Barely saved by daylight (a Daylight Saving Time tale)

Morning in the
neighborhood (yeah,
there are palm trees
but this in not our view,
just so it's clear)

Come with me, gentle reader, back a few weeks ago, for a tale of a conspiracy of circumstances almost causing chronological catastrophe (eh, kind of). However, before we start that, we need to set the scene with a bit of background on our morning routine.

On school days we have an alarm set to sound to get us up so we over an hour before needing to leave the house. Getting our son up on school mornings can be particularly challenging, so we factor in time to: 

• actually get him out of bed (which sometimes literally involves dragging him off)
• prepare him a warm breakfast (or at least something that can be warmed in the toaster over) and putting together his lunch
• give him adequate time to eat (which often involves at least ten minutes of him just sitting at the dining room table, zoned out while presumably still waking up, allowing whatever we made to get cold) 
• get himself ready (brush his teeth, wash his face, etc., while factoring in he'll goof around in the bathroom until we step in to get him back on track) 
• get himself dressed (which he drags out to the last minute because he hates his school uniform)

As my wife and I both work from home that routine is all geared around getting him to school on time. Even on good days we're often just getting out the door on time.

The vast majority of those days I'm already awake when the alarm sounds. My body is simply accustomed to waking up then (and even on the weekends generally I cannot sleep in); the alarm is more the indication of needing to actually get up than something to rouse me.

Morning at the bedroom window
(not as attractive as the palm
trees so that's why I didn't
put it up top but included here,
as it's the actual view)

Being awake at that time of the morning allows me to somewhat track when the first light of sunrise starts showing on the east-facing windows of our bedroom, which had been getting a little earlier each day since December. In the week before changing the clocks for Daylight Saving Time the sky outside was starting to turn orange right around the time of the alarm.

AND that brings us to... the Friday before we "spring forward". Our son didn't have school for an administrative day, so we'd disabled the alarm on that day, as we didn't need to go through any of that normal routine and could let my wife and him sleep in a bit. (I'd be up anyway.) A little bonus sleep before the fall!

On that Sunday of course the clocks "sprang forward" to Daylight Saving Time, and everything seemed a bit off as it always does that day. Sunrise was now around the time we'd need to leave on a school day rather than around getting up time. But hey, the sunset was later so we had more daylight at the end of the day. That's the whole point, right?

On the Monday after "springing forward" I remember waking up and laying in bed for a couple minutes. The alarm had not sounded, and the house was a bit cold still with the unusually cool March we had, so I figured I had a few minutes before I needed to get out from under the warmth of the covers.

Then it occurred to me: It's starting to get light out. With the time change it should still be dark.

I grabbed my phone from my nightstand. (I don't have a clock there anymore.) It was about ten minutes until we should be leaving the house. We'd overslept!

We'd forgotten to re-enable the alarm after Friday's break. And my typically reliable body clock was still back on Standard Time.

I muttered an obscenity and quickly woke up my wife, then got our son out of bed. I apologized as I dragged him to the bathroom and got him ready myself, while my wife threw together his lunch (with extra snacks). She grabbed a banana and granola bar for him to eat in the car ride, and put a little milk in a thermos bottle. I got our son dressed fast while my wife quickly got herself ready to drive him to school. They got in the car and were on their way about fifteen minutes after my realization, so only about five minutes behind schedule.

When my wife got home from dropping him off I asked if they made it on time. As it turned out, traffic was lighter than usual and they were actually slightly early, presumably because most other people were running even later than we were.

Now with a few weeks to adapt, my body is waking up before the alarm again. Nonetheless, we now make a habit of making sure the alarm is set the night before. Parenting is always challenging, and often is barely pulling it all together in time, but schools really should not be making it even more difficult by disrupting that routine just before the time change. Clearly we can be ready in much less than an hour if we must, but that's no way to live.

(Changing the clocks twice a year is in its way absurd but that at least serves some purpose that can be beneficial. At least I assume so, having lived with it my entire life, but as I wrote last year it might be a harder sell if we didn't already do it.)

Iron Man

Like most sentient beings our 8-year-old is well acquainted with the theme to the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon. I think he may have seen some clips on YouTube but mostly it's from me putting it on a playlist we played in the car many times. (The playlist also included the Ramones excellent cover.)

Last week I mentioned there was a song called "Iron Man" and he was interested, figuring it must be about the other Marvel superhero. I pulled up the Black Sabbath track on my phone and played it for him, and... he lost interest partway through and had me stop when it became clear it was not about that subject.

Fair enough.

Then yesterday he was humming the riff to "Iron Man" quietly to himself, despite it not having come up in the interim. So apparently that had made some impression on him. 

And last night before bedtime he started singing this:

"Iron Man
Iron Man
Does whatever an iron can"

Then he chuckled softly, amused at himself.

Kids make you proud in the most unexpected ways sometimes.

When I didn't meet Weird Al Yankovic

On the Late Show with Stephen Colbert the other night, the actor Thomas Lennon told the story of how he met "Weird Al" Yankovic (in an office supply store), which, along the news of a biopic of Mr. Yankovic starring Danielle Radcliffe being in production, reminded me of this:

A custom Lego mini-fig my wife
got for me a few years ago,
not from the event chronicled here.

Back on November 9, 2018, my wife and I took our then-pre-school-aged child to Disneyland. It was not the first visit for any of us, but this was the first time any of us went there on the first day of the park having its Christmas decorations up (or, at least, having the big tree on Main Street; there were parts of the park where the decorations were still in-process). 

Unsurprisingly, it was a warm autumn day in Anaheim, so it didn't really feel like the holidays but such is often the case in Southern California. Being a Thursday the park wasn't super crowded, which was nice, but being Disneyland there still were thousands of folks there with us.

At one point in the middle of the day I noticed that one of those people also at the park was "Weird Al" Yankovic. Yes, the Weird Al. Or just "Al" as I'll refer to him for the rest of this post; even though we aren't friends I feel like he wouldn't mind.

Jury Duty in the Time of Covid (a case for pessimism)

When I received a jury summons last March, it was particularly unwelcome. It's not like most people look forward to jury duty, but in the middle of a pandemic where we'd spent a year working from home, where our son spent all of first grade on an iPad in his bedroom, and where we'd not gone pretty much anywhere, the thought to going to a courthouse and being around a bunch of strangers in an enclosed assembly room was worrying. This was prior to vaccines being widely available, and way before our child would be eligible for that.

So I postponed my service as far out as I could (five months) to August.

By then my wife and I had been fully vaccinated. While the state of Covid in our area wasn't as bad then,  again, our son was not yet so I postponed it a second time, again the five months I could. By the first week of February 2022 we were hopeful he'd be vaccinated and the pandemic should be in a much better state. 

Oh, how quaint we were. Well, at least our son got his shots, but Omicron made February arguably worse than August would have been.

Whatever happened to my (demented) brain?

The other morning a song popped into my mind, seemingly out of nowhere. I've written about this phenomenon before, so this is not new, but the song in question was not a radio staple... unless you listened to a particular radio show back in the day. What was it? 

Eddie and the Monsters' 1983 novelty track, "Whatever Happened to Eddie?" (sung by Butch Patrick, who played Eddie Munster on The Munsters TV show back in the mid-'60s).

(There's also a full music video they apparently made, if you dare.)

Where would I have heard that? Why, the Dr. Demento Show, of course. For the uninitiated, Dr. Demento was a DJ who spun comedy and novelty records on his weekly program, and each Halloween he'd have themed episodes where "Whatever Happened to Eddie?" would be a mainstay (at least during the period where I was an avid listener; more on that in a moment). I suppose with Halloween coming and us putting up decorations, that may have triggered something there in the recesses of my grey matter, even though I had not heard the song in many decades. 

Looking back at September 14, 2001

The previous post took a look back at what I'd written in my journal on the day of the terrorist attacks, but while I had the notebook out (from the box in the garage where it normally is) I glanced a few days further and noticed what I composed a mere three days after the attacks, which I offer below without edits, as a document of its time. (I'm not suggesting I have changed my overall view in the intervening decades, especially after seeing how that period played out, but I'd probably write in a slightly less jaded tone these days.)

Spoiler: As you'll see, I was not on the nationalistic (some might say jingoistic) train sweeping much of the country at the time, but I was riding the commuter rail at the moments of writing this.

Looking back on September 11, 2001

On this 20th anniversary of the attacks, many people have been remembering where they were and what they were doing when they heard. Like everyone who was old enough to be aware, I recall that morning very well, even though I was thousands of miles away from the tragedies.

My morning routine at the time is worth noting for how I learned of the news.

I lived alone in a studio apartment. To allow myself to sleep in as late as possible and still get to work on time, I had it down to only the essential actions. When the alarm sounded I'd immediately get up and get in the shower, then brush my teeth, get dressed, run a comb through my hair, grab my bag, and head out to walk to the train station a few blocks away. I'd get something for breakfast after I got to the office, so I had that whole process from waking to out-the-door down to around 35 minutes. 

The key: In that 35 minutes, I did not turn on the TV or even a radio. It was all about getting done as fast as possible, and that would only have been a distraction. (Obviously this was before smartphones and news alerts.)

I walked to the train station unaware of anything happening in the world. While waiting on the platform, someone did say, "Crazy morning, huh?" I recall nodding just to acknowledge but not knowing what the person was referring to. Even then, that was a comment that could be taken a number of ways.

I did have a Walkman-type AM/FM/Cassette player in my bag, and after getting on the train and taking a seat I put on my headphones and tuned in to the Kevin & Bean show on KROQ (something I still did back then). Rather than their usual silliness, their tone was of shock and disbelief. That's how I learned about what had happened: from a rock station's morning show that ordinarily devoted maybe five minutes per hour to actual news.

I listened for a while, trying to take it all in. Then I did what I usually did on the ride, and pulled out a pad of paper and pen, and jotted down thoughts in my journal. I went back and looked at what I wrote that morning, which I offer below not because it is particularly profound or insightful, but as a record of the moment.

Kids ask the most probing things: The dangers of nature shows

Tonight, as a family we were watching an episode of Crocodile Hunter (yes, from the '90s) where Steve and Terri were on a beach where green turtles were mating in the shallow waters. The hosts talked about how during the hours-long mating the females are responsible for bringing both turtles to the surface to breathe because the males are too focused on what they're doing.

Without missing a beat, our son asked (with complete sincerity) "Is that what Daddy was like after you guys got married?"

After several minutes of uncontrollable laughter, we could only say: "Not exactly." 

The simple joys of being a middle-aged dad: Flash Gordon theme edition

Somewhere in my past the chorus to the theme (by Queen) from the 1980 Flash Gordon movie got quasi-embedded in my brain--particularly that couplet: 

Flash! A-ah!  

Savior of the universe! 

 

Over time my brain changed the second line to "Defender of the universe" (which I think works better in the meter, but that's another topic) but the melody remained, and the key (of course) was the "A-ah!" vocalization after the hero's name. It's not as though I was a huge fan of the movie (I was not) nor a huge fan of the song (it's fine); but that part was just an earworm that was in me permanently.

For no good reason other than my own amusement, occasionally I'd adapt it and substitute another single-syllable word where the "Flash!" was, to elevate the term in a ridiculous way; e.g., "Cheese! A-ah! Defender of the universe!"--although I have no recollection of using that one in particular. It's always spontaneous, tossed out in the moment when an appropriate word comes up in our conversations, as a jocular interjection, so they never stick with me.

Taking your medicine

A single moment can change your day, and it doesn’t even need to be that big a moment.

Take yesterday morning.  It was the first time that our kindergartner could wear something other than his school uniform or his PE clothes, and unlike most mornings he eagerly got dressed. The theme was dots (or circles) and he had his red Flash shirt (with the lightning bolt through a circle, but in the design the circle diffused into dots).  He even picked out shorts and socks that had some such pattern.  He was really into it.

As we were wrapping things up before it was time to leave, Mommy asked if he’d had some medicine and he had not; this week he had been coughing some with occasionally runny nose. As she finished getting ready in the living room, I went and poured some into the little cup. She sent him over to the kitchen where I was, and he looked at the cup and said, “That’s more than zero.” I didn’t think much about that and simply replied, “Yes, now here.” As we were running short on time and he was hesitating, I put the cups to his lips and tilted it so the medicine would run down into his mouth.

He then closed his mouth and it spilt down on his shirt and shorts in large globs that did not look like dots.

Play it LOUD, Daddy

Last night on the drive home our preschooler had a full-on crying fit... because I wouldn't play "Here and Now" by Letters To Cleo at full volume in the car.

"I like it super loud" was his argument for why I should increase the volume. Which I countered with, "No"--but while still playing it louder than I would listen to, say, NPR.

Then for tonight's drive the iPod played a mix of songs that I kept at a very modest volume... until he decided he wanted Grant Lee Buffalo's "Truly, Truly" turned up--not that he'd ever heard that before; it may simply have been what came on at the moment he wanted the music louder in general. And the volume stayed up for... the Carpenters' version of "Reason To Believe". When he wanted "super loud" I said, "How about semi-super loud?" That distracted him as he then had to ask what that meant.

Then to close our commute he requested that we listen to the Bauhaus cover of "Ziggy Stardust" twice in a row. That he accepted at just normal volume--which, again, was louder than I'd do for NPR. Because Ziggy played.. gui-tar.

Knock knock

Actual knock-knock joke our preschooler told at dinner a couple weeks ago (with our responses):

Knock-knock
(Who's there?)

Banana
(Banana who?)

Knock-knock
(Who's there?)

Banana
(Banana who?)

Knock-knock
(Who's there?)

Pickle
(Pickle who?)

Pickle you glad I didn't say "Banana"! [Cackles with laughter]

~

Happy National Pickle Day.

A couple moments with my son

Tonight after I put our son in bed and turned out the light he said, "Let's talk about our day, Daddy." And so I asked him about school, and he answered. Then he said (for the first time ever), "How was your day?" And I told him it was fine, which is as much as he needed to know about what it's like to be a grown-up, despite how mature he sounded when asking.

~

Earlier in the evening, without establishing any context, he had talked about how "my friends say 'poo' which has an 'o' on the end, but 'poop' has a 'p' on the end" and he was quite certain he was right and they were saying it wrong, and his pedantry was too cute for me to mention either variant is acceptable. Nor did I elaborate on how either is just what grown-ups say around young children to avoid saying words they don't want to have to explain to the teachers.

But whatever elicited his remark it surely revolved around how either "poo" or "poop" is something that is hilarious in preschool. And I'm glad he's not growing up too fast to stop enjoying that.

Karma has no room in LA traffic

(My descent into turning into my father is complete. I'm going to talk about how long it took to get somewhere.)

Setting the stage: For my typical morning commute to work I take mostly side streets, and the key point is where I must cross a set of tracks for a light-rail line (as there are only a limited number of crossing points). Recently construction on the closest large boulevard has closed that and caused much more traffic to the smaller two-lane street I use.

At the intersection just before the tracks there is the street that proceeds straight north to the tracks and a perpendicular street where cars coming east turn left or cars coming west turn right to get on to the aforementioned northbound street. But with all the extra traffic cars back up in all three directions, because not only can the tracks be blocked when trains go by but just on the far side of the tracks is another intersection with a traffic light. So that light turns red, the northbound street backs up all the way to the previous intersection, leaving no room for more cars to proceed through at that one.

At least they shouldn't. But that doesn't stop some oblivious or inconsiderate drivers from pulling into the intersection even though there isn't room on the other side, thereby blocking the intersection when the light changes and the westbound cars (that aren't turning) cannot go.

I try not to be such an person, which seems like should be karmically good.

Dino jingle

While reading a book about dinosaurs to our preschooler last night we came upon Ceratosaurus, and he said, "It sounds like 'Cerritos'." And I agreed that it did somewhat resemble the name of that Southern California town.

Then he sang the "Yes... Cerritos Auto Square--dot com!" jingle from the commercial for the car dealers, which presumably he'd heard on the radio while riding with Mommy.

This is why I only listen to the iPod or NPR when I'm driving in the car with him. Kids are sponges.

When you don't get your sleeping child an In-N-Out milkshake

Last weekend while running errands our preschooler (unsurprisingly) fell asleep in his car seat. He'd eaten many snacks beforehand so when my wife and I were hungry we went through the In-N-Out drive-thru (to allow him to keep sleeping while we ate in the car) without worrying about getting him something.

Then over an hour after we left there (and had gone to two other destinations, where I stayed in the parked car with him while my wife ran into the stores) he awoke in the back seat... and noticed the empty milkshake cup in the cupholder with the chocolate and vanilla residue showing through the lid.

He then started saying he wanted a milkshake, over and over. And I kept explaining we were no longer near where they made the milkshakes. And he kept saying he wanted one. And I kept explaining. And he kept saying he wanted one.

Finally, with his lip pouting so far out one could rest objects on it, he muttered, "Worst day ever. I don't get a milkshake."

We are really bad parents. We should have disposed of the evidence before he woke up.

~

Epilogue: I gave him a little ice cream bar from the freezer when we got home and then things were fine.

Raising a Dodger fan

The other morning our son changed out of the shirt I'd picked out (and dressed him in), taking it off and choosing instead a Dodgers shirt instead.

I asked him if he remembered the last time he wore it, and he replied "When we went to the Dodger game." (We took him to his first professional baseball game back on Father's Day.)

I asked him if he remembered who won. He said, "The Dodgers?" (It is unsurprising that he didn't recall the outcome, given it was more about all the stuff he got to eat and chanting "Let's go, Dodgers!" But being only a preschooler the fact he made it through the entire game was remarkable.)

I had to say, "No, it was the Giants." He furrowed his face and said, "I only want the Dodgers to win."

Then Wednesday night when we got home another Dodger game against the Giants was about to start on TV. When he saw the shots of the players on both teams he asked who was the "grey team" (going on the color of the road uniforms). I answered it was the Giants, reminding him it was the team the Dodgers played when we went to the game.

Unprompted, he said, "The Giants are a sack of poop. I want them to lose all the time."

As a parent, I know in general I should dissuade that sort of "sack of poop" sentiment, but in this case I allowed it.

~

It's also worth noting the Dodgers won that Wednesday game over the Giants in extra innings.

Squishy

Our three-year-old son has taken to occasionally wanting to hold my arm for a few seconds as a soothing gesture when I put him to bed. And it's not my wrist he seeks but my bicep; he has even gone so far as to ask me to roll up my sleeves to grant him better access to that part of the upper arm.

As a parent of a pre-schooler, I am generally tired and will appease him because it means he will go to sleep faster.

At first I thought he found it comforting to touch the muscle, as though it made him feel safe to be near his strong Daddy. Then he started squeezing my bicep and gleefully saying it was "squishy."

Here's the thing: I am absolutely certain in his mind that is a colossal compliment. That his father has a part of the arm which he can squeeze is apparently what makes him feel better in those moments after I've turned off the light in his room.

It is that oblivion that makes it somewhat endearing, and allows me to put aside societal conditioning about musculature when he specifically asks for "the squishy part" (as has become his preferred phrasing).

I could be more physically fit (of course), but rather than this inspiring me to hit the gym I am merely pleased he hasn't figured out a way to try to grab my stomach. Which I'm sure will only be a matter of time until he does.

And I'm sure I'll learn to live with that, because while I may only be doing so-so when it comes to being "in shape" I can roll with such things by being in reasonably decent parenting condition. Or, again, too tired to object.

Walk-reading

On the walk to the station one evening I found myself briefly behind a young woman proceeding at a slower pace and her head pointed toward something in her hand. Oh great, I thought, another smart phone shuffler, not looking where she's going and enrapt in whatever email or text cannot wait.

However, when the opportunity to get around her presented itself and I stepped up beside her I discovered her hands held not a phone but an actual book.

The quaint nature of her old school distraction made my slight delay while stuck behind her somewhat less annoying for no reason other than it being unexpected.

I guess there's something to be said for novelty in one's inconsiderate behavior.

Woof, woof

A few months ago, as my mother-in-law was watching our toddler son (while he was home from daycare due to a fever), she taught him the sound dogs make. Presumably this was from a book we have that also has buttons corresponding to animal sounds, where the dog sound is one of them.

Now when he sees a dog on TV he (at least some of the time) says "woof, woof" (or more accurately, "wuhf, wuhf"). Given that we don't have any pets it was particularly interesting he could identify them and remember that.