Adam Oster's Blog, page 5

That One Time I Parented

With life being as busy as it has been lately, I’ve felt like more of a bad parent than I usually feel. Like, I’m not a terrible parent. I don’t beat my kids, I try to show them I love them and all that jazz, and really try to keep from emotionally scarring them for life. But…I’m also not always the most attentive parent. At least not of late.

So, this past weekend, when it was determined that I wasn’t needed at the bakery, possibly because of the fact that we really can’t handle having our two boys running around trying to kill each other while the business is open, I found myself feeling energetic enough to try to do something with them. And after a battle of what to have for breakfast and what to do with our day, it was determined that we would use all of my leftover computer parts to build them a new computer. Well, what was actually determined is that I would talk them through building a computer.

And we did. These two kids who have been struggling with their attention spans and ability to follow directions ever since the world shut down two years ago, worked hard to put this computer together, and outside of a few things in which I took over just because we were running low on time before we had to move on to other activities, they really did almost everything themselves. And we plugged the thing in and it booted up the first time. And they were really darn proud of themselves.

Of course, their patience dwindled heavily when they realized that we still needed to set up the computer’s software, and since we installed an old hard drive (which we might have to replace quickly), everything moved at a snail’s pace. But, the important part here is that we had a moment where the three of us, all before my daughter even woke up for the day, had a pleasant morning of dusting computer parts and piecing them all together to create a new machine. And even if they aren’t proud of their work that day, I sure as heck am.

And…I even managed to feel like a good parent for a bit. Or at least an okay one…

Plumbing, Why Did it Have to Be Plumbing?

I like to consider myself a pretty handy guy. In fact, just a few weeks ago, the dryer absolutely stopped working and I was able to take the whole thing apart, figure out the issue, order a couple of new parts, and within a week had the thing back up and running, with less than an hour of my own time invested in the event. We had a dishwasher fail on us a number of years ago, and while I was pretty confident on what was wrong, we decided to call someone out, because it was new and we didn’t want to have to deal with fixing something so new. The guy came out, spent far more time asking me what I thought was wrong with it. I finally sent him away, ordered the part I expected was the issue, took the whole thing apart, replaced the part, and the thing worked like a charm for as long as we had the house (I would expect it still works, but can’t verify that at the moment).

I fix things rather often. It’s something I feel pretty happy with myself about, especially considering how my granddaddy was renown for his prowess in fixing things, and I feel like I can confidently say I keep that family tradition alive. My dad is also pretty good at fixing what’s broken, so one could say that I’ve got a nice ancestry for keeping things working that don’t want to be working.

But there’s one place in which I simply can’t seem to make things happen, and that’s when it comes to those darn pipes that carry water in and out of my house.

For the past couple of years, since we bought our new house, we’ve had trouble with one particular part of our plumbing, that I’ve been slowly working on fixing, and continually thinking that I might have actually managed to fix on a number of occasions, only for the entire basement to wind up flooded yet again and I end up spending another day not only trying to mop up water, but also trying to figure out how to fix the issue.

Yet, for some reason, I’ve never called a plumber. In my years and years of absolutely hating plumbing work, I’ve never called a plumber. My wife has called on my behalf a number of times, but I simply haven’t been able to take the knock to my own pride and make the phone call myself…until today.

Today is the day where, after another whole day was spent this past weekend trying to unclog this particularly clogged pipe that we’ve been struggling with for years, I finally decided I simply couldn’t do it, and I, yes I myself, actually called the plumber.

In fact, he’s sitting here in my house as we speak, tearing apart my plumbing, and my guess is (and my hope, because I know these guys aren’t exactly cheap) that he’ll be done in an hour with something I have spent countless hours dealing with. And he’ll also probably cost far less than I’ve already spent on tools and cleaning products and items that have been destroyed because of a flooded basement.

In other words, if it weren’t for my own damned pride, I could have had a lot fewer struggles in my life these past two years, and probably even a little more money.

Instead, it has taken me two years, and I’m now, finally, expecting that this whole situation will be dealt with before I even finish my coffee this morning.

Which, I guess, is a little bittersweet.

I mean, I’m super excited about being done with this plumbing situation, but far less excited about the fact that I simply can’t figure out plumbing.

Maybe someday…but honestly, now that I’ve made my first official call to the plumber, I might be far less reticent to do so next time.

That Moment Things Actually Slowed Down

At the time you’re reading this, I’m well past the moment I actually sat back to write this little thing. But, I feel that I need to make you aware of this incredibly weird and special thing that happened suddenly (especially since we’ve now opened the bakery). Something that I know my wife at this exact moment didn’t have happen. However, in the midst of this craziness that has been my life for the past few months, between waiting for final grades, getting ready to buy a business (at the time of this writing, it’s set to happen tomorrow), and just all of the standard life stuff, I actually managed to find myself with a moment to myself. A moment when I didn’t actually know what to do.

And…I don’t know what to do.

When life has been running at full steam for as long as my life has felt as it has, it’s an incredibly weird feeling to sit, staring at your computer, thinking that there’s got to be something you’re forgetting to do.

And I’m totally forgetting something I’m supposed to be doing right now.

But, once I got past that moment, realizing that I had approximately 15 minutes in which I didn’t have anything planned for filling my time, I got somewhat excited about the idea of actually filling that time with writing.

And then I sat back, opened up a Word Document, and sat there with a blank document for the following five minutes. For someone who has been wanting to do nothing but write fiction for the past few years, when given the opportunity to actually just sit and create, I couldn’t. I froze. I thought about all the things that I might still need to complete. And as I worked through them, and realized that I was where I needed to be on all of them, I came to the realization that even if I’m actually at a point where I actually could have a moment to myself, a free second to just do whatever I wanted…I didn’t know what to do with that.

I froze.

And so, because I’m now down to less than 10 minutes of free time, and I wanted to get something out, I thought I’d tell you about this ridiculous moment that I found myself in, where I finally got to that holy grail of having absolutely no requirements for a brief period of time, and still being in that headspace of having all the things to do.

And, to be honest, it’s bittersweet. While I’m excited that I actually made it here for what feels like the first time in forever, I’m a little annoyed with myself for not making good use of it.

I mean, I did come up with something new to write about on this space (in a way its new at least). So, that’s something.

But…the boys are almost done with karate now, so time to get back to driving all the children everywhere before I collapse in an exhausted heap by the time I make it home tonight…

Yay life!

But even more so, yay for actually finding a free minute. Fingers are heavily crossed that this might come again sometime soon. Because I’d really like to get back to some real writing.

Daylight Savings

With my luck, it just so happened that the weekend we opened the bakery coincided with the time of year in which we skip an entire hour of the weekend, meaning that I was already exhausted from just running everywhere in order to make sure the bakery was running as it needed (including fulfilling my lifelong dream of being an unpaid dishwasher at the age of 40), and then I lost an extra hour of sleep.

So, you can imagine my excitement at the idea that the one time the Senate completely agrees on something, it happens to be regarding the idea of giving up this crazy idea that we should meddle with time.

Actually, to be honest, I don’t care much one way or the other about DST. Sure, it adds some confusion when it comes to things like, you know, how to change all your clocks those two times a year you need to do that. And there’s always the possibility that you’ll be looking at the wrong clock, the one you haven’t changed yet, when getting ready for an event. Or, as my wife found out this weekend (as well as at least one of our staff), if you set your alarm to go off at 2am on the day that we skip right past 2am, your alarm might not go off at all. But the truth is, outside of those crazy times twice a year in which time becomes a bit more questionable than usual, I don’t think much about it.

And, here in Wisconsin, there’s actually some good reason to keep DST around, or at least to keep time an hour behind all year. Because, you see, in winter, our days are incredibly short, and so in those mornings where my kids (some of which have to be at school at 7am) are walking to school, they would be doing it in absolute darkness. And I’m not too keen on that. Sure, we’ve got a pretty well-lit set of streets between our house and the school, but the reality is that it’s just too darn dark for them to be walking.

Of course, they tend to convince me to drive them to school on those early mornings more often than not anyways, but I’d really like to get past that…

So, while I think DST is stupid, because it really screws up at least a couple of days a year and can cause a fair amount of confusion, I’m also thinking that we might be keeping the wrong half of DST.

Also, I’ll deeply miss the majesty that is the extra hour of sleep gained from Falling Back one hour in the fall…

Spr-inter in Wisconsin

Well, it’s Sprinter in Wisconsin. That means we can go from sub-zero temperatures with the wind chill to balmy 60 degree days in the course of 12 hours. That means that although yesterday I was outside without a jacket, today snow is filling the air.

Wisconsin is ridiculous. I remember first telling people about how much I disliked Wisconsin weather compared to my home state of South Carolina’s, and the response was always that the people here preferred to have 4 seasons instead of what they told me was only two in SC. And they’re right. We do have four seasons here in Wisconsin, sometimes all in one day.

Early spring weather in Wisconsin is always unexpected. You never really know what’s going to happen next. This morning I was driving with the windows down, enjoying the fresh warm air, and an hour later I was brushing the snow off my car before skidding through a stop sign because of the bad roads.

Of course, the question now is, have I changed my tune? Do I now, after being here for over 20 years, prefer the weather of Wisconsin over the weather of South Carolina?

And the answer is still no.

Sure, I can appreciate the ability to go sledding and ice skating, and there’s nothing quiet like the odd silence that fills the air during a heavy snowfall. But then, there’s also all the snow removal that comes along with it, the icy walkways, the need to bundle up in multiple layers just to walk outside for a second, and the constant checking of weather reports to know if your upcoming activities will need to be cancelled.

I’ll admit, it’s really just winter in Wisconsin I take particular issue with. But, the problem is, winter in Wisconsin can be upwards to six months long. And even if spring does come early, that’s often a fake-out, which is often followed by super-winter, where the snow and the cold are twice as bad as they were during the actual winter.

And so, right now, we’re a week out from the official start of spring, and I’m going to have to get the snowblower out tonight. And I hate it.

And I’m not alone. My kids have recently taken to talking about summer almost every day. Not because they want to be out of school, but because they’re excited for warmth and the pool and riding bikes. Because no matter what things there might be to do during the winter, the reality is, they simply don’t compare to being outside on a sunny day, enjoying being warm…even if it’s a little too hot for comfort.

Happy Birthday to my Love

Hey, if you happen to know my wife, you should 100% send her a message of love today, because it’s her birthday! And because…well, I’ve failed her a bit today…

She’s had a pretty wild time of it lately, because even though the bakery has been her dream for as long as I’ve known her, it has also added an entirely new level of stress to her life, which is saying a lot, considering we have three kids.

So, when trying to come up with an actual birthday present for her, I wanted to come up with something simple that might be fun for the bakery. Since we had taken down a number of things from the walls because they didn’t quite fit the vibe we were going for, I thought that maybe I could come up with some fun things to put up their place. And when I found the below, I thought, these are awesome, she’ll love them, and I immediately purchased them to be shipped out from Etsy.

But, you see, the problem is, the items we removed from the walls were all word art things, like ‘5 Stars, Would Poop Here Again’. And, of course, here I was, purchasing more word art for her…and it took me a day or two to realize what I had done.

I’d like to blame my absolute exhaustion over the past couple of weeks for my misstep here, but really, I think I was just so absolutely needy for something to get her that would go along with her bakery, that when I found something I found amusing, I didn’t stop to think much about whether or not it actually fit the bill for what she would like.

And…I failed.

Which is why when I tell you that you need to give her some love today, I mean it. She has a husband who completely missed the mark on a birthday gift for her, showcasing his absolute disregard for understanding what she would actually like, and got her the exact thing she had been removing from her business over the past two weeks, instead of giving her something that was actually thoughtful.

Which means, give her love, because I definitely didn’t.

Happy Birthday, Gretchen!

The Wisconsin Mobile Weather Isolation Unit

Every morning during the cold months, I find myself sitting in a long line of cars, with my daughter in the passenger seat, as we wait to get to the drop off location for school. And then, after she gets out, I wait an even longer amount of time, just to be able to actually get out of the school parking lot and on to the road.

It’s a mess of traffic. There’s no real good flow in this process, and so these cars inch along at a snail’s pace, waiting for the car in front of them to move slightly forward so they can move slightly forward, all in the hope that it will soon be their turn to wait for the freedom of turning off of the small side road onto the much busier road that will entail freedom from the weird frozen conga line which is school drop-off.

And while I sit in this line, peering through the haze of frozen car exhaust filling the street and parents attempting the most ridiculous driving maneuvers in order to somehow increase their chances of moving through the line faster, while risking the lives and car integrities of their fellow humans, I can’t help but think of this weird situation where all of these people are seated in their warm little rooms, staring out at the rest of the world, wishing for their turn to be free.

I hate the cold, and I often find myself willing to burn all the carbon I can just to feel all the warm I can while stuck out in the harsh freezing temperatures of a Wisconsin winter. But at the same time, I look at all of these cars, idling as they expel fumes from their tailpipes, filled with people struggling to feel the warmth of their car’s heaters, and, well, I can’t help but feel a little ridiculous as I sit in my warm little weather isolation unit, hoping to somehow get back to my much larger home and sit on top of a space heater hoping to thaw out from my time where I didn’t actually get out into the actual cold, because I got into my car from my garage.

But it also seems so…oddly modern. This line of cars all waiting to move forward is too perfect of a metaphor for the rat race we often describe ourselves as living in. These people who swerve through the lines trying to get through quicker because they have some other place to be, presumably, forgoing any care for the rules, while I sit there (im)patiently hoping my turn will come.

In other words, I have far too much time to my own thoughts while I sit in this line, and sometimes those thoughts don’t come out fully formed, and now I’m here trying to present them to you without a real thought of where they are going.

But the real point here is…I hate school drop off.

The Great Human Hunkering: A Retrospective

We are now 2 years out from day 3 of what I had been referring to as The Great Human Hunkering, a crazy period in which we, as a nation decided to close up shop for a couple months in order to ‘flatten the curve’. Okay, so, yeah, obviously “we” didn’t decide, those in power decided and then there were plenty of people who revolted against it, at the same time that most of our country was still out and about because they were the underpaid folks who were considered essential workers.

But, for those of us who weren’t essential workers and wanted to try to help keep our hospitals from being overrun, we stayed in, away from the rest of the world, and simply hunkered down.

My Timehop (does anyone else still use that app?) has been reminding me of the daily posts I was doing at that time, in some self-appointed need to record the history of it for my family. Things started out feeling a little cheerful about the concept. My wife had come up with a whole bunch of ideas for ways that our kids could keep entertained, having even developed a huge list of online activities of things that had been made free for the hunkering, like museums and drawing classes and, well, just a giant pile of things that I honestly can’t remember any longer. I filled our inflatable hot tub with water and set it up in the basement (a terrible idea when you have cats, btw…RIP inflatable hot tub), all with the idea that we were going to try and make this brief period in our kids lives not nearly as terrible.

Not only did this period not end up being nearly as brief as we had thought, but by day two our kids were already at each other’s throats, and in my office on the regular telling me how bored they were, even though my wife had spent an awful lot of time getting all the things together so they wouldn’t need to ever tell us that.

I’ve often said that one of the weirdest things for me was how not-weird the whole quarantine period for our country was. And in a lot of ways, it really wasn’t that weird, but when I look back at it, it was downright eerie. Not only were my kids, who had suddenly all become these incredibly social kids, stuck at home all the time, not able to see their friends or really go anywhere, but there was also the fact that none of us were seeing anyone. I remember a night where we decided to break the rules and have my sister-in-law over for a drink on our deck. Not only were we outside, but we also kept our distance from each other. And it was amazing to have someone new to see in person again. While still feeling like we were breaking all the rules just in doing so.

Things like going to the grocery store, holding your breath as you walked past anyone else, both to keep from passing or receiving this virus that we knew so little about. Things like giving a wide berth around people while walking down sidewalks, or crossing the street, so as to avoid breathing the same air. And this same look on everyone’s face, even visible beneath the masks, which seemed to question whether we would ever get out of this.

Two years ago, we entered this odd Twilight Zone version of our planet, where people all wanted to interact with each other but were absolutely terrified to do so. Terrified that they might get this disease and then pass it on to someone else who simply didn’t have the immune system necessary to fight it off. People were starved for social activity, but the best we had was to look at faces on screens while we hoped our internet would be good enough throughout the free 45 minute Zoom call, while also knowing that this conversation still wasn’t as good as the real thing.

Two years ago, I went through my normal routine of work and life like I always did, not fully realizing how much my life had been impacted by this global pandemic, and it’s taken me probably two years to actually realize that things were, in fact, really really weird. Sure, the roads might not have been devoid of traffic, because people were still going places, but just the way we all would interact with each other was completely different, down to the looks we would give each other to try and determine where the other person sat on the whole debate of masks, hugs, and whatever else.

Things feel a heckuva lot more normal now, but the weird thing is, I think if we had gone straight to where we are right now, I’d probably find it all much more weird than I did the actual hunkering period. Because during that period, it really just felt like I was back to being my standard I’m-a-parent-and-don’t-have-time-for-social-activity self.

All the same, I’m really appreciating being in a place where I can feel at least a little more comfortable with being a part of the world again, even if I’d really like these case counts to go down a bit more…

And I’m really really glad that my kids aren’t stuck in the house all the time this March. Although Spring Break starts this weekend and I’m sure that will be a whole ‘nother problem brewing.

So Close…

Oh crap, another school-related post!

I am 8 days away from the end of my term, meaning 8 days away from being a graduate, meaning 8 days until I can stop checking my school email on the regular to see if my grades have all come in (I’m down to three left). And I’m also approximately 20 days past submitted my final assignment.

And I just got an assignment back asking for additional work to be done.

Now, I’m not going to claim that what I submitted was my best work. Considering this was the last assignment I submitted during my flurry of effort to try to get work done before we bought a bakery, I can admit that I may have worked through it a little quicker than I probably should. And the fact that I have the opportunity to resubmit as opposed to getting a failing grade and therefore having to tack on an extra term of school just to redo this one class is also something I am very happy for (because of the way this school works, any assignment that is considered less than a B is considered a failing grade for the whole class). But…I really don’t want to do any more school work.

Like, I was incredibly happy when I finished to be able to consider myself as being done. Sure, I had this dark cloud hanging over me for the past month where I fully expected something like this to happen, and therefore haven’t actually allowed myself to feel comfortable with the idea that school was over, but I was just starting to get over that, starting to feel as though maybe I could relax a little, starting to feel, well, done.

And now, here I am, within a second of getting the notification that this grade came through, feeling all that weight of the world once again. I’m quite literally ready to just throw in the towel over one grade, where I really just have to write a wall of text to justify things that I simply didn’t give enough text to justify (like, I don’t even need to do a better job of justifying, just have to write more).

I’m going to do it. I’m going to get it done, but, I feel a lot like a whiny little toddler just crying “But I don’t wanna!”.

School might really just bring out the worst in me. Here’s hoping 8 days from now I’ll actually be in a place where I finally feel absolutely done, because I’m really tired of thinking about school.

Return to Normalcy

After World War I, Warren Harding used the phrase, “Return to Normalcy” as his slogan for election. I’ve always really liked this phrase, and not just because of how it has long caused scholars to debate whether or not the word actually existed prior to this point.

There are many moments through history were the question comes up about whether or not we can ever return to normal. Often throughout this pandemic, we’ve seen the usage of the phrase, “The New Normal”, which causes me unhappiness because I miss the old normal. Which is probably why the concept of a return to normalcy is a big one. Just imagine the world during Harding’s time, coming out of a war, and the Spanish flu, and the first Red Scare, all wanting the world to go back to what they used to know.

And then Harding comes along saying, “I’ll get us back to where we used to be!”.

Of course, he didn’t. Our issues with Russia and Communism continue to this day, we still have our regular flu shots, and World War II was far worse than WWI could have ever been, and ultimately changed the face of war for forever.

Similarly, we saw the return of this phrase during the most recent American Presidential election, attached to the campaign of Joe Biden. And similarly, we really shouldn’t see things ever actually go back to normal.

Just looking at what all we still have to do in order to get through airport security, which was a response to the September 11th attacks, its apparent that it’s really difficult to go back to the way things used to be.

And that’s sad.

And that’s also how I’ve been feeling lately with my personal life. I’ve been really excited about getting out of school and returning to the normalcy of my life before school. But, just like with COVID (which has lasted about as long), I don’t even really know what that life was like any longer. The idea of not constantly rushing through everything to cram homework into all of the quiet seconds of the day, well, that feels foreign. Of course, for the couple of weeks I’ve been done with school, I’ve managed to have a bit of down time to reboot, but the truth is that something feels incredibly wrong when I don’t have all the things to do.

Last night, I’m sure because of how little I had to do during the day, I couldn’t sleep, my legs wanting to run off to somewhere because my body was sure we still needed to be on the run.

And, of course, with the purchase of a bakery now in the mix, things really aren’t going to be quiet for that much longer around here.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss it…not that I’m even sure if my memories of the Old Normal are all that accurate any longer…