It's Morphin' Time!
Greetings from another time and another place! I have opted to finish talking about this year as if it were already in the past. 2020 was one for the books. None of us will forget where we were when 2020 started...I can think of 365 reasons to leave it behind us.
Reason # -100. Breasts, Beets...Battlestar Gallactica
The last few months have been somewhat of a blur. In October, Eliana opted out of her sleep-through-the-night routine and decided to opt into a routine that was a little more spicy. She now prefers the exotic schedule of waking sometime between 9:30-11pm followed by a dash of slumber that promptly and inconsistently breaks around 2-3:30am, finishing with the “tableau vivant” which brings in the new day around 5-6:30am. Sophie has been the trooperest of troopers during these chaotic siesta fiestas. She wakes up to feed her throughout the night and I get her ready for the morning so that Sophie can get a few extra minutes of sleep.
Despite a more sporadic nighttime schedule, we have finally cracked the code for nap time! I am happy to report that we can now put Ellie down for a nap without her crying for 10 minutes. It’s possible she just got old enough to understand that we weren’t abandoning her every few hours, but it’s also possible that turning off the light AFTER she’s in her crib made all the difference. Either way, we are two slightly happier parents now.
It’s amazing to think that less than 6 months ago, Sophie and I could only conceive a vague idea of what parenting was like. Now it feels so immersive and familiar that it’s hard to imagine what our lives were like without Eliana. Seeing her grow up so quickly has been such a rewarding life experience. As much as I want to teach her new things and help her development, these first few months very much feel like a life-and-death-getting-to-know-you session. She screams, she cries, she laughs and she smiles and we make sure she’s still breathing, still fresh and still fed throughout the day. At night, Sophie and I regularly go through old photos of her and can’t believe how quickly she is growing!
Just a few weeks ago she learned how to roll over and a few weeks before THAT she learned how to poke people in the eye and a few days before THAT she learned how to sit up all by herself and a week before THAT she learned to control her head...all of these firsts coupled with sleep deprivation make parenthood feel like a first-person home movie that you started watching at 2am.
We recently started feeding her solid foods and I’m happy to report that she is quite the little connoisseur. We had our first little family Thanksgiving and she enjoyed a smorgasbord of unseasoned splendor. We have discovered that she loves carrots, kale, spinach, garbanzo beans, sweet potato with pumpkin, garbanzo beans with spinach, beets, beets with rice cereal, rice cereal with breast milk, breast milk with baby aaaaaaand she tolerates apple sauce and mashed potatoes. Mikey’s famous smoothies are in her future.
Reason # -12. Emergen-C Preparedness
Most of you know that I host a monthly fitness challenge for whomever wants to join. It’s different each month and I divide it into one physical and one non-physical goal to meet. For November the theme is “300 Reasons To Be Grateful”: 150 Physical and 150 Non-Physical. The physical challenge is point based and you earn points from running, push-ups, pull-ups and sit-ups. This challenge has gotten me so into fitness this month that I ended up getting a fitness wearable to track my body’s recovery, strain, and sleep patterns. I’ve only had it for a few weeks now, but it’s going to be a game changer. I’m excited to use it in the summer.
In addition to cardio enhancements, I’ve also been making some progress in the Flexibility Enhancements Dept. Ever since the Yoga fitness challenge I hosted in August, I’ve been committing to a consistent dose of yoga each week. The results have been surprisingly noticeable. I never thought I’d be able to put my nose to my knees in a straight leg stretch! The results are so noticeable that I am addicted to stretching now. It no longer hurts, it just feels tight. It’s now fun to see how much further I can limber up and nice to know that when the zombies come, I won’t be getting crampy cramps in my hammy hams.
It’s also nice to know that we now have a decent-sized food storage system going on. For the last few years, Sophie has been slowly fine-tuning her bottling skills and providing our household with the finest of the fine in the adult food preservation industry. We recently installed some cabinets in our dining room closet and converted the whole thing into a cozy little pantry. Looking at the abundance of salsa, pie filling, grape juice, and zucchini pickles, I feel very fortunate partaking from the bounties of our labor and land. It’s not everyday that you get to cook with the ingredients you harvested from your garden. These are the little things that make life so rich.
Reason # 00. Vehicular Commutation
Last week I received the strangest phone call. Around noon on Monday the Subaru dealership called me stating that my car had been in an accident. I started laughing. Surely they were making a joke. Or exaggerating. By accident, you mean service miscommunication, right? RIGHT???
Earlier that morning, I had dropped off our vehicle for some routine servicing. The car was starting to make a ‘chunk’-ing sound when I turned the wheel all the way to the left and I needed an oil change. No big deal. Drop my car off in the morning and have it back by the time I sink my teeth into a lunch smoothie. Trouble is, I never got my lunch smoothie that day...or the next day. Bad news has this way of making you lose your appetite and sucking the life force out of your ‘Happy As A Clam’ Bday Balloon and leaving you feeling like a limp rubberdo’. But I digress…
That afternoon the service manager laid it all out for me. My car had been in an accident. How rich. “Our technician hit a pole going around 15-25mph...A tow truck has been dispatched...Insurance will be calling--” Blah, blah, blur, blur, blah, bl-, bl-, b-... The technician was testing the car in a parking lot to find the ‘clunk’-ing sound, he looked down to turn the defrost on and ka-blammy! Blood and guts all over the movie theater parking lot. Auto body blood and guts...The worst kind.
All of a sudden, I’m the lead in a Rom Com’s deadpan idea for a situational comedy scene. After the novelty of the bad joke wore off, my brain towed a smile off my face leaving behind a frown in the gutter. I asked how long it will take to fix the car. Up to 2 weeks was the answer. My head hung heavily.
The previous situational depiction may have been dramatized a touch, but I did worry for a couple of minutes. I’ve always had a good experience with the dealership so I quickly remembered I was in good hands. Fast forward to today and we have “exchanged” our vehicle for a newer vehicle with less miles for a fairly small amount of money!
Ka-blammy! Subaru strikes again with some epic customer service.
Reason # 46. The Election
It is with a heavy head that I, Michael B. Lee, publicly admit defeat of my presidential nominee. My party lost bigly. The biggest loss you could ever imagine! With only 1.2% of the vote, Jo Jorgenson of the Libertarian Party really let me down. It’s back to the drawing board with my third party candidate voting.
This photo was taken 8 days after the election was called…
I am happy to put this election season behind us. It was, how you say, quite stinky. I feel like all of us lost a bit, no? I’m still waiting for 2020 to throw us another curveball and have the electoral college decide to elect Trump for four more years. It would be the perfect capper to a jam-packed year of colossal bullwilderschmit.
Reason $299. Deck Tales
In September I took on the colossal task of refinishing our deck for the first time in four years. Take my advice: Do not treat your deck like a fine wine and leave it to age unattended for multiple years. The only tannins you discover will be in the rotted floorboards you remove. I can honestly say I am not looking forward to doing that ever again. Over the course of five weekends, I recruited a few friends and family members to help me with some ‘light deck work’. We tore out, replaced and repaired about 25% of the wood slats, sanded down the remaining floorboards, then pressure washed, re-stained and refinished the entire deck. I have a newfound appreciation for yearly maintenance.
~~~KIDS: Never neglect your chores. They add up and they will burn a hole in your financial vineyard if you’re not pruning annually.~~~
Reason # 321. Closing Time
This month had an especially spicy surprise in store for us. Proverbially speaking, shit is in the process of hitting the fan. One long and juicy turd is slowly passing through the fan blades as I smile with my face 4 inches from the “airstream”. As of November 8, the governor of Utah in his infinite, god-fearing-science-given wisdom (or “science-fearing-god-given wisdom”???), has bestowed a curfew on all the filthy peasants who dare to be out doing the devil’s germ spreading work past 10pm. Don’t worry about schools anymore. Don’t worry about family gatherings this holiday season. Our governor has identified the true culprit of this pandemic: humans who drink alcohol from 10pm to midnight.
If you can’t tell, I’m a little bitter about it. The nightlife in SLC has sputtered to a sobering halt as we simultaneously wish for patrons to stay home and come out to support us. To really slap us around while our little turd faces are down, the Governor has extended the curfew for two weeks, while simultaneously revoking the mask mandate AND not providing ANY recommendations that people stay home for Thanksgiving.
~~~Now THAT is the sweetest piece of shit pie I have ever tasted!~~~
(Happy F*#% Turkey Day You Drunk Peasants)
Reason # 333. EL FIN
I’m not going to sugarcoat it...this Fall has been particularly challenging for us as a family. It has given me pause to focus on what I am grateful for. Despite the financial constraints from the COVID curfew, the sleepless nights from ‘El the bugaboo’, the totaled car and the pandemic too, I often still find myself feeling so lucky to be raising a wonderful little baby with such an amazing mother and human being. I feel so fortunate to have so many marvelous family members and friends to learn from and rely on...and pay back for all of the deck work they’ve done. All the people in my life have made this year more than tolerable.
Dani recently came over to take family photos for us while the weather was still nice. I’ll admit, I didn’t particularly care to take them at the time, but now that we have all of these crystallized memories of our little family, I become so happy as I see them scrolling through our family photo album. There are so many things right now to feel uncertain about, but my family is not one of them. If there’s one thing this year has taught me, it’s how to be adaptable. Change the things you can, find a way to enjoy the things you can’t. Keep rolling with the punches. And above all else, always remember...YOLO.
YOLO.
