Summer time 2022. No blues 1 : Getting there

Last year I wrote about the horrendous travelling by airplane and going through Chicago O Hare airport.  In retrospect now, by comparison I can say that is one of if not THE worst airport experience I have ever had.  I still want but realize I wont be compensated by O Hare airport or the airline or my booker for the hotel we had to stay in for missing our flight.  

By Comparison we went through Detroit this year. And you know those surveys they send you and ask you to comment in after the flight? I got one and was asked how much I would be likely to recommend my flight company, and I said "very much".  And I here I go. 

Folks, I am not getting paid in any goods or money whatsoever for these comments. They are strictly my own and my own feelings.  You may have others. That is fine. But going on KLM/Delta through Amsterdam and Detroit is simply much much better than anything else I have ever done. I have done many airports in Europe and several in the US.  Heathrow is THE worst in Europe. I will never go through that one again unless I go just to London.  And Chicago O Hare is DISGUSTING, HORRENDOUS piece of junk which should be shut down or warned about.  C¨mon, three hours in customs line, more than three.  No special treatment for families with kids.  Not enough sense to open up more customs lines (and this was before inflation and nobody working) and just BAD BAD BAD.  If you can avoid O Hare, do so at any costs.  I took O Hare because I would have had a five hour layover in Detroit. In retrospect, I would have taken Detroit if I had known how crappy Chicago O Hare is.  

By comparison in Detroit this year, the customs line was so very little and they had several customs officers working it and one directing you to a line and courteous customs people.  I dont know if they had a special line for families with kids, I didnt see, but you can try.  But it went quickly enough without it.  

Then finding your baggage and checking it through again.  In all the media and even on the airport websites there were warnings that there may be holdups due to lack of workers or expert workers at the airports.  They even said on one to get to the airport over 3 hours before your travel.  I did from my beginning site and it was a waste. It would have been a waste in Detroit too.  We found and checked our bag through to our next destination without ANY worries or troubles. In fact the whole customs, finding your baggage and rechecking thing took about 40 minutes.  Compare this with about 5 hours in Chicago, missing our next connection, and paying an exhorbitant amount to stay 6 hours in a hotel.  It makes me sick to think about it.  

Needless to say we made our connection flight and luckily through a pickup of friends we were at our destination before sundown.  This is a transatlantic flight taking like 19 hours.  Our flight in the morning left at 8.50am. We got there at 6am which was overkill.  The only problem was it was a Saturday so our car rental was closed by the evening so we had to come there on Sunday to pick up our car. This will have to be looked into next year for a better situation, going to the car rental that stays open.  

What does this all have to do with being a father with kids?   

Well it has to do with the overall travelling with kids. When I book, especially overseas flights, I know I need more time. If I was by myself I know I could get a layover of less than two hours with customs.  And one hour with no customs. But with kids you need more time.  I am a bit worried if I have less than two hours.  

You dont want strange things to happen and you want to be seated together.  In general you want to stay together at all times.  If they are going to wander off for food or bathroom you have to make sure there is enough time before boarding.  And you have to make sure you have enough time going from one end of the airport to the other for your connection.  I guess it is mostly a time thing.

O Hare Chicago came up ZERO.  0 per cent I give  them.  Well maybe 5 per cent. I have nothing good to say about O Hare at all especially travelling with kids.  Unless you totally totally have to go through O Hare, even by yourself, but especially with kids for a connecting flight..... book through another airport, even another airline.  I would say even if it costs more.  

Chicago O Hare airport -------------- ZERO.  

Detroit I give in the 90s.  Even though  I cant think of anything that went wrong, I can never give 100 per cent.  But definitely in the 90s.  I dont care much about architecture, but even for Detroit, I like their glowing passage way (which unfortunately wasnt working when I passed through it this time, though my daughter did it twice and said it was working the second time).  

And in Europe, I have been through many airports, but by far not all (I would like to try the Helsinki airport sometime), but of about 10 I have been in, I would say Amsterdam KLM is the best. Even though they did pull me aside for special security check this time, I have very little against that, except that it did stress me out, but I understand their reasoning.   It did in general make me feel stronger that they have a good security check system there.  So I also give KLM Amsterdam airport in the high 80s rating.  I have been through them several times and mostly as far as I recall without incident.  The only problem I believe I might choose differently is the price and timing.  Otherwise, all things being equal I would always choose Amsterdam to go to.  

With kids a smooth airport experience just dispels your flying travelling stress.  And travelling with kids overseas IS stressful.  

Again, I disclose that I have received absolutely nothing for this post. Neither monetary compsensation or gifts or presents, nothing for my words and recommendations.  Strictly my own.   

I didnt listen to any music while writing this post.  I did hear a lot of boats on the lake going by.   

Five variations of doing nothing. Summertime Blues

Things started going bad during the covid.  My daughter paid less attention in class during those stupid on line sessions.  The kids can turn off the camera and no one is the wiser.  Sometimes the sound too.  

Then she took to taking long naps in the afternoon.  Now she still does.  This last year she claimed she had her homework done in school and she was always tired when she got home. She might take a two or three hour nap in the afternoon.  No she is not on drugs (she is 13) and she is doing fine in school, only math a bit of a problem and dont get me wrong, sleeping is not bad.  A teenage brain needs more sleep.  So, I let her sleep in the afternoon.  As long as it doesnt keep her up later at night, which surprisingly it didnt.  

The actions that get me really crazy is the inactions.  AND, unfortunately, she is also very good at doing nothing.  So good that I started taking notes on her various ways of doing nothing.  So I come to this post, inspired by my daughter, variations on doing nothing.  

1.  Writing people on message services.  I cant stand it.  I start nagging that she has watched enough tv for the day and get off the device.  She yells back that she is texting her friend from school.  Grrr.  It is a form of doing nothing.  You know, you write something stupid or what you are doing now, or that your father is yelling at you , or what happened after school etc and then you wait for an answer.  Its a back and forth of nothing.  Remember when kids used to telephone their good friends just after they left them from walking home from school?  This is the updated version.  Same old, same old doing nothing.  If she has to give me a good excuse, she says she is waiting for her friend to give her the homework or notes or something from school.  Just doing nothing.  

2.  Lying on the floor and doing nothing.  This might be combined with another form of doing nothing, like texting, or watching a stupid application.  But quite often it is just lying on the rug, doing nothing.  Now, you might not be doing nothing. You might be thinking big thoughts, doing math problems in your head, meditating, or working on a novel or a thesis in your head, but this is quite often not the case.  She is just doing nothing.   

3.  Looking at useless applications.  Yes, tik tok is really that stupid.  Yes people really are that stupid.  And yet, who is stupider, the maker or the viewer?  Lying there on the rug scrolling through short videos of people cooking or doing inane things.  The epitomy of a world doing nothing. Looking at instagram?  Again, the epitomy of valueless action, looking at peoples pictures? Sometimes you dont even know them, you just look at their picture.  Another wonderful activitiy supported by those wonderful people (sarcasm) at the truly ethicless FaceBook, now meta. (an aside, I should be impressed that Sheryl Sandberg broke some sort of glass ceiling by being an important woman at a valueless company that has two billion people around the world doing nothing for some portion of the day? O...K. Clap..... Clap) Snapchat design filter.  "Look dad, I can make myself look like a dog." Oh. My.Dog.  

4.  Playing useless shoot em up or jump higher video games.  This is what finally made us put limits on their gadget use, that and serial tv watching.  It just got to be habit forming and playing for hours on end, and we had to say, enough.  You are addicted and we have to put limits on this.  Just like any bad food, you cant only eat candy and cookies all day.  The way they keep you playing hour after hour is getting you interested in reaching a higher level.  It really is like drugs, and useless.  Everybody says that physical games are dead, that everybody just plays online, but I have yet to see an involved game on line like world at war or minecraft.  The big space big mmorph games are still on disc and are too big to download.  Most of the stuff people play online on their phones is just mindless crap.  Jumping over the train or Brawl shooting people behind hedges.  It is another version of doing nothing.  You ever watch people on public transportation playing these shoot jump games?  it is just to pass the time while riding on the public t from point a to pont b.  it has no value whatsoever except to kill your time while you are doing nothing.  But you are still doing nothing.  Might as well look at the outside scenery, or the people around you, you are doing nothing.  

5.  Useless sleeping.  As I said at the beginning, I dont mind sleeping. It is good for teenagers and helps the brain.  All for it.... except when it is used as an excuse to not do something and wanting to do nothing and as a result doing nothing.  I yell at my daughter cmon now you have watched your allotment of TV for the day, time to practice now or do some house or homework.  "But dad," comes the reply? " I am so tired now, I am going to take a nap". She knows I dont mind her sleeping.  But this sleep is useless sleep to get out of doing something.  And it is nothing.  I get angry.  She is still doing nothing.  This is no value sleeping

I listened to two Bob Dylan albums while writing this post and I think I will get Saved.  To cap off this post. You cant imagine how much Bob Dylan has done in his life.  And you know what?  His worst project, his worst album is heads taller and better than anything Facebook, instagram has EVER done.  I hope one day Facebook will be swept into the gutter garbage of useless cultural items discarded as "what the hell were we thinking".  

    

Its the tone dummy

 Note:  I am being a bit silly in this post.  I had an idea and the idea was backed up with reality but I wrote it quickly. It is not my best one.  Dont take me totally serious on this one.  I love my daughter and whatever she wants to do with her life (pretty much) is fine with me. 

I went into my local butcher shop to get a pound of ground beef to make my good spaghetti sauce.  I like to support them rather than go to the big chain and also because I think they are either Arabian or Jewish and prepare the meat in a good manner.   

However I was quite put off because this was the second time that the Russian lady was quite nasty about the whole thing and the specifics.  I guess I might avoid these national terms because it could have been any nationality behind the counter who was "yelling" at me.  But, no, that isnt quite true.  The further east you go, the further the niceties of retail people deteriorates.  And that happens even if they replant themselves in the US or some other country.   

One thing the communists had no clue on was how to train a polite society of

retail people.  I mean, if you are put off because there is only some teen ager behind the counter who is just messing around on his smart phone and doesnt give a donkeys ass about doing a good job, the communist retailers had this "I dont give a fˇˇˇ about you" long before the punks took it as their own slogan.  

So here is this Russian lady yelling at me because I am worried there is not enough ground beef for me to take, and she has me over a barrel because there isnt another good kosher butcher in any neighborhood that is close to me.  So... pride be swallowed. 

But.. you may ask, what does this have to do with the price of spaghetti and being a good father?  

Well, it quite surprised me when my ten year old daughter said that she was interested in becoming a lawyer.  Maybe a patent lawyer.  I was surprised not because I dont think she can become a lawyer, but because she lacks, the voile, the patois, how does one say, the TONE to become a lawyer.  

Every job calls for the right qualifications and I think my daughter has the right TONE to become a lawyer just as this Russian lady for surely had the long history and heritage to be a friendly retail lady butcher......... NOT.  

So how does a good father nudge his daughter into the right job, say Mafia leader or coffee tester for instance?  

I am being facetious of course, its just that I dont want my daughter to spend 15 years on special expensive schooling to become a lawyer just to be barred right at the beginning from practicing because she called the judge an idiot.   

Then again, there is no success like failure or if this Russian lady can pretend to serve me ground beef with a smile (more like a smile when she cut my throat), I guess my daughter can be a lawyer.  God willing.  God willing.  Who knows, maybe God is willing.  

I listened to a Glenn Branca CD selections of his symphonies. I have big respect for Glen Branca, but his music is not totally up my alley, my cup of coffee.  But as an artist, I highly recommend you at least listen to some of his stuff.  This album is a good place to start discovering his works although only for those who can handle "noise".   Please sit and re orient your hearing organs.  Open mind too. 

Daughter destroys my Life meaning in 5 minutes

 

As was dictated to me by my wife and Marie Kondo, I had to do a deep, deep cleaning of all my things in my apartment.  It was a birthday present for my wife, she asked for it.  I didnt.  But, I had to do it.  I have plans to start a "Marie Kondo sucks" blog soon, but I am getting way off topic even before I start MY topic.  

I got to my CD collection. I had to make a huge investigation of all my CDs and see which ones I REALLY wanted to keep.  I did my whole electro/dance collection with no problems.  I didnt have to listen to much and I had a given space to sort them by style and have them in view to play and look at every day.  This is important for me. 

But then it came to rock.  I had to listen to a lot of stuff because I received so many promo cds in the 90s. Some, or even more than some, I really didnt have any connection to either by taste, label, or even business, but I had to make sure I knew what they sounded like (or remember) for the final test.   I mean I have to either like the cd, or it has to have some special connection like when and where or why I received it, or has to be on a label I really like/d or maybe I sold a lot of them and I have to keep one in rememberance. Or, they were an important band in the evolution and history of the genre and I have to keep it.  Suffice to say I had to look each over carefully.  I had a stack of about 100 cds I had to listen to.... all the way through.  

So I am listening to a lot of music at home and my daughter comes into the living room where I am working and says, "Are you still listening to that EMO music?"  

Now I have to explain.  

I realized a couple weeks ago that the important growth years of my life (say 15 to 28) were dominated by the style of "Indie rock".  I dont want to explain this time period, because I dont want to date myself.  (I will eventually though.)  The term EMO I first heard in about 1993 for the band Sensefield who played "Emotional Hardcore".  The singer was very emotional.  Everything else about the band and label was HARDCORE. But they knew how to use dynamics to make a hard/soft masterpiece.  But they didnt get to the mainstream.  EMO as a style and term didnt enter the mainstream until the new century perhaps associated the most with the band My Chemical Romance which started in 2001.  EMO became a term in the mainstream music from about that time.  

EMO and My Chemical Romance were very much poo pooed by the purists and put down as hipster music for wanna be cool girls who were probably fake.  Namely by the last generations of punks and indie rockers. Namely "my people".  (I say that tongue in cheek because indie rockers and punks dont have any people, they are individualists to the nth degree). (I say that last sentence tongue in cheek also). And the 2000s emo was so whiny fake too.  EMO became a joke for black clothed new goth girls who wanted to kill themselves.  Egads.   Not my thing, though I do have doubts about my life sometimes.  EMO was a hated, frowned upon term and music for us older folks. I cant say My Chemical Romance without thinking "oh THAT band".  Puleese. 

Now, today, 2022 my daughter comes into the room and says, "You re listening to that EMO music".  HUH?   EMO?  This is Jawbreaker.  They are respectable melodic hardcore from 1991.  They rock.  Fugazi: post punk or post rock, the epitomy of the underground in the 90s.  EMO according to my daughter.  AGH.  This isnt possible.  "Yeah dad, listen to them all.  Guitars and screaming and 'I wanna die, oh life is so terrible' EMO".  

I was destroyed in 5 minutes.  All that I had listened to and even based my life on from my formative years into the 90s reduced to a term I eschew, by my teenage daughter who wasnt even alive when EMO was coined the first or second time.   

I tried to listen to other stuff, but there seemed to be an awful lot of screaming and well, of course guitars.  Guitars are a staple to music since Elvis.  How can you escape them?  Yes, the singers often were very emotional, I mean... uh.. how can they not be emotional?  But no, this isnt EMO.  This is ... this is post punk, post rock, melodic hard core, noise rock, no wave, math rock, slow core, lo fi and about twenty other terms we had coined for the alternative scenes.  But not EMO, except for Sensefield.  My daughter demoted a lot of the music I listen to in one sentence.  Sometimes it sucks having kids. 

Ach, I might as well take all my guitar music CDs and throw them in the trash.  Marie Kondo (and my wife for sure too) would agree with folded arms.  

And yet.  As Lou Barlow of Sebadoh says (screams) "Just give me Indie rock."

More tales about food and buildings

 This isnt a food blog.  I am a dad parent trying to help bring up my two kids.  It is about me and the topics of modern dads with their kids.  However, I seem to be thinking more about food these days.  I dont know why it should be a continuing topic, but... here it is again. 

As I said in my last post here, I dont want to spend TOO much time in the kitchen.  There is a limit to it.  (But admittedly in the last couple weeks I have spent no time as I have had to work in the shop every day, but maybe that will swing back come next September. It can change again).  Three hours is the limit really. I like Mexican and Italian food and they are easier to prepare, and everyone likes them.  

My old specialty was Lasagne and now it is becoming homemade spaghetti sauce with spaghetti.  There is a degree of trial and error when you are making the meal for the first times. For instance I used grated pork meat one time for the spaghetti sauce and that did not taste the same. Grated beef it had to be.   My daughter didnt like the grated pork, but i had to agree with her. But as much as I would like to experiment with the recipe and add this or that or take away this, I just cant with my daughters. 

I have been making Lasagne now for about three years. I have it down so I can kind of make it in my sleep.  But, no I cant.  Because i have to be careful of everything along the way to make sure it is done correctly.  Listen now on the process and what can "go wrong".   

so many, but only one will work

A long time ago I learned I had to make it only one way. I couldnt experiment with spinach or other cheeses or other meats, they had to stay the same.  I used salami ham once and my wife complained and said dont use the cheap salami ham. You have to use the real ham.  Dont cheat on the ingredients just to make it cheaper.  (Boy, she would have been fired a long time ago if she worked at a food services company.  Making it more economical with lower priced ingredients is the name of the game).  

I did get away with buying a cheaper lasagne but my daughters found me out once and said, "dont use that cheap lasagne noodle. That one isnt good."  So what I did was get the expensive brand once and keep the box and put the bargain brand in the more expensive box.  They havent noticed.  The noodle which costs less is A LOT less. I just cant splurge all the time on the premium brand. It is twice as much money.  

And I have settled on a gouda cheese.  It is not too pricey but tastes good. I guess I would like to try a mozzarella some time, but that means extra pay and I am afraid by now that my daughters would complain and say, "what is that?".   So I get a chunk of gouda. 

Luckily the sauce and the yogurt are pretty steady and always the same and not difficult to make. I did once put my own spaghetti sauce into the lasagne sauce when I started my own spaghetti sauce making.  It was so so. It wasnt extra time because I just used extra sauce from my spaghetti, but it means a spaghetti meal and then a lasagne meal and that is too much back to back.  And the extra time and work wasnt worth it. The standard sauce was good.  

Once I get down to the making of the lasagne I have to have checks along the way. The biggest let down and problem I have is that the bottom layer lasagne noodle is always harder than the other layers. I have experimented with more oil, or none, different cooking configurations, soaking the noodles first and other things, but nothing works or just messes up the recipe.  And it isnt because of the brand of lasagne noodle as the more expensive one does just the same thing.  This is a continuing monkey wrench in my creation. 

What I do now is I let my younger daughter test the cheese and yogurt sauce before i put it on. I got into trouble a couple times with messing up that sauce.  Too much pepper,  too much salt, that is bad.  Not enough cheese. Unless I make it after the girls go to school, I have to let her taste it to make sure it wont not pass her test.  

I was getting bad comments from my younger daughter on the bad quality before that.  In the end she would always eat two pieces (her allotment) and take one of Mommys pieces.  Or else she saves two pieces for her lunch for the next day. After all the complaints she made, she always ate her shares AND the next days anyway. In other words, there was something wrong, but it was good enough.  

These days my older daughter is complaining about my lack of cooking time length.  "Cook it longer," she says.  "You have to cook it till the cheese is browner in more places."  "But I have been cooking it for an hour," I say. "It has to be cooked for an hour and ten minutes then. The cheese has to be brown on the top".   The last time I made it and just put it in the fridge for them to cook before dinner.  When I came home it was in fact cooked so that MOST of the cheese topping was brown, not burnt, but brown in more of the top.   All the same she was usually taking two pieces and eating them. She always eats it by layers.  She makes such a mess of it, it pains me to see my creation mutilated before it is downed. And some of it remains on the plate. The hard bottom layer is usually left on the plate.  

I guess there are still some problems with cooking it and I cant cook it in my sleep. Still, a simple thank you, "it was a good meal" would be nice. But it is usually a twenty minute meal and run back to see who wrote on the phone messages to them.    I guess it is too much to ask for a thank you.  Kids dont seem to see the need to pet the egos of their parents, UNLESS they know they are going to get a serious yelling at if they dont administer praise or sorrys.   But, I am not in that category. 

Oh well.  A lot of things parents have to do for their own joy and satisfaction.  And only they know they got it right.  

PS - I cooked it yesterday and my younger daughter said, "the ham was strange. But it was still tasty, but the ham was strange".   She had half the lasagne. 

Cook it yourself.    And listen to great music while you do. 

Math Equation : Cooking Dinners

The more I cook at home the more I realize that in some respects it is a lost cause.  

It is kind of sad that I start a post like that.  I like cooking more and more and would like to add to my repertoir and be able to create LOTS of interesting meals for me and my kids.  

The frustrating problem is that there is this math equation.  It is an inverted truth.  Something like Arrow up on PT as arrow goes down on ET.  In other words the more time you spend in the kitchen preparing (preparing time) the food for dinner or whatever , the less time it takes for the family to eat it (eating time).  I would say that every hour in preparation equals 10 minutes less on eating time.  So that if I spent two hours cooking a meal including preparation and cooking time, then eating time is going to be around plus minus 30 minutes and maybe 20 minutes.  If I spent 3 hours in the kitchen then eating time is going to be 20 minutes for sure.  

Recently I added some "new" meals to my abilities.  I made homemade sauce

We had an orange one

spaghetti. This was a specialty of my fathers'.  He had a famous recipe which was never written down and thus was lost with his death. Except that he told it to us in person once or twice.  Sort of sliding off my original topic it went like this, "oh a pound of ground beef, some onions, stewed tomatoes, garlic, one green pepper, a can of tomato paste, a pinch of spices a, b, c, d and e and f, salt, pepper.  Cook in the crock pot for five hours".   Yeah, something like that.  So I got my mothers recipe which she related to me in the same manner but at least I think I have it down.  And she is still alive so that I can ask if I have missed something.  But she cant remember it either by now.  

In any case, you have to cook the sauce for a long time.  The throwing of everything together takes about half an hour to 45 minutes of mixing and cooking.  And I calculate that it should cook for another hour and a half once I have everything together.  It comes down to about two hours of cooking. I wish I had a crock pot I could cook it proper for four hours in there like my Father used to do.  But we dont... yet.  So I cook it for two hours or more.  Plus the shopping and getting the goods.  Cooking the spaghetti when the sauce is just about cooked and this and that it is at least two and half hours.  (Note, my father did this in much less time).  

Well if I can even get the servings out before my kids have snuck a bowl of the sauce away and eaten it in their room, the eating time is approximately 20-25 minutes depending on if they have a second helping or not.  Lasagne takes about an hour and half to make with prep and then cooking, maybe even less, hour and fifteen to twenty to minutes and I think the eating time on this is 30 minutes, although my older daughter can do it in the same 20 minutes.  

I guess to some extent it does depend on the age of the kid too. Older daughter, teenager, twenty minutes and then she is back on her gadget watching, playing or listening.  I dont allow her to do any of that while she is eating, so the result is she eats quicker, "finishes" her meal and is back online AFTER dinner.  Even though I am eating still. My Younger daughter takes a bit more time during dinner, but that is often because she is trying to make it look like she took a lot of time to eat not so much.  If she can get away with sitting at the table for half an hour and make it look like she ate a lot then she can leave half her meal on her plate and say she ate a lot and for a long time.  Although she does love my spaghetti and lasagne.  

Pork fried rice they didnt eat a-t all!!

I am not about to make a meal which takes 4 hours to cook, but I assume that might be eaten in world record time.  Unless it is some roast fowl which takes a long time to cook, like turkey or duck.   Maybe the math equation is, "kids take 20 to 30 minutes to eat dinner... no matter what".  I shy away from trying to cook something really grand, because I really dont want to spend all that time on the meal and then it is done in 15 minutes. I couldnt take that. 

My mother and I used to fix this problem by having a really long dessert at dinner with coffee.  I mean with the dessert dinner could often stretch to an hour and a half easily.  Those were great meals. And we ate them outside on our porch overlooking the lake in summer.  

The more time you spend eating meals, the happier life is.  Can I say that? I think so.  Eating meals slowly and peacefully is better than heroin (not that I have ever taken heroin).  The sheer relaxation and good inner feeling caused extends your life by some magnitude of time.  Fast food (and heroin) destroys you.  

I didnt actually cook this one

But I am getting way off topic.  

Suffice to say that I have enjoyed learning and making new meals for my family and I would like to continue that.  I recommend this much more than ordering from some new ordering line, grubby or unter.  Take the time to make more home made food.  UNLESS it takes too much time in which case I am not interested because I dont want to spend SO much time in the kitchen just to see it wolfed down by my kids... and its gone.  

Covid : Stuck around too long... in me.

A lung destroyed by Covid

 It has been a long time now.  It s been a real big pain.  

I havent written in so long because for two months I was wading through the affects of covid.  Every little problem you have with your body is accentuated and brought out.  It s like open day, open house for all the evil problems in your body to drag you down.   

First I had the covid - probably the omicron variation - and then I had it for two weeks. And then I went back to work but still felt tired so I got tested and... I still had it.  T'hen, I had the after affects, the lingering affects. I had the coughing, the tiredness, the low energy.  In all I was still fighting it and coughing into April.  Over two months after I got the covid.  What a pain.  Yes.  

I made 7 trips to 5 doctors with two x rays taken. First on my lungs and then on my back.  Then a trip to a different lung docter to see if it was in my lungs. I did all sorts of fun breathing tests (the nurse yelled at me because I shut the machine down by coughing and she had to reboot the whole computer).  And every night feeling these little hairs, what felt like hairs, in my throat twitching back and forth and knowing they were covered with phlegm which was making me cough.  Sometimes feeling like throwing up in the morning. 

I tell you, I am an old man now.  My whole energy level was / is way down.  When I was sick, I could stay up for a couple hours after lunch and then I had to go back to bed.  Even after several months my energy is not what it was before the sickness and I havent started exercising again.  Not exercising just lowers my energy level more and gets me fatter.  I come home from work in the evening and I am tired and dont feel like doing anything more.  How do you like that?  I used to stay awake till Midnight reading articles and studying.  Now, its dinner time and I would rather just go to bed.  My wife says I am an old fart now.  Ugh.

What does this have to do with being a father?  Well that is obvious.   What kind of father can you be when you just want to go to bed and sleep?  I havent been very good at all.  Finally after several months, late in March, there was a nice Sunday and I went to the park and played ping pong with my daughter for two hours.  That was tiring, but it was great to be a father again. 

It is really terrible that this virus takes everything from you and just leaves you a spent empty husk.  I miss being a father.  It has stolen that from me too. I havent been 40 per cent father... maybe.. maybe 20 per cent.  Its terrible.  

Please Dads, make the smart move and be careful and take care of yourself.  You really dont want to lose the ability to be a good father.  Dont try to be a Jon Wayne with this virus.  

I know it is subsiding now. I know all countries pretty much are trying to get back to normal.  Most people want to lead a semblance of normal lives now.  Even mask wearing isnt necessary on public transport.  Which feels weird to me. I feel like putting on my mask because I feel all these diseases floating around the compartment.  

The point being, dont let your guard down.  Being a father is much more important than trying to be some tough guy.  Stay vigilant right now and get your shots.  I know, lord I know, that the shot might not work.  We have other variants wandering around and we dont know if they can be batted down with a dose, but let me tell

you YES, a vaccine shot, a booster will keep you out of the hospital.  It could be the difference between the disease sending you to bed for a week or without it sending you to the grave for eternity.  

¨Stay a father and for your kids do the right thing.