We are about halfway through summer, and life has felt like a juggling act, though not necessarily in a bad way. Our routines have been shifting with the kids out of school. My son has been going to a new supplemental childcare provider, which is something different for us. Prior to him entering elementary school, we had the same care provider all year, so to change part-way through the year has been impacting our routine. I’m usually responsible for drop-offs, which has added some time to my typical morning commute. Thankfully my wife has been working four long days from Tuesday through …

Today started off pretty slow. While my wife was out for a workout this morning, I stayed home with the kids, and we watched The Mitchells vs. The Machines. Not bad! My son liked it a lot, but my daughter was a little scared by the robots at times. For lunch, we finished off some leftover tacos from last night’s dinner.

After lunch, I tackled decluttering our bedroom/office. One of my goals for 2025 was to get our house in order, and this was as good of a place as any to start. Both of us work part time from home and our desk tends to accumulate everything—papers, books, random notes and other …

1. Declutter my home. I've never been very good at this, but it's proven to be so much more difficult with two young kids. Still, I know I can do a better job and keep a cleaner house in the process. To start, I might do a packing party.
2. Consistency in planning ahead for weekends away and other trips. ADHD makes this hard, but I’m always happiest when I have a well-conceived plan to execute. So many times I feel like I'm being led around by plans that are made for me, or feeling bummed out that a weekend was wasted due to poor planning. While rest is important, my …

After several months of asking questions, trying to understand the coordination of benefits between my dental plan and my wife’s in preparation for some orthodontia, here’s the email I finally received from Delta Dental. 🦷

I have an employee under Redacted who wrote in asking how COB works when a married couple both have family coverage through separate employers under Delta and the family is about to initiate an Orthodontal claim. The spouse is an employee of Redacted hospital ($2K ortho limit is the plan they are considering). The husband read his policy documents and then called into Delta …

Home sick today and feeling a bit wistful. I get this way a lot when I’m lying around alone with too much time on my hands. I went down a 90s nostalgia rabbit hole and found a couple gems.

The first is from a podcast episode titled “What did the 90s smell like?” by We Don’t Wanna Grow Up.

The other is a YouTube video of a guy flipping through a Seventeen School Zone Special magazine from 1996 that I remember purchasing on a grocery store run with my mom when I was 15. I used to love seeing how kids across the country dressed in the wake of the grunge era.

Isn’t the internet amazing?

The strangeness of putting yourself out there. The mere act of expressing that you indeed have social needs, that you crave the connection of others, is one that creates repulsion, in myself (and seemingly with others). The effort required almost makes the desired outcome somehow less desirable. 

Even in social situations of late, there is something different in the way we all speak to one another, something missing from the way things used to be. We are all tired, we are all distracted. Going through the motions. Feeding each other the requisite smalltalk. Single-serving “friends”.

Someone …

We shipped our kids off to my mother-in-law’s for the night and drove out past the gorge to Dalles Mountain Ranch in Columbia Hills Historical State Park. The wildflowers were in bloom and the cloud cover kept us cool. It was very peaceful, and it felt good to burn some calories in preparation for a well-earned beer.

My car is 13 years old and recently turned over 150,000 miles. I got it used in 2013 with 55k miles on it, so I’ve done fewer than 10k miles per year, including several cross-country trips. It’s been a great car with very few issues, but it’s showing its age and I’m debating if I should put the $4k in repairs it needs into it or get something else. I’ve loved not having a car payment the last 5 years, but I also don’t want to keep sinking money into it. Keeping it would cost $6k over two years, including gas. An electric would cost $10k after incentives over the same period.

For the last five years or so, I’ve used the space next to my driveway for raised beds. I’ve got a 3,100 gallon rain cistern in my backyard and I hand dug a trench to the front yard for my drip irrigation system.

It’s worked pretty well, but there are pros and cons. For starters, the beds are pretty close to the driveway, and my wife already ripped my bumper off once and tried to pass it off as if nothing ever happened (I caught it on camera). That was just a one-off incident, thankfully.

Another negative is that I’ve had kids cutting through my side yard on the way to the light rail or on …

We had some wind last night and it knocked out our electricity at around 1 a.m. My son was already sleeping in our bed, but my daughter woke up screaming bloody murder and wouldn’t go back to sleep, so I had to bring her into our bed as well.

The worst part about power outages is that I can’t sleep without my CPAP machine anymore. I have a battery for it to get me by, but I must not have charged it after camping last summer. I got another hour out of it before I was awakened again not being able to breathe.

I had to get creative because I needed sleep. I had an early morning meeting today and …

This morning, I accidentally bumped my HomePod while cleaning off the desk and some music started. Land Locked Blues by Bright Eyes came on, from his 2005 album I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning. It’s making me nostalgic. That is about the time I stopped listening to Bright Eyes and stopped buying CDs altogether.

I was 24 that year. It was before smart phones became popular, and 2005 was about a year after I got my first iPod. I still actively managed my library for a few more years, but that slowly started to change as streaming became more popular.

My music listening habits are so much more …

Recently I got into the world of management and I’ve noticed e-mails coming my way in the evenings and on the weekends from director types and such.

I am committed to my job and enjoy the work, but I’m not sorry to say that I’m not getting into a habit of responding to emails on Friday night, midday Saturday, etc.

What I did do yesterday was take my two young ones to a birthday party at Conestoga Recreation Center and ran around a gym for a couple hours while they had the time of their lives. We had a lot of fun and we all got some exercise playing soccer, basketball, etc.

My wife leaves for a …

I slept in until about 8 this morning and watched some Italian IPTV after I blogged a bit about our trip planned for later in the year. I’ve been trying to get into the mindset.

Our friend offered to watch our kids for a couple hours, so we took her up on it so that me and my wife could go to the gym. We went for a swim. I tried to talk her into doing laps outside, but we only made it one lap before she was too cold, so we went back inside and soaked in the salty indoor pool and then hot tub.

I made a single serving friend named John who was in his 70s and seemed lonely, so we talked a bit. He …

Before the holidays, I had my first phone conversation with a distant cousin I connected with on one of those genetic testing sites. I don’t make it a habit of reaching out to complete strangers with loose genetic ties, but I had been looking for Italian family on my father’s side in the United States and he had the same surname as my my paternal grandmother before she got married. I didn’t have a relationship with my father, so I didn’t have the benefit of having direct family introductions. So I sent him off a message and we’ve been connected for a few years now.

William lives down in the …

I had my last cigarette 7 years ago yesterday. Since that time, I've saved something like $25,000 in direct costs and have hopefully added years to my life. I don't write about this anniversary for praise or pats on the back, but instead to honor myself and explore my own feelings on the subject, which are complex.

Avoiding lung cancer and saving money are of course two of the biggest motivations most people cite for wanting to quit smoking. But what nonsmokers might not realize is that many smokers experience profound psychological stress about their addiction, which in my case was what …

I'm just not feeling the holiday spirit this year. Both my kids are young and I am trying to show up for them. I even saved up quite a bit of cash to pay for toys and gifts and take some of that stress off us, but I just can't get in the mood.

I think more than anything, I'm feeling tired of Oregon and feeling the pull to move back to Michigan. We’ve outgrown our house and feel trapped due to prices and interest rates. Looking at real estate back in the Midwest looks like a bargain. The pay isn’t even that different in my field, and we’d have a huge down payment if we sold our current house to …

We had a very busy but fun weekend with the kids celebrating the holiday season.

We went and saw Santa Claus in North Plains on Saturday, and then went to Steeplejack Brewing for pizza. Then, on Sunday, we went to the SHARC for swimming and later went to Zoo Lights at the Oregon Zoo.

Lately, both of my kids have been learning so much and it’s intense seeing them grow before my eyes.

No. 1 is 4 and has known his ABCs and how to count for a while now, but he’s become so articulate, annunciating every letter perfectly (no elemenopee anymore). He’s also counting into the 40s and higher when reminded of the starting digit. Even more impressive are the questions he’s beginning to ask. Existential questions, and reflecting on complex topics, even accompanied by sadness and even anguish when speaking of loss. Wow.

No. 2 is 23 months and is saying short sentences and asserting her …

Real estate prices have been going down a little, but affordability is still a major issue. For example, a 984 sq. ft. house with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths in my area just sold for $400k.

To put this price into perspective at current interest rates, a buyer would need an annual household income of about $120,000 to qualify with 5% down.

The median income for a family of 4 in the Portland region is $114,400. Median income for all households was $81,149 in 2021, according to the Oregon Employment Department.

You would have to be in about the top 85th percentile of households in terms of income to …

• The kids are watching a movie (Spy Kids: Armageddon) and my wife is off with her girlfriends paddle boarding. We’re winding down after a somewhat stressful week while DW gets some much needed time for herself.
  
  
• I finished a big report I was writing for work early in the week, a few weeks early no less, so I feel like I can release some of the extra anxiety that has been burdening me unnecessarily. I’ve also been waiting on some pretty important work news since May and I still haven’t gotten any word about it. As a result, I haven’t been sleeping the best again and it’s made for some tougher …

As a parent with anxiety, I can already tell that raising two young children to have confidence in themselves, and to approach new and uneasy social situations with bravery, is going to be difficult for me.

I had a difficult childhood, complete with a fatherless upbringing and abuse, which affected me in various ways, including low self-esteem. I didn’t participate in many extra curricular activities due to my anxiety. I struggled in school for that reason, too, both socially and academically.

Now I have to work up the courage myself to encourage my kids to participate in healthy activities …

I had a flashback this morning as I was getting the kids ready for school that reminded me of a time in my life when everything was so unsettled and chaotic. This seems to happen to me a lot more whenever summer starts to give way to fall, when I can smell the change of season in the air and the evenings get a little bit shorter. The memories of back-to-school anxiousness come flooding back and I get a pang somewhere in the recesses of my brain. Usually I’m transported back to being 13 and crying in the dressing room at Sears while trying on school clothes, but today’s memory was different. …

I was having a text conversation with my brother this evening. He hadn’t heard of ChatGPT yet, so I showed him an example and he told me that this reminded him of that song by Tool about California being flushed away into the Pacific Ocean.

I said, “Arizona Bay?”

“Yeah,” he said.

I asked ChatGPT again: “Tell me about the song ‘Arizona Bay’ by Tool.”

This was its response:

“Arizona Bay” is not a song by Tool. However, it is a term coined by the band’s lead singer, Maynard James Keenan, and it is the title of a comedy album by comedian Bill Hicks.

Bill Hicks was a renowned …

Normally I try to keep things fairly light and impersonal here. I may tend toward the dark or sarcastic from time to time, but over all, I’m usually a pretty happy person. However, lately I’ve been feeling a little more easily bruised, overly sensitive, and just generally melancholy. I’ve been wanting to write a little more at length in hopes of lifting some of the weight up off from me, but life’s been pretty busy lately up until right now. And so here I find myself after some dust has settled.

If you’ve just joined me, or stumbled across this place, my blog, or even if you’re just passively …

Long couple of days, but feeling more alive today after some rest and lots of coffee.

Got in about 2 a.m. (5 a.m. Eastern) the night before last. Had a couple hour delay with our connecting flight out of Seattle. All told, a 13-hour travel day with my 4 y.o.

Carried him (40lbs) and his cargo about a mile according to my watch. My legs and arms definitely feel like they got a workout today. I guess that’s how we acquire that coveted “dad bod”.

Overall, Pax was a trooper though, and is a great traveler despite me having kept him up way past his bedtime.

At one point, he spilled a half-full glass …

If I could talk to my teenage self, I would try to convey just how much value there is in being in a field that’s in high demand, and to maybe try to focus on getting a creative role in such a field.

For the most part, I like what I do as a planner, but there is very little creativity, and the options are extremely limited in terms of where we can go. It hamstrings your ability to move about the country or world, or work remotely for yourself, when you have a career in a field that is so competitive and tied to locations.

When looking for a job as a planner, not only does there have to be an …

I bought my house in 2016 before I was married or had kids. Coming from the Midwest, housing prices were pretty crazy out here in the Portland region. Not like the Bay Area by any means, but I only had my own income. I was pre-qualified for a mortgage based on my Midwest salary the year prior. I had very limited options, so I bought a short sale fixer upper. 

When I moved in, the place was in really rough shape. It had been a rental and I'm told that the last renters had multiple animals, including a potbelly pig. I keep a copy of my inspection report, not only as a list of things that need to …

You ever look in the mirror and wonder, “who the hell is that?” Seems every day my beard gets a little grayer, my skin a little worse, my body a little more exhausted. I’m trying to age gracefully but the thought of death has been living rent free in my mind since my younger brother passed two years ago and the signs of time passing don’t provide much comfort.

To be fair, things have been better the last few months. I’m getting good sleep, waking up earlier, showing up in all aspects of my life. In a lot of ways, I feel on top of things, and have a lot that is going well for me. I think I’m a …

My wife and I are watching Fleishman Is in Trouble on Hulu and I’m really impressed by the writing. No real spoilers here, but I do talk about some basic plot info and some experiences of a supporting actor if you want to skip reading this.

The main character of the show is Toby Fleishman, a recently divorced middle aged hematologist. His successful ex-wife, a New York City talent rep for performing artists, just disappears one day and doesn’t come back, leaving him and his preteen kids in the dark about her whereabouts. He and his kids are in shock and struggle to make their way in a new life …

It was what feels like a lifetime ago, but I still have some lingering trauma left over from my teenage years when my mom married my stepdad. I know she didn’t mean to do any harm and was in fact trying to do something positive for herself and her kids.

She moved me and my brothers out of the city and into the country. It wasn’t cross-country or anything, but it was still far enough away to lose all of my existing friends and to feel very isolated. We were also unable to walk anywhere given the location. Basically the middle of nowhere. Tough on a city kid who was used to running around the …