I don't often do things that might be stereotypically considered "millenial", especially by Bay Area standards. Some of that is probably growing up in suburban Oklahoma, some of that is nerdy interests that lie elsewhere, and some of that is living a hermit life until very late. But, today, that trend was bucked not once, but twice.

We began the morning by packing the sleeping wee baby up and heading downtown to the farmers market that's put on every weekend. Kayla had gone to one in a neighboring city last weekend with a friend, so thought it'd be a fun activity to do as a fambly. It's summer and summer is mojito season, so I was on the lookout for fresh fruits to put in cocktails. We tried a variety of things, mostly berries and peaches... which, incidentally, is what I wound up buying. Peaches and lemons for some peach bourbon smashes, and various berries for tossing into mojitos (blueberries, black berries, and raspberries). We also wound up grabbing some veggies for philly cheese steaks this week. It was a crowded situation, especially with a chonky stroller, and I wasn't much for listening to people's sales pitches, but you're definitely not going to find better fruit anywhere else. We've added "visit five local farmers markets" to The List, so others will definitely be hit (not SF; we already checked that one off a long time ago).

That evening, we went to ShaKa Brewing, a local hole-in-the-side-of-a-warehouse brewery that sports a rotating list of food trucks. We'd been eyeing this place for a while, mostly waiting for the karaage chicken truck to show up. We had skipped their previous appearance at the brewery due to the Taylor Swift concert, a cultural event that strained the local economy. While we grazed on delicious fried chicken skewers and potato croquettes, I enjoyed a flight of the brewery's best selection, which was chosen for me by one of the owners of the brewery (super nice dude who's birthday is the day after mine). We crashed a hightop table iinside the building, which really was just their brewing warehouse that had tables, chairs, and even a couple couches and games on one side. I'm not 100% sure the reason, but they even had two bamboo trees with tied up with tanzaku for tanabata. Overall, it was a pretty chill experience and we're planning on hitting them up more and trying out some of the other food places that come to camp.

These are the kinds of things that I've wanted to do more of since my time here, but haven't for various reasons, be it not wanting to go by myself or everything being shuttered up due to a global pandemic. Maybe this is where we can start turning that around.

I've mentioned the three part series on the journey of having a baby a few times, but have kept kicking the can down the road because I wanted to write something insightful or inspirational or some bullshit. That requires more thought than I'm willing to put into it, so I'll instead cover those three parts from a personal historical narrative angle.

I've been around pregnenacy a lot in my years on this earth, being the oldest of eight children. And, while there's a fair amount of mechanical similarities, when it's your wife carrying your child, the game's a bit different. First of all, this is the person you've chosen to commit your life to, sickness health and all that; the emotional ties are on another level. Secondly, every woman is going to pregnant different from every other, so I really didn't know what to expect with Kayla. Would she be one of those that has nightmarish pregnancies, being bedridden and unable to help herself? Would she morning sickness all over the place? Would she skate through mostly unscathed, just getting larger and feeling the ill effects of her guts getting shoved out of the way of the child growing inside her?

Yeah, it was really that last one. No morning sickness, a shocking amount of mobility even towards the end, and no real major side effects. If you were to ask her (and I'm going to do so right after I write this sentence), the worst part of the whole pregnancy was the heartburn, which started off bad during "morning pregnancy", kind of went away for a bit, and then came back with a vengeance in the later months. (I just asked, and I was correct. Go me.) She also added that generally feeling drained was a close second.

This left me in a perpetial state of waiting to be waiting on her hand and foot. Sure, I took up some extra slack as her body got larger and she tired more easily. Covering extra chores, cooking, blah and etcetera. That and emotional support, which is definitely not in my wheelhouse. I did the best I could where I could, but in the end, I don't think I ever had to bend over to pick things up for her.

One thing emotionally I guess I could say I did well on was being invested and involved. I accomponied her to every doctor visit and even got called back to see the ultrasound or listen to his heartbeat most times. Speaking of, the "big" twenty week ultrasound was a little nerve wracking. There were a couple of markers that, taken together, could've been a marker of genetic issues. In retrospect, that was the beginning of the proxy hypochondria I've developed for this kid. However, early on, Kayla had an NIPT done, which is a mother's blood test that checks for genetic markers coming from the baby, things like downs syndrome but also the baby's sex (not to be confused with gender). The kid's so healthy now, I'd actually forgotten about this brief bout of worry until retrospecting for this post.

But, that wasn't where the worry stopped. There were a few occasions where I kind of mentally freaked out on Kayla's behalf. There was a this kid growing in her and only two potential ways for the kid to get out, neither of which are exactly a picnic walk. Dwelling upon that notion gave me mild anxiety, and that kind of morphed into a perpetual background anticipation as the time grew nearer. See, while I knew how to pamper a pregnant lady good, my knowledge of things like "signs a woman is going into labor", "what really happens when the water breaks", and "when and how should contractions be timed" was brand new territory to me.

But covering that is for part two of my three part series: Partum.

Moments ago, I interjected myself uselessly into a text message thread sussing out details for my neice's upcoming birthday party. It's going to be Frozen themed and at some point, one of the other folks said "I was going to let it go. see what I did there?". Up until that point, I hadn't said anything because nothing coming from me would've added value to the conversation. That didn't stop me from crafting a contextually relevant message that incorporated as many Frozen [2] song titles as I could manage (with the help of Kayla). This is not my first rodeo doing something like this.

It's a fun exercise that I've done for quite a long time, tracing back to doing spelling in school. Every week, I'd have a list of ten words that I'd have to learn how to spell, the definitions of, and demonstrate understanding by using them in written sentences. In what was a combination of laziness and just for the sheer sport of it, I'd try to figure out how to use those words in as few sentences as possible. I've no doubt some of them were a stretch, but it was a fun challenge to an otherwise mundane task. Pretty sure my mom wasn't about it and eventually set a rule that there needed to be one sentence written per word. I'm pretty sure just once, I did a combinatory sentence that was repeated for each word it used until the rule was changed to a unique sentence per word.

More recently in life (but not as recently as the intro paragraph), I've applied that mental challenge to shout out messages in a podcast I enjoy. This podcast is famous for its recurring bits, so when I've purchased a message, I try to pump each one with as many bits as possible while actually delivering a message. It's a challenge, especially when the message is limited to the size of an OG tweet (RIP).

Maybe this is a normal thing people do. Maybe it's something nerds do.

Maybe it's just something I do and I'm a fucking weirdo.

The daily blogging challenge gets incredibly difficult to maintain after a time. Even when I have a big topic that I could pontificate about right in front of me, it's still a mental drain to put the nuances of being dad and husband to baby and baby mom. Thus, in the past, I'd come up with the minute blog post. I will set the timer for one minute, right out whatever is on my mind, and when that minute is up, that's it. So, let's do that.

GO!

Summer is upon us and summer means mojitos. I like a lot of cocktails for sure, but there's something about the crisp refreshingness of a mojito when the weather is warm that just can't be beat. It's a trickier drink to make, but well worth the effort and open to a lot of fun options, such as adding fruit. One of the best mojitos I've ever had was on a particularly hot day at Disneyla-

I was actually on a roll with that one, but the timer went off and the timer must be respected. I believe that catches me up on daily blog posts, so yay me.

In this whole parenting thing that I have yet to write about meaningfully, I've been given the great privilege of a whole sixteen weeks of paid parental leave. By normal people standards, this is a bonkers amount. By Bay Area tech job standards, it's somewhere around average (at some point, Netflix was giving out a whole year). I'm now six weeks into that, not including a week of PTO I tacked on right before the wee baby was born. So, it's been seven weeks since I did anything that can be considered paid work.

Initially, it was a weird feeling. I'd had a habit of keeping on top of work Slack on my phone, trying to keep the amount of unreads for the morning down (also, to make it look like I work harder than I actually do :D). That got signed out of in the hospital, so that was a reflex I had to break. The idea of there being no point in looking forward to the weekend because every day was a weekend was also strange. I tried to keep track of days so the weekend felt somewhat special, but that has since dissolved as a notion and I barely know what's up with the calendar anymore.

The contents of a day itself is just keeping on top of house chores and keeping my two loves alive (recovering mommies require work just as much as a baby does; perhaps I'll write about that in a three part series eventually). If I'm holding the baby, he's either being actively fed or I'm just watching bullshit on YouTube or dumping even more hours into Tears of the Kingdom while he sleeps. If I'm not holding the baby, I'm probably catching up on baby related chores, like cleaning bottles, or making sure the formula pitcher is full, or something something the diaper pail. An entertaining habit has come out of people visiting, wherein I will hand off the baby to said visitor and then, instead of socializing, I will immediately begin tending to the dishwasher...

What was I talking about?

Oh, not having work. It'll be interesting to see where this shakes out in another ten weeks when I "return to work" (read: mostly work from home). But, on that note, I did sort of return to work today. I'd logged into my work laptop to get on Slack so I could round up the usual suspects for a work provided meal enjoyed down at the local beer garden. All of this was under the guise of meeting the baby, of course. It was an interesting scenario, because I remember the few times I'd go to my dad's office as a kid was to parade around whatever sibling was new at the time. Now it was my turn. Also strange was roaming the halls of the office with a stroller and a fussy baby, reminding myself that a fussy baby in the office is weird and distracting... for the five other people that were there. Still, it was a good time catching up with coworkers, and the lovely beers and cafe food was delightful. While it may sound like the wee baby was not cooperating, all he wanted was a bottle and a clean diaper. He literally slept the rest of the time like a good visitor. Makes me wonder what other kinds of things he might be a good trooper for.

Making videos for an electronics YouTube channel?