“Why do we have lights outside our house?”

Because once upon a time, Santa Claus put lights outside Jesus’ house so the three wise men knew which the right house was. (Mama said, “Daddy!”)

Dear Js,

Thanksgiving is done, Christmas has come. The decorations are out and up. We bought a little tree from Whole Foods this time. With two car seats in the back seat and the two of you, we weren’t going to the tree farm this year. This was easier. I picked a tree up with one hand and I had you in the other. It fit in our trunk with our weekly groceries.

As soon as mama opened the Christmas box, you transformed into a Christmas tree elf:

Then the next day, mama made the mistake of leaving you alone downstairs. She returned to find that you had taken all the ornaments down. You took off all the old wire hooks. You laid them mangled-tangled in a heap beside you. And you replaced them with new ones and hung them back up. Now we have a tree with nothing but neat straight hooks.

Mama has started a tradition of making plaster handprint ornaments every year.

Mama made one for this year this week. She wanted it to be perfect. And so did you. But your idea of perfect included paw prints of your dinosaur friends Arnie and Gilbert:

I’m starting a book recommended by the Stanford Bing Nursery prof: Mindset by Carol Dweck. An example of her research is studying what happens when a parent praises the person (“Good job – you must be really smart!”) vs when a parent praises the effort (“Good job – you must have tried really hard!”). She found that praising the person made children act and feel dumber – they became less confident when trying harder problems, and they preferred to stick with the easier problems where they were praised for being smart. The children praised for effort were happy to try even harder problems:

I can’t escape reality even in my dreams. It surprised me. Because, you can manufacture any world you want in your dreams, right? Well one night, I was floating down from the clouds, onto light blue water. It was bright and the sand was white. I descended into the water and the warm water surrounded em. I floated down and my knees touched the ground. Then the coarse sand scratched my knees. What the hell? Why would I put coarse sand in my dreams? I woke up and it made me wonder for a couple of minutes. I guess I’m a realistic guy.

Then the next day, I dreamed I heard my parents yelling at each other downstairs. Just like they did when I was a boy living with them. My first thought was okay, they have to go. Then I woke up a little and realized they’re not here. My next thought was, I’m going to tell them they’re not coming in February. Then for the next 30 minutes I was stuck between “but they’re your grandparents” and “No, they’re not coming.”

Mama gets strong. Mama has joined Crossfit. She has been working out every day at 6-7am since Monday. Crossfit means a guy coaches people in a group like a drill sergeant and makes you do things like jerk bars, squat deep, run back and forth, toss medicine balls and up chins. The first day she came home with her competitive spirit awoken. She said she’s going to beat the blondes. That one has bad form. And she has her eye on the two best students – a young guy and girl. She spends the rest of the day complaining about how sore she is. But she says it helps her mood immensely. She says she’s more tolerant, awake, and has more pep. She missed the 6am on Thursday because Julie you wouldn’t unlatch, and she suffered withdrawal like a drug. She said she was going at 6.30pm even if she had to strap the two of you on during. She didn’t think exercise made such a difference until that day she missed it in the morning. I guess Chemistry and such.

The masses live lives of quiet desperation A puzzle I’ve been twisting in my head is, “Who is a valuable/affluent customer AND has time on their hands?” Putting Eric Hoffer’s True Believer, Reddit’s top 200 posts, Facebook, YouTube and tons of “Escape the 9-5, live your life on your terms making money doing what you love” panderings online, I came up with this. The answer is: the frustrated and anxious, mobile middle class. I believe what sells the best on the Internet is sold to them. I don’t know how the Internet will be in your time, but now it’s a distraction procrastination black hole where productivity goes to die. I believe it’s most attractive to the frustrated, in the phase in their life where they have shitloads of time to waste (single, no kids, white collar job, unemployed, living at parents, etc). Yes I know there are the kids with their whole day to waste – but they have no money. I’m only interested in valuable people who have jobs that afford them luxuries like buying nice things and having time to waste online. And they have intelligent and passions… but they are unhappy. I believe these people drive most of the commerce online.

I raged again. What the F- Nothing usually phases me. I shrug things off and laugh at how ridiculously some people react to the littlest things. Yet the littlest thing bothered me today. Thinking about it now, I know what it really was about. But I’ll tell you what it looked like on the face of it first.

I took Kimi for a walk, after she had been whining and grinding my teeth for an hour or so. I couldn’t take her out sooner because mama was staying with Julie while she was napping and I was with you. It was 29 F outside, but somehow I still did okay without a jacket. The cold did make me bitter, but I soon forgot about it. Kimi was annoying as usual, pulling even though she knows not too, and not going because she needs to stare down every rustling leaf.

Halfway round the block, she still hasn’t gone. Fed up, I stopped and stared at her and said, “Get busy” 57 times. She circled 33 times and finally went. God. What a pain in the ass. Speaking of which, I hear a lady ask me in the most bitchy tone, “Are you going to pick that up?”

Normally, I would just go and have a civil chat with my neighbor. But it wasn’t even just the way she said it. It was that I remembered mama telling me how she harassed her before. I don’t know why, but my blood started boiling. In the dark, I turned around, looked right in her eye and walked straight to her. I’m sure my nostrils were flaring and my eyes were crazy.

“What?” I raised my voice. “That’s urine.” I stopped 6 feet from her. “I have a bag here to pick up her poo.” I showed it to her. Kimi was beside me, barking the whole time. It was obvious she hated dogs, and the barking made her uncomfortable. That, and now I was up in her face, giving her a problem, and towering over her. She shook, clutched her chest and retreated slightly, “I’m just asking if you’re picking it up.” I said, “You don’t have to pick pee up. What do you want me to do?”

Her son came out and asked, “Is there a problem?” He was a little guy, trying to act tough. I turned my body to stare at him and raised my voice, “That’s what I’m trying to figure out here. IS THERE A PROBLEM?” I caught myself getting a little angrier than I intended to be. I was shouting now, and it felt almost as if I had flames coming out my eyes. With the barking and me raging, they became timid like mice, quivering, stammering. “No.” “Okay, fine.” I turned and walked away.

Let’s see if they’ll change their tune from now on. If she were to be more polite to begin with, I’d chat with her about how I’m angry too about the poo that people leave behind, and that it’s not because of people like me. I live here too. I don’t want poo on the sidewalk anymore than you do. Your beef is with the people who live in the ghetto apartment down the street who walk their dogs here. But imagine how bold must she be to feel safe to berate strangers outside her front door, for grass she doesn’t own? I know where you live. You’re lucky I’m not malicious. I could put one rock through one window each week. Anyway, I’d love to run into her again. I’m hoping she’d check her windows to make sure I’m not there before she steps outside each time.

So now that I think about it, there’s a pattern here. I have developed a hair trigger for anything that’s hostile toward my family. Remember the helicopter FedEx guy I made pee himself a few weeks ago? It was because he made you cry. This time, I flipped out because of the way the lady started the conversation (“Are you going to pick that up?”) but mainly because she had harassed mama before for the same reason, and mama was too polite to do anything.

“F*** IT, we’ll do it live!” As it turns out, the Director will be demo-ing Achilles live. But not to a broad audience, but to some audience of staff/strategerary people. The VP, Marketing, Directors, etc. The goal is to showcase what the department is doing. Then provide strategestical guidance. Then the “marketing” guy will see if there’s anything worth spinning into Publicity. We had an interesting conversation to decide what and how to present to them. It was refreshing to not have to talk about the technical mumbo jumbo but sales and persuasion instead. He shared with me his “setup” to Problem-Agitate and I suggested the hook that ties in with why I named it “Achilles” – because even Gods fall, and this tool will help us systematically find our “Heel”.

Achilles update: Good news and bad news. Bad news is two of the three “apps” we wanted to present failed to load. He said he rehearsed and it worked on his laptop, but not on the presentation laptop. I said good thing at least one worked. And Cognitive Dissonance, we reasoned how the one that worked was the best one to show anyway. They loved it. They were teased enough that two VPs asked for a private demo after the meeting. And then they scheduled a full demo with me in January. I wished it was tomorrow. But Christmas is coming, so January. I’m also scheduled to lead a “bootcamp” — now that we have enough excitement and social proof, this will be a big net to pick up beginners and stragglers and bring them step-by-step up to speed. We even get free food to lure them with.

All about Julie stories. One night after mama put you to sleep, you rolled to your belly and popped into cobra stance. You surprised yourself and cried. Mama was stuck with J so I tried my best to put you back down. I scratched your back. Your eyes fluttered, your elbows wobbled. What do you know, it was working. I kept scratching and you did push ups until you had no more energy. You plopped down, I put my hand on your back. You turned your head to the side and sighed. I did the jewel thief swap with my hand for the blanket. Not bad. It was my first time putting you back to sleep myself. You usually fall asleep nursing.

By the way, mama says it’s easy to find what to wear for you. She shows you your clothes and you express your opinion by throwing up on the one you don’t like.

Also, your first 2 teeth are here!

Now you, J. Your brain muscle is growing. You’re grasping more abstract concepts. You’ll say, “I want the red thing.” I’d ask which one. You’ll say “THE RED ONE” and we’ll go back and forth until I say, “You have to be more specific.” “What’s specific?” Then I explain that when you say red, I see the little red car, the big red car, red elmo and red James the train. So I’m investing in the word “Specific” so maybe next time when I need it, you’ll know how to help me understand.

I also taught you the word “vortex.” Mama laughed at me. I said, “What? There’s no simpler word to describe it. The tub drain makes a vortex, just like the toilet. Then mama asked you, “What’s a vortex?” You said, “It’s like a whirlpool.” Wise guy.

Reading brain is coming. We’ve spent enough time with letters and sounds and reading that you’re starting to see letters in words. You have a toy girl in a boat. I forgot her name so I asked you. You thought for a while and came up with nothing. I said, “I don’t remember either.” Then what you said surprised me. “I think it starts with K like Kimi.” Kai-lan! That’s her name. You smiled. Now what intrigued me about this is, that means one component of your memory is sound (you’ve only heard her name), which you associated with the letter ‘K’ upon recall. You decoded your memory fragment and interpreted it as a letter so I could understand. The other interesting thing is you could have made the ‘K’ sound, but for some reason you went the extra step to find the letter.

And speaking of words…

Bathtime teaches Opposites! Since it’s cold at night, you’re afraid of bathtime. So mama dug up our space heater and we made the tub nice and warm today. As I got you out, you asked, “Why isn’t the black spinning?” I said because it’s not a fan. “Why?” Because it’s a heater. “Why does Abu have a fan?” Abu needs a fan because Puerto Rico is hot. “Grandma too – they live in hot places.” We need a heater because it is cold. When it’s hot, a fan makes it cool. When it’s cold, a heater makes you warm. They’re opposites.

“What’s opposites?”

I thought you were ready for this new concept, so I explained. An opposite is like hot and cold. The closest I could explain using concepts you know was, an opposite means that something is not like the other. Then I gave you examples. The opposite of hot is cold. The opposite of cold is hot. The opposite of big is small. What’s the opposite of small? Big! Then I made it a game, “What’s the opposite of loud?” “Quiet.” That one you got all by yourself. I said, “You know opposites now!” You said, “Why do I know opposites?” I was careful how I phrased this answer after what I read from Carol Dweck’s book. I said because you didn’t know what opposites are at first. Then we talked about it, and you were thinking about it (I phrased it this way instead of grammatically correct “thought” so it was clear which word I used.) for a long time. When you don’t know something and you think about it for a long time, you will know it. You smiled.

Mama walked in to us smiling and she asked, “What’s going on here!” I explained, and she tried to test you, “What’s the opposite of wide?” “Close.” You got it.

It’s funny where learning happens. That’s why it’s easy to miss if you’re not . Because, it happens everywhere, doesn’t it?

It’s Friday. One thing I look forward to is my Heinekens on weekends. Sometimes I have other things too, but this is the only thing I stock up on because it’s the only thing I’ve never gotten tired of. I don’t drink on weekdays because otherwise I’d drink all the time and wind up an alcoholic. What’s the statistic… my memory is fuzzy. I believe over 2/3 of people who try alcohol have some sort of dependency and half get addicted. My numbers are probably wrong, but this I know to be true: The only thing more addictive than alcohol (and legal) is smoking.

Love,

Dad

P.S. – Look – I taught you to hold a pen:

P.P.S. – I left for work one morning and my family was missing.

P.P.P.S. – Best (worst?) alarm clock ever: