Fatherhood – ooglykraken

Moving On

This past 27th of September was my birthday. I don’t really care about the ceremony of it as I’m no longer a child who receives gifts. To me, yesterday, tomorrow, and today are just days. Turning 33 doesn’t change anything for me, it’s just another day. However because of the cultural expectations I wanted to spend this day with my daughter. I have fleeting glimpses of hope for what my life can be and I’m still figuring it out, but what I want above all else is to be a good father.

I promised my daughter I would take her to the zoo and eat berry dessert with her. Since my divorce I can hardly eat or sleep but I couldn’t betray my promise to Zelda. For several weeks I only slept four to five hours at most and I thought about not being there. Instead I woke up around four, drove two and a half hours north, picked up my daughter and spent the next four-and-a-half hours at the zoo with her, her friend, and her friend’s mom.

Afterwards she slept for a bit, but woke up with maybe only 30 minutes of sleep. I had asked my Ex to pick up some berry-tarts from a local bakery, which she did. Thank you X. Afterwards Zelda and I shared one, though Zelda ate most of it. I don’t like sweets but I promised we’d eat it together.

Afterwards I spent some time playing with Zelda and just doing anything to spend time with her. When she wanted to sit on my lap and replicate my pose I felt really happy.

Later her mom came home from what I can only assume was a date, we prepared a dinner for Zelda. I helped as best as I could as I don’t spend enough time with Zelda to know what she likes now (writing that line makes my heart bleed, I wish I knew but her mom makes it difficult to spend time with her). While she did like the broccoli I made her, she really was invested in eating it when I promised to read to her. People are always amused when I say I can keep a toddler’s attention for an hour with books, but I use onomatopoeia, different voices, and engage her with questions.

In the end Zelda went off to do her own thing and my Ex and I spent some time talking. It was the most civil conversation we’ve had since she declared she’d started a divorce. It still hurts but I realized something recently.

I’m better off without her. She is selfish, non-empathetic, hyper-focused and apathetic to my plight. If I criticize her she gets angry. If I tell her she hurt me she plays UNO-Reverse and says its my fault. When I expose my vulnerabilities she just gets angry with me. So I just drank my pain.

She’s not a bad person inherently just selfish. As I’ve come to understand this, the love I’d held for her for over decade has started to fade.

I’d known she was like this the entire time, I just hoped she would change. It was during a trip in China to visit her family for Zelda’s first birthday I realized I didn’t mean much to her. I felt so alone and ignored. She didn’t understand when I said wanted more time with my daughter as everything was following Chinese traditions. I don’t know those, I’m not a part of them, I just felt like an outsider. It was just months of pain being an outsider, and she didn’t try to help. I even told her but she didn’t understand or care.

It’s this accumulation of apathy towards me I’ve realized she’s just not worth loving. I hate this. I hate that I feel I have to write this, but she ignored me and I loved her with everything I had. In the end it’s just a sad story.

More Useful Than I Think

My last post, Less Useful Than a Paperclip, has been deleted as it goes against the ethos of my intentions. I do suffer from depression and nihilism but I do not want to spread it, when I write I just want to spread understanding and hopefully good will. While finding my divorce was finalized has hurt me deeply I do not want negativity to pervade. It really sucks and I miss my ex-wife and daughter but that’s life, as Mr. Sinatra said. Life is not an easy undertaking but we all have our own cards to play and recently I’ve been misplaying mine and blaming the game. There is so much happiness and good to find, for most of us. It’d be disingenuous to constantly be so negative. For all of the pain and misery one finds in life there certainly is joy and happiness. I know not all people are as lucky as I am, I was born to a middle-class american family but striving for something better can avail something to everyone Srinivasa for example.

I’m choosing to write today because my last post is the least of what I want. I hope when you read my writing you connect to me in some small way and I do not want you to connect to my negativity. What I want is for all the world to be a good place, full of life and happiness. I’m naive so it is my nature. To not-so-subtly get to the point I apologize for giving in to my despair. Instead I started a Youtube Channel where I will be posting all child-friendly content. Mostly reading books and when I finish those doing puzzles and other similar content. If you’ve read a lot of my blog you know I have a drinking problem and other related issues but I will not allow that to bleed out into anything related to children. I have my failings but children deserve the best of us, and that is only what I will give them.

I hope whoever reads this has a great rest of their day.

It’s Not All Bad

This is meant to be a follow-up to my previous post, The Next Chapter. I’m worried it came across as too defeatist or negative when it was just meant to be a frank look at my situation. It should also be noted that my situation has been rapidly changing over the last month or so, and where I was when I wrote that is quite different from where I am now, mentally at least.

For the first time in probably a year and a half I’m hopeful for myself. Not because I believe my wife and I will get back together, not because anything has improved in regards to my relationship with my in-laws, and not because I’ve finally landed a new job. In fact none of those things are true but because I’m able to start living on my own terms. My wife is even reluctant to let me spend time with my daughter which is both frustrating and painful. However I’m no longer stuck in a quagmire of hurt, struggle, disappointment, self-doubt, and hopelessness. I am still hurt and struggling and disappointed and so on but I’m not content to stay there. Tomorrow may not be a better day or the day after that but I’m determined to keep moving forward until I do get to be genuinely happy again. Without change I will just slip into an abyss of self-destruction and no one wants that, most of all I do not want that.

When I finally move into my own home, or apartment if you want to be technical, I plan to set aside a corner of things for my daughter. That way I’ll have a visual reminder of what I’m fighting for, why all this pain has been worth living through. The future is uncertain but I can’t let the natural chaos of life deter me from experiencing the beauty that can exist within it.

In short, life is difficult but if I don’t work at achieving something better for myself I’ll never have that and I believe I can do that work, I trust that I can do what needs to be done.

The Next Chapter

For almost a year now I’ve been living at my parents home recovering from a painful divorce and an ongoing battle with alcohol addiction. If these two occurrences were characterized as wars I’d be losing both. Most mornings I wake up hating myself for being as useless as I feel, an unemployed father who can’t be there for his daughter. I feel like a leech attached to those I love, stealing from them just so I can slowly rot away with no purpose. Due to my inability to fully heal from my wife leaving me and change my drinking, my parents have decided it’s time for me to move onto whatever is next for me. I agree. I’ve been wanting to be on my own for a long time but didn’t trust myself to do the right thing. So I have two options: 1. Check myself into an in-house care facility or 2. Find my own place. I am fortunate that I have money saved up from my time as a Software Engineer that I could do either. As a result, because I’m just ready to move on, I bought a car and applied for an apartment closer to my daughter (who lives on the other side of the country). I’ll be driving out there soon and then I’ll try to find any job out there. Its the riskier option but I’m tired of feeling this way and the only real path I see to move on is to do what I want to do, not what other people want me to do. I’ve spent most of my life following directives from others. If it wasn’t my parents it was my wife. For the first time I can just do what I want.

That doesn’t mean living alone in a drunken stupor where I’m not directly impacting anyone, it means being self-sufficient and responsible for myself. I’ve been in therapy, psychiatric care, working with an addiction clinic, and attending Alcoholics Anonymous which are all useful tools for someone in my position and I encourage anyone who feels a similar powerlessness to use them. AA specifically is free and provides a lot of support and community for alcoholics and will be the one thing I continue with going forward. Once I’m in a better position I can be involved in my daughters life again, the only thing that’s been keeping me going. Despite friction between my wife and I, I’m determined to make sure I am a good father for the person I love most in this world. Right now I may need her more than she needs me but one day that will change and I will be able to proudly support her.

Bottom line I’m not in a good place but I can’t give up no matter how much I want to sometimes. I just need to keep moving forward.

Happy Days

I’m so exhausted from writing heartbreaking anecdotes, instead I’m going to write about something wholesome and happy. First off I’m no longer unemployed, it’s nothing grandiose but it’s a job. Onto today’s subject: I had the pleasure of my daughter spending a few months with my parents and I in Indiana last year through the new year.

My mom converted her craft room into a room for Zelda replete with her own bed, shelving, and a chest to store all of her clothes, books, and toys. Not long into her stay we went to a nearby second-hand store for children’s things and got some puzzles, books, and her first booster seat. It was fun watching Zelda run around and seeing what took her interest. She loved her booster seat which had the Paw Patrol as a motif, she loves dogs in general. There aren’t any in her home with her mom but my parents have two dogs and my sister who visits frequently has her own as well. Nearly every time we video chat with Zelda she wants to see everyone including the dogs. The group being together is important to her.

While here we would always spend our mornings in the living room where my parents watch the news everyday. Zelda would get her morning milk (chocolate milk if we had it) and we would draw, work on puzzles, play with toys or whatever she felt like doing that morning. If we drew she always wanted me to trace our hands next to each other on paper and tell me which was which. Baba hand and Dada (short for Zelda) hand. After my parents finished with the TV I would let her watch educational children’s programming like Numberblocks or Ms. Rachel for 30 minutes. I like to watch it with her so I know what she’s being exposed to, but would also take advantage of her distracted attention to prepare her breakfast. After breakfast I would always encourage her to go outside, though Indiana was quite cold at this time. She didn’t always want to and that’s ok. She did get to go sledding a few times and we even attempted her first snowman, though it was too cold for the snow to stick. We’d brush our teeth together every morning and she always wanted to imitate my brushing technique, then I’d help her finish. She did catch a cold and she and I developed a habit of taking our medicine in the morning. Baba medicine, supplements and anti-allergy pills, and Dada medicine, honey-based supplements for an immunity boost.

Around this time, I would practice her numbers 0-20 with her and then her alphabet. By the time she left Indiana, she understood 0-20 and was even starting to draw them herself. Letters were a bit more difficult, but she did learn some. Then, it was time for her midday nap. However, she almost never napped during this time, I believe it was because the room didn’t have blackout curtains. Instead, this became unsupervised play time, which is ok as long as she seemed healthy. Pushing for midday naps isn’t always necessary. Sometimes, when I would check on her, which was every 15 minutes, she would look at me with a wolfish grin saying “No, no, no” because she wanted more time to herself. After her nap was more milk, followed by more playtime.

One thing we had setup was a large box with windows and an opening for a door cut into it, with the folds taped for increased structural integrity. By the time she left it was covered in colors, words, and drawings. She’d dump her crayon bucket in there and just sift through the different colors, finding a favorite and scribbling into one of my notebooks. Or she he’d have me close the top flaps and jump out saying “BOO!”. Then she’d have a snack plate, play more, and have dinner with my parents. I’d allow her another 30 minutes of TV in the afternoon of whatever she wished. I think we watched Frosty the Snowman at least 30 times, eventually she had nearly all the dialogue memorized. Pokemon was a choice but she liked it too much and I didn’t want her to watch it after the first episode. She was going around saying “Pika, Pika!” for several days. Other things would be Bluey, Peppa Pig, nature documentaries, music videos, etc. I preferred music videos where she could see people playing their instruments.

To go to bed she had to have all of her stuffed animals, she really likes animals, all lined up in her bed with her “cozy” blanket, as she called it. Getting her cozy was a ploy I used to increase her comfort making her self-soothing to sleep easier on both of us. Sometimes I let her sleep next to me, usually when she was sick or if she woke up too early. Though she always wanted to sleep next to me, it’s better for her development if she doesn’t.

Zelda even had the chance to meet one of my friends and his kids as well as his nephew and niece. I spent the whole two hours chasing kids, being hit with pillows, playing hide-and-seek, and whatever else they all wanted to do. We both had a lot of fun, and it was my first time seeing this friend in-person in a while. It was after this Zelda started to warm up to my parents more as well, like a seal on her social openness had been broken.

Leading up to Christmas, she would make cookies with my mom, and I allowed her one cookie a day, usually split up as a treat across her meals. I used sweets and berries as incentives for her to eat her vegetables every meal. She did have her first big Christmas with us all, and she got to open her stocking of candy and small road-trip toys as well as several presents. I made sure she got a present “from” everyone, including her mother, her mother’s parents, and Santa Claus. One of her big presents was an all-wood kitchen set. Another was a marble run which I set up, and she loved the little colored marbles. She loves bath time, so one of my themes for her was bath toys, so she got all different kinds as well as a hypo-allergenic bath ball and bubbles. Watching her open the presents was great. She had no restraint and was just opening them one after another with no regard. After Christmas, we had a road trip to Virginia to meet my brother and his family. This was the first time she and my older brother had met, much to chagrin, but I was glad it finally happened. In Virginia, we spent most of our days at Busch gardens, which she really enjoyed. There were light displays, musicals, different foods, and plenty more. It was my first time riding a roller coaster in probably a decade or more. She also rode some rides with me and alone. In the afternoons we went to the pool and I’ve never seen her so excited. Her little limbs flailing like the propellers on a helicopter. She would intentionally try to jump in somewhere out of reach because she always trusted me to catch her, and she would slide in on her belly headfirst from outside the pool like seal.

When it was time for her to go we all had ice-cream sundaes the night before. It was a special night so she got a special treat. This was her first sundae with all of the fixings, a cookie, sprinkles, chocolate syrup, banana, and whipped cream. It was 20 minutes of audible expressions of enjoyment. Just “Mmmm” in various pitches as she worked through it. She didn’t finish it which is probably for the best. We all had a great time. On our flight out we watched movies and TV together. We couldn’t both watch on the same screen so I lined up the timing on our TVs so we were watching more in parallel than anything, but seeing this little head with my big beats barely fitting was pretty great. I had the volume turned way down for her. All in all we both had a ton of fun.

The Collapse Pt Four – Nadir and Terminus

I plan on this being my final post in The Collapse series and to avoid things I’ve already said, and to highlight happier moments there are a couple of earlier posts from in-the-moment I’d like to highlight. First is Life Comes at You Fast, where I go into more detail about what I was doing leading up to my daughter’s birth. Another from a month after her birth, A Liminal Space. And finally Tempus Fugit which focuses on the several months when I had parental leave from work. Again the topics below will probably be hard to read through. Anything I say about myself or others is only meant to draw out the points of how things can fall apart.

My daughter being born was and is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. Pardon the meme but her birth cured my depression, or at least my nihilistically driven existential dread. For the first time in my life I wasn’t afraid of how I ended. It also seemed like the best chance for me to prove to X how capable I could be. However my wife and I clashed on almost everything at this point. I didn’t need to put a lot of effort into my contract job and thought that we agreed I would take over day-to-day child care, at least to start. Except my wife wanted a live-in doula, which I was fine with as far as nursing her back to health following a 10-month pregnancy. But it was obvious she wanted to offload day-to-day care to other people, something I was and am strongly opposed to when it’s not necessary. Since we came home with Zelda, it was “let’s have a doula, let’s let my mom come out and help, let’s get this daycare, or this person to come babysit for a day.” She had no interest in being as hands on with our daughter as I did whereas I felt that was mandatory. Before I continue I will say, X put in a lot of time and effort in other areas like finding daycares, vetting them, and other more logistical tasks.

From hour one of Zelda’s birth I was there, I even cut the umbilical cord probably with the most worried look on my face I’ve ever had. For the next three days we spent in postnatal care I most likely only got about six hours of sleep while watching over X and Zelda. Then we had a live-in doula for about two months who took care of X’s recovery and took care of Zelda. After the doula left, I sleep-trained Zelda myself, which meant sleeping only a few hours every night for months, getting her adjusted to a regular sleeping schedule. Then getting her to sleep by herself. All while looking for new work and getting housework done (I was on parental leave from work). If you ask X I’m embellishing, but I don’t believe I am. For the majority of Zelda’s first two years outside of the doula and eventually daycare, I did nearly everything that required hands-on effort. Not to say X wasn’t present, she did spend time with her. It’s just that I was the primary caregiver for a long time. When I was in CA last and picked up Zelda from preschool with my wife, Zelda completely ignored her mom and ran towards me, I believe because I was always there. Playing with her, talking to her, reading to her, brushing her teeth, feeding her, taking her to the pediatrician, things X did just not as frequently as I did.

At a certain point I started drinking again. From my memory this was 8-9 months after Jekyll &Hyde. Longer than I’d ever gone sober before, not to blame her but she gave me an ultimatum, stop drinking or she would leave. I didn’t have the strength for either. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, no matter what it cost me, I just couldn’t afford it. So when I did start drinking again I didn’t want to tell her. She’d always been a taskmaster, if I was playing video games I felt the need to hide it because she would shame me for it. Drinking was worse, I couldn’t tell her or I felt my marriage would be over. I was not drinking a lot at this point. It was mostly beer, as I enjoy drinking it, and only a few at night after Zelda was asleep. Back at work I felt driftless as I was on a new team, learning several new services, but my team was struggling to keep up with stakeholder demands. I had very little time to learn from my seniors and worked over-time to keep up. Work alone was incredibly stressful but my wife was still pressuring me to find a new job. I still had to take care of my daughter. There’s just a lot to do at this point in one’s life. We still had our good times and things didn’t take a turn for the worse until well after Zelda’s first birthday.

Zelda turned one during a visit to her family in China and this was when I realized something I still haven’t found a solution to. When my wife is with her parents she doesn’t really spend a lot of time with me. Though we did putz around town on scooters together a couple times. When my daughter is with them she wants to be with the group. I was naturally excluded because of the language and cultural barrier so I spent most of this time in China working, studying, and playing games by myself except when I took Zelda out on my own. When I told my wife this she didn’t really seem to care. One could argue “Learn Chinese”. Sure, which I did. I even delivered a vow to my wife in front of her family and friends in China, in (imperfect) Chinese at our wedding ceremony there.

Fast forward to later that year when in late October I was laid off as a part of company-wide expense cutting. I think our marriage was over the moment my wife found out. Immediately she told me, if only I had gotten a job sooner this wouldn’t be an issue. I wasn’t completely hopeless at this point, I had a plan already laid out for the next 4-5 months to make sure I would get one, by the end of my first day unemployed. A week later I had a few beers for the first time in months and X and I argued. The next morning we separated. I moved out, into a nearby rental. We started couples therapy. The rental I stayed in was shared with several others but was affordable as a result. I stayed mostly to myself while I focused on job searching. After a couple weeks I noticed the house-mates all hung out on certain days on the back porch and started joining them. Problematically they all drank and/or smoked. So at first I started smoking here and there, then I started drinking again. X was ready for me to move back into the house until I showed up completely drunk one day. No fights, just obviously drunk. Now I moved back in, not because she was ready, but to keep me away from influence.

Things stayed relatively ok still, during this period, though our relationship had obviously very much cooled. We got into one argument since therapy and she immediately stopped the sessions. Zelda was in daycare and I focused on getting a job during the day. I was putting in at least 6, sometimes 10, hours every day studying and applying for work and attending interviews but nothing ever panned out. I did pretty well staying sober having the occasional drink every couple of weeks but it was still enough for her to know I wasn’t in a good place, especially with all the failed attempts at a new job. After several months of this, around April of 2024, her parents came to help with Zelda. It was after this I completely fell apart. Since X spent all of her time with her parents we didn’t do anything together anymore and X’s parents were always with Zelda so it was hard to be with her also. Again I was excluded by the nature of language and cultural barriers. I felt alienated, alone, and frustrated. With the only two people who had kept me going all this time seemingly taken from me or just avoiding me. So I kept to myself, worked on getting a job, and drank at night and sometimes during the day.

I still spent whatever time I could with Zelda but it was usually just her and I, intentionally avoiding my wife and her parents. This meant walking her to the park, taking her out to experience new things, letting her interact with things like keyboards and vinyl. To this day if you play the theme from Banjo-Kazooie she’ll want to dance or have me hold her and dance. My favorite day from 2024 was Father’s Day when I took her to another city nearby for the afternoon. We went to Michael’s where she could see all the pretty and colorful craft supplies. Then we walked around the main strip, got lunch nearby and had ice-cream together.

Eventually I came clean that I had been drinking again but with everything that had happened I could feel, any chance of respect, love or hope had died. Still I strived for it. This was the hardest part for me. I wanted to be close to her, but I had betrayed her trust too many times, and she had never respected me as an equal. I was fighting a losing battle, and stuffed those feelings into a bottle of Vodka. It became worse and worse over the months.

“Pray before the Altar of Needles
Worship in the Temple of Smoke
Whine at the feet of Surrender
Smile all the while as you choke
Because we are in love with the pain
That we keep coming back to
Again and again and again”

– Abuse Ritual by Black Tongue

It was after X told me she wanted a divorce that I hit my nadir and I had given up. I had become nothing more than a blubbering mass of alcoholic self-loathing, a miserable little pile of secrets. There were days where I’d just lay in bed, drinking, wanting to die. My wife was already irreparably hurt by me, but harming myself would just hurt my daughter too. I slipped further and further until my best friend started to come and check on me. My situation worried him so much he worked with my parents to have me leave. Something I should have done as soon as X’s parents arrived. This was a week before Zelda turned two. I still hate myself for that, but I’ll just have to live with that shame.

After moving back in with my parents I was served the divorce papers. It hurt, and still hurts, so much I took my frustration from that out on my wife when I was intoxicated. Blaming her for this and that from over the years. She went from being a friend to no longer wanting to talk to me. I understand now, after all this time, what I did to her, how I hurt her.

See this is not just the story of how my marriage collapsed but how I crumbled alongside it. Instead of showing strength I gave in to my weakness, instead of doing the right thing I gave up. Those moments where my determination was most required, I didn’t have it. I failed. I failed again, and again, and again. Because of that I lost my wife, my home, a friend, my sanity, the right to take my daughter to school everyday, and the right to live with her and watch her grow up. Above all I hurt everyone around me. I hate it, but it’s my fault so I just have to learn to deal with it and do the right thing going forward.

Getting this far has been because I had friends and family around me who loved me and still support me.

X if you read this and make it to the end, no amount of apologies will take back what I did but know from the bottom of my heart I’m sorry.

Tempus Fugit

Time seems to have lurched into hyperspeed overnight when I wasn’t paying attention. Every day blazes by. I wake between 5-8 AM and usually when I take my first deep breath for the day it’s 3 PM. My wife and I simultaneously wonder where indeed the time has flown to. This isn’t meant to be a complaint but rather a noting of how quickly a life shifts. This is all relevant because in what seems to be a blink my daughter is now three months old. It’s been a wonder watching her grow but I’m so close I don’t realize how much (physically) until the wife and I share pictures and see older ones. Recently I’ve been encouraging her to use her and hands and seeing her discover how to use them is not something that can be transcribed effectively. That’s how everything is with them (babies). It seems like magic or a miracle that they can develop so quickly. Yet how some things seem so beyond them despite it’s simplicity i.e. sleeping. I try to carry conversation with her while avoiding “baby talk” or pitching my voice higher to help her learn language and hearing her respond with her own onomatopoeic vocabulary shows how much she tries. Once while talking to her I looked at her face expecting fully formed english to come forth until I remembered “she can’t talk, she’s a baby”. You could say “wow this guy seems (out-of-it, dumb, etc… pick one)”, but you don’t witness their magical development first-hand. One day she struggles to lift her head, the next she’s pushing her whole body away from my chest so she can look around the room. And I swear when I say “hi” to her she already responds with a high pitched “ai” sound.

All this to say that despite feeling like time had been compressed it’s been a wondrous three months of fatherhood. As I write she’s screaming, cooing, and shrieking in her bouncer while listening to music, stopping to stare at me while I sing the parts I know. If you just got some incomprehensible warm feeling reading any of this know that parenthood is that feeling nearly all the time but also sleep-deprived, busy, and likely covered in spit-up formula all the time too.

I had recently suffered some muscle problems, likely from carrying the baby one-handed, rendering me ineffective at almost anything but lying prone groaning in pain. My wife picked up my slack but after a week put her foot down claiming things were untenable in their current state. Fortunately after several chiropractor visits and acupuncture I was able to start using my arm again. Then shortly after that my parents and younger sister came to visit us. We had about a week with them which also included my 30th birthday. It was a great time to work on spouse-parent relationships which can be difficult but are important especially when there’s grand-kids to consider. Roughly a week removed from their departure and the home is settling into a routine.

There’s so much that could be said. I could elaborate on my family’s visit, my favorite things about Zelda (my daughter), or how I confront the ever impending end of my life made ever-real by my changing of decades but there’s so much to say and too little time to ponder it.

A Liminal Space

My daughter is almost a month old now and there are times where it still doesn’t feel real. Like I’m not actually a father and there’s just this baby I’m taking care of for the moment. Even saying her name is weird. Just calling her Baby feels more normal as calling her by name makes it her real name, she’d never know what we’d named her if we just called her Baby. The bizarre feeling when I first said her name was like I was speaking her into existence, announcing her presence for all the gods and humanity to witness. But it felt heavy and came out soft and low. Good for a baby, better to soothe but if you’re exercising primordial magic it’s best to be more confident I think. My wife convinced me we needed a doula, one who speaks her native Mandarin, and so I’ve largely been unneeded. I’ve still got my nine-to-five as well so it all makes me feel so disconnected from being a father. When I have moments that I can steal with Zelda I do, keeping her tiny frame warm and engaging her with talk and the occasional reading (The Princess Bride). In the first three days I slept no more than a few hours while doing everything for Zelda and my wife but after the doula arrived the sudden separation of duties left me anxious and restless. I had left the safe and comfortable boundaries of youth and was creeping evermore into the responsibility of raising another person. Some memories of my youth still seem fresh and yet I’m expected to provide for her for the rest of (hopefully) my life. Daunting yes but I’m not scared of that. Before I can step into the full role of a parent I feel I should be more involved with Zelda day-to-day, moment-to-moment. My wife says I worry too much and it’s fine. She’s probably right though. The doula does create a real and obvious de-escalation of need as she’s able to do most everything herself. I think this causes two problems for me:

1. She’s spending time with Zelda that I don’t want to give up and performing responsibilities I think are mine

2. By not being able to fully step into my expected responsibilities as a parent I cannot fully become one.

This renders me stuck between the past and what’s next. The liminal space between being an adult and being a parent.

If any of this has you worried, it’s fine I’m past the point where this has pervaded my ponderings. So much so I wondered against writing about it at all, but no pain no gain. Logically though this all really shouldn’t matter:

1. The doula is only here for two months max, I have the rest of Zelda’s life to be a father.

2. I just have to get over it because I don’t really have a choice one way or the other. Plus I still have a job to do.

Thanks to ShortFatOtaku on YouTube for the word.

Life Comes at You Fast

Any day now I’m going to come home from the hospital with a baby girl as a new father. I feel anxious, excited, afraid, curious, and more. For the moment I’m just double checking everything, trying to keep the house clean, and my wife happy. My wife is ready to no longer carry a watermelon-sized person around her belly also. This has been the largest reason I’ve not found the time or motivation to write much of anything. Even now the words come only with much focus and thought to wring out something. Anticipation has always had a way of staying under my skin, making me overwhelmingly anxious. For relief I always end up going over all the details, even the only mildly related ones. The nursery is setup, I’ve re-organized the garage, re-evaluated and sold off part of my video game collection, re-organized and cleaned the kitchen, and put some finishing touches into my gardens. I think I’m feeling the end of this chapter of my life and I’m trying to finish what I can so I can start the next as unburdened as possible.

I have so much going on and so much to say this will probably be quite long, especially with some pictures. So it’s been broken up into pieces, mostly for my benefit. If you’re asking why I didn’t release smaller posts over time, that’s a good question.

The Baby

Going forward I may talk about Zelda, my daughter, but only after confirming it’s ok with my partner. We’re almost at 41 weeks and my wife is ready to be done. Fortunately Zelda is for all intents and purposes in good health despite her late stay. Unfortunately we’ll have to wait for our local hospital to deliver a few other Summer babies before we can schedule an induction and a definitive end. One way or the other within a week I’ll be able to hold my newborn. My wife is abuzz with the possibilities for Zelda, whether she’ll be good at math, a natural swimmer or anti-social like her dad. How quickly will she learn to crawl and speak? Will she be noisy or quiet? Active or still? All I can hope to do is comfort her against all the possibilities and assure her Zelda will be fine.

Ironically by the time this post goes live, my daughter will have been born already. On July 4th close to midnight Zelda was born with no complications, and all the struggles my wife suffered for the past 40+ weeks melted into one of the biggest smiles I’ve ever seen her wear when they handed her this tiny, quiet, little girl. Two days later and we’ve taken the baby home for the first time. Here’s to a healthy baby and wife *drinks more caffeine*.

The Wife

Wild salmon, fingerling potatoes, and green salad.

My wife has found the dwindling end of our non-parent life together pre-occupying her mind. As a balm I suggested a long list of ideas for “Dates”, with extra attention to her limitations in pregnancy. While we were unable to do all of them we did knock off quite a few and having this list to work through made planning a fun day quicker.

Dinner for two by candlelight
Bake desserts and make ice cream sundaes
Picnic
Work on some artwork together
Day trip to an interesting nearby city
Try a board game, card game, or video game
Faux camping in the backyard with smores and grilled food
Watch a movie at the Drive-in
Food crawl through a town
Dinner at a nice restaraunt
“Movie Theatre” at home

Pictured below we were able to complete a “Paint-by-numbers” on canvas that we are now deciding where to hang. Most likely in the nursery.

The next we were able to do was try Anti-monopoly, a variation on the classic board game. It was the first time in a few years we had played a board game or anything like that together. On occasion she’s willing to play the video game Overcooked with me and it’s a bit of chaotic fun. We were also able to catch Everything Everywhere All at Once at a nearby Drive-in Theatre. We grabbed some mexican take-out and had a great time gorging and watching. Earlier in the year we had driven north to Napa, CA (the city not the county) where we roamed around taking in the sights and eating at a few places, this is the closest we got to a true food crawl. When I first moved out to California my wife and I were not married yet and were actually taking a break from each other. We eventually met for dinner at a nice local italian place and re-kindled our relationship that night. I was hoping we could go one last time before parenthood and we may still but it seems we won’t. Lastly my wife had received a small projector as a gift from work and with some tinkering I was able to setup our spare bedroom into a “home movie theatre”. The projection’s image is rather grainy but sharp enough for subtitles, a must for my wife. For our movie night I suggested The Grand Budapest Hotel, something we had meant to watch together for some time. This was my second viewing and her first. It’s a pretty fascinating movie with lots of stuff bubbling beneath the surface, she enjoyed it quite a bit so I’ve moved onto my next recommendation for her, Catch Me If You Can also a hit. Even though we worked through half the list we hit a point where we knew even amongst those limited options, our choices were fewer each day.

Just a funny aside, we have a local pizzeria that serves a “Prego” pizza. One that is claimed to help start labor, and my wife anxious to get things going advocated for it’s consumption. So I pickup what is essentially a combo pizza with extra onions, pepper, and linguisa added. She wasn’t a fan, she doesn’t like such “american” style pizzas so I’ve had pizza for lunch for almost a week now.

Myself

I’ve spent some time thinking about why I even have a blog and what purpose it serves. One conclusion is that being able to write about whatever I want with no real objective gives me the opportunity to organize my thoughts. Then in the writing of it I ask myself critical questions, which reveals more understanding. If nothing else having a place to speak even an empty room is conducive to my mental health and self-awareness. It’s my hope I’ll continue to think out loud and find more confidence in exposing more of my thoughts as I do so. Aside from my mental health I’ve taken a break from serious excercise to nurse a foot back into shape, but between an acceptable diet and limited activity I’ve lost another ten pounds in the past month. This makes 25+ pounds over two months. Down from 220+ to 195. The end of last month, June, was when I hit two months of no alcohol as well. Things are not perfect but I’m making the changes that I think are meaningful for now.

Video Games

It’s weird that I feel so compelled to finalize things. Not only that but what I cared about or what mattered shifted quickly as the expected due date neared. This was most apparent with my intentions towards game collecting where I had streamlined my collection selling a good chunk of it. Cutting down on larger items like collectors editions and entire genres I’ve realized I just don’t like. Not only this but I bought plastic shells for all of my Nintendo paper game boxes as that finalized level of protection. In addition after a lot of shuffling around I’ve found a layout for my games that I find functionally effective and aesthetically pleasing. From the hookups for all my handhelds over on the left, to the ready-to-play PSOne between my genesis games, and everything else. I look at these shelves and see an interactive shrine to what gaming is to me. In an effort to make playing any of my consoles even easier I’ve started switching over to all wireless controllers. So far this covers the Genesis, SNES, and PS2 for the consoles that dont have first-party wireless controllers. So far it’s been pretty effective, I just need to document what combination of switches need to be activated for seamless component video out to my Retro-Tink 5x.

Vinyl

This push to tie the bow on my collecting also included my vinyl collection which saw two new additions with another three on the way. Most recently was The Black Dahlia Murder’s Ritual. I bought my first TBDM vinyl, Abyssmal a week or so before Trevor’s death and I had posted about not enjoying their recent music as much. I know I don’t have anything to do with what happened but it still left me with some guilt later. I only wish the best for those left behind. Continuing with the Death Metal I also picked up Black Crown Initiate‘s Song of the Crippled Bull and Selves We Cannot Forgive both excellent listens with a lot of variety, though I would like to say the former is more like one 21 minute long track that’s broken into four pieces. The latter goes to a lot of different places and most of the tracks have a clear identity picking only a few styles to blend each. The last Death Metal album is the newest release from Archspire who seem like a joke band because of how ridiculous some of what they do is, but every time I listen to their past two releases what I hear is some pretty great songwriting. Finally I was able to find an affordable copy of one my favorite 90’s east-coast hip-hop albums. It has this theme of a city bracing for a hurricane, the eponymous storm in the form of “Hurricane” Starang Wondah, Louieville Sluggah, and Top Dog.

For anyone curious about my setup, I’m using an AT-LP120XUSB so my audio is actually transmitted via bluetooth as I’m low on space for chords. At the moment I’m only outputting to a pair of decent Bose bookend speakers that’ve lasted me since High School. Given our house is mostly hardwood and vinyl planking the acoustics are exceptional and I can fill the whole house from downstairs at well less than half volume. My turntable accessories and stuff for cleaning are in the drawer just below the turntable, while replacement vinyl sleeves are on a shelf lower. My vinyl shelving was just some second-hand furntiure left by a friend of my wife’s. After having it for some time not knowing why this “book”shelf can’t hold books, it all clicked when I was looking where I could put my vinyl somewhere safe, accessible, and allowed for legible spines. I’m using some cheap metal bookends to keep the vinyl vertical and help with organization. Right now I have them organized into four sections Metal or Hip-Hop my wife doesn’t like on the top left, stuff I don’t listen to or damaged vinyl on the bottom left, video game soundtracks on the bottom right and everything else (jazz, rock, classical) is in the top right. Just for my vanity and because vinyl album covers are an art to themselves I bought a stand to display whatever’s playing.