Me: (after dropping something) Sorry, I can’t get it up. Her: (bursts out laughing) Do you… Me: (sighing and holding up hand) I heard it when I said it.
My collection of injuries seems to be growing every single day.
About a year ago, I started getting these weird wrist pains. They’d come and then go, no real rhyme or reason.
For the past month, my wrist has been bugging me non-stop; I don’t go to the gym anymore without a wrist brace on.
This is just an old pic of mine after some party.
Then, about a week ago, I started getting these shooting pains in my lower back.
Him: Are you ok? What happened?! Me: That’s the thing – nothing happened. No major event. It just started hurting one day.
A buddy of mine is a doctor, and I mentioned it to him. He asked me a few questions, which I answered.
Him: Sounds like you have a herniated disk. Me: What?! You’re kidding. What do I do? Him: (shrugging) Wait and try not to injure it more. It takes about two years to resolve itself.
The Firecracker started digging around and found something called The McKenzie Method for back pain.
Essentially, it’s about seven exercises that you do every 2-3 hours; it takes about 15 minutes to do from start to finish.
Man, I hate it.
But I hate feeling like an old man more so…this is what I’m doing for the foreseeable future.
Blargh.
Her: (to a friend) I’m glad that Biden dropped out. I can’t vote for him again. He’s older than Logan. Me: That was uncalled for.
Location: my floor, doing these $@#$@#$ exercises
Mood: grumpy
Music: I just keep pretending I’m okay (Spotify) Subscribe! Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.
I was just born in this picture. My kid wore what I was wearing here as well. Maybe someday, I’ll show it to you.
Mom: Your dad’s been gone seven years. Can you believe it? Me: Not really. It feels like it was just a couple of years ago. Her: (repeating) Seven years. Not easy, is it? Me: No. He woulda loved seeing [the kid]. Her: Yes. That’s your dad. Me: (nodding)
Location: at a school performance, waiting for the kid to arrive
Mood: impressed
Music: Where are all the gods? (Spotify) Subscribe! Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.
Firecracker: Is that a black bagel? Me: Yeah, it’s pumpernickel. Her: Oh, I’ve never had it before. Me: You’ve never had it before?! Her: You know, you do that all the time: I tell you that I’ve not had or done X and you immediately say, “You’ve never had X?!” No, Logan, I haven’t. THAT’S WHY I SAID IT! Me: Noted. (under breath) You didn’t have to yell…
My buddy Annabel swung by my pad the other day and dropped off some gifts for the kid.
I’m always touched when someone goes out of their way to help us out or do something nice for us.
The main problem with having such easy access to a good camera these days – after all, even the cheapest cell phone still takes pretty good shots – is that you end up with hundreds if not thousands of pictures that you really should go and clean up.
I keep having to upgrade my harddrives because I have so many pictures.
So, the other day, I started deleting pictures that either aren’t good or that I just don’t care for.
Been coming across some cool ones though.
Like the woman above obviously shooting a model shot.
Or this one below of people jumping onto the tracks to save someone.
Think he just fell in, and those two fellas jumped in to rescue him.
Again, thank goodness for the good souls, right?
Finally, the below conversation between the Firecracker and her sister made me laugh…
Location: late evening, picking up my son late from school. There’s a lot to do at the end of the year.
Mood: sleepy
Music: Christ, I’m out of my mind (Spotify) Subscribe! Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.
Him: But it fits! Me: Kinda. You’re definitely Brittney Spearsing it here.
Clothes that I just bought for the kid last year are already not fitting him.
I remember that, as a kid, I loved this yellow shirt with a red V on it. Wore it until my bellybutton was constantly out, all Britney Spears like.
Think my parents were just happy that I didn’t ask for new clothes, but I always think that Alison woulda wanted him to be put together so I try my best.
My best being a sliding scale.
(c) Getty Images
Him: Why don’t you ever show my face? Me: Because I don’t have that right. At least, I shouldn’t have that right.
Been enjoying my new gym – it’s interesting rolling with people from a completely new gym because no one knows my game and I know no one else’s game, so each roll feels very different than at my old gym.
Recently rolled with a very talented but smaller female. While I could have easily beat her, that wasn’t why I was there; I was there to get better.
Just because I can, doesn’t mean I should.
In a way, that’s why I don’t put up pictures of my kid where you can clearly see his face.
See, I grew up in a time where you could grow up in relative anonymity.
Never realized what a gift that was until YouTube because – MAN – did I do some jaw-droppingly bone-headed things when I was younger.
Legit, thank god everyone didn’t walk around with a video camera because I would most likely be hated by the world writ large.
In that sense, I feel that it’s not fair or right that I – as someone much bigger and much older than my kid – have the right to take away my son’s chance to be anonymous.
Just because I can, doesn’t mean I should.
He’s a little kid right now but little kids grow up to be adults.
When he is one, he might resent not being able to tell his own story his own way.
If you think about it, the thing that probably pisses you off the most is when someone else tells your story.
Janet? She’s such a slut. Did you hear last Friday, she…
Tom? He’s a loser. When we were kids…
That guy? Lemme tell you about him…
But I have to balance that with the fact that I’m proud of him – so proud of him – and what he can do so I wanna show him off.
And that’s really what it is with parents, isn’t it?
They want to show their kids off, not for their kids sake, but for their own. And that’s not right, I don’t think.
Just because they can, doesn’t mean they should.
So, my concession is that I blur or hide his face and name so that when/if he does want to have a public face/name, that’s his choice to make when he’s old enough to make that choice.
For now, I realize that, just because I could put up anything I want about him, I shouldn’t.
Me: One day, you’ll be old enough to decide who you are and how you want the world to see you. You and your friends are gonna be some of the first kids on the planet that’s lost that right to be a nobody. Him: (thinking) What if I wanna be someone? Me: That’s your choice to make. I’ve lived my life. I don’t have the right to live your life as well. You get to decide who and what you want to be. (pause) For what it’s worth, you’re always someone to me. You’re my most important someone.
Location: a pier with four lovely ladies – including the Firecracker – the boy, and a bottle of white
Mood: so. full.
Music: I just wanna be someone. Well, doesn’t everyone? (Spotify) Subscribe! Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.
Her: Can you imagine what George Washington would say right now? Me: “What an asshole?” Her: Exactly.
A good buddy of mine hurt his leg the other day doing a harai goshi and sent me a video of it.
Fast-forward to earlier this week and the kid tried the same throw and almost broke his leg.
Him: Why are you mad at me?! Me: I’m not mad at you, kid. I’m worried you’re gonna break your leg!
By Gotcha2 – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3096148
Both the body and mind grow through adversity.
This fella named Arthur Golden once said, Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are.
Wanna give the boy enough stress to make him better, but not so much so as to make him worse.
On that note, I just went to my local urgent care office – again – because I thought I fractured my wrist in jits the other day.
Doctor: What happened? Me: Essentially, I forgot that I’m 51 and not 17. Him: (nodding) Ah…we get that a lot here. Me: Yup.
Turns out that I didn’t have any broken bones, just a particularly bad strain.
The weirdest part was that no “event” happened – I just walked off the mat at the end and could barely move my wrist.
Not much to do but rest it up and hope it heals quickly.
I still have a small handful of kali students that I train over Zoom.
One of them is a doctor from Pittsburg that was in town the other day visiting his sister, who just happens to also live on the UWS.
So, we met up for a really brief bit to have a cuppa joe.
Me: It’s crazy when I think about it. My great grandmother was so poor that she sold her only child – my grandmother – to another family because she couldn’t afford to support her. She died not soon afterward. And here I am, an ivy league educated lawyer living in Manhattan. Nuts. Him: Surprising how much similar history [we have] being second generation children of immigrants. Me: Yeah. I wish my dad was still alive so I could tell him that I’m so sorry for being such an asshole when I was a teenager.
Her: I like room temperature soda. Me: I only realized now that I’m dating a psychopath.
Not been sleeping well for a while now. It’s a long story.
Been thinking about Alison and my dad a lot lately for a whole buncha reasons we don’t need to get into, but one small reason is Princess Kate.
The fact that she and King Charles both have cancer should be a wake up call to everyone for a simple reason:
If two people that have the best of everything – healthcare, food, trainers, etc. – can get cancer, anyone can.
You definitely can.
In the 1970s, a fella you never heard of named Kotaku Wamura was the mayor of a Japanese town you never heard of, Fudai.
When Warmura was a kid in 1933, he saw a tsunami kill 439 people in Fudai and made a kid’s promise to himself – he would prevent this from ever happening to Fudai ever again.
When he became mayor in 1970, through sheer force of will, he convinced the town to erect a 51-foot-high gate as a public works project.
He, and his supporters were mocked mercilessly as fools.
Fast forward some 40+ years to the Japan earthquake and tsunami of 2011, which I wrote about before, and killed over 19,000 people and destroyed at least 45 towns and cities.
But the village and almost all its people were almost completely unscathed.
Not a day goes by without someone saying something chiding about what I eat, how I live, or what I do.
“You eat that much peanut butter?”
“Sardines? Fish, out of a can?! Disgusting!”
“Do you really need to roll around with sweaty men every day?”
“That’s a little extreme, don’t you think?”
Essentially, the argument I hear is always something that starts with, “Everyone…”
Something is fucked in our lives and we’re all dying of cancer. I dunno what it is but I’m trying to go where science is telling me to go.
And I still might get it because the odds are shit.
But I’m gonna do everything I can to try to avoid it if possible.
You should too.
Wamura died in 1997 at age 88 and never saw that he was right. But he was right.
And I think I’m right here; just like Wamura didn’t know when the next tsunami would be, he knew it would come eventually just like I know cancer will touch alla us at some point if it hasn’t already.
Cancer doesn’t give a shit if you’re a king, a princess, a new mother, or a nobody.
It’s here to end – or at least massively fuck up – your life, if you don’t do something about it.
I’m not the one that’s living an extreme life, IMHO.
To me, the people living an extreme life are the ones that know that there’s a close to 50/50 chance at getting the emperor of all maladies and doing nuthin meaningful about it.
Do you remember when I told you about my upstairs neighbor’s toilet leaking into my kitchen some 14 years ago?
Never told you details about it but one thing that drove the workmen at the time crazy was that the original builders that first put in that toilet seem to have stuffed greased up newspapers into the gap between the waste pipe and the cement because there was a gap there.
The second set of workmen “fixed” the issue some 20 years later, sealed up my ceiling, and that was the last that I thought of it until about two weeks ago.
And the reason for that is that two weeks ago, I wrote in this entry that I climbed up to check out the same spot and was on “top of my refrigerator, looking at a huge crack and some mold.”
Well, it turns out that the workmen were, among other things, hypocrites.
Note the grossly stained stuffed plastic bags to the right of the pipe.
Because instead of removing the old, incorrectly seated flange – the part that connects a waste pipe to a toilet – pouring fresh concrete and then reinstalling a new flange they ended up stuffing plastic bags into the gap themselves and installing a toilet over the whole thing.
You can see a bit of the light from my kitchen shine up even with the plastic bags in place.
Welp, the plastic bags finally deteriorated enough from 14 years of water and waste such that sewage – urine and fecal matter – soaked through my ceiling and came pouring down.
It was precisely as gross and as nasty as you’re imagining it.
Worse, actually, because I keep my cookware – pots, pans, Instant Pot, food processor, etc – on top of my fridge.
Me: Clearly, I have to burn my entire unit to the ground. Plumber: (laughs) Well, maybe just toss all your cookware? Me: You think!?
After the plumber removed the plastic bags, you can see the light from my kitchen shine up.
The unit owners, though, are friends of mine and sent a plumber to come by yesterday and he did what he could but he said that he could only do a temporary fix since the floor was uneven and that was outta his skillset.
Him: Do you have cardboard? Me: Sure, why? Him: Well, either I have to seal it to keep critters out or… Me: Nope, nope, nope, nope – here’s some cardboard.
After he left, I slapped on double gloves and double masks and cleaned the whole thing.
After about two hours, most of the most disgusting stuff was gone but the smell of urine was palpable even after scrubbing everything.
My fear is that some dried under the fridge and I’ll need to empty it out, have the whole thing pulled out, and then clean under it.
So, home ownership hasn’t been the best this week.
Here’s hoping twice in 14 years will be the limit of my ceiling caving in.
Location: Another basement apartment on WEA and W 80th Street, avoiding two dogs.
Mood: grossed TF out
Music: I’ll keep waiting, and, someday (Spotify) Subscribe! Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.
My trip to Austria highlighted the fact that my life is very different now than when I was younger.
For one, the only real luggage I have is not one, but two garment bags – the first being the red one I brought all over the world for close to the past 30 years.
Still works great, btw.
The second is in the form of a shoulder bag.
The reason both are garment bags is because, in my youth, couldn’t imagine a scenario where I wouldn’t need a suit, or at least a nice dress shirt, when I traveled.
This time around, I had nonea those things and the rolling garment bag left a lot to be desired.
The Firecracker’s stuff didn’t fit it all that great and there was a lotta wasted space because of how it’s configured.
So, I started looking for luggage.
Jesus christ, are there a lotta options out there.
To narrow things down, I started only looking at luggage that had “YKK” zippers on them because that’s an indicator of quality to me.
What I noticed was that they were, by-and-large, about 20-30% more than luggage that didn’t have – or didn’t state that they had – YKK zippers.
This just supported my decision to buy one from that group because of another saying I like:
How do you do anything is how you do everything.
In other words, if a company cares enough to spend the extra money to use YKK zippers in their luggage, they probably care enough to do other things right and more thoughtfully.
Obviously, like all sayings, there are exceptions to it but it’s generally true, for the most part.
Been telling the kid things like this now that he’s getting older and can understand such things.
And this particular saying is pretty applicable to him because of his personality.
On the positive side, the kid is relentlessly upbeat and excitable.
On the negative side, because of his joie de vivre, he tends to rush at things and not really focus when he needs to.
So, I’ve been trying to tell him to slow down, which is hard for a kid like him.
It’s a work in progress.
Him: Done! Me: That was fast. Lemme see…OK, well, you got every single thing wrong here. Him: What?! I added up everything and checked my answer. Me: Yes, I see that. Your math is right, but the instructions said round your answer to the nearest 10. You didn’t do that. So, yes, you got all the *math* right in all eight of them, but you got the *answers* wrong in all eight of them. Him: That’s not fair! Me: Listen carefully, kid: Life’s not fair. Accept that and your life will be better than most people. Now, slow down. Notice things. If you do that, you’ll be different from most of the world. Him: What if I don’t wanna be different? Me: Look, if you’re different, you can be irreplaceable. And if you’re irreplaceable…your life will be better still. And that’s all I want for you. Slow down.
Location: 18th Street, getting floored because of my dislocated toe
Mood: ouchie
Music: Yeah, I want that red velvet (Spotify) Subscribe! Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.
At least since 2019, I’ve been averaging about 97.3 degrees but lately, I’ve been drifting even lower – above is what it was this morning.
There seems to be two major theories for this:
People are larger now, which generally results in lower body temperature, and/or
People are just less chronically inflamed.
Can’t speak for the world-at-large but I gotta think that my lower temps are because I’ve lowered my overall inflammation since I wasn’t super big to begin with.
When Alison first got sick, I did a baseline reading for myself and found that I was consistently around 97.9 degrees but, since her illness, I spent a good amount of time and energy trying to reduce my inflammation overall, resulting in temps I wrote above.
This past week, I’ve been ridonk sick with some weird cold. Mainly fatigue and coughing but my temps maxed out at 99.6 degrees.
But the question is is, if I’m a full degree lower than normal, is a fever now something above 99.4 degrees?
In any case, I’m better today; the last four days were spent in bed but today I felt well enough to cook for the kid – the Firecracker spent most of the week cooking for him.
As the years go on, more and more people ask me how I stay so young looking.
Obviously, genetics have a lot to do with it. So does the fact that I’ve been on a diet for 36+ years.
But, in terms of recent changes I’ve made, that’s all been focused on my reducing my systemic inflammation to try and combat cancer.
The unexpected benefit is that I think I’m literally slowing down my aging even more.
In any case, reducing my inflammation means:
Taking a shit-ton of turmeric, with a dash of oil and black pepper, on a daily basis.
Taking some spirulina for additional protein as well as for its anti-inflammatory benefits.
Just like my computer shutting down when it overheated, I think that people don’t realize just how damaging being inflamed – thus, over-heated – is for their overall health.
These are the kinda things I think about when I’m sick.
Her: How’s the patient? Me: Blargh. Her: Are you resting? No computer fiddling? Me: There might be some fiddling going on.
The Frenchman and my friends around the way met up the other day for tacos and beers near my pad, along with the Firecracker.
Not soon afterward, we all went to the ABFF’s for dinner as well.
That’s the thing about living in Manhattan; everyone who lives here is generally pretty willing to meet up anywhere on the island for a last minute something.
Back when Alison got sick, I did a pretty deep dive into medicinal mushrooms, particularly things like Turkey Tail for anti-cancer properties.
But I also discovered that lots of culinary mushrooms have pretty impressive health benefits as well so the past year or so, I’ve been growing all types of mushrooms in the pad.
My fave is probably Lion’s Mane as it has a taste and texture similar to seafood – which you know I love – and cooks very easily.
But it’s not the easiest one to grow.
In any case, I had to stop because it turns out that fruit flies love mushrooms as well so it was a constant fight keeping them at bay.
It’s a shame – it was nice having a constant supply of fresh mushrooms to eat.
Her: (cooking) Do you have any mushrooms? Me: Shoot I’m out. Her: You’re out!? Me: Yeah, I’m as surprised as you are.
Today was a huge day for me, professionally, for a number of various reasons.
Unfortunately, I can’t tell you anything about it but…yeah, it was huge.
Her: I think it would take me 20 weeks to do what you did in two. Me: It doesn’t happen very often but it’s pretty cool when it does.
Maybe I’ll tell you about it someday.
Location: reading legal papers at my dining room table with a young woman who signed everything
Mood: pleasantly surprised
Music: just need a moment to get back down (Spotify)
