainable pace

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I write because I can’t really talk to anyone anymore.  My wife doesn’t need to hear any of these diatribes, and frankly I really don’t think anyone can relate, as ludicrous as it sounds to single myself out as a special little snowflake in a world of several billion.  And if anyone can, I don’t know them so it might as well not be anyone. 

My family that are all parents and have multiple kids, the age gap between us all is practically an entire generation.  Of all my parenting friends, almost none of them have more than one kid.  The ones that do, their kids are spaced out in age way greater than mine.  And there’s nobody else I know with two kids born during coronavirus-era as close apart as mine.  I’m not trying to say that my problems are greater than anyone else’s like some sadistic internet pissing contest, but COVID really is this difficulty multiplier that stands at the end of every factoid, ready to make everything worse than it might have been for anyone else who didn’t have to deal with things during a pandemic.

But I have been living my life at a fairly unsustainable pace for a while now, as far as keeping my shit together goes.  I try really, really hard on a daily basis to do such, and I have good days, but I definitely am the first to admit that I have some bad ones too, where it just feels like a lot of shit just piles up all at once, and I’m left standing there while my kids are screaming, clocks are ticking, I’m late for school drop off which makes me later for work, and there’s no end in sight.

I’m 99% sure my eldest is sick again.  There’s a small chance that she just never recovered from the cold she had a week ago, but the frequency in which she’s sneezing and her nose is runny again leads me to believe that she’s just plain fucking sick again, which means some more fuckface parents of the kids in my daughter’s school are continually sending their kids to school with plagues.

The problem with that, aside from their selfish and inconsiderate behavior that I can only hope for some divine retribution for, is that when #1 gets sick, it’s basically a death sentence for #2 that she is going to get sick 2-3 days later.  And then my sitter will nope out because they don’t want to get sick which means I’ll have to call in sick because mythical wife’s career is rigid and can’t call in at the drop of a hat, which makes me look even flakier and unreliable, and I have to deal with days of dad double duty, and working after hours.  And then it’s back into the toilet bowl of despair of how much life can suck because of the actions of other people.

Days like today, I’m just burnt out.  I’ve been on baby duty for what feels like an endless length of time, due to the fact that we had two kids in such rapid succession.  #2 is always wanting to be near big sis, and moving them apart is like trying to keep magnets apart, based on how she will rubber band back to wherever #1 is, accelerating the inevitability of transmission.  #1 is frustrated and fussy because she’s sneezing like crazy and her nose is running like a faucet and doesn’t understand why I have to try and isolate her on the other side of the room but can’t trust her with markers or Play-Doh, and I just want to jump off a bridge.

I haven’t had a break in a long time.  A day in which I can wake up on my own without any alarms or dog or kids, no long-ass car rides to retrieve kids, or anything that’s remotely time sensitive.  A single day where I can wake up as not a dad, have a day where I can leisurely do the shit I want to do without any clocks looming over my head, and have the ability to sit and stare at a wall if I wanted to.  There have been some mini-breaks, some afternoons or evenings without the kids, but I’m still having to do one of the above tasks on them regardless.

I just can’t recharge or unwind, and haven’t been able to for well over a year now, and I don’t know if that’s really unhealthy or uncommon, or if I’m just being a melodramatic parent who needs to be made aware that there are millions of dads in similar boats that I just don’t know personally.  But today is definitely one of those days where just enough bullshit has been added to my bags to drag me under and leave me feeling drowning again.