22 October 2025

Fun night yesterday with the elder princess, she’s still trying to figure out her new bedtime routine. Things in the big bed aren’t working out and she’ll be going back to her crib for awhile. She seems to need the restriction of a crib and a sleep sack, basically a blanket she wears. As the princess would lay in bed, she kept moving around unable to settle. I even tried laying with her in hopes she would fall sleep on me, but no luck. Hanging out in bed was still fun, like one time I told her it was time for bed and after a moment of quiet she told me to look at her because she had one eye open. She makes me laugh. After the mention from our neighbor that they will have mommy cocktails for Halloween, we’ve decided to clean our house in case anyone would be coming in. The days are counting down, we’re under 10 days away now with a couple of Halloween activities to attend. Adult life is tiring, while writing I’ve got Daniel Tiger playing in the background and he’s make bead necklaces. I never got really into bead crafting, but have spent some time with them. When I was a kid I remember thinking beads were so cool and that nothing could be more important than making the coolest necklace. How did things get like this? Just like when I was young I was bored looking for things to do, but now there’s more things to do than there is time to do it, plus I just want to do nothing but sleep.

21 October 2025

AT&T is installing fiber optic internet in my neighborhood. We currently use a local internet company and having lived in Philadelphia and New York using Comcast and Time Warner respectively, I have a healthy dislike of big internet companies. We likely won’t be switching internet providers. Regardless if anyone here plans to use it or want it, it’s being installed. Maybe the process is the company makes a deal with the city, the city receives money and whoever brokered the deal is going to get something. I assume the city is responsible because they’re digging on what I believe to be city land, about 4 feet from the street. The construction process isn’t too invasive, it’s loud so hopefully it doesn’t wake any naps and when I was walking the baby yesterday I had to pass by. My biggest complaint would be the workers that leave trash on the side of the road where they’re working, it’s not even work trash, it’s their personal trash like drinks and cigarette packs. They might go through when it’s all done to clean everything up, either way it’s not my responsibility. There are some patches of land I’ve seen recently I would like to be my responsibility, or at least I would be able to transform them into something more useful. When we moved out of the last place, I swore off ever working with my hands again. I don’t know if I will own land again, still it’s something I think about when I see a space going to waste.

20 October 2025

We had a good weekend and I hope the world did too. The elder princess has started sleeping in a twin bed and is out of her crib. She slept there for the last two days and hasn’t caused any trouble. It is hard to understand kids growing up because I’ve been grinding away try to feed, clean and teach this kids, then I look up on a walk and that one time baby looks like a little person. There’s still a lot of basics she’s learning like letters and recently I’ve put more time into using scissors. An inexperienced mind is interesting, when we were doing scissor exercises there was a straight line, a curve, and zig zags. She said she doesn’t know how to do the zig zags, I’m thinking they’re the same straight lines you already did, but to her it’s a new world breaking into the second dimension. Not much going on as we approach Halloween, it sounds like we live in a good neighborhood for it, that people bus in to trick or treat here, and we met a neighbor on our walk that said she’ll have mommy cocktails available. We have a very nice life and I thank God for all my blessings, still we are not used to living in nice situations. The queen and I have had our heads down most of our lives, we came here from taking evasive maneuvers to an emergency. Now we’re setting into a place nicer than we every expected or planned for. The Talking Heads are right that you may ask yourself, “how did I get here?”

17 October 2025

Yesterday I was writing about how tomorrow isn’t guaranteed and indeed it isn’t as last night the little princess was waking up in the middle of the night and by 5 AM she was ready to start the day. Those are some hard nights since there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do besides hold the baby, at least the screaming didn’t wake her sister. The reason holding at night is hard is because I want to lay down in bed and sleep, there’s no place to lay down with the baby and there’s a fear I’ll drop her if I fall asleep. What ended up happening is I’d rock the baby to sleep for a couple minutes and try to put her back down, then she’d scream and we’d repeat until the sun comes up. It’s annoying, but not world ending; I got good sleep the night before. Interrupted sleep is a reminder that I’m excess energy territory, everyday I’m trying to get through the day and hopefully the night. 

16 October 2025

Last night’s sleep went well, now onto today. Bill Murray’s Groundhog’s Day is an important piece of media because it exemplifies real life. We can do everything perfect today and still wake up tomorrow with a blank slate. The kids having a goodnight of sleep yesterday doesn’t really effect the odds of them going down easy tonight. Habit is an important lesson to learn in this philosophy, even though each day is a fresh start, our habits determine where we start from. Meaning things will change even when we can’t see it. How does that help me now? The kids are growing up, some how my baby turned into a little human while I was busy, now I’ve got a new baby learning. Even though I don’t see results today from what I’m teaching them, I keep trying for that perfect day and get lost in time until years have pasted and the kid is repeating what I said in the past. In terms of rewards for me, there’s nothing, I can choose to participate in their life and be happy with their progress. Speaking of we got the elder princess’ first report card from daycare, she’s doing well. The teacher wrote, “Smart girl! Love her!” and it makes me happy that people would like to be around my kid, much better than if I was being told my kid is being destructive and socially isolated. Destructive and isolated seems to describe me, I’ve gotten better at controlling my bad behavior. After a decade of caring for plants and a dog, I’ve learned to nurture things, though I still isolate. Care for things can be so frustrating, spending so much time creating a wall for this weak creature. One day it emerges better for it.

15 October 2025

Last night was weird, the elder princess is getting older and with that comes staying up later at night. We’re still trying to figure out where her sweet spot in time is and the best approach to get her to sleep at a new time, there’s also the looming of adjustment of day lights saving at the end of the month. The elder princess is 3 and most of her life she’s gone to bed before 6 PM, I can think of one night where the queen was out of town and I let the princess stay up to watch a movie with me. Outside of the movie she’s probably been awake past bedtime a handful of times. Last night was probably the latest she’s been awake, pushing past 8 PM. The main culprit keeping her up was her interest in Halloween, during the day we carved pumpkins and she wanted it in her room as night light. Then she got scared of the pumpkin, I took it away, but that wasn’t enough so I gave her a flash light and she calmed down. She didn’t fall asleep though, the flash light was a new toy I had to later come back and turn off. After all that I laid in bed with the princess for a bit until later the queen was able to get her to fall asleep. At least she’s sweet and I like hanging out with her, especially as her sense of humor develops. 

14 October 2025

We’re back from a long weekend, we used the time off to visit the beach. We were in the Gulf of America and I was able to get that on a t-shirt. Along with a Gulf of America shirt, I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled over the next year or two for some good 250th birthday merch. The past weekend was possibly our best vacation yet and it had one of the scariest starts. About an hour into our drives we stopped to get gas and when it was time to get going again, the car didn’t. The battery died with no warning and the fear of being in the car with two and a dog with no way of moving set in fast. Thankfully, we couldn’t have broken down in a better spot. Not only were we in shade at the gas station, but across the street was an Auto Zone and two mechanics. We got a mechanic to walk across the street and check out the car. I was trying to start it while he looked under the hood and it was frustrating to have a push button start. With a key ignition, it is possible to pump the gas and turn the key in such a way to get over the hump of a weak battery and start the car. All I could do was push a button, there’s also a string of activity the car does before starting the engine like turn on lights, the display, and AC, thus destroying any hope to get the car to start. The mechanic helped us with jumper cables, but it didn’t work. We were able to get a new battery at Auto Zone, they drove it over and installed the battery. We got back on the road in under an hour, it was amazing and I’m still a little shock at the possibility of being stranded with the kids.

8 October 2025

Yesterday I was able to tighten the belt on diet for the first time in awhile, I have to actually look at how many calories I’m intaking to do it properly. I don’t have to expend to track calories, so my strategy was to not eat. This isn’t fasting, just a constant reminder to stop snacking. As a result to eating less I’ve been reminded why dieting is so difficult, today it feels like there’s a spike in the base of my skull. I once tried to cut all added sugar out of my diet and was faced with some terrible headaches. Modern foods are terrible addictive to the point it hurts to stop eating them, and it’s only getting worse with the rise of Ozempic. My understanding is the medication makes food less desirable and that cuts into snack food companies’ profits, they have been researching how to overcome the ozempic pandemic. The future to this thinking is the population will be eating food genetically engineered to overcome our biological controllers. The result is new illness mankind has never seen before. I don’t have opinion on the ethics of it all though my inclination is to stay in nature and the real world. That belief conflicts with my real life of computers and cars, but it’s an attempt to stay safe by continuing what we’ve done in the past. Still “real foods” are far from natural. The way modern corn looks like it does is by breeding it to have exponentially more food, the intermediate species in the process can’t survive or reproduce on their own, I’d call that unnatural. 

7 October 2025

This morning I noticed one of my neighbor’s houses had been TPed, or vandalized with toilet paper. Vandalize feels like a strong word for soft as bottom tissue and for Halloween the visual is appealing, still if it was my house and was done in ill will then I’d have no trouble calling it a crime. Luckily there was heavy rain last night and the toilet paper won’t be around for long, the remnants might linger for the month though. I’ll probably keep an eye on the house to see the decomposition process because I do like the idea of toilet paper decorating for Halloween, maybe TP myself with the family some day, it also seems like fun to throw the rolls. To be clear I did not attack my neighbors house, nor have I ever TPed a house, that’s why I need to imagine what it’s like. On further thinking my guess is it’s hard to throw the perfect toilet paper roll since it would ideally have a long tail as it flies. The reality is the paper would probably rip mid flight if the tail got too big and heavy. Now I’m thinking about how exhausting decorating is, why would I want to get out of bed in the middle of the night to go decorate someone else’s house when they won’t even appreciate it. The only bright side will be if it’s biodegradable and no one has to clean it up. Throwing paper towel rolls could be an improvement, if for no other reason than to confuse your enemies.

6 October 2025

Hit the ground rolling, had the dog waking me up at 4 AM again, this is why everyone’s cries for help have to be ignore. Help someone once and then they expected everytime. He’s a good boy and sleeps in his crate the full night, it might be him getting older. As the babies get old enough to sleep through the night, the dog will get too old to go all night without a potty break. The little princess might have a cold because she is fighting sleep right now. She seems fine, the only explanation I’ve got is her nose is stuffed up and when she lays down it becomes uncomfortable; lots of wake ups last night and this morning. The elder princess had another soccer game this weekend, she’s doing great. In free time we mostly play, she does lots of drawing and painting, but we have lots of activities at the house and rotate through them. I had my first religious teaching with the elder princess since as her father I take it to be my right to discuss such things with her. She know the world “heaven” due to school, it’s mentioned in teaching how to write numbers. Since she knows heaven I branched off of that, we started In the beginning God created heaven. She got to see my Bible and could notice the number 1 next to the words noting the verse number. Life is so interesting, the first book is Genesis and it’ll be awhile before she knows what that word means. There’s a long journey ahead of her and for all of us.