Tag: family

I watched all of Shameless over the last few months

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There’s not much more to say beyond the title of this post, but considering how much of my life I’ve given to slowly binging this series, I felt like I had to write something about it.

But god damn, I think Jeremy Allen White said it best, that shows really shouldn’t be meant to go as long as Shameless did.  I’m not saying that I didn’t enjoy the show, I really did like it from start to finish, and as far as the older seasons go, I think it was cleverly done so that it didn’t age poorly, but there were multiple times throughout binging it, I’d stop and look at the list of seasons and how many episodes there was per season, and think, fuck, I still got so much to watch.

Because I’m the type that doesn’t like to start multiple shows and bounce around, I like to give all of my focus to one show at a time, and continue as long as it can hold my interest, and in the case of Shameless, despite the fact that it’s 11 seasons long, it accomplished in being entertaining enough throughout the series to keep soldering through.

Primarily due to the strength of the characters, namely Fiona and Lip Gallagher, whom at varying points throughout the series, I felt them so hard at times, despite the fact that I don’t have either of their addiction issues.  But it’s the whole notion that throughout the series, the two of them especially, took on the role of being the patriarch of the family, shouldering heavy responsibilities and putting the family first, I felt it at a very personal level, and it makes it easy to relate and root for the characters as the series chugs along, and that personal connection to characters is what makes binging the series so easy to do.

But at the same time, I’m really relieved that I’m done with the series.  I think I will have great reluctance again in the future the next time a series that’s more than like, five seasons, comes up on my radar, because it’s a tremendous commitment to decide to delve into a lengthy series, and considering the general dearth of available time I already have in my life, I want to make sure that the things I do, do when I have it, like binging television shows, are worth it to me.

Fare thee well, Shameless and the Gallagher clan, it was an entertaining ride from beginning to end, but I’m ready as fuck, to move onto some other things now.

The worst dream of my life

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t think I’m being hyperbolic about it either, because I don’t think I’ve ever had a dream in my life that upon waking up, it reduces me to breaking down into sobbing, I need nearly 30 minutes to bring myself back to earth, and it proceeds to ruin the entire day because I can’t stop thinking about it, and thinking about it fills up the wells again and it’s moar crying all over again.  Telling my wife about it floods the gates one more time, and I can’t even bring myself to write about it until an entire day has passed because it apparently did that much of a number on me.

So yeah, I think it’s pretty safe to say that this was the worst dream I’ve ever had in my entire life.

In a nutshell, I was dying, which I can’t really say has ever really bothered me in the past, but then I had kids, and the number one drawback to no longer living would be the inability to watch and experience their growth and now the thought of death isn’t something to be so ambivalent about anymore.

But in this dream, not only was I dying, I was basically otherwise alive and fine, but facing an impending, for lack of a better term, euthanization.  I had something that was going to definitively kill me, and for whatever reason, it would be best to be put to sleep lest I suffer a gruesome painful demise.  I had a scheduled death date and time in place, and I was basically spending my time in this dream trying to tie up loose ends, and try and make the transition into the world without me in it, as seamless as possible.

Two specific moments stood out the most that I can recall the most, which was a conversation with mythical wife, explaining that after I’m gone, I am fine if she wanted to ever remarry in the future, and obviously to just keep the girls in mind when looking for someone else.  She was more torn up about the conversation we were having than I was, which is probably not necessarily true to reality, seeing as how I probably shed tears way more than she does on the regular.

However that didn’t last long, because it was the other moment that I remember which ultimately ended up being the breaking point in my dream.  I was on my last day, and while walking around the house with my wife further discussing things to keep in mind and things that were settled, I realized that I only had about an hour left before my death appointment, and I proceeded to have a panic attack about why I wasn’t spending this time with my children. 

I frantically ran down the stairs and it was at this point in which I finally woke up.  It was 5:21 am, and I lay there for a few seconds coming to the realiazation that it was all just a dream.  I wasn’t dying, and I wasn’t going to be taken away from my wife and children.  It didn’t matter though, in the seconds that followed, I began openly weeping and the tears came pouring out, fat, hot and wet down my face. 

I couldn’t get back to sleep after a dream like that, so I went downstairs with the dog to take her out early, since she already perked up knowing that I had awoken.  Afterward, I meandered aimlessly downstairs, and gulped down some water since I had woken up with the driest mouth ever afterward.  Must been the blood pressure medication, which did state such could be a side effect; nothing was mentioned about lucid, horrible dreams though.

I sat in the media room in the dark, just replaying the dream in my head, and crying some more.  I clicked on the baby monitor to feel the most immense relief at seeing my two girls peacefully sleeping away in their rooms, knowing that I’d get to see them in just a few hours when they woke up.

Eventually I went back to bed, since rational thinking finally came back to me and I figured it would be best to at least lay down and try to sleep, even if it wouldn’t come, just so I could be warm and comfortable if anything at all.  I don’t remember falling back asleep, but I do remember being awoken by the alarm, that really wasn’t much long afterward.

My day was effectively ruined after that, and I had to make sure I kept my mind on the tasks at hand, because every time my mind wandered back to the dream, I would begin to feel tears welling up again, and crying in the office wasn’t something that I really wanted to have happen.

Point is, it’s not a difficult reach to say that this really was the worst dream that I’ve ever had in my life.  It’s like I can’t call it a nightmare, because there wasn’t anything unrealistically frightening, aside from the ability to schedule a voluntary euthanization, but the scenario of being a situation where I couldn’t see my kids ever again is something that could very well happen, and that alone puts the fear of god into me like nothing else.

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

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

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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