National Son Day

(This one was supposed to have been posted back on September 28th)

I’ve been considering exploiting my all suffering male offspring as source material for the upcoming #inktober, but well, I am sensitive to over handling them, so to speak...and to putting their faces out too much online as recognizable images. 

But here is a trial run, nonetheless.

My son tells me that it is recognizable as him. 

I am distracted by the drawing disaster and cannot really engage with the likeness issue.  But it’s not really looking like a solution to my inktober problem. 

Family Support

This Will Be Easier If You Don’t Struggle So Much:

(Family Support: Whether You Want It Or Not)

We were all back to school, both remote and in person.  Both iterations were challenging for all involved. Everyone needs support...but they might not enjoy receiving it. And we might not be offering the right kind.

On another note, I am still thinking about faces and face recognition...and drawing the kids in such a way that their faces are partial or not exactly recognizable- at least to an algorithm.

Napkin Portraits

Yearly Napkin Portrait Dysfunction:

The Cover Your Nose and Mouth Edition.

Every year I rediscover the information that napkins do not photograph well when put next to actual people. And that my kids are unwilling to cooperate for even the two minutes it might take to line up the image. And this time I did not ask them to embarrass themselves on a subway platform.

But it’s the dysfunction that makes it interesting....right?

If the photo actually lined up the way I planned, what would be the fun in that?

Monkey On Your Back: On the Couch Version

Pandemic Bonding Continues:

New York is opening up a bit recently, but it hasn’t really changed our sons’ couch-centric quarantine lifestyle.

And they can exercise while on the couch, mostly through”body-weight” exercises.

Incendiary Masking for a Happy July Fourth

There doesn’t seem to be much enthusiasm for fireworks this Fourth... maybe because there have been constant explosions throughout the city all week...or maybe it’s just the state of the world?

We are wearing our masks whenever we go out. Perhaps unfortunately, they do not launch fireworks. 

I’ve been sitting the last few weeks out in terms of social media, since I really did not have anything particularly pertinent to add to more important national conversations.

But petty familial mutual irritation and bad drawing have still continued.... even if they are not getting posted.

Hope everyone is safe and well this holiday!

You can see Fourth of July napkins from years past at this link

Alone Together

We’re All in This Loneliness Together:

There’s much less FOMO when you know everyone else is also trapped at home. You are reasonably certain that they aren’t having fabulous parties that you weren’t invited to.

But social anxiety is probably not entirely extinguished by the inability to socialize.

Pandemic PE

Remote Learning Gym Class:

Is It Working Out?

We are fine. We have relatively little to complain about, given what is happening in the world lately. 

But this is not to say that the situation is optimal.

Hope all is well with you and yours!

Exercise During Remote Learning

Restorative Exercise Breaks Between Stimulating Remote Learning Classes:

It has been said that because of recent world events: in the war between the screens and the not-screens, the screens have definitely triumphed.

Our sons have never been convinced of the goodness of exercise or the merits of outdoor activities. 

And the harder I am selling something, the harder the pass. 

I would like to say these things are a recent development, but, no they’re not. 

My ability to form memories was severely compromised by extreme sleep deprivation for many years during their early childhood....but I can clearly recall our first son prone on the floor wailing, “I HATE OUTSIDE!” when he was a toddler trying to avoid a trip to the playground.

So this stay-home-all-day-with-your-WIFI  hasn’t exactly been the kids’ worst nightmare come true. 

Though after a month, there have been suggestions that they might actually miss going to school.  

Exercise, probably not so much.

Stealth Pajamas

National Wear Your Pajamas to Work Day Was Today.

And Every Day.

Both kids’ schools have some sort of officially stated rule about student dress, or lack thereof, during remote learning.

Pajamas are, of course, officially forbidden.

But what if you were regularly wearing the clothes you sleep in to bricks-and-mortar school before the pandemic?

The bathrobe visible in this drawing might be giving it away. 

But if they can only see him from the chest up on Zoom, it could just be an extra cool hoodie.

Remote Learning

Remote Learning May Not Be As Stimulating as Non Remote Learning:

Spending 24 hours a day with my kids is delightful...maybe. I’m sure I will reflect fondly back on this period of time in my old age after they have moved far away. (ok, in my older, old age)

But the remote learning situation is really a bit of a challenge for us for many reasons.

Perhaps the least of the challenges is the physical environment...but it’s still a problem nonetheless.

In the past, we always wanted to avoid having the kids on their screens while alone in their rooms, so their desks and gaming have been out in the communal space.  This doesn’t work so well for virtual school, so they both set themselves up in makeshift situations in their bedrooms.

In all fairness, what you see in this drawing is no longer the arrangement for this particular student. He is now actually sitting on a chair rather than crumpled in the corner.

It’s a very uncomfortable chair in an uncomfortable location, but at least he is no longer stuffed between a stairway and a dresser.

I don’t observe any additional evidence of physical vigor, however.

Homemade Wrapping Paper 2019

Homemade Wrapping Paper:

Does it redeem mediocre gifts?

Perhaps not this year, but I remain optimistic about the future.

This year I drew the kids wrestling with their heads replaced by animals. 

Why? You may ask. 

Because last year I drew zombie Santa, sharks, and animals wearing reindeer menorah hats....so those topics were already done.

I usually try to not leave too much time to make wrapping paper because then I fuss over it too much, which does not improve it, and is perhaps inappropriate for something that is meant to be crumpled and removed.

But this year I did not have time to make enough and things were unwrapped...and the paper I did make was not exactly up to the already very low wrapping paper standards....

But.....there’s always next year, right?

Inktober 2019 Day 20

Don’t Sleep in on the Weekends to Maintain Circadian Rhythm.

Or Do, and See if I Care.

Inktober 2019 Day 20

I’ll Sleep When I am Dead. Maybe.

I do believe the science that says that maintaining circadian rhythm is more important than total quantity of sleep on a given night.  But it is hard to live up to that premise and pull myself out of bed at 6:20 am on the weekends.  

And my kids are totally unconvinced.

The well known sleeping-in-on-the-weekend/ feeling-crappy-on-Monday-morning phenomenon is sometimes called “social jet lag” I guess presuming that you have been out late socializing on the weekends.  We just call it actual  jet lag: i.e., I say to the kid who just scraped himself out of bed at 11:30 am on Saturday, “You are now somewhere off the coast of California, heading towards Hawaii, and you have to make it back to New York by Monday morning.” 

But the bliss of sleeping on Californian time is awfully hard to pass up, even for a sleep nazi like myself.

Inktober 2019 Day 12

Participate in Relaxing Activities Before Bed:

Inktober 2019 Day 12

I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead. Maybe.

We are always keen to get the kids off their screens before bed so they can do something low tech. So relaxing for the whole family.

(That’s a rubber knife, in case you are wondering. But still, not exactly calming for the observer or the participants.)

I’m posting this close to midnight, so you can see that I am no example of sleep virtue today. There were some very extenuating circumstances...and I am wearing my red glasses....

Inktober 2019 Day 9

Oxytocin Supplementation:

Inktober 2019 Day 9

I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead. Maybe.

Apparently sleep can be enhanced by boosting one’s endogenous hormone production...particularly of oxytocin, the cuddling hormone.  Oxytocin opposes the stress hormone cortisol. Elevated cortisol in the evening, say after yelling at your kids about not getting ready for bed, definitely messes up sleep. 

While my sons are usually not too concerned about my spiking cortisol levels, (Mom!!! Don’t turn off the WiFi!!!) they can also help me relax by hugging me....though often it  appears that there might be an alternative agenda at work.

Inktober 2019 Day 4

Imaginary Soothing Companions:

Inktober 2019 Day 4

I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead. Maybe

In the quest for at least minimally acceptable amounts of sleep, I have tried various forms of meditation, mindfulness, and breath work.  There is sadly more to come on this topic, but since I was tired of drawing my own increasingly jowly face, I thought I would move on to my problems with visualization and the generation of positive mind states.

Several meditation or self-regulation techniques invite you to imagine a positive or soothing situation- say that you are with someone you love.  I have tried the perhaps most idiotically concrete implementation of this concept: imagining holding one of my sons as a sleeping infant or napping with my long-departed dead cat. 

But of course, both kids were epically terrible sleepers as infants who preferred to nap almost exclusively while being carried by a walking adult...and would then go off like car alarms the moment they were transferred to a non mobile surface...or a mobile surface that was not their mother, for that matter. 

My cat was rarely a snuggly lap pet and was also a rather opinionated individual who did not exactly prioritize my needs for emotional support....or for sleep. He was more interested, for instance, in catching a mouse in the middle of the night and then carefully pushing it up against my neck so he could play with it in my bed.

I really need to focus and visualize that rarest of infant or feline naps, carefully refraining from letting my mind wander to the other 99.9% of our interactions involving sleep.

Perhaps this is an extra mindfulness challenge that will pay off someday.

Back to School Napkin Portraits

Back to School Portrait:

It’s been a difficult end of summer around here. 

The summer itself was mostly filled with probably age-appropriate, incessant rejection of parental authority. This independence from authority primarily manifested as a refusal to attend to basic personal hygiene, and balking at the idea of going outside or engaging in any physical activity beside walking from the couch to the bedroom. ...And also rejecting any well-meant suggestions (ok, this is sometimes described as nagging by the recipients of the well-meant suggestions) that it might perhaps be wise to complete some of the enormous summer homework assignment a bit in advance of the weekend immediately before school. 

But this evening, I am focusing on the recently popular topic of gratitude, and reminding myself how nice it is to have the kids around now, and how much I will miss them in the future when I can’t nag them in such close proximity...and can’t spectate on the failure of my nagging quite so easily.

The following images are of the napkins without the kids, and an example of what happens after a stressful 2 minutes of posing for mom.

One can see many more instances of napkin portraits on the blog from many years past, but this is our first solidly profile view, so that is marginally notable. 

(See the all the napkin portraits over the years here:)

Fat Raccoon

Every Gamer’s Ideal Companion:

The Joy of a Fat Raccoon.

Our younger son has been fantasizing about how cool it would be to have a pet raccoon...a FAT pet raccoon.  Fatness in a pet trash panda might in fact be inevitable, I suppose?

I gather there are some raccoon videos going around recently. Something about one trying to grab food off a kitchen counter and instead spilling a bowl of water on its own head. And fat animals appear to be endlessly compelling. I don’t think we will try to unpack the reasons for this here.

What I might have failed to mention previously here, is that a few years back we did have a very sizable raccoon in our urban Brooklyn yard. Actually it presented itself perched rather assertively on the top of our roll down gate, very unconcerned with humans, even if they were hoping up and down and pointing at it. That raccoon was clearly not pet material, and in fact its potential ongoing presence in our woodpile made the boys quite leery of going out in the yard to fetch firewood....ever. 

But if you had a pet raccoon that would sit on your desk between the PlayStation and pc.... 

You would definitely feed it leftover pizza, wouldn’t you? 

Mother’s Day

It’s been a challenging day here, I just finished yelling at one kid, and am now torturing another by making him belatedly write a paper due tomorrow. 

There’s not been enough time for me to draw anything...or to feel like an even marginally competent parent.

So, in honor of Mother’s Day: here is a throwback napkin from 5 years ago....from back when seeing them asleep was just such a relief.

I was always annoyed as helpful strangers would approach me when the kids were tiny and offer me the unsolicited advice that I really should enjoy them while they were young because things were going to become more difficult later and I was going to miss the simplicity of dealing with small children and babies.

This sort of comment was usually offered, say, when I was poorly managing the temper tantrum of a hysterical four year old on a crowded rush hour subway platform while wearing a screaming infant with a full diaper strapped to my chest. 

Ah, memories.

It’s doubtful that my parenting has improved much in the intervening years, but our sons have matured despite my failings. 

And I don’t wish that they were still tiny....

(....and totally unwilling to sleep.)

Happy Mother’s Day!

All Star

Some 

Body Once Told Me

The World Was Going Roll Me

(I ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed.)

I had a reasonably good opinion of my own intelligence once. There was some outside corroboration- I did quite well in school. My academic success was very much a triumph of drudgery rather than of innate intelligence. But if one drudges long and hard enough, one can mostly outrun the fear of being outed as a secret dummy.

Maybe until you have kids. Or at least until you have my kids.

The fact that I had a 4.0 GPA in college is now at best a surprising and amusing anecdote.  The ability to perform well in school has been a pretty useless skill in my adult life.

You might think that I could at least help my kids excel at school: help them proofread their papers, share tips on how to study for tests, suggest how to budget their time, etc.?

No. No. No. 

Absolutely not. 

I might even have an inverse effect when it comes to fostering academic prowess in my own offspring. 

You no doubt are wondering what this has to do with the napkin. Maybe not much. But to continue:

Like all things meme related, I was slightly confused when I noticed a year or two ago that my that my older son was repeatedly singing the opening lines to Smash Mouth’s 1999 song “All Star.” I was perplexed at the time, as I was pretty sure the song dated from before his birth. I don’t think I even recalled its use in the opening credits of the first Shrek movie- also released before his birth. 

As usual, I though this repeated singing of the song snippet was a sort of special torture he had cooked up for the adults in the house.

...but no, I discovered later, it was everywhere online.

This “All Star” / Shrek meme is a decade long, deep dark rabbit hole...which is actually a rabbit warren of significant proportions. I can’t even begin to explain it here.

(Go to https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/all-star?full=1 if you desire an overview)

But one particular iteration is the “Somebody Once Told Me” photo meme. In the first movie, Shrek throws open the door and bursts out of his outhouse, just as this line plays. 

The related memes feature two images with the text split between “Some/body once told me”  The second image is often something  surprising, upsetting and/or funny that is suddenly revealed from behind a door. Many of them are just variations on how funny it is when things go wrong for other people: falling down, blowing up, spilling something, generally getting clobbered in a demeaning way. 

(For more on this: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/somebody-once-told-m

In summary, the people rolling me have definitely burst out of my own personal outhouse. But I can only say, “get your game on, go play”

Cringe.

Yelling

Yelling:

[And More Yelling]:

This one is perhaps not so much a meme, strictly speaking, as an observation. 

My impression is that there is a lot of yelling going on in anime and anime-derived games. 

Related memes often present the characters with their mouths almost comically open wide.

There is also a lot of yelling at my house.

My sons are often yelling happily or excitedly while playing such games. 

When I am doing the yelling, it is very rarely an expression of joy or excitement. 

I might need to work on that.

The second image is a “My Hero Academia” derived meme...I think....and the source of the image format.