Dad Brog (#119): Sometimes I’d rather not know

For quite some time, I’ve usually been that type of guy that just never goes to the doctor, unless something is actively wrong.  Never did any annual checkups, physicals or anything other than eye exams or going to urgent care for what always seems like prednisone whenever I go.  I often used to say this stemmed from not wanting to miss out on work on account of the long stretch when I was freelancing and contracting, and when I wasn’t working then I wasn’t earning, but the truth is that even when I had landed full-time work with actual benefits, I still didn’t go then either, even if I were paying for it.

Then I got married, and that didn’t really change, except for the fact that I now had a wife that encouraged me to go, but I still made excuses and dragged my feet and resisted going, because I just didn’t really want to.  I felt fine, I exercised regularly, and I didn’t eat like a shithead too much, so I never felt like it was worth going since I felt fine, strong and healthy.

But then I had children, and I crossed into 40, so I finally relented and made the effort to at the very least, have an annual, just to make sure things were copacetic.  And last year, it was about what I had suspected, I was pretty much fine, with no real concerns.  I had little reason to think it was going to be any different this year, but if that were the case then I wouldn’t be writing this post now, would I?

The TL;DR is that it turns out that I’ve put on a not-insubstantial amount of weight, and my blood pressure is kind of high.  The thing is that despite the weight gain, my clothes all fit the same, save for some tightness in the chests of my shirts, but my pants all still fit, I still use the same rung on my belts, and I don’t really feel any different than I did physically a year ago, or longer.

But I don’t want to be the asshole who gets all “uuhhhhhh muscle weighs more than fat brah” and humble brag that I’ve been hitting the weights, and that my weight gain is solely based on the fact that I’ve been going to the gym with consistency over the last two years, versus the nearly two-year stretch in which I dropped a lot of muscle mass because of COVID affecting my ability to hit a gym.  Of course, I did hit my share of lazy stretches where my household eats a bunch of fast food or dines out/takes out more than we really should, but I do like to believe that some of my weight gain really is having put on some muscle mass back on over the last year.

The bigger thing though, is the blood pressure reading, that was high enough to where the tech and my doctor wanted to point it out as being high.  My knee-jerk reaction was to ask just how much correlation there is between BP and stress, to which the answer was a high one, and I feel like I already know why I’m having elevated blood pressure.

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I feel like I sacrifice more than an Ultimate Warrior promo

With a post title like this, one might think that this was going to be yet another whiny, my-life-is-difficult diatribe where it can be assumed that I’m in a foul mood of some sort.  The thing is, I’m actually not in a particularly bad mood or anything, but it is just something that’s been on my mind a lot lately, and I just felt like typing out some words to see if anything comes to fruition, as that’s something the brog has served for me occasionally throughout the literal decades.

But to get to the point, I feel as if the vast majority of my life these days is spent making sacrifices all the time.  I don’t drive my own car into work most of the time, because my car is the big safe dadmobile with the childrens’ seats already set up in them, and it’s left with my au pair so that she can drop off and pick up my children from pre-K.  I drive our third car, which has served me fine, but it is older, needs more care, and lacks some of the conveniences that my own car provides.

At home, I no longer have an office or a space of my own because of our choice to employ an au pair, which is no knock on them, as I still consider it one of the best decisions we made as parents, and one that I would easily recommend to other parents of young children.  But the point remains, when the house gets crowded, or I feel the want or need to just go somewhere in my own house to hide out and take a breath in, I don’t always have such a reprieve.  This was exacerbated numerous times over the last few weeks with several house guests, and I found myself in a position where I just wanted a little bit of privacy and couldn’t have it.

Most of the time however though, are the sacrifices of my time and general self I feel that I make, and I sometimes ponder if I’m doing it too much.  I basically have no hobbies left because I don’t have time for them because my weekdays are all spent working, parenting and then I have like 3-4 hours a night “off” which doesn’t account of the time it takes to clean up after the kids, reset the house, and prepare a litany of things for the following day, so I really have like two hours a night in which I’m truly free to be off and relax, but not without a clock over my head knowing that I have to sleep at a sensible time, so often times I don’t do anything that substantial or the things I want to commit meaningful time to because two hours a night just doesn’t cut it.

On our most recent “vacation” I sacrificed myself to ensure that our au pair could get to experience some things about Disney World, since it is important to me that she gets to actually live some semblance of life while here, and not just be a nanny to the kids, but what it results in is me taking kid duty and ultimately not getting to really do anything that I might want to do, not that I could think of anything I’d want to do in Disney World anymore these days.

The point is, I feel like I’m always in a state of constant sacrifice that I don’t really know where I’m generally at with my life anymore.  All I want is just a single day in which I can sleep in and not have to be the first one up, preparing breakfast, preparing everything, dealing with the girls’ cranky morning tantrums, and have some substantial time to myself.  It doesn’t sound like a lot, but I haven’t found myself in a position to be able to enjoy such considerations in quite some time, and I’m pretty sure the last time I was able to take some time off, was when I hopped on a plane to go to Texas to visit my brother.  But opportunities like that are few and far between, because I’m financially strapped because I’m always sacrificing everything I make to try to support a lifestyle that might be a little too extravagant for my personal preference.

I read a book not long ago about a half-Korean girl dealing with the passing of her mother to cancer.  Piggybacking off my prior post about crying, I think I was drawn to this book because I knew it was going to be a real tear-jerker and I was seeking out something to help burst my dams, but it was still a good read.  But one of the takeaways from the book, and I’m sure it was really meant to be sage wisdom passed down from a Korean mother to her daughter, but I feel like it could apply to a Korean man like me, was that far too often, there are people who give 100% of themselves to their families.  Such is not necessarily a bad thing, especially at the ages of my children, they need everything I can give to them, but her wisdom was to hold back 10% of one’s selves, and keep it for ourselves.

That stuck with me, because I feel like I’m currently living a life where I’m constantly giving 100% to my family, but in doing so, I’m completely devoid of having absolutely anything for myself.  Recently, I’m trying to look for ways to try and gain back any percentage of myself, and even if I succeed, I highly doubt that I’ll be able to get up to 10%.  I guess I’m just such a sacrifice-er, that if I can get to like 5% of myself back, that should be considered a win.

I tried to treat myself to a new pair of shoes; but like so many indulgences in the world, whenever I find something that I might like, it turns out to be what everyone else tends to like, and the specific shoes that I decided I want a pair of, apparently, they’re so hard to get a hold of, that when Foot Locker gets a new shipment of them in, they’re basically treated like an online queue lottery system that everyone has to fight over, and only the lucky ping lottery winners actually get an opportunity to get.  Seriously, I made it through the virtual queue in three minutes, but my size was apparently already sold out, and within ten minutes, they were sold out of all sizes, presumably because of re-sellers and StockX pirates just grabbing anything they can get their hands on.

So, so much for trying to get any semblance of any % back for myself in that regard, back to the drawing board.  But the bottom line is that I just need to stop sacrificing 100% of myself, and find little ways to keep semblances of me, for myself, otherwise I end up as, well, this.  An angsty, emotionally volatile, usually irritable and mad, deep-fried burnt out dad.

That was awkward

Part of my property includes this giant useless field that sits underneath power lines, where the options to do anything with are very minimal, because of the easement and by-laws and other bullshit that are tied to Georgia Power.  Regardless, I am still responsible for my half of the field, and I do the absolute bare minimum in doing so, by paying to have my landscapers run the mower over it, so that the weeds don’t get so high any I have another neighbor try and anonymously report me to the county again, and have them threaten a lien on my property for something I had no idea was my responsibility in the first place.

Despite the fact that it’s legally my property, its ambiguity is still in question to everyone else in the neighborhood, who all seem to make the assumption that I once did, that the land isn’t private property, and that it’s perfectly acceptable for everyone to walk their dogs on, or for people to trollop all over whenever they want to.

Normally, I’m okay with the dogs and the occasional teen girl squad who want to take sunset selfies, as long as poop is not left there, and nobody litters.  A few weeks ago, I came outside to see that a car had parked on the edge of the field and two teen lovers had laid a blanked out on my field and were just lounging out.  It irked me, but I chose to not say anything about it, because I didn’t want to be the neighborhood Clint Eastwood always telling kids to get off my lawn.

Just recently though, I was coming home, and I spotted a golf cart sitting on my half of the field.  I was like wtf, and it turned out to be this couple in the neighborhood that I recognized.  I have no qualms with them, and we’ve been friendly in the past, so I didn’t think it would really be an issue when I came up to them, and explained that I don’t have problems with them walking their dog on my field, but if they would just not drive their golf cart around on it, I didn’t want them setting a precedent that other people would start thinking they could run vehicles on my yard, thinking it was public land.

Pretty immediately, the defense came up, and it was clear that they were not fans of being made a request of, and they immediately disputed the fact that it was my property, and that it definitively belonged to Georgia Power.  They proceeded to bring up the fact that I was dumping tree debris from my fallen tree episode on company land, and that I had allowed so much tree debris to sit there for as long as I did because I have children and no time to clean up my yard whenever I want to.

It wasn’t a pleasant conversation despite both of us being able to keep it tensely civil, but I was thrown a tremendous amount of shade and passive aggression, with his wife chiming in that I should just build a fence, as if I have another spare $10,000 to erect a fence around the field, when I frankly don’t know how I’m going to pay off my credit cards at the end of this month.

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The things I think when I start to feel mopey about being broke all the time

Welp, I didn’t win Powerball yesterday; but I did win a whole whopping four dollars, which seems like a pretty solid consolation prize, I suppose.  So I guess it’s back to fantasy land when it comes to imagining a world where I didn’t have to stress about finances and all the money I don’t have no matter what I do in my life.

One of the things I often hear about, mostly from professional athletes, is the general idea of the importance of banking their first million as fast as possible, because the idea is that once you have a million in the bank, you can start to get on the short road of being able to live off of the interest and dividends alone, as long as you’re smart and don’t go too crazy with newfound wealth.

Obviously, it’s easy for the wealthy to spout this kind of simplistic ideation, but seeing as how it feels like I’ll never see a million bucks in my entire lifetime, who am I to argue with such a broad stroked idea in the first place?

That being said, I think it’d be really cool if I could befriend a wealthy person who has several millions of dollars in the bank, and really wouldn’t be at all affected if they were to temporarily part with just one of those millions, and allow me to just hold and sit on it, so that I too, could feel what it’s like to be able to sit back and watch money come in, solely from having some in the first place.  And after a predetermined amount of time, I would give the original million dollars back to this wealthy friend, and them being an actual friend, would charge me no interest and not make me feel bad about borrowing it in the first place.

I wouldn’t want to borrow a million dollars to frivolously spend and go nuts on all the outstanding mortgage and car payments.  Or fix up the house, make additions, or buy any shit I don’t need.  I just want to borrow a million dollars so that I can get a little bit of a boost at being able to passively accrue my own wealth.  To literally let it sit in a bank account of mine, where it can generate interest and grow for no other reason than the fact that it’s there.

And if the rich athlete theory is truly correct, then after a while, the money starts working for itself, wealth continues to accrue, and I can give the money back and start to live on my own proceeds.  And if this friend is truly a really good friend, they’ll float that million bucks over to someone else who just needs a boost at being able to start making their own passive interest wealth as well.

Obviously though, this is a pipe dream as unlikely to happen as the magical appearance of a fucking genie.  People, especially the very wealthy, are far too greedy, far too possessive and far too protective over their money to be willing to participate in such an idea, no matter just how many people in the world it could help if they were just willing to try. 

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I would just love one day where I don’t feel like I have to hard carry, everything

I am really fucking miserable right now, and this is another post where I don’t really feel like I can unload my baggage onto anyone, so I just put it all into writing the best I can and throw it up on the internet onto a brog where I have zero readers and hope that my words are heard.

But as the subject of this post says, I would just love to have a single day in my life where I don’t feel like the weight of absolutely every responsibility was on my shoulders.  I’m exhausted with life right now and I don’t particularly see anything getting better any time soon, and it’s becoming harder and harder to keep up the façade some days that I’m anything at all beyond an overworked dad and basically nothing else of any redeemable contributions.

I’m sure it’s of no surprise that a lot of this stemmed from the recent homeownership woes that my house has been going through.  I say my house, but the reality is that it’s what I’m going through, because when it comes to any of the home maintenance stuff, that pretty much falls solely on me to do.

I’m grateful to my neighbors almost to the point of tears for their generosity in time and effort in helping me get the whole fallen tree thing resolved, but as expected, the bigger issue was the plumbing matter, where I had a leak infiltrating the lower level from the bathroom above.  After all, moisture is the bane of homeownership, and I just knew that this was going to be a more aggravating matter than the fallen tree.

To summarize, plumbers came out to assess the situation, and I was fully bracing for a $1,000 expense, because nowadays, my old belief that most every small matter pertaining to cars, medical, home repairs, or any sort of labor, usually comes to $500, but due to inflation and just ‘Murica, I’ve upped it to $1,000.  Anything under $1,000 would be decided to be a win.

The showerhead was spraying back, which was determined the culprit of the leak, and a new shower head was affixed.  $467.  I was pretty pleased to have made it under $1,000 and I had hoped that the matter was solved. 

But this post wouldn’t be here if that were the case, and that evening sure as shit, the leaking was still present.  I got in touch with the plumbers, whom were total pros, polite, and I genuinely like them, but seeing as how all this shit was happening behind walls, the next solution would be to convert my 30+ year old three-valve shower hardware to a single pipe system, because the dated hardware was probably what was leaking.  Suddenly, I’m up to $1,700, and add in the showerhead and I’m looking at not just $1,000, but $2,000+ to solve this conundrum.

Whatever fine, I just need this shit fixed.  But since I’m poor as fuck and mostly living paycheck to paycheck these days, I have no real idea on how I’m going to cover this, but I know I need to get this resolved sooner rather than later, because the last thing I want is my home to deteriorate from a leak, because I really do take serious that moisture is the antichrist when it comes to homeownership.

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Home Groanership

Good news/bad news: the bad news is that pretty much my #1 worst nightmare involving my property happened; a tree fell over during a seemingly spontaneous storm with very forceful rain and wind for like an hour.

The good news is that it was not one of the trees in the back of my property that I always fear will fall onto one of my girls’ bedrooms and hurt them.  It was a tree in my front yard, and it fell in a pretty precise manner in which nobody was hurt, it did not hit my home, and it did not hit my neighbor’s home either.

The point remains however, a tree fell down on my property, and I didn’t really know what the fuck to do.  It’s not exactly something that I ever anticipated would happen, but then again I did have suspicions that this particular tree wasn’t optimally healthy based on the fact that mushrooms were growing out of one side of it.  But it was still sprouting leaves and growing branches, so I didn’t suspect that it was really dying beyond survival through a storm.

I did remain calm and rational and figured out what my next steps would be, but I also went ahead and threw out a query to my community’s Facebook page to see if anyone could recommend a tree removal service that didn’t have a completely booty experience.  One of my neighbors chimed in and stated that because the tree had already fallen, it shouldn’t be difficult for him to break it down, and he volunteered to assist.  And seeing as how raising children stretches my finances into frequent discomfort, this type of assistance was extremely welcome.

My priority was that I wanted to clear as much of the tree off of my neighbor’s property as soon as possible.  I know that legally, even though the tree originated on my property, most states’ laws say that the owner of the property where it lands is still the one liable for it’s removal.  Sure, it would be easy to shirk the responsibility but such truths don’t sit well with me, and the last thing I ever want would be to have beef with my next door neighbor, with whom we have a normal, neighborly, friendly relationship with.

But after putting the girls down for the night, I could already hear that work had already begun on the tree, and by the time I came outside to get to work myself, several of my neighbors were already hard at work, and moving branches and cutting down the trunk, and nearly halfway through with breaking it down.  Needless to say, I was quite floored by the immense generosity of time, labor and camaraderie spared by my neighbors, and it’s hard to put in words just how grateful I am for the help.

I’d say it took maybe another 90 minutes before we wrapped up, with not a single scrap of fallen tree left where it had dropped in sight, with only a smattering of wood chips and a jagged stump to indicate that the tree was even there in the first place.

I really need to make sure to compensate my neighbors with some form of food, treats or drinks, because I can’t even fathom just how incredible they were in assisting getting this tree off the property.  I’ve lived in so many places where everyone is just so insulated and keeps to themselves that I’ve practically forgotten what it’s like to have neighbors who care and are willing to help out and it makes me want to be a better neighbor and pay forward the generosity of effort to those whom might need it in the future.

However, as positive as the tree issue is, it’s unfortunately not the only thing to have happened, to warrant the snarky post title of home groanership.

Apparently, I’m having some plumbing issues in my home, to the effect of realizing that there’s a leak in one of the ceilings of my lower level.  It doesn’t take a physics genius to realize the correlation between when the dripping began with the bathroom right above it, and what we’ve got is a scenario of a mystery leak that’s most likely hidden behind the walls and will require some cutting into drywall to identify.

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Identity crisis

Just the other night mythical wife said that our household should be What We Do in the Shadows characters for Halloween.  And without any hesitation, she said that I should be Guillermo.

To the credit of that opinion, my face immediately made the same face Guillermo does whenever he looks at the camera after the vampires do something stupid.  But I wasn’t at all impressed at the knee-jerk association.

The lack of excitement of that was obviously noticed, and the back pedaling and explaining begins; he’s a badass vampire slayer, he’s the glue that holds the house together, he’s the guy that’s perpetually on the edge and verge of snapping being sick of everyone else’s shit, and I’m just thinking about the guy that’s fat, gets walked on by everyone around him, and is basically there for comedic relief but usually at his own expense.

Now I love the show, and it’s a fair comp, but the fact of the matter is that Guillermo is kind of the show loser, and it depressed me to be so immediately comped up to him.  He is an awesome character with a lot more depth than all the others, but when you take a step back and look at Guillermo as a whole, he’s a guy with no discernable identity, and spends the vast majority of his existence cleaning up after others and not at all doing anything for himself, much less forming an identity.  He’s the joke, he’s the doormat, he’s the comic relief.

But like I said, it’s not a completely unfair comparison.  I am the guy that keeps my house together; I’m the guy that maintains or manages the landscaping, the (attempted) cleanliness, tries to keep the house in working order and somewhat organized, with little or no help.  I take the vast majority of parenting duties, and any minute where I’m not working my job, I’m spending time with my kids while they’re awake, and it’s not until they are in bed that I have any semblance of downtime, that is when I’m not back to managing the home.

And I am, perpetually on the verge of losing my shit, because my life is not at all easy, I’m overworked, under-helped, taken for granted, and I’ve just been reminded of my general lack of identity in the world other than a dad or a housekeeper.  Both titles are undoubtedly important and I take them seriously, but when I try to picture anyone else thinking about me, I struggle to wonder what in the world words formulate in their minds when they think about me, other than those two things.

Because I don’t know what words formulate in my own mind when it comes to trying to describe myself.  I think I used to be a sports guy, specifically a baseball guy, when I was super into baseball and talking about sports all the time.  I used to be a League guy when I spent so much of my life buried in the League of Legends community.  I used to be the wrestling guy, which might be the closest thing I’m still identifiable to these days, and I most definitely was the belt guy, but the thing is that I’ve gotten pretty much every blet I want and until I have an office again, there’s not much point in getting any others.  Ironically, the one thing that I have staunchly refused to ever give up, being my desire to write, is probably the one thing so few people actually know I do, because I have zero readers and I’m neurotic and don’t want to advertise that I do it, so being a writing guy or a brogger isn’t exactly something anyone would know me for.

But the thing is, other than the latter I don’t think I’m really any of these things anymore.  As my kids came into existence, and my personal time diminished into negligible amounts, all my hobbies and interests fell to the wayside as any time I had to myself was either staring at a wall or trying to motivate myself to write something, usually about how burned out and over my life in general I was feeling at the time, kind of like I’m doing right now.

And so, I don’t really have an identity anymore, I don’t think.  As often as I think I would benefit from a day or two completely by myself to actually rest and recharge, I really don’t know what I’d even do.  I’m so money conscious that I wouldn’t want to spend the money to go hide out at a hotel or something, and I’d feel guilty eating out and spending money that I know I shouldn’t be spending, but I also can’t really expect to get any recharge time when I’m around my kids, because I want to spend time with them, so I’m left in this spiraling swirl of indecisiveness and end up doing nothing but watching television and treading the waters of depression.

Really, I just need this funky emotional wave to pass so I can go about my life without the baggage.  Hopefully I won’t be reminded of how much of a Guillermo I am again any time soon.