2 more ways to fail at dadding

Dear j,

The life of a parent is being worried about when you’ll screw up next. You fear that one of those goofups will result in your kids losing a finger, a tooth or an eye. Sometimes, no matter how much you worry, one of your fears becomes true anyway. Worst yet, sometimes you surprise yourself by screwing up in a spectacular way you never anticipated. And that is scarier. Because that means there was more you didn’t worry about. And when you look back, you can try to laugh ha… he… hoo… whew… because oh you know all the ways that could have been much worse.

A few examples for you. Exhibit 1:

One of your friends’ dad manages the recreation community at the local university. They invited us for his 4th birthday and encouraged us to make use of the pool. It was a new center, built 5 years ago exclusively for faculty and staff to enjoy.

I lowered you into the pool. It was 1-2 feet deep. I turned away for a few seconds to ease myself in. It was a sunny afternoon. The water was not cold but not too warm either. I leaned back to relax against the wall. When I turned back to check to see what you kids were up to, j, you were face down in the middle of the pool, kicking. I shot forward and picked you up and you gasped at me with big eyes. You weren’t sure if you should be scared or if you should cry. In the end you just said, “Daddy? Daddy…? I’m cold?” I thought, “Um. nope. But good news is it looks like you’re fine.” Mama did warn me that you are a fish. You love your swimming classes. The difference was, at the swimming classes someone always has a hand under you. So you jumped right in like you always do at class, expecting not to sink.

Exhibit 2:

We were playing in the front yard of Bing. J, I was there for your birthday celebration. You wanted me to spin you. Then j wanted a spin. Then I tumbled J. Then j you wanted to flip. So I flipped you. I put you on my shoulder, then tucked your head and flipped your legs over to sommersault you down. We did this a couple times already, but this time you decided not to meet the ground with your legs. I just assumed you would so I let go. You kept rotating and your face met the ground. Thud.

🙁

It was pickup time so all the parents were with their kids. You cried and touched your cheek. I could feel them staring. You pushed me away and asked for mama. I was embarassed. I could almost hear the whispers, “Look at that dad. How irresponsible. Is he her father? I hate that we have to hang out with common people.”

OOoookay. Let’s talk about something else, like…

Why swimming is a great low-impact exercise. We’ve all heard it before. But as I was swimming at that pool party I thought of one benefit no one else mentions. It’s the reason why I love to swim whenever I get the chance. It never fails to melt the knots in my lower back, hips and joints. That’s why at the party I decided — screw it — I’m going to be antisocial and ditch the party. So after playing with you kids for a while, mama took you guys away to dry you, feed you and mingle. And I cannonballed into the deep end.

Here’s how I usually spend my time at the pool. First, I do some slow laps. Mostly frontcrawls. I try to glide through the water with as little muscle as possible. There’s a rhythm with swimming. You have to relax to find it. If you muscle it like a meathead, you not only waste energy, you often go slower. You go fastest when you’re riding the wave, and you’re slowest when you’re producing negative interferece with the waves. When I frontcrawl, I like to breathe on one side, swim 3 strokes, then take a breath on the other side. I alternate left and right breathing like this. I started practicing doing this years ago, because I found breathing on one side made my strokes lopsided. Why 3 strokes? Because breathing every 2 strokes is too choppy, and I’ll run out of breath if I wait 4 strokes. So I like 3. It feels like a good rhythm, and breathing on both sides forces me to stay neutral while I roll side to side to breathe. But I’m hardly a competitive swimmer so I can’t say this makes you a better swimmer or go faster. It’s just what makes me happy.

Anyway, when I start feeling good about myself, I try to go faster. That’s when my body starts to remember what it’s like to breathe in the water again — i.e., the rhythm of inhaling briefly and exhaling continuously. When your body remembers the rhythm, it relaxes and stops freaking out thinking you’re about to die. You start to need shorter breaks between laps. That’s when I start tossing in breaststroke laps.

To be honest, I’m usually feel a little embarassed to do the breastroke, because I feel it’s so flashy. Nothing beats the butterfly in flashiness, but the breaststroke, when swum right, is right up there in showboating territory. You might see most people swim it with just their heads out of the water, like a hippo. But this is not the right way. In fact, watch swimming in the Olympics and you’ll notice a difference in physique between specialists. You’ll see that the swimmers with the broadest shoulders, widest lats and biggest chests are breaststroke swimmers. That’s because the right way to swim it is to hurl your upper torso almost completely out of the water. This minimizes drag when you’re recovering. As you leap over the surface, shrug your shoulders and squeeze your elbows together. Then spear forward with your next kick. It takes a lot of energy to do it right. And it looks strange to almost everyone else. When I blow bubbles at the end of a breastroke lap, I sometimes see parents point me out to their kids. Meanwhile, I’m not that good so a good swimmer might scoff at my bad technique. I wish I could tell them, “No, don’t look at me, I don’t really know what I’m doing!” But what should I do? Swim the bad way so I don’t get looks?

Anyway, one of two things happens. I run out of steam or I start feeling too self-conscious. That’s when I drift over to the deep end for some games. The pool we were at had a nice deep end. I think it was 12 feet. When I stretched my toes down with my hands still touching the surface, it felt like I had another 3 feet before I could touch the floor. I tried diving to touch it. I barely got half way before I freaked out and shot back to the surface. The pool floor taunted me and so it officially became a challenge. I was going to touch the floor before I left.

I knew there were two things I needed to do. 1) I needed to fill my lungs with more air. And, most importantly, 2) I needed to calm down. The only way I was going to sink 12 feet and float 12 feet back up was by relaxing. Muscling it wastes too much energy and burns too much Oxygen. I needed to conserve as much O2 and energy as I could to get down and up ad efficiently as I could. So I started practicing.

I started at the edge of the 8′ lane, which sloped down to the 12′ end. Deep breath, plunge, exhale. At first, I couldn’t even touch the 8′ part. I’d get to 7′, stretch my toes, then freak out that the bottom was still 1 foot away. Then I’d kick furiously back to the surface. But I knew I could do it. So I kept trying. Relax… I kept reminding myself.

Pretty soon I was working my way down the slope. I blew bubbles all the way down, touched the floor, then kept exhaling all the way up. And for the deepest part, I did the trick that freedivers do. I can’t remember what it’s called. But it’s almost like cheating, if all you have to go is 12 feet. Anyway, what you do is you spend a minute taking many fast breaths at the surface. This saturates your body with Oxygen and flushes out CO2. Then, just before you dive, you inhale as deep as you can. Then you inhale again. And again, until your chest is about to pop. Then you exhale, relax and let your body sink. Sometimes I move my arms from my sides to the top of my head to push myself down.

Little fishies. When you were done with lunch you jumped back in. J you complained about the water non stop. But you wanted to come in anyway. I pulled under your armpit and to get you to relax I said pretend to be a pleisiosaur. You have 2 flippers in the back, 2 flippers in the front. Use your flippers. You said, “I’m pushing water!” j, on the other hand… you’re a fish. I put J’s tiger floaties on you and you looked like a duckling floating around on the surface. You stared at me and it looked like you were thinking about how interesting it felt to float. Then you paddled to hunt for all the black floats on the lane divider. I felt embarassed when the dad of the birthday boy came to get us for the cakesong. I had been missing all party and playing at the pool and now I was going to eat their cake.

Balance. I think why swimming is good is it forces you to balance. You can’t muscle it. Your body floats a certain way, and the way to find neutral is to relax. Neutral is the stable state. Any energy you spend is off the weightless neutral zone, so that’s why it’s low impact. But more importantly, it’s self-correcting. I’m becoming a fan of self-correcting exercises lately. What I call “self-correcting” are exercises where you cannot help but do it the right way. For example, if you lifted weights, there are many things you can do to “cheat”, and use too much of your lower back, or your arms, or whatever. We’re so good at fighting gravity that we can destroy our bodies trying.

Swimming, on the other hand, doesn’t let you cheat. If you aren’t neutral, you’ll roll over to your side or to your back. If your body isn’t relaxed and straight, you won’t float as you glide forward. You can flex your lower back or your chest all you want, but the water won’t care because how much water you displace stays the same and you still float the same. You’re forced to relax and find your balance.

I think I need to start using goggles though. After that last swim my eyes burned and my vision was blurry. I couldn’t make enough tears to clear it. Something in the pool messed me up. I flushed it with tons of tap water. Even that burned for a few minutes. I kept flushing until it stopped burning. It was still blurry and burny as I drove home. I probably shouldn’t have driven.

Scooter I had a lot of fun on your scooter the other day, for the same reason of ‘balance’. (We gave it to you for your birthday.) My legs have been withering away from lack of use. Specifically, the meat around my left (non-dominant) knee. Squats and weights that I’ve been doing don’t help much, because it’s too easy for my brain to cheat with my dominant leg or more dominant muscles. And when your body cheats, all your joints don’t track right and your hinges don’t line up.

The scooter was great because… First, it’s “self-correcting.” You have to balance your weight on one leg over two wheels. The leg on the platform has to work to stabilize the bumps and lateral movement, and hinge up and down as you drop the other leg to scoot. But again, since you’re forced to balance, your knee is forced to track the right way. If you don’t, you’ll tip over before you can hurt your knee. So I put my left leg on the platform to give it a workout. I felt the burn within minutes. The muscles and ligaments around my knee got warm, loose and pumped. I got off a few times to test it on the ground and it felt strong and tracked better than it did in forever.

Supertooth. Finally done with the dentist (for now). Roots canaled and crowned. It feels stronger than my other teeth, like I have a rock-crusher in the back of my mouth that can’t feel any pain. I actually had two that needed work but I only fixed one. This helps with the bills. There’s a limit on how much insurance will pay per year. Just one tooth put me over my yearly limit, so I’m hoping the 2nd one holds together until next year.

But you know what? It wasn’t as bad as I thought. It took 3 visits. The first visit was to eradicate my roots and nerves and build the post. The most interesting part of that visit was the dentist frowning and squinting into my mouth. He said, “Chlorine,” without looking up and his assistant passed him a giant syringe. The room smelled like a swimming pool and he said to me with a smile, “The infection is bad.” He said “Chlorine” and “infection” 3 more times over the next hour before he felt he could close the hole. All I thought was, “Take as long as you need… I don’t want to come back here and drill into there again.” He was meticulous, skillfully manipulating tiny tooth things into my molar with tooth tweezers. Each time, they blasted me with x-rays to make sure things were perfect. I’m always worried about why they give me a lead vest but not a lead helmet. I always try to ask for one and say, “That’s the most important part.”

The 2nd visit is to make a mold of my teeth. I’d say this is the worst of the 3. They put trays in your mouth and make you bite playdoh. The molds are sent to a lab that scans them and CADs out a perfect replacement. I asked the dentist to implant a chip with bluetooth while he’s there but he refused. They sent me back with a temporary cap. The 3rd visit was to snap on the super duper stone crusher. It was surprisingly unimpressive for how much money I paid for it. It just looked like a tooth. I was trying to think of what else we could’ve done to it to make it cooler. I mean, if you’re going to replace something, you’d want an upgrade, right?

Anyway, the lesson is take care of your teeth. I neglected them through college and this is my punishment. I just hope the other molar that needs fixing does me a favor and holds together until next year, when my insurance budget resets. The other molar is scary because it was almost invisible on the x-ray. Which meant that it’s almost completely dead.

The dental procedures themselves weren’t too bad. It was the sitting there not doing anything for hours while they pried and drilled and cut that killed me. But in the end I’m glad I got it done. That infection sounded bad (I wish I had a mirror to see it). So I’m glad it’s all cleaned up now. I noticed my throat doesn’t feel as phlegmy or hoarse. Remember how I said my throat was always scratchy? I think the infected molar could have been the culprit.

OK. Serious time. We got news about something worse than a root canal. It happened to someone close to mama and I want you to listen closely. We always think these things only happen to other people but I’m telling you this story so you can see how it can happen to you too — if you’re not careful. And it’s a reminder that no matter how trustworthy someone appears on the outside, PEOPLE ARE ANIMALS.

Mama found out like how we all find out bad news. She answered the phone, said, “WHAT” and disappeared for a long time. You two asked me what happened and I said I don’t know. I said it sounds like an emergency, but I don’t know what. When I ran into mama a few times the rest of the night, she was distant, quiet, sad and angry. After we put you to bed, she was back on the phone, in a corner, crying and trying not to talk too loudly.

I waited for her to tell me whenever she was ready. I figured if she hadn’t said anything yet, it probably wasn’t directly related to me. Then she told me about her old best friend’s “boyfriend”. He raped her. She takes sleeping pills for her insomnia and he took advantage of her. She only found out one night because she woke up. There’s more. She takes medication, and he mixes weed in her breakfast. She had told him that she can’t mix weed, other drugs or alcohol with her medication. She’s broke because he drained her bank account. But the reason she called mama was because she came back from the hospital. He had thrown her around her apartment. I rarely see so much anger in mama’s eyes. He threw her on her bed and broke her bed. He threw her into the dresser and broke the dresser. He threw her against the wall and broke her mirror. He threw her onto the floor and kicked her. Then he beat her with a hammer.

“Did she call the cops?” I asked. Mama said they arrested him. The sick part is her “security guard” and her neighbors all heard her screaming but did nothing. She called the cops herself and they picked him up and tossed him in jail. His father used to be a lawyer who represented drug dealers. He was released on bail with a GPS ankle tracker. She’s worred that those things are apparently not hard to dismantle.

My first concern was her safety. If the hospital released her the damage must not be too bad. It could easily have been worse. I’m surprised nothing was broken. A hammer? He could have killed her. And now she was back at her apartment alone. She can’t drive. She had to testify in court in a wheelchair. That was 72 hours ago. She hadn’t slept in 72 hours.
She begged mama not to tell her parents, like she always does when she gets into trouble. But this is the most serious trouble she’s gotten into.

For the next couple of hours into the early morning, mama stayed on the phone to make sure she was okay. She talked suicide once. Mama talked her out of it. And to top off the night, you peed the bed. Mama helped you into our bed. I got you out and made you pee so you didn’t wet our bed too. Then I went to soak up as much pee as I could with a towel. How do you fucking clean a mattress? I tried to dilute/wipe/dry with the towel. When I got tired of that I doused it with Nature’s Miracle. We have that handy because of Kimi. I let the chemicals neutralize whatever I missed.

The next day mama randomly kissed me and said “Thank you for being awesome. I said but I didn’t do anything. She said “exactly.”

A short story about how Pseudoscience can kill a kid’s curiosity in Science. I heard this from an interview with Penn Jilletteh He said he used to love Science and Math as a kid, until one day a magician on TV tried to sell him an ESP kit, claiming it was real science.
He didn’t know any better, and his parents didn’t know any better. So every night his parents humored him with his ‘mind-reading’ experiments, but he was embarassed it didn’t work. He had made his lower-middle class family buy a piece of junk, because they thought it was “educational” or “science”. One day Penn stumbled upon a magic book at the library. It described how tricks worked, and it showed how the “ESP” trick worked. Penn was furious because he knew then that he was conned. But because he didn’t know any better as a kid, and because his parents didn’t know enough to explain the truth, he came to the wrong conclusion. He concluded that scientists (and all adults) could not be trusted. Because he believed the TV magician was really a ‘scientist’ as he claimed. And if scientists can lie to you and con you into buying junk, who can you trust? Penn went from an A student who loved science and math to flunking out of school. This is why I think any magician who insists that magic is real (Uri Geller) is despicable. Same with anyone who hawks pseudoscience when he/she knows it’s phony (Dr Oz). I mean if you’re stupid and you can’t tell the difference, you can’t do anything about that. But if you know better and yet you con vulnerable people with lies… give them false hope or cause them to ignore proper treatment for holy water, you’re scum.

Beware of people who are too sure of their answers. Real science always questions and always challenges old theories and always discovers new answers. Pseudoscience is when people give simple answers to difficult questions; and they snuff anyone who challenges their answers.

New developments

J you’ve trying hard to be funny. You like to make us laugh. When you hear something we laugh at, you try to make us laugh by saying it again and again. We have to tell you to stop because you get annoying.

Bedtime dream routine.
J: “I don’t want to sleep!”
“That’s okay we can just talk.”
“I want to talk about what I did today.”
“Okay.”
“Now I want to talk about what I want to dream tonight. Can I dream about flying back to the past to see the long ago animals?”
“Yes. You can dream about anything.”

“No stress chess” – mama got you a chess set. It’s “no stress” because it makes you draw cards that tell you what to do. We thought of introducing board games to give you some mental challenge. But you still haven’t grasped the idea of an adversarial game. We’ve always encouraged you to be nice to each other, to work together, etc. So playing “fighting” is uncomfortable to you.
J to mama: “I don’t want to play anymore”
later…
J: “I didn’t want to take your horse.”
Mama: “It’s ok it’s just a game.”
J: “Next time I won’t take your knight.”

j learning to sleep without boob.
Mama: “j are you playing or are you done?”
You unlatched and rolled over, then talked and sang a few songs. You sang swimming songs, the goodbye song from Bing, and went to sleep.

Then when you wake up in the middle of the night asking for leche…
Mama: “Two leche empty until Sun comes up.”
j: “OK me wait until Sun comes up.”

j after picking up your brother at Bing: “Me done playing. Me sit in chair and close my eyes and go to sleep.”

j you don’t cry much when you wake up in the morning anymore. You often wake up before us and just chill in bed. One morning mama looked over and you smiled back.
j: “Me wake up mama. Me eyes closed, now me eyes open. It’s dark mama.”
Mama: “No the Sun is shining, it’s bright.”
j: “It’s bright.”

J, Anomalocaris has become your favorite pretend creature. You became obsessed with it and you wanted to learn all you could about it. It was the animal you drew on your birthday crown. When mama bought an anomalocaris toy for you, you didn’t want to school because you didn’t want them to put your prehistoric animals away.

You monkeys have been sleeping together. We put you to sleep in the same bed and you keep each other company until morning. One day mama found you two talking to each other in your sleep. You formed and L with your heads touching. J went bla bla blabla and j said, “NO J I DON’T LIKE IT!” But you were still asleep.

Curious convos

j: It’s dadik!
Me: Hi julie
j: Dadik?
Me: julie?
j: Dadik?
Me: Julik?
j: Ya

Mama: Hi curious eyes
j: Me curious eyes! HYUK HYUK!

J: “I like my family the best. Mama. Mama. Mama! The reason I like you the best is… because you smell nice.”
Me: “Maybe you should have a flower as a mama.”
J: “No… mama smells better than a flower.”

Mama put on some make up and ear rings
J: Mama I like it when you look pretty
Mama: Don’t get used to it boy, I don’t do this for you.

j, while nursing, looked at Saturn on the ceiling
j: “I like Saturn. It is a gas giant. Saturn bigger than earth.”

Mama: “I love you j!”
j: “I LOVE MESELF!”

One day mama was getting you monkeys ready for Bing. She turned around and you had j’s hair grabbed in your two hands. You were about to eat her.
Mama: “J! You may pretend by tapping her on her shoulder, but not holding her hair to flip her around.”
J: “But I’m anomalocari-”
Mama: “I don’t care.”
But after that you were nice. You ran around tapping your sister. And j you rolled yourself over and pretended to be eaten.
later…
J: “j is a trilobite. But one that has poison so I don’t eat her.”
That’s kind of an accurate metaphor. She always defends herself or cries and gets you in trouble.

Me: “Are you still anomalocaris?”
J: “Yes I will be for the rest of my life.”
Me: “The rest of your life???”
J: “Noooo… just while I’m a kid.”

J: “What do you want to dream about daddy?”
Me: “River, fishing, …”
J: “What else?”
Me: “Camping, fire, …”
J: “And what ELSE?”
Me: “That’s what I want to dream about.”
J: “I want to dream that I’m a long-ago creature. But I will not go extinct. I am going to live foreeeeeeeeveRRRRR.”
And then you fell asleep.

j: “I pooked. Peeking at daddy.”

j: “Me downward dogging.”

J to mama: “I want you to try to grow a mustache.”

Interesting things

Conveyor belt sushi. Mike Tyson picks his best Knockouts for Jamie Foxx. Robert Downey Jr gives kid a robot arm in-character as Iron Man. Paper record player. The Demo that accurately predicted computing today, in 1968

This week in pictures

Drawing

Birthday scooter

New river spot

Bedtime

Corn monster

Tried to make a compass. You weren’t ready. You wanted to play with the water and the needle instead. Not sure how you didn’t poke yourself

Stuff I’m reading.

I picked up a book from my to-read box called The New Wellness Revolution by Paul Zane Pilzer. It’s because a friend who’s a neuroscientist is interested in starting a business for “telehealth.” I was skeptical about the book at first, but then I remembered one of the reasons I like reading books with case studies. It points out certain historical events that shaped the present. Interesting. For example, I learned about Rodale. They were the first to fight in court to defend the first ammendment in publishing. They claimed that whatever anyone writes in print is protected as free speech by the constitution. And the legal system agreed. I didn’t know it was only a few decades ago (1970) that this happened. Since then, anyone can make any outrageous claims and promises they want in a book (“Rub your tummy away!”) and never get sued. One implication for business is that it’s easier and less risky to publish information for health in USA, than it is to do real medicine and provide care or treat someone.

Meanwhile, mama has nose buried in the Game of Thrones series. You asked her how many pages there are and mama said 1000. “ONE THOUSANDD?????” But you’re curious about what she’s reading so you bug her to read bits to you.

Work in progress

I was thinking lately about what makes kids stressful. And I think one reason is that kids are unpredictable. You can be happy one minute, but screaming the next. Playing and laughing one minute, but going too far and crying the next. And the one million questions. Kids don’t give you a chance to relax. Kids keep you on high alert. They take everything you got, so you almost never have time to finish a sentence or complete a thought.

That reminded me of reason #117 to write or keep a journal, like what I’m doing here writing to you two. No one has to read it. (I don’t know if you guys will.) John Carlton mentioned this in one podcast and I agree with him. Writing is a way to put thoughts down so you can let them go. Like dropping a bag of rocks you’ve been carrying on your shoulders. With life, all the unfinished sentences and uncompleted thoughts pile up. It can get stressful, like a nagging restlessness you don’t understand. Writing sorts things out, and it lets you go “OK” and skip along your merry way… at least until they pile up again.

Love,

Dad

P.S. The ultrasonic sensor arrived from China and I finally finished my garage door opener. What do you think?. It works beautifully. I love it when things work beautifully. The switch was not a reliable trigger for detecting if the garage door was open. The ultrasonic sensor can detect an obstacle up to 3m away. So it turned the “detect door open problem” into a software problem. I set my threshold for “open” to 20cm or closer to the sensor. And now that our door can tell if it’s open/close, it emails us to let us know and remind it if we forget to close it.

Mama already suggested our next project: a gizmo that tells us when the washer/dryer are done. So I ordered more parts from China: Sound sensors with analog output ($2), 4xAA battery holders ($1) and a $11 micro-controller with WiFi built-in. I’m thinking of using sound/silence to tell if the washer/dryer are done. Then the gizmo will email or text us over and over until we turn it off.

P.P.S. This is how you fall asleep lately

P.P.P.S. Happy birthday! We’ll be throwing a party for you in a few weeks.