Tag: famiry

Happy trails, Chase the Face

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I told myself to not write anything before the fact, because that would be time spent on myself and not hanging out with the Face.  I still have no idea how people do this, where they schedule the euthanization of their pets, and then literally manage to operate their lives knowing there is a very real clock ticking down the remainder of their life.

Needless to say, the time between making the call to the vet and to the eventual saying of goodbye to my dog, has been real hazy, but fortunately for me, I’m the type of person who can throw themselves into work, just so that I don’t have to think about the anxieties of something like having to put my dog down.

Here’s a fun fact about me, Chase is actually the first dog that I’ve ever own, myself.  Every pet I’ve had in the past was either inherited, temporary or technically belonged to someone else, but not actually mine.  Chase was the first dog that I’ve ever adopted, paid for, and been solely responsible for in my entire life.

I adopted him on May 16, 2012, from the Atlanta Humane Society.  My home had always had dogs in it, and when it stopped having dogs in it, it felt like there was something missing.  I was single with no prospects at this time, so having a dog seemed like a no-brainer as far as unconditional companionship was concerned, and I wanted to adopt a rescue because I just felt that it was a more responsible thing to do, seeing as how the pet population is pretty out of control in general.

I had visited a couple of shelters leading up to eventually going to the Humane Society, and when I met Wind Chaser, I kind of felt pretty quickly that this was the dog that I wanted to adopt.  Say what you will about my general preference in dogs, maybe it’s an Asian thing or maybe it’s just me, but this maltese/shih tsu mix just kind of spoke to me.  So I paid the adoption fee in an Amazon donation, and shortened to Chase, was now my dog.

Continue reading “Happy trails, Chase the Face” →

Time to combat the dad bod

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Among the challenges that have emerged during the journey of raising a second child is that I’ve basically had to give up running.  I haven’t run since October, and it’s been way longer than that since I’d last had a formal workout in a gym.  Raising kids has a tendency to make stuff like exercise expendable in a day’s agenda, and it was bad enough I had to forfeit gyms due to pandemic, but throwing a second kid into the mix has taken running off the table for me as well over the last few months.

Needless to say, I’ve watched my weight do some rollercoaster-ing since the original lockdown occurred, and now it’s not headed in the right direction.  At first, my weight started to drop because I wasn’t eating well, often not eating enough, and with the gym off the table, muscle mass began deteriorating, so the weight from muscle mass presumably started coming off.  Eventually, running became my only real exercise, and doing cardio with no weight training meant that I could really only lose more weight, and I actually got my weight down to almost my peak high school weight, in the 170’s area, and I actually felt like I was looking pretty decent, in spite of the loss of all my gains.

Eventually #2 showed up and life went into hard(er) mode with two kids in tow.  With my job also ruining my life at this point and the challenges of raising two kids simultaneously, the running eventually ceased, and mythical wife and I more or less went into survival mode as far as our eating habits went.  We never had the time and/or energy to cook not-trash food for ourselves, and with the little time we did have, we have been eating a whole lot of garbage over the last few months.  My weight has been creeping up in this time, and it’s been especially noticeable when I’d be doing virtual job interviews and putting on dress shirts, and feeling the bulge and tightening in all the wrong places.

I normally don’t like to put too much stock into weight numbers, since when I worked weights I always spouted the whole muscle weighs more than fat thing, but with no weights in play, I knew that each and every pound that I’d gain was solely based on my own poor choices.  At the time of starting this post, I’d crept up to 192.4 lbs., and with the reality that I haven’t exercised in months, that means I’m 192.4 lbs. of fat fucking American embodiment of failure.

Anyway, my intention is to stop the bleeding, and to try and get back on the horse.  Due to the fact that #2 has been sleeping at night fairly well as of late, I had the confidence to get back on the treadmill and go for a run, the first one I’ve done since October 7th, 2021 (thanks Garmin fitness tracker).

It was the worst run I’ve had in probably 16 years, since I’m basically starting from scratch.  I was running at a pace that I had to keep slowing down .1 at a time because I was blowing out and getting gassed, and it took me nearly 40 minutes to traverse three miles.  Now I say traverse, because I definitely didn’t run the whole time, like I used to do my old workouts of non-stop running.  My pace was probably around 12 minutes a mile, a far cry from my old 9:50 pace, and I feel like I have a long way to go before I can competently get back to those kinds of splits.

But it was also the best run I’ve had in a very long time, because I actually got to do it.  And one thing I’ve always stated is that at no point ever, does running ever feel like a waste of time, and that’s absolutely one thing that I love, because I abhor feeling like I’m wasting time.

If all goes well, I’ll get back to a general routine of running every other day, which is good because running is also when I can try to catch up with watching things, since I can watch things on my iPad.

Furthermore, at the new gig, I’ve done some recon and my access to the fitness center has been activated, so I now officially have a place where I can hit some weights again, which I’m super excited to get started with.  I’m not really looking forward to the fact that I’ll be starting from scratch there, which means the inevitable soreness from doing, everything, is going to be pretty prevalent, but once it dissipates, I’m hoping to try and build back some of the muscle that I’ve clearly lost over the last two years.

It’s not the best stocked fitness center there is, but it doesn’t cost anything and has some free weights, so I can at least not feel entirely like a geriatric living on machines.  I intend to make the best of it, and declare war on the flab that I’ve amassed over the last few months, because how far I’ve fallen off the wagon is not okay, and there’s little I want more than to change that.

Changing the eating habits is probably going to be a bigger hurdle to clear, but at least if I have some exercise back into the rotation, that should help suppress some of the physical decay I’ve been allowing to happen to me.  I’d prefer to have the dad bod that actually looks like I work out occasionally versus the dad bod of the guy that’s let go of everything and will have to start buying bigger clothing because of it.

2 Under 2: A catch up on dad brog post (#078)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Hard to believe it’s been over a month since I made any additions to this series.  I suppose I felt a little guilty that I was using it pretty primarily as an arena to bitch about parenting and that’s really not what I had wanted the tag to be in the grand spectrum of things.  This isn’t to say bad things that stress me out haven’t happened, but a lot of things have occurred over the last month and a half since the last time I made an official dad brog post, and I feel like writing about them before the thoughts, words and motivation to do so vanish into the aether, never to be materialized.

It started with one of the worst nights since #2 was born, as she woke up in the middle of the night like four times, required a bottle each time to go back out, only to sleep for like, 45 minutes before blowing up all over again and completely nuking mythical wife and I out of our minds.  We got to the point where it was trial by fire, and was time to evict the little night gremlin from our bedroom, and officially placed her into hers.  The crib, camera and just about everything else had already been set up, but being right next to #1’s room, our biggest concern was that her night tantrums would run the risk of waking her sister, and two miserable kids was the last thing either of us wanted.  But seeing as how our lives were being ruined at that very moment, we pulled the trigger and kicked her out, and put her into her own room.

The rest of that particular night didn’t improve much, but we did learn that through a combination of maximum-distanced cribs between adjacent rooms and two white noise machines, it was possible for #1 to not really hear the screaming going on next door, which was a small victory in itself.  Now we knew that we could start working with #2 to sleep in her own room without risking waking up her sister, no matter how much she screamed.

And since then, knock on wood, things have been showing some nominal improvement.  I hope I’m not jinxing it by notating it, but she has been sleeping better more than she hasn’t, and it’s creating some optimism for mythical wife and I, and I’m feeling like if this improvement starts to grow, then I may begin to have the capacity to get some evening runs in on the treadmill, which I’ve been pining for like crazy, because I’ve been gaining weight in not a good way over the last few weeks and it’s feeding into my general anxiousness about life as it is.

As was the case with my first child, my mom has come down to stay with me for a few weeks in order to help out as well as bond with her grandchildren.  Unlike the first go around, I don’t have my head up my ass for most of this time, and I absolutely love having my mom around and I’m not all (as) mopey and depressed about life while she’s here, and understand that this really is the best month ever all over again.

If you want proof of the importance of early bonding, #1 has lived a life very sheltered from people in general due to the never-ending pandemic we live in, but among the few people she met within her first year of life, my mom is one of them.  Now, she is basically stranger-danger to every single person she meets, including my sister, my dad and pretty much all of my relatives that she met for the very first time this past Thanksgiving, because she never knew them when she was an infant.

That being said, one of the greatest joys of my life is seeing just how happy #1 is around my mom, and just how much she wants to be around halmoni, except in toddler speak it keeps coming out as halmi which warms me to the very core of my often hard dark heart.  She loves my mom, all of her cooking, and I’m over the moon at the help and stability she brings to our chaotic household of two kids.

But also the fact that #2 is getting the same opportunity to bond with my mom and hopefully create a similar lifelong appreciation for grandma that my first child has.  My mom’s not getting any younger, and I’m just so grateful that she’s still got enough in her to lug around a 16 lb. and growing infant, and bringing some old school parenting tactics that is getting her to take naps and take a tremendous load off of my shoulders.

I’ve never felt more productive and relaxed during the workday than I have over the last two weeks with my mom in tow, because it means my nanny doesn’t have to pull double duty, and I know both my kids are getting the individualized attention that they really need.

Finally, on the topic of work, this week marks the first time that I’ve been reporting to an office in two years.  Sure, the company has since changed, and I’m going into an office I’ve never been to before, but the point remains, I’m now getting up in the morning and driving into work, three days a week, two days from home.

Among all sorts of awkwardness and germaphobia of doing such, I had a moment on Monday morning where I had to fight a clock, which was nothing out of the ordinary, but I had to pick up #1 and give her a kiss and tell her that I had to leave for work, for basically the first time ever.  Yes, there were 1-2 days after her birth and before coronavirus shut the world down where I went into the office, but she was in the NICU, and completely unaware of the world around her that she didn’t know that I was going to work.  It was a very surreal and unusual feeling moment, but is something that will for the time being, be the norm.

And it sucks knowing that after two years, I’m away from my kids for 7-8 hours a day, because without eyes on them, I genuinely have no idea what’s really going on, save for the mercy of updates from my mom or the nanny.

However at the same time, being in the office environment and completely devoid of all the distractions of home, I’m getting more work done than ever, and I feel like I’m actually learning more about the job than I did while being full remote.  It’s a good and a bad thing because of the tradeoff with my home and kids, but still essential nonetheless in order for me to actually grow in my career.

So that is where life as dad is right now, which is to say that these dad brogs don’t always have to be so miserable and full of mirth.  At this current juncture with my mom helping out, and me not dreading my job, things are actually feeling pretty optimistic currently.  Hopefully I’m not jinxing anything by acknowledging it, but it does feel refreshing to not feel so drowning all the time, and hopefully the myths of things getting easier as the kids get older starts beginning to come to fruition.

Undefeated, no longer

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One of the many things I hate about very likely having COVID is whenever anyone insinuates that it’s remotely close to okay, because the infection numbers are so rampant that it’s almost inevitable that everyone will have caught a variant of it at some point.

My response to that is that a loss is a loss, and there’s no wiping a loss from your record, no matter how successful you are afterward.

Because I’m me, everything is an analogy to sports or wrestling, and the way I see it, everyone who has managed to evade COVID as long as I and my household had, was basically undefeated. 

Fewer things in competition are as hallowed as undefeated streaks, and there’s little more frequent narrative of a streak to inevitably break, with it growing more and more value the longer it goes unbroken. 

The ‘72 Dolphins. DiMaggio’s 56-game hit streak. Ripken’s 2,632 consecutive game streak.  The Oakland A’s 20-game win streak. The Cleveland Indians’ 22-game win streak. Goldberg’s 173-0 streak. Asuka’s 914-day undefeated streak. The Undertaker’s 21-0 Wrestlemania streak.

And in my head, every single person who has managed to go without COVID since it came into existence, y’all are also undefeated.  And up until a week ago, my wife was.  Up until more recently, so was I. 

But now, (very, very likely) not anymore. 

No, it isn’t the end of the world. My wife will recover. I will recover. We could thrive afterward. But it’s still a loss on our records, and that will never go away.  And I fucking hate it.

Back in like 1995, I was playing a season NBA Live ‘95. I wanted to have a season where the Orlando Magic went undefeated with my Penny Hardaway having 100% field goal percentage and averaging like 169 points a game and a triple-double.  I put a lot of time into it, but after about 30 games, the game apparently didn’t like such unrealistic conditions, and next thing I knew, I had a loss to the Seattle SuperSonics on my record and my Hardaway’s numbers were all tarnished. 

I quit the game.  That and-1 was a loss that I couldn’t expunge no matter if I won every single game afterward.  It ruined the ultimate goal.

Having the ‘Rona brought into my home and infecting my household makes me feel like the 2007 Patriots.  We were doing so well, only to be derailed and defeated by an unlikely party.  And the worst part is, I highly doubt the offending party realizes just how much they’ve fucked us.

Whereas they can go home to a childless environment with nobody but themselves to care to recover over, or any real demanding jobs to go to, mythical wife and I have two young kids to be mindful of, boatloads of duties that still have to get done no matter how addled we are; on top of our respective jobs.

Ask any parent how it feels to have to deny their kids an embrace that they want, and tell me that it’s still “fine” that “everyone’s going to get it eventually.”  Don’t try and calm me down with that bullshit reassurance that everyone will get it or that Omicron isn’t as lethal, because I will tell you to go fuck yourselves.

Life is already very difficult as it is right now, but to throw fucking coronavirus into our mix, sounds like a pretty crushing loss and way to end an undefeated streak in a terrible fashion.  I will always resent it, and unlike a video game, this loss on the record is permanent and there’s no turning off and quitting it.

How today should be versus how it is

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Today is my last day with *Fortune 50 company redacted*.  I’ve been here for a hair under six years, and this is the longest job I’ve ever had.  As much of a stressor and source of frustration the job had turned into over the last two years, under normal circumstances today really should be a bittersweet one, because there are still a lot of good people there, I’ve made a lot of good relationships, as I close this chapter of my career.

Instead I’m just bitter, at all the life’s circumstances that are swirling around in play right now, and I’m having a very difficult time letting go of all this anger and frustration I’m feeling. It’s tarnishing absolutely everything around in my life right now, and I’m fully aware of it and how calm people always wax poetic about how it’s never good to hold onto anger, but I can’t help it because my entire household has been compromised by one fucking person who thinks vaccination means they can resume living life like it were 2018 again and going into crowds and picking up plagues to spread unto others.

I should be excited about my new job starting up soon, but I’m not.  I haven’t even worked a day, but I’m already dreading it, because my home is still fucked with COVID, and in spite of me originally thinking I may have been asymptomatic, I’m feeling shit in my throat that is saying otherwise and I’m 99% sure I too now have dropped off the list of the undefeated but I can’t know definitively because the America is too full of stupid fucks, the disease is everywhere and I can’t get tested because all sites are slammed to oblivion and and all home tests are sold out everywhere until like 2025.

Instead of embarking on my new career path full of optimism and hope eternal, it’ll more than likely be just like a day like today: me on double duty with my girls because we can’t bring in help because of COVID and mythical wife still having to go to work because the school system is more fucked up than Heaven’s Gate and they’re more than willing to turn a blind eye to someone with a very recent exposure as long as they don’t have to go get a substitute teacher.  So I’m quadruple stressed out because I probably have the ‘Rona, I’m still on the clock with my last day of work, I’m worried for my wife, and dealing with both kids.

All because one person brought the fucking plague into my home.

I should be coasting to the finish line and feeling melancholy as I bid adieu.  I should be excited about my new job coming up. 

I should be in good spirits.

But I’m not.  I’m angry, frustrated, disappointed and disgusted.  Brain full of bile, throat full of phlegm, feeling bitter and resentful and helpless because there’s absolutely jack shit that can really be done about any of this but wait it out.Have to power through orientation and day 1 of new job while putting up a facade that everything is fine.  Have to wait out 10-14 days to hope that this Omicron bullshit works its way through my house’s residents.  Have to eventually find somewhere to test or have to pay for fucking home tests if they can even be found.

Have to keep life in fucking hold stasis for even longer, because of the conduct of someone outside my home.

Today should be a good day.  But it’s fucking not.  I can get over me getting sick, but my wife and my innocent children getting sick, is inexcusable.  It’s not fucking fair, and this is anger that I will be incapable of letting go of, for a long time. 

A kick in the balls at the buzzer

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

If you’ve never seen one of these before, no this is not a pregnancy test.  God forbid, no.  Mythical wife and I used those fancy tests that could actually run Doom on them.  Two kids was the plan and mission accomplished.

No, this is a rapid COVID-19 test, and the two lines that are shown indicate a positive, yes you have coronavirus within your system.

For all the caution, masking, distancing, isolating  and other measures mythical wife and I have done over the last 22 months, it still made it into our home.

To clarify, this is not my test, although considering someone in my household is registering a positive, it’s safe to say that we’re all exposed.  I, or anyone else in my house can’t really go get confirmed, because everyone in my area has gone bonkers and any testing sites are all slam packed not to mention it’s New Years fucking Eve.

I’m quite upset over the likely circumstances that brought this unfortunate development to light, but what’s done is done and raging about it will accomplish nothing at all.  But the result is still the same, and for the next week, maybe two, my household is going to be wonky, my wife and kids and myself will have to play spatial chess as we try to minimize together time so that those with symptoms avoid those without.

It upsets me that the world went from intelligent avoidance to eventual acceptance that everyone was inevitably going to contract coronavirus at some point, and in the case my home, it wasn’t anyone here that went out of their way to get themselves exposed.  We’ve been doing our part to minimize exposure and stay safe, but unfortunately we can’t monitor the world outside our doors and the activities that the people outside our doors are doing.

I’m just upset on varying levels and degrees right now.  There’s never any good time for anyone to get sick, but happening right on a holiday makes things a little bit harder and more inconvenient.  There is no consolation in me being negative or asymptomatic, when my wife and one of my kids are ill and addled.

My daughter registered a fever of 103F. Ordinarily, that’s a need to go to urgent care, but clinics and facilities all over are so overrun, that they do an assessment to see who’s at the greatest risk of death to determine on whether or not they should go or.  Seeing as how my daughter is acting fairly normal in spite of the temperatures, we’ve been recommended to “stick with what you’re doing – at home” instead of going to urgent care—that’s where the fuck we’re at in this state of the world right now.

Life is already fucking difficult enough as it is, but to throw coronavirus on top of it, and I’m just feeling defeated and owned and all sorts of dejected.  Things will seemingly never get easier, and all I can really feel like is the endless need to endure and be patient, instead of thrive and enjoying life more than I am.

It’s funny, because as I was finishing out my last post and ending it with how the book on 2021 was closing with that post, it was almost like tempting fate that something should occur with the one day we had left.  And much like the title of this post is called, it really does feel like a kick in the balls, right at the buzzer.

Happy fucking new year, everyone.

A 2021 year-end post

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Looking back at all my old posts on a near-daily basis through the On This Day plug-in I use, I realize that I’ve written a whole lot of year-end posts throughout the years, which makes me feel somewhat obligated to write one for this year as well.  Initially, my thought was “fuck, ain’t nobody got time for this shit,” but then I stopped to actually think about the year 2021 as a whole, and realized that making one, really shouldn’t be that difficult.

Seeing as how in my double dad duty life, I’m typically always in search of the path of least resistance, “shouldn’t be that difficult,” pleases me.

Although plenty of things happened both in my own little bubble, as well as the rest of the world, for me, the year really can be summed up pretty succinctly as a tale of two halves.  The first half of the year was spent preparing for the birth of #2, where my job made me miserable and was sucking the life out of me.  And then literally halfway through the year, #2 arrived, embarking on the second half of the year where my job still made me miserable, but it was compounded by the ever-living difficulty of parenting two under two with insufficient help.

All while the coronavirus pandemic that plagued most of 2020, still raged on throughout the entire 2021, regardless of how stupid, arrogant and ignorant the rest of the world seemed to become because we’re all a bunch of selfish fucks who can’t understand the importance of quarantine and distancing, and have to be out in public events and crowded restaurants.  Vaccinations came into fruition, and smart people got them, but it didn’t make everyone suddenly invincible, as much as it dulled the fatality capabilities of coronavirus.  But that was good enough for everyone, and I stopped pondering which was worse between the unvaccinated and the vaccinated who thought they were bulletproof.

On that description alone, it sounds like 2021 may have sucked, and I’d be the first to admit that I did have a tremendous amount of time with dark clouds over me and inside my head.  But none of it has any bearing for the love I have for my children, no matter how hard they’ve made my life in this current juncture, and no matter how much I bitch and write pissy brog posts, they are still my happiness and the greatest things to have happened to my life along with mythical wife.

This isn’t to say that the year was entirely a wash.  It’s just pretty easy to sum up in very broad strokes, that make it sound negative.  Aside from the birth of my second child, she brought baby luck into play, and despite thinking I wouldn’t ever see it in my lifetime, the Atlanta Braves won the World Series.  I mean if that isn’t the very embodiment of baby luck, I don’t know what was, the Braves had 88 wins and had no business making the playoffs, but they did, got hot, and rode the momentum all the way to the Commissioner’s Trophy.

I also got the NXT UK Tag Team replica blet, that I’ve been waiting to come into existence for three years.  That pleased me greatly and was a good way to wind down the year.

Oh, and the new job I secured with the year winding down.  A substantial raise, elevated job title, and for the inevitable future where I have to report back into an office, a shorter commute.  Plus, it gave me the long-awaited departure from my toxic current boss, and I can’t wait to get the fuck away from her.  That shit is really fantastic news too.

But because I’m a nerd that takes general notes on the happenings that interest me, the following things also occurred in 2021:

  • Baked potato worshippers basically tried to throw a coup and invade the Capitol in Washington DC in defiance of the failed 2020 election
  • I took a UX course to try and pivot my career path
  • Got vaccinated, had it kick my ass. Got a booster later in the year, which kicked my ass again
  • Tried the Dr. Now diet from My 600 Lb. Life of eating 1,200 calories a day; I lasted a week before throwing in the towel, but still lost 3.1 lbs.
  • The housing market in America went completely bonkers, and I capitalized on it by refinancing on my house to help ourselves financially
  • Alabama won its 52nd National Championship
  • Tom Brady won his 43rd Super Bowl; but first with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers
  • The Milwaukee Bucks, yes Milwaukee Bucks, won the NBA Finals
  • My upstairs HVAC died in the middle of summer and had to be replaced, causing a very uncomfortable week in August
  • And finally, speaking of deaths, notable passings in my world included: Hank Aaron, Larry King, Screech from Saved by the Bell, Jessica Walter, New Jack, Norm Macdonald, John Madden, Betty White, and most tragically, Sonny Chiba. 

But let’s not end this post talking about deaths.  As droll and depressing some of the tone of this post might’ve read, there is absolutely no reason for me to not be optimistic about 2022.  I have a new job that pays better and gets me away from the toxic situation that shit all over my 2021, and as my girls grow and develop, life should become a little simpler, and pave the way for me to get bits of my own life back, gradually, little by little.

Those things alone carry great weight, and as long as those things can progress positively, not even the dismal state of the world’s handling of coronavirus can drag me down.  And with that, I close the brog book on 2021, and hope for nothing but the best going into year 22 of fairly consistent brogging.