Author: Pavowski

I am a teacher, runner, father, and husband. I am an author-in-progress. I'm bad at jiu-jitsu. I know just enough about a lot of things to get me into a lot of trouble.

The World of the Small

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We took the sprouts to Six Flags last night, and it opened up our eyes (as doing things with your kids will often do) to some things that you just don’t notice or even think about when you don’t have kids.

Namely, “family” events. Before you have kids, these things might as well be taking place on the moon, and you can avoid them just as easily. In short, if you see a bouncy house, a grown person in costume, or a brightly colored clutch of balloons, steer yourself in the opposite direction, and you’ll be fine. But when you do have kids, these are things you have to do, somehow. There’s a vague impression that lives at the base of your skull that you’re not a “good parent” if you don’t take your kids to these things. Unfortunately, they usually also mean leaning into the worst things about having kids. The peer pressure of other kids acting crazy, which inspires your kids to act crazy. The hyperprevalence of sugary snacks and drinks, for which your kids will beg you incessantly. The proliferation of oblivious parents, obliviously ignoring the obliviously a-hole-ish behavior of their oblivious kids.

But because you’re dumb, you take them.

And it sinks in — again — that your life has changed irrevocably, and will never again be what it once was.

Because once upon a time, you were young and adventure-seeking, and you went to amusement parks for the thrill rides: the more the better. Your stomach was made of iron: you could easily take down a 64-oz full-sugar soda, a double cheeseburger and fries, and a funnel cake, then ride the most wickedly devised gravity-defying stomach turning rides and never blink an eye. There was a “kids section” in the park, and you knew its location only so that you could more effectively avoid it.

These days, you know the kids section because it’s the only area of the park that concerns you. You pack your own snacks because you know that a whiff of funnel cake after riding even the tame little teacups will leave you queasy and sweaty. And you walk right past the thrill rides with a suppressed sigh because you won’t be riding them today, even if you thought you could handle them, which you probably can’t anymore.

So it’s bad enough going to the park with sprouts in the first place. But it’s worse on the “family days” (here in Atlanta, it’s Six Flags’ Holidays in the Park). Because 90% of the traffic in the park is poor, run-down, exhausted and raccoon-eyed moms and dads and their squalling, snot-faced brood.

The kid-centric drains on your wallet are even more pronounced, prevalent, and shameless. The kids’ area is lousy with “games” that cost a ridiculous amount of money for your kid to win a bit of candy or a cheap stuffed toy. Everywhere around the park are carts selling pretzels and popcorn and hot chocolate. And around every corner is a festive elf or a costumed cartoon character just crying out for a photo-op with your bundles of joy — which means people are clogging up all the major thoroughfares and creating foot-traffic jams, the worst kind.

But worst of all is making your bee-line past the thrill rides — most of which have waits of less than five minutes, if they have a wait time at all! — to the kids area with its crappy slate of rides, for which you’ll be waiting twenty minutes a pop, because everybody who is here tonight is here for this.

The part of your life where you could run amok, ride everything in the park, and go home without making a bathroom stop halfway (because the four-year-old somehow never needs to go when you’re walking past a restroom, but damned if he doesn’t suddenly start doing the dance when you’re about to get on the crappy kid coaster)? That’s over.

Say goodbye to fun at the amusement park.*

You’re parents at the park, now.

Abandon all hope.

*Actually, Holidays at the Park is pretty sweet. I just hate everything.

The Weekly Re-Motivator: Say Yes

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The case could be made that “yes” is the most powerful word in the world.

This is a thing that took me too long to learn in my life. Shortly after college and deep in the places where having a skeptical (okay, fine, cynical) outlook can take you, I knew about this “yes” thing, but I wasn’t interested in it. “No” was a lot easier. Only two letters, after all. One consonant, one vowel; there’s a beautiful balance there. And it had the power to ward off all kinds of uncomfortable situations.

“Is today the day you start writing that novel?” No.

“How about going for a run?” No.

“Maybe call up an old friend, or think about enrolling in a class, or even just step out of the house and do something different today?” Nope. I’m good.

No keeps the world in check. Keeps things level, even, and easy.

But yes is inherently unbalanced. Two consonants and a vowel, none of no’s lovely symmetry. Not only is it unbalanced, it’s unbalancing. “Yes” shatters the status quo. “Yes” breaks the mold. “Yes” floods your comfort zone with pepper spray and forces you to get the hell out of there.

“Working on that novel today?” Yes.

“Gonna do some research on publishers, too?” Yes.

“How about exercising a little? Reading a book instead of watching TV all day? Try something new out at work?” Yes, yes, yes.

“Maybe elect an orange dude with tiny hands and a rampant narcissism to run the most important democracy in the free world?” Apparently, yes.

(Okay, I know I said I wouldn’t. Couldn’t help it. Just slipped out. But my point stands: we are shattering the status quo.)

Point is, “no” lets you stay where you are. It lets you grow roots into the floor and get comfortable. “Yes” keeps you moving. Not always forward — if only life were so obliging — but always onward.

I teach drama, and one of the things I spend a lot of time on is improv. For the uninitiated, improv is that crazy thing actors do where they go in without a script, take on suggestions from the audience, and attempt to roll with it. Sometimes the scenes crash and burn, sometimes they soar. But always, the scenes are interesting. Even a scene that crashes has interesting tidbits lurking in the rubble. Anyway, the cardinal rule of improv is: “say yes.” Your partner brings to you a strange suggestion. “Let’s go see what’s in that cave.” That’s an opportunity. For you, because you get to embark on an adventure that you didn’t even have to come up with. For the audience, because now they want to know what’s in the cave. If you say “yes,” we all get to go on the adventure. If you say “no,” not only do we not get to go on the adventure, but we have to come up with a new idea. Not to mention, you piss off your scene partner, which is never a good idea. Actors are jerks.

So, let this little spiel fall into the pile of things I would have said to a younger version of myself. Say yes. Go on the adventure. Try the thing that scares you.

You know. Except for the whole voting for the orange guy thing. It’s okay to say “no” every once in a while.

This weekly remotivational post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Every weekend, I use Linda G. Hill’s prompt to refocus my efforts and evaluate my process, sometimes with productive results.

Sick Day

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The kids are sick. So I’m home sick with them.

And, almost as if on cue, the monstrous cough I’d been fighting for weeks — and thought I had the better of — has resurfaced. I’m sure it’s unrelated. Couldn’t be my stress over the state of the country or anything like that.

Eh, we’re not going there.

It’s weird. Teaching is one of the few professions where it’s almost more stressful to take a sick day than it is to just suck it up and go to work: upon your return, you’re almost certain to have behavioral issues to sort out, extra work to grade, a day to make up in your lesson pacing. Not to mention the sense — foolish as you know it is — that things are surely going to sharknado without you there.

Add to that I’m in my first year in my new job. I’m definitely in the not wanting to screw anything up boat. So taking a last-minute day off makes me feel a bit like I’m letting people down.

So around 10 last night, when my kid woke up with some pretty horrific, uh, bodily functions, and it became clear I was gonna have to take the day, I started stressing out. Got him sorted out, stopped him crying, and got him back into bed. Ran downstairs to chuck his clothes in the laundry (for the second time in four hours). Then I went to work. Fired up the laptop to e-mail supervisors. Whacked together some activities to e-mail to the sub. Started worrying about what was going to happen while I wasn’t at work. Struggled going to sleep.

Then I realized my priorities were all fargo’d. My kid is sick — in discomfort and upset in addition to oozing from his orifices (orifici?) — and I’m getting my knickers in a twist over my job, over my students — many of whom will be only too happy for me to miss a day!

And with that, I let it go, and I slept like a baby.

Frankly, the day off couldn’t come at a better time. I got to hang around the heezy, watch some movies with the kids (both of them somehow really dig the new Ghostbusters, which is fine by me), read ’em some books, snuggle them on the couch. All of which is a very welcome respite from where my mind has been for the past week.

Didn’t actually get much done that was productive or helpful around the house. Only managed to type this up while the kids were napping. (Here, the savvy reader might interject: couldn’t you have done some housework instead? Some dishes, a little vacuuming, a much-needed dusting? To which I respond: this was a sick day, dammit. That would be missing the point.)

But that’s fine. All of that is just fine. Despite the gummy gunk collecting in my lungs, I am breathing easier than I have in a while.

All the same, let’s hope sprout #2 doesn’t come down with the same thing sprout #1 had. You can only do so much laundry in a day.

 

The Weekly Re-Motivator: Turning Away

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So this week has been … well, it’s been something, hasn’t it? One of the weirdest and perhaps most depressing weeks in recent memory.

But I can’t wallow in the pain, the uncertainty, the massive, all-consuming doubt that the imminent Trump presidency carries with it. Maybe it’s my unbridled optimism. Maybe it’s the fact that I have faith (how? where did this faith come from? I hate everything, after all) that, though it will certainly be bad, it won’t be that bad. Maybe it’s that I can’t stand being in a pain- and griping- and complaining-spiral.

Trump’s presidency will either be a total cock-up, or it won’t. And I know people are protesting in the streets, and I know the petitions are swirling and people are social-media-sharing that there are still things we can do to stop it, but … sorry, I don’t have that much faith. The electoral college is not going to negate itself just because the country has heartburn. Trump isn’t going to resign because he sees the protests and all the #notmypresident-ing. (By the way, you won’t catch me saying such ridiculousness. For better or worse, Trump is our president. That doesn’t mean I endorse him, but it does mean we get to hold his feet to the fire. We have to be good skeptics, as I said the morning after, and that means giving him a chance — even a short one — to not be a total scumbag as the leader of our great nation.)

We have to get on with our lives.

And yeah, I know, I speak this from a place of privilege. I know that I have the benefit of being allowed to get on with my life, as a middle-class white dude. And a part of me is more than frustrated with myself on that account. You can’t just move on like that, I hear myself insisting. Others can’t move on; that’s why this is so important.

But he’s only one man, and our country is bigger than one man.

I just … I can’t stay here, in this state of mind where the election of the orange nitwit is front of mind every day, for too many hours in the day. I’ve lost too much productivity and too much mental energy down that black hole (and a black hole it is; it sure as hell doesn’t give anything back for everything I’ve poured into it over the past several months).

He’s the president-elect, now, and in January, he’ll be the president proper. I think that sucks. I think it’s an embarrassment. I think we (and by “we” I mean basically the entire USA, even those of us who voted against him — because we couldn’t stop it) have made ourselves something of a joke on the world stage.

But I’ve got books to write. I’ve got students to teach. I’ve got kids to raise up into something resembling decent human beings. And miles and miles to run.

I’ll keep wearing my safety pin for solidarity, as long as that’s a thing. I’ll stay informed and vote in the 2018 elections, and I sure as hell urge everybody out there to do the same. And I’ll certainly be keeping tabs on our new president as he creeps toward office.

But — and I realize I’ve said this before, but now that the election is over, it feels more final — I’m not going to be posting about it as much around here. It’s tiresome to me, and I’m sure it’s tiresome to my readers. This is supposed to be a blarg about writing and running and parenting and other lighthearted sharknado like that, for fargo’s sake.

I’m not going to be thinking about it all the time. I’m not going to waste my mental energy worrying about a thing that’s out of my control.

I’m going to co-opt a bit of religious wisdom (without the religion) in the form of the Serenity prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference.

You don’t even have to believe in god to see the wisdom in that. Any good meditationalist (is that even a word?) will tell you that serenity comes from within.

For me, at least, it’s time to turn away from Trump and the noxious cloud that surrounds everything about him. It’s time to turn inward.

It’s time to get back to work.

This weekly remotivational post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Every weekend, I use Linda G. Hill’s prompt to refocus my efforts and evaluate my process, sometimes with productive results.

Trump’s Election Confirms: God Exists

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A theory:

Conventional writing advice states that an author should, generally, step on the throats of his protagonists. Occasionally , you shift your weight and allow the poor bastards to catch a little air, but mostly, you keep them down until they’re almost dead … and then you stomp on them some more.

One could argue, then, that this campaign season has been an extended size 13 to the windpipe. It abated, for the briefest of moments, as the election drew near and it looked like Clinton would win.

And then the boot came down for a crushing blow, and what the hell do we do now?

So: God exists, and he’s an evil fiction writer.

Hopefully he’s set us up for some sort of triumphant third act.

But I kind of doubt it.