I m a survivor ----?

A possible preview advert for a new season of "I m a survivor". 

In our new season, dads talk about surviving being alone with their teenage daughters and sons.  a weekend, 5 days,  2 weeks!  Dad Max has a 15 year old teenage daughter (in the background said daughter is singing along with a new tik tok video which uses some sort of cat lyrics.  She is singing  "meow meow meow meomeomeomeo mee yow...") and he has to spend two weeks, no, more than two weeks alone with her as the other half of the family is going on an extended spring vacation.  Dad couldnt. He had to work and be home with the other daughter.  "oh lord give me strength" we heard Max mutter as daughter was singing the cat song again, and then going to some "ye" song.   ("Kane" West, doh).  

Back to reality now.  Yeah, that was what I was thinking at the beginning of the two weeks as the other two left for vacation and my daughter started singing the cat song. I immediately thought of a new season of Im a survivor featuring,... Me. 

Then I was going to write again after two weeks and give the "survival view".   That would be close to today, tomorrow or Monday.  

So far, it looks like, as Gloria Gaynor sings, "I will survive."  (bad dad joke). Except my back is still worse even though I tried to start up my back exercises again.  It feels better just to stand all day.  Sitting wrecks it up. But I divert or divest. Not sure which.  

The ROYAL pain is that she doesnt like most of the food I make, or just doesnt eat it. Seriously its not my fault, I ask her what she will eat? What I can make, but she just makes herself some stupid noodle dish.  Which meant I had to do regular shopping AND I stocked up on other foods AND I still had to give her money to buy her own food.  So you would think I could have saved some money with only the two of us, but it didnt really work out that way. It came out just about the same as when the whole family is here.  Strange. Strange brew in fact.  

So economically, I survived, but didnt thrive. I wasnt even able to climb my way out of some debt with fewer food payments, as i was hoping.  No. 

She had vacation and I had work so she was mostly still sleeping when I left for work. And I go to work later than others.  But it was a pain because she stayed up till 2 or 3 am (actually it is 1.30 am now, but Saturday night, so I am allowed to stay up too).I sleep like a deer so i would hear her padding around and eating cereal at 1am and doing this and that.  Sleep ..... was bad.  I get my "cleaning brain" deep sleep from midnight or  1am to 5.30 am after which I have my worse REM sleep where I dream too much.  So she was making noise just in my deep sleep time which messed it up and my brain didnt get cleaned out as well.  This means I can blame my alzheimer on her later in my life because my amyloids (sp?) werent cleaned out as well living with a teen ager who went to bed at 3am. 

SHE yelled at me.  "Well, without Mom home, someone has to yell at you,"  She said.  (I dont get no respect in this home, not even Donald Trump could maintain his ego in this household, let alone my lower self esteem hubris).  Granted I did nag her.  Parents have to nag.  But she threw it back in my face. Last Sunday: Please clean the bathroom before you go on your trip on Wednesday and can you do a dark laundry?  Yeah I ll do it.  She actually did it Thursday as she didnt go so she slept on Wednesday and did it Thursday.  

But all I asked was to please put away the paired socks I did that are on the couch. How that caused her to have a complete tyrannical, unhinged shout at me, I really dont know.  She sometimes has a short temper, like her mother.  ugh.  So then she refused to cook the dinner.  Well, ok.  Too bad I mean, but I ve been cooking anyway.  

She did clean the bathroom really well though and did the laundry.  I appreciated that. 

We did have some nice times. Although I was hoping we could go see a movie together. We stayed at home instead and watched.  Twice.  Once she fell asleep.  The second one she stayed awake.  Uncharted movie.  We have interesting conversations on occasion.  Better than when there are other people in the house.  She is able to have an intelligent conversation.  Even though she doesnt study much, she seems to have a lot of information.  I wish her head would get in order and she could find a direction with her information, but I suppose that will come.  I really am not going to push her ON THAT.  Seeing as I had no idea myself for most of my life and still sometimes now.  

She did feel regret that she hadnt been productive enough one day. So she suddenly got up from the couch at midnight after watching 5 hours of tik tok or whatever and did the i-roning, the laundry and cleaned her room till 3am in the morning!  I too was "lazy" and just felt like watching late night programming and reading the newspaper every night till 1am instead of writing or working or doing something productive. I too was very tired.  So... I shouldnt be hypocritical.  

Dismayed

The point is... well, I am kind of dismayed that nothing turned out well enough. Not the money, not the sleep, and not the going out with my daughter.  But... it wasnt a fiasco.  I think a total failure would have been nagging and yelling every day, really badly.  Occasionally it happened, but then it worked out and we got back to talking with each other. Even after I said out in the open that 15 year old teen agers are ... really ... bad. I am not sure I used those nice words.  She said, "so I am bad?" I said, well no, and yes, its just that your brain cant put things in a good order and often just acts out of impulse and doesnt choose well.  In a couple years it will be able to manage things better, and hopefully make better choices.  

But I guess I have survived the ordeal.  I am a survivor

But actually this is not how I thought this post would be written. I thought it would have a lot more survivor emotion and intensity and then we battled and then she yelled at me and turned up her hip hop.  Some of that did happen, but really it just was a going along life is life.  Why I have people in China reading my blog is beyond me, but thats cool.  It really is just down to earth banal even possibly boring little incidents.  But thanks in China and even in Russia for reading. I kind of think they must be robots. Who else would read this tripe? 

hahahahahahahahhahahah

Car bomb and Spoke. 

Again I have been listening to this band  CAR BOMB. This album "Meta" will just give you brain melt or will rattle you from your toes to the hair on your head. Or rattle your spine.  Incredible.  Maybe it is good for my back, or bad.

Just "refound" SPOKE S  other cd album.  "done" in the store warehouse.  Last one.  I love their chord changes. 90s melodic hard core. From 1994.  I m going to buy it myself.   

Afterword

On the next day after I wrote the above. She really ripped into me and said I dont know how to cook. I should get a real cookbook (my wife got me the one I use to cook)and  learn how to cook MEALS not vegetarian chili or curry thai chicken.  Cook.... I dont know, get a different cook book. I was confused.  I was deeply hurt and offended. I wanted to give everything up. I should have asked her, "well how would you do it?  Can you give me help on how to make it better?"  But I think she would have repeated to get another cook book.  I had to get out of the house it really hurt. After I gave her money to buy some fast food crap because she wouldnt eat my food.   Surviving, but not very well.  I might make another mix of this post.  Write it again like a real survival show.   

  

  

Its the little things.

 I tell ya, I dont get no respect.   

I know, its a famous line from Rodney Dangerfield, but one which seems appropriate for this post.  You try to be the best dad possible, but people usually complain about something and basically say your attempts were "less than satisfactory".    I guess it is criticism which I should accept and improve upon. 

However, the criticism amounts to, "do things exactly the way you have done them all the time and dont change a thing."   Even small things can upset the overall product. In fact it is the small things which often screw up your efforts, or bring complaints.  

Examples come mostly from cooking and food.  

After I have established several recipes of dinner foods I have to stick to them like iron and can not improvise or change at all.

Lasagne.  No black olives.  Only green.  Ham, not any other meat.  I once tried to substitute my famous spaghetti sauce to make a bolognese lasagne.  But after two tries, that brought "Dad, can you go back to the original recipe and stop with the spaghetti sauce recipe?"   No ricotta cheese. I want to try that, but ... not with my kids.  Spinach lasagne?  Are you kidding?  My one daughter recently repeated AGAIN that she does not eat anything green.  

Tuna spaghetti.  Made with black olives only.  Not green.  And with the twisty bowtie noodles, not any other.  

When I got my recipe fine tuned on the family spaghetti sauce, they loved it, until at one time I tried it with ground pork and not ground beef.  Wrong. Failure.  I only did that once.  

The worst one I have to say myself was a bit bad, though my intentions were good, was trying to make the Buffalo Hot wings better.  I only strive for crispier and spicier hot sauce.   I only looked for another recipe on the internet which could help with this, but admittedly I dont see how adding honey to the sauce can make the sauce spicier hotter.  I made the wings last night again and my daughter who loves them said, "yes they were fine, except..."   the song remains the same: they were not spicy hot enough.  So, I have to change the recipe without changing the recipe.  Go figger.  

I guess it is mostly food making which draws the criticism of, "You changed it, why did you change it?", but there is another area which brings great ire to my daughter.  Fashion.  Though my wife could throw me out of the house on that issue alone, I have to point out two fashion faux pax which "trouble" my younger daughter.  In these cases it is not a matter of "keep them the same," but in fact "they are strictly NOT ALLOWED".   

Currently I only have one pair of pajama bottoms.  When they get dirty I have to resort to these swim pants warmers I rescued from my archives and brought to my current apartment.  They were in storage before, but that storage had to be liquidated or transferred.  I was on the swim team in high school and for warm up pants worn when we werent swimming we got bright orange sweat pants.  Bright orange.  You know, sports colors.  I have them still.  I found them in my storage and was sentimentally nostalgic and brought them to my current house.  And they are my only other pajama pants I have.  

My daughter hates them so much, in fact my whole family does, that I have to put them on after everyone is asleep and change to my clothes in the morning before i even do my morning pee.  I wore them once or twice and got such derision that I was scarred.   Nobody can stand the sight of them.  I always feel comfortable and nostalgic in them, but, I have to hide them.  

Lastly, I am not allowed to wear t shirts in the US which have foreign writing on them.  I dont get that one, but I abide by that.  I mean people in the US often wear T shirts with Japanese characters on them or maybe some French.  But "es ist verboten"  (good joke) for me to wear other language t shirts in the US.  Stuff I got from not Paris or Tokyo.  

I guess the point being that I always think I need a big overhaul of my personality and have to rewire my entire being to make myself better.  When in fact my younger daughter says, "no dad," in fact, "dont change things one bit, not even one LITTLE bit."  That pertains mostly to food.  Once you get the recipe and the taste down, then you can not mess with it at all.  

However dads, if we want respect, we have to face up to the facts on another topic.  99.7 per cent of us know nothing about fashion and just have to let others tell us what is good or bad and what we should or should not wear.  Though I thought jeans and a t shirt were safe, dont resist at all if they are not.  Just go find the suitable clothes and change.   Its the little things that can save your life right?  

Or destroy it.  

I started listening to Tyler the Creator  "Igor" several months ago on advice from my daughter.  I finally got it in the store and sold it in one or two days.   Will get it again.  My daughter owns the vinyl courtesy of me.  I was listening to this more as i was editing as I cant write and listen to lyrical music so well. 

I was also listening to this band while editing upon recommendation of a customuer.  Wow, talk about Math metal.  This just does not let up.  10x Meshuggah.   CAR BOMB  "Mordial"  

"Poor Daddy" part 1. Sucker for the sick card?

 There must be some tool for measuring if you are being a sucker or being conned or not.   Dont they have something on the market?   

On Wednesday after Easter my older daughter was sick again.  Upset stomach.  That is the hardest sickness to confirm. A cough, they cough.  A runny nose, they blow their nose.  Maybe a headache too.  But an upset stomach?  Yeah yeah they are curled up and in pain.  "Dad, I cant make it to my first class".  Ok, ok.   sure sure. Skip that one and go later in the morning.  

Meanwhile I go to work.  I come back home.  "So, did you go to school at all?"   

"Well no.  See, I fell back asleep, woke up, got up at 11 and threw up.   Then I took a long shower and it was noon. I had a dental hygiene appointment at 2pm, so... just then I noticed that my room was a mess, that I had a big pile of clothes on the floor and my desk was messy.  So I spent over an hour cleaning it up."  

Ok.  Just one thing.  Well, maybe two.  Or maybe more.  Why does she suddenly notice now on Wednesday after we have been telling her on the weekend that she has clothes to put away?  And her  desk has been messy for months.  Suddenly she sees this, on Wednesday during school, and thinks that it would be a good idea to clean it up.  I have to say she really cleaned everything off her desk.  At least that part is good.  But it isnt too unobvious that it was an excuse.  And the throw up? Who knows.  No one was home.  She didnt take a picture of her spewing into the toilet bowl.  

Then of course she felt better.  She made it to her dental appointment with no problem and she even felt well enough and sunny to go out with some friends in the afternoon and come home for supper.   Fancy that.  

Now fine, maybe I am being unfair.  I dont know girls and womens pains coming on and how long they last. Many men dont.  Not their fault, but then men shouldnt second guess painful cramps and quick sicknesses, which in fact is what I am doing today.  So, my bad. 

I guess it boils down to whether your child has a good reputation or not.  If they are using the sick card quite often, you start to wonder how much and how many times they can really be sick, or in pain?   

But I think the father is between a rock and a hard place and will always lose.  1) If the dad says "no, this time you are going to school," you cant be certain you arent sending them into school to throw up someplace awkward or to send their germs all over, or just in general to suffer and be uncomfortable all day and in pain.   2) if the dad says, "yes yes, sure sure, you better stay home", you cant be sure that the child isnt calling him a sucker behind his back or something thereof and learning that the sick card can usually be used if asked of Dad.   Dad loses no matter what.  Poor Daddy.  

Cant we invent a thermometer that measures truth?  I guess a lie detector test which can be put under the tongue or shoved up the butt like a thermometer in the old days?   

Had this album when I was a kid.  Brother threw it away.  I "rebought" it this week used and have been listening to it endlessly.