Conor Grennan's Blog, page 2

finn and the christmas lights

The only thing that gives me the strength to put up Christmas lights is the fact that the holiday season comes but once a year. Putting up the lights is my personal New York City Marathon - I have to mentally prepare. I put in the time at Home Depot. I stretch. I make sure [...]

new book

Is there anything in the human psyche more irrational than nostalgia? Is nostalgia ever just objectively, factually accurate? Today, I am thinking about the typewriter. And the crazy people that want it back. But let's pause for a second so I can tell you why I'm thinking about this particular artifact: You see that stack [...]

music

The older I get, the less I listen to music. Which would be fine, except that my brain has degraded to the point where I’m having trouble understanding why anyone listens to music. For example: My friends Eric and Jill are on a group text with Liz and me, and every week Eric will send [...]

lucy wants to stay in bed

Lucy has taken to sleeping in. I get it - who actually wants to get out of bed? It’s like a hot shower. Has anyone in the history of water ever wanted to get out of a hot shower? If you removed the lobe in our brains that gives us our sense of general responsibility [...]

reading family

Liz and I share a Kindle account, which means both of our books appear in a list on our iPhone, where we do all of our reading. The problem, of course, is that Liz reads a book a week and I complete a book maybe every two months. Which means that I have to scroll [...]

the other commuters

Is there anything more universally coveted than the Empty Seat Next to You? The flight attendant announces that the doors are closed, there’s nobody else coming, and the middle seat is still vacant. What’s a better feeling than that? The Queen could be coming up the aisle to knight you and you’d still be thinking [...]

working mom

Several years ago, when I worked from home, I used to pick up Lucy from pre-school. I would wait outside the classroom with a cluster of moms, and when we heard the goodbye song from inside, the door would swing open and the teacher would announce “Come on in, mommies!” Except then she would notice [...]

family fun day

Let me ask you this: As parents of children in the same class, do we need to talk to each other? Don’t get me wrong - I’m not saying talking should be, like, banned. You probably enjoy talking to other people! That's so great! And everyone is super nice and interesting! But is there any way [...]

the green ones

Yesterday I asked the kids for a status report on how I was doing packing their snacks for school. “I LOVE the Veggie Straws!” Lucy exclaimed, like she’d been waiting all her life for this question. (Veggie Straws™ are an elongated crispy snack treat, as you can see in the photo above in Lucy’s very [...]

yoga

Lucy corrected me this past weekend when, in the midst of our first yoga session, I told her I wasn’t any good at yoga. “You’re not good at yoga yet,” she said. Then she folded over like a collapsing flip phone. “I’m worse than you, dad,” Finn whispered from the mat next to me. “You’re [...]