Tag: dad

Life as The Janitor class

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Like many topics that swirl around in my head that I think about writing a post about, there are times in which I feel like I have to be in the right mood and/or headspace to optimally write about a particular one.

Considering #1 peed all over her bed because we’re still in the process of night potty training her, and #2 decided to obliterate her night-time diaper, probably because I’ve let the kids eat some fairly rich foods over the holiday weekend, which meant I had to clean everything up in the tiny window of time in which is usually spent ushering the girls downstairs for breakfast, I think I’m in the right frame of mind to write about this one finally.

A long time ago, my friends and I played this one board game; I think it was Nemesis Lockdown, because it’s the only board game that I can Google that sounds like what I’m trying to recollect.  Among the playable classes was The Janitor, and that stands out because I’d never heard of a game that took such realism into consideration to where they’d force a player(s) to take on the role of an actual custodian.

And it wasn’t a case of where it was a class in name, and that The Janitor was more a metaphor in that they CLEANED UP THE OPPOSITION or anything remotely more audibly interesting than what actual janitors do.  No, The Janitor class was an actual janitor, where their primary action is to, eliminate waste, that other players and the monster classes leave behind in their wake.  Like, the typical turn for The Janitor was, movement phase towards a tile where waste was, and action phase, the act of cleaning up said waste.  No cool special talent, no hidden bonus to where they could one-shot a baddie, their sole existence in the game was to shuffle around the board, cleaning up after everyone else.

Here’s the twist to the game – if The Janitor were ever to be eliminated, the clock in which the game comes to an end would accelerate to an insurmountable speed.  The game was set up to where there was no way for The Janitor to ever stay on top of the amount of waste that other players and enemies generate, and required tactical management and prioritization of waste disposal.  Smart, cerebral players learn and know how to manage waste disposal to where it doesn’t hinder the survival cause too much.

But if The Janitor were killed, there is no more player who can eliminate any waste, and after every player phase, more and more waste accumulates in the base, and eventually the map becomes immovable.  Either players trap themselves in a prison of waste, or they’re forced to evacuate the base to where monsters would more than likely overwhelm and kill them, but either way, the game ends much faster after the elimination of The Janitor than if they live.

That’s basically what swirls through my head on a daily basis when I spend an absurdly inordinate amount of time of my life cleaning up after other people.  I try not to think about it too much, but the reality is that so many people in my life are basically slobs.  Family, friends, my own household, it’s like everyone I know has way more shit than they know what to do with, and as a result, it’s just piles of said shit all over the place.  And it’s like I’m not only a player who has my own set of tasks and duties to do, but I’m also The Janitor on top of it all, and having to do all of the tasks and duties of The Janitor, except I still only have the number of movement and action moves of one player.

It’s often overwhelming and always frustrating, and I try on a daily basis to keep my head above water over the endlessly growing piles of waste that accumulate and clog up my board in an endless cycle.  More often than not, I don’t get to do any of the actions of my primary class, because I’m using all of my actions being The Janitor, cleaning up the endless shit that keeps materializing around me, while having to be tactical and cerebral on what has to go versus what I can push off onto a later player phase.

And if I were to ever be killed or eliminate from the game?  There’s absolutely no doubt that the same thing would happen to my home as what would happen in the game when The Janitor is removed from play.  Shit would start to accumulate and accumulate, and with nobody to give a shit about actually cleaning up and eliminating some of it on a regular basis, the home would eventually become overwhelmed, and I don’t even want to think about what would happen if that were the case.

In the past, I used to be critical of Marie Kondo and her whole spiel of get the fuck rid of everything.  I criticized her Netflix show but watched more episodes than I care to admit, and then laughed when she had kids and admitted to being just like all of us other parents who get overwhelmed and start accumulating more shit than she knew what to do with.

But as my life has progressed through the 2020’s, the more I wish my life were closer to being able to pulling a KonMari than not.  I’d probably need an entire dumpster to purge my home of all the shit that I know we don’t need, and pretty much only then, would The Janitor be able to take a backseat to whatever class I’m really meant to be, I don’t know fucking know anymore, because I’ve been The Janitor for so long now that I guess I don’t really have another player class anymore.

Shitty game alert for parents: Donut Dash by Goliath Games

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

My kid begged and whined for us to get this game.  And seeing as how it was on deep discount at the death row of JoAnn’s, we acquiesced, because nowadays, anything that can occupy and entertain my children for more than two seconds is considered a win, and which is why my house feels like a future episode of Hoarders: Buried Alive, is because it’s so full of shit like this.

Mythical wife has this funny habit, where she’ll buy things for the kids, but then just kind of hand them off or leave them for me or the au pair to give to the kids, or in some cases, just kind of give the things to the kids and let them tear into the boxes and packages because they love to do that kind of shit.  But in most cases, that’s not always the best idea, because games aren’t made to be immediately played right out of the box, now more than ever, and this fucking game, Donut Dash, is among the worst I’ve ever experienced.

The above image I made pretty much gets right to the point on why this game blows, because there are no batteries included, and worse off, there are a ton of stickers in the box that need to be affixed to very specific things, like the little car, as well as decorating each and every single one of the 22 donuts included in the game.  And my kids love fucking stickers, and it took less than 10 seconds for them to start peeling them up and affixing them to absolutely anything but their intended objects, and I spent an inordinate amount of time, obviously annoyed, trying to carefully peel and correct sticker placement onto the bullshit donuts that couldn’t possibly have been bothered to have that kind of shit printed on, on perhaps cardboard instead of shitty plastic.

And when I read how the game actually played, I could already see in my head upon reading that the car shot the discs out in random directions, that this game wouldn’t last five minutes before we lost one or more of these stupid donuts.

That is, if the dumb car didn’t jam immediately, because of the donuts that my kids put stickers on themselves poorly stuck to the inside of the well, clogging immediately, once again requiring parental intervention to fix it.

I actually didn’t stick around for the actual play of the game, but when I came back home later in the afternoon, I found at least three donuts randomly on the ground, and I imagine that there’s probably others underneath the refrigerator, under the area rugs, and undoubtedly underneath the couch.  And the kids were completely uninterested in it any further, and I opted to just box it back up, and put it away, because as far as I’m concerned, Donut Dash is a colossal piece of shit and a waste of money, even if it was down to just $8.

The point is, this is an awful fucking game, not just for the kids who will lose interest in a fifth of the time it takes to properly set it up, but the parents who not only will pay for it, but are also the ones who will be responsible for said proper set up, lest the kids like my own fuck it all up from the on set, which I would highly recommend not allowing to be the case, if one was still so inclined to want to give this turd a try.

Dad Brog (#150): Next stop, kindergarten

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I blinked a few times, and now my eldest daughter has graduated pre-K, and is en route to starting kindergarten the next school year.  I still have a hard time digesting that, considering that the last five years have soared by, where my kids were born the generation of COVID babies, and the world has gone through a whole lot of hoopla to get to where we are today.

Like, it didn’t feel that surreal when #1 began 2K and went onto 3K while #2 started a year later, but more recently, it dawned on me when I went to the last Friday sing-along of the year, that this was also the final Friday sing-along for #1 outright.  Very soon, the school year was going to come to a close, and all the classmates she’s mostly had over the last three years, almost all of them are going their separate ways, since being a private pre-K, kids are from all over the place, and despite the fact that this school is zoned for a specific elementary school, almost none of them will actually be going there.

Obviously, #1 doesn’t seem to grasp the fact that she’s not going to be seeing a lot of her classmates again with any regularity very soon, and instead it’s me the parent that feels sentimental for her that she’s not going to be seeing her friends, some of whom she’s grown quite close with over the years, and we as the parents can all tell each other that this doesn’t have to be the end, but much like our own adult relationships, it basically is.

Such is the relentless passage of time and the journey of life, and my first kid has completed one of the first stages of life, being preschool.  She’s a whip-sharp, intelligent and observant kid, that has a beautiful imagination, loves to draw and paint, and I’m often floored at the academic development she’s shown over the last three years of preschool, and it’s going to be all sorts of emo-dad emotions in the future to see what she does next, starting elementary school.

As most parents aside from myself probably opine at similar circumstances, I just can’t believe that time has flown so fast, and I’ve already got a kindergartener on deck.  Aside from the financial alleviation of having one less kid in a private pre-K, it’s going to be exciting to see what lies ahead in the future as #1 takes the step into the next stage of life, entering contemporary education.

The joy-not of driving the third car

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In another episode of overlooked dad things, I’ve mentioned before how in my household, I have the permanent short straw, well in most cases, but in the context of this post, when it comes to the cars we drive.

Technically, I have two cars in my name that I am paying for, and then we have mythical wife’s old car that is free and clear, but is also 13 years old, and comes with all of the anxious hangups that go along with driving around in a 13-year-old vehicle.

This post doesn’t exist if I actually got to daily drive one of the two cars I pay for, which means my daily commuter car is the third car in our household, which on paper really isn’t bad, as it is small and compact, making it ideal for my parking garage that has the smallest fucking parking spaces in existence and gets very good gas mileage, to which my daily commute of maybe 12-13 miles round trip means I’m filling up maybe once a month.

However, like I said, it’s a 13-year-old car.  With the overwhelming majority of those years being not mine, which means there’s a lifetime of history and little things that I’m unaware of, service and maintenance that I don’t know how well has been maintained other than the time in which I began to oversee it.

Whereas it was a sturdy, peppy car when mythical wife was mythical girlfriend and we first got together, the car is now 13 years old, and definitely feels its age.  Lots of the mechanisms feel tired, the transmission feels slippery and I permanently drive it in manual shift mode to get around all the wonky gear spacing and super revs when sneezing on the gas pedal. 

I don’t have the power to overtake anyone that isn’t standing still and have to concede my position way more often than I sometimes care to, and I spend admittedly more time than I probably should, lamenting on the day in which I don’t have to be the one in the third car and might actually get to permanently drive my own car that I don’t have share and adjust every time I get into it.

If it’s idled too long, something overheats or otherwise happens where the revs take on a higher pitch.  The tires in the rear are balding and should really be replaced, and the car’s at its time of life in which it’s always a question on whether or not these are the last new tires for them or not.  And of course, there’s all sorts of rattles and creaks that even Batman couldn’t identify.

But the absolute worst part of the third car is the horrendous lines of sight for probably anyone over 5’2, because mythical wife had had the car before I drove it regularly and she has no idea what I’m talking about.

The photograph above is what I see when I’m at a stop light – which is not the stop light at all.  I have to crane my neck at an uncomfortable angle in order to see the stop light, which really fucking sucks when a light stays red forever, necessitating me to keep my head in an awkward position to ensure that I see it turn green and begin driving accordingly.

At 5’9, I am not as tall as I wish I were, but I wouldn’t classify myself as someone who could be referred to as tall.  And yet, even when the seat is as far back as I can and adjusted to be as low as it gets, I’m still in a position to where if I ‘m not the third or further back car in a line of cars, I probably can’t see a traffic light in front of me without craning my neck.  Which sucks doubly because I always want to be the first car in a line so that I can drive with nobody in front of me because the existence of other commuters is what ruins the otherwise enjoyable act of driving cars, so I’m often in a position to where I concede sitting behind others, or put myself to where I have to crane my neck in order to monitor the light.

It’s every time I have to sit at a light craning my neck that this post has materialized in my head.  It doesn’t happen all the time, and some commutes I’m lucky to where it doesn’t happen at all, but then there are some days and some intersections where I just don’t get so lucky, and I have to sit there looking and feeling absurd as I how I often feel about the whole notion that I’m the one who always seem to have to make all the sacrifices in life for the sake my family.

Dad Brog (#149): I am so over children’s sandboxes

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

With the school year coming to a close, I can think of several things that I’m looking forward to not having to do anymore on account of my children.  At the top of the list is shaking out my kids’ shoes and watching a fistful of sand pour out of each shoe of each kid.  I do this over a trashcan because I used to do it in the garage but it was getting to a point where my garage floors were getting excessively sandy and grainy, and above all else, I’m tired of the feeling of sand sticking to my own feet when I’m indoors from the shit the kids track into the house.

I swear, I’m sure that if I were to collect all the sand that my kids bring home on their feet and in their shoes, I could probably fill an entire sack of play sand, and return it to The Home Depot.  Sure, that would be a tremendous amount of effort for about $6 in store credit, but the money is beside the point as much as it’s about the sheer amount of sand that my kids manage to bring home with them on a regular basis that I’m completely over, and looking forward to the end of the school year where I (hopefully) won’t have deal with this crap any further.

The word count of this post doesn’t accurately reflect my disdain for sand.  I thought I had a lot more piss and vinegar to spit out about my general annoyance about all the sand my kids track all over the place from playing in the sandbox at school, but that’s really all there is to it.  I’m over checking their shoes every morning before school and watching a metric ton of sand pour out, and it’s definitely top-2 in things that I’m looking forward to not having to do once school’s out.

And to think me being all old and adult now, I wouldn’t be able to relish in the joy of school being out like my own children and the kids we once were.

Dad Brog #148: an example of having to take it on the chin

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t really know anything about Judaism, but for whatever reason, my kids have the entire week off because of Passover.  I don’t really know anything about Passover either, but far be it for me to question any religion’s stuff beyond the fact that my kids are off school, but some of my colleagues at work who are Jewish are all in the office like it’s any other day of the week.

The thing is we’re a week removed from a week in which both mythical wife was off on spring break on account of being a teacher, and the au pair was off on spring break on account of her being a student and going to school.  In previous years at my kids’ preschool, they’ve usually just aligned with the county school schedule, and this is the first time that I can recollect them having a separate Passover week off.  This has never been an issue in any of the previous years that my kids have been going to their school, but for whatever reason, here we are, this year.

All I know is that it really sucks because as is often times the case, I’m the one who has to take it on the chin and alter my days in order to accommodate this misalignment of time off, and further illustrate that I don’t get time off, ever, and this is just my life and I really have no other choice but to cope with it.

So, for this week, I have to stay home with my kids until my au pair gets home from class to which then I have to go into the office late, play catchup the entire days, and probably have to stay late a little bit to make up for lost time, so that I don’t fall behind on more of my shit later on.

Yeah, I know it doesn’t seem fair, but there’s little sense in calling it out because nobody listens or would be willing to do anything about it.  So it’s just grin and bear it, and make the best of my shitty situation where I don’t ever get a fucking break, and try to take solace in the fact that I can spend a little bit of extra time with my kids and try to push out of my mind the meetings I may be missing and the optics that goes along with flaky attendance, even if I do manage to get all my shit done.

As I’ve opined a thousand times, I would just like a little bit of help and a little bit of breaks from having to be the hard fucking hyper carry in my household.

My daughters will extend my life by almost three years

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Okay: recent study suggests dads with daughters have tendency to live longer, with each daughter adding on average 74 weeks of lifespan

When this story was fed to me, I couldn’t help but smirk as I often do whenever I read anything related to girldads or being a girldad.  The notion that by virtue of them being daughters instead of sons, my two girls will be responsible for keeping my ass alive for 148 weeks longer than my life expectancy should suggest, nearly three entire years, is amusing to me.  Even more so, that it’s pointed out that sons, add no extra life to their dads, comparatively.

The thing is, the story could have ended with that, and kept it vague, yet still sweet, but in this day and age, where everyone is expected to show their work, when they dive a little deeper, it’s mostly attributed to the notion that when said girls become women, they’re way more apt to nag their dads about health and preventative care, which is the primary reason why they tend to live longer.

I mean it makes sense, since harping on their dad to go see doctors and get checkups and critical milestone tests probably is more useful in the long game versus daring dad to see how long they can go without farting, how fast they can go in the rental car, or can they take a spinning power bomb off the top of the couch.  But it does take some of the sticker sentimentality away from the general headline, but not enough to where I can’t make a brog post about it.

What’s interesting to me though, is that I wonder how much truth this will hold in my particular case.  A lot of the longevity is attributed to what seems like a bunch of out-of-shape dads who view their children as a sudden reason to get into better health and pick up better habits, which would naturally be beneficial to their life expectancy.

I’m no Zac Efron, but I’ve always been consistent and routinely with exercise, and mythical wife has already gotten a handle on egging me to go to the doctor at least for annuals, so the things that my daughters would’ve been expected to drive me to do in order to give me 148 weeks more of living, I’m already doing.  Of course, I want to be around when they graduate schools, maybe get married, or any other life’s milestones.  Maybe there’s another level of physical improvement to reach, probably when they’re not little brats who are sometimes shits about their food, and I end up eating a ton of shitty leftovers on account of not wanting to waste food.

Conversely, there’s always the easy joke about how my kids, regardless of their gender, are solely responsible for taking years off of my life on account of the sheer amounts of stress they put me through with their childish insubordination, stubbornness and constant power struggles.  Maybe that’s something that the study doesn’t account for is that daughters might each give me 74 weeks of extra life at the tail end of my life, but they’re sure as fuck siphoning a lot more of it on the front end.

Either way, let’s choose to ignore all the background noise of this study, and choose to believe that my two little girls are going to be the reason why I live three years longer than I really should be, solely by existing. ❤️