Remembering Uncle Bob

Today we went to the memorial service for Uncle Bob. I can't say that Bob and I were close, but my personal feeling is that grief is easier when shared, so I wanted to be there to support the members of his (and my) family who were grieving. And you know what? You always learn about the deceased at a funeral, and chances are you see people you ought to see more often. If it weren't so dang sad, funerals would be really cool.

Here are some things I learned about Uncle Bob today:

• Uncle Bob was a union carpenter. 
• He worked on the Kingdome and Seattle Center.
• He built rigging to support shipments sent for the drilling efforts on the North slope.
• He loved Lifetime movies.
• He was a swimmer.
• He ate a lot of icecream. Like, a whole lot. Every day, by the sounds of it.

Because I had the privileged of going to the service with Nana (and Mom and Dad), we also go to swing by the address where she grew up- 510 9th Ave SE. (She says it surprising which things stick in your memory.) The house is gone, but the address is just a few blocks from Meridian, the main drag of Puyallup, and parking for the State Fairgrounds. She told us there used to be a Japanese internment camp on the corner there. That's a bit of local history that I've never really recognized so directly.

We got to see (and hug, and share memories with) some of the farther flung cousins, which was great. It made me really glad I was able to go. Maybe we shouldn't wait until the next funeral to do that again.

Matt Makes Me Crazy

 You know how there are some couples where one half of the couple has, maybe, a strong personality or a very conspicuous habit, and you can see HUGE pull that has on the other person? The sort of, "Wow, if I had to live with someone like that, I'd go nuts!" situation? Well, I think, in a way, I might be the other half of that couple- but probably not the way you are thinking.

It's not that Matt has a strong personality, but some how, living with him has desensitized me to some things I NEVER thought I'd be desensitized to. Here is just a punch list:

• While at speed on my bike, I collided with a squirrel, who was flipped into my pedals, bounced off my leg, before he ran away. I screamed a lot, (a LOT) and then rode my bike home.
• Sometimes, I deadlift.
• For more than a minute, I was considering the feasibility of running a half marathon. (I don't have any special love for running, it's just easy to do wherever you are.)
• I ran my first 10k. It took 1hr and 17 min. I repeat, I was running for an hour and seventeen minutes.
• Matt had a race that I didn't want to wait around for, so I made our friend Adam go on a 10 mile hike with me.(We saw the changing of the larches- which was beautiful)
• The previous two bullets happened on the same weekend. My hips are punishing me today. What kind of crazy person have I become??

You see, I live with someone who apparently rides 100 miles a week, who has at least one race booked for every weekend in the foreseeable future, and who gets really weird if he doesn't get a proper sweaty workout in every day. And of course, our friends support this crazy healthy lifestyle by participating in as much running, hiking and biking as is imaginable. It's inevitable that I'd get sucked into this craziness, and even forget that while I can sometimes do one epic thing, stringing them together doesn't make them easier. Ha! Of course, Matt makes all this look quite effortless. He will often ride 14 miles in a day in his commute, then run 5 miles before dinner. And maybe lift weights with me, if I need his help spotting anyway. He ran the 5K version of that 10K I ran, and he came in second. To Jeffrey. Oh, and they both decided to run the 5K, because they had a cyclocross race on Sunday. TWO RACES in ONE weekend. Living with He-man kinda makes you want to stay in shape.

But of course, now he is in the kitchen doing the dishes and singing along to MAGIC! and the pop charts like no one can hear him. ("Marry that girl, I'm gonna marry her anyway...") I suppose this marital influence goes both ways.

On perhaps a related note, I'm struggling to make my weight lifting goals (2-3 times per week, training to squat, deadlift and press my own weight). I'm about halfway there, but it's slow going. Does anyone want to be my virtual weight lifting buddy?

I don't much like being a Parent

I feel like venting about this for a while, and being as my children are still too young to read, I feel safe putting it up here.  Perhaps some day they'll be trolling through my electronic history and stumble across this.  If so, good job, detectives!  The treasure is buried under Old Man McGillicutty's mansion.

I've given it some thought, and you know what I think I hate the most about parenting?  It's that in far too many circumstances, it's easy to identify the right choice, because it's the one that makes your children less happy.  We speak of childhood, collectively, as this great time of wonder and exploration.  It's not.  I'd be properly chuffed if Tyler exhibited a little more wonder and explored a little more.  Mostly it seems like childhood is screaming when things get difficult or confusing, and always trying to eat foods that are bad for you.  I think that line might not fit in a sonnet as well, though.

I've been waiting for a moment, or even a gradual transition, where I start to really *feel* good about parenting.  Where he does something that melts my heart or makes me proud to be a parent.  I certainly didn't feel it right away, but I was prepared for that.  Dad's sometimes don't feel that connection right away.  But Tyler is coming up on three and a half years old and I still view him as largely a series of chores.  Even playing with him isn't that much fun.  The games we are allowed to play together are pretty restrictive, mostly involving him ordering me around until I get tired of it.  This doesn't surprise me, really.  He's three.  We can't really break out Dominion or Scrabble to pass the time and bond.  But, I dunno, playing with him now just feels like work.  I'll keep doing it because the books have told me it's really good for him, but let's not kid ourselves, I'd rather be doing almost anything else on my own.

I'm afraid, actually afraid, of being generous with him, of letting him have too much of what he wants; I can't keep it up.  Any reward must be transitory, of course, and he's capable of becoming a real monster when you have to turn off the TV or take away the IPad.  So I'm reduced to just being 'proud' of him.  It feels so empty.  I hope that he likes me and that such gestures give him some sort of positive reinforcement, because it feels like the only tool of positive reinforcement I'm allowed to use.  And, of course, I don't want to give him too much dessert because I'm trying to lose weight, and on top of everything else there is to do in a day, saying no to ice cream too often strains my self-control.

Of course, we are only a few years into the whole experiment, and raising a 6 or 10 or 15 year old has to be a completely different animal, but *man*.  People say all the time that they love their kids.  I'd certainly start breaking fingers if anyone tried to take them away, But I look at him now and I mostly just feel...tired.

-N