Music, who knew?

I've made a discovery about The Girl which has been successful in no less than three occasions now.  She apparently likes Electro Swing music.  For those not in the know, Electro Swing is a genre of music that combines modern electronic music and swing music.  Duh.  It is pretty enjoyable and some of the songs/bands that I've been turned onto have become staples in my playlists.

Anyhow, I was up late one night with The Girl who was fussing and crying.  I set her in her swing so I could do some dishes, it was 2 am, what else would I be doing?  Anyhow I know that music helps me calm down so I figured I would try with her.  Now, most of my saved playlists on Spotify have less than.... family friendly fare on rotation so I chose my Electroswing playlist.  It took her a moment to quiet down enough to actually hear the music but once she did her eyes opened and she went silent.  In less than ten minutes she was asleep.

It doesn't work every time, clearly more tests will need to be run but it seems like our wee Boo likes my music.  Good, goooooooood.

Blood for blood.

I am not the most articulate person I know.  That particular award has to go to my friend Kai who can argue with the best of them.  It is probably genetic as his father is a playwright and the whole family is smarter than a... group of... smart people.

It is frustrating then when someone at work or somewhere starts going off on a tangent that I find enraging.  This happened today, not twenty minutes ago where a person I work with started talking about ISIS or the guy that shut down the airports because he was trying to kill himself.  It quickly devolved into blood for blood, violence meeting violence and no room for sympathy or a different view.  It was loud and cold.

I wrote yesterday about how I lean towards the classical Stoic philosophy and I would like to clarify part of that thought.  I feel that in all honesty we are all collectively as good as our lowest/weakest actions.  When someone kills in hate or for fun we are all dragged down.  Revenge, theft... anger.  They drag us down.  So when someone says that blood is the only way to answer a problem or that they best way to solve immigration is to throw them out or away it infuriates me.  Something I've started to find is that the people that hold these views are people that have abused the system in their youth.

A person I knew in high school who did drugs and brought alcohol to classes now is a staunch Republican.  The person that was grumpin about the IMMAGANTS at work I know for a fact does abuse some of the same programs that he just bitched about.

I don't like that I can't really say to these people that they are being cold.  I hate that I can't cite to their satisfaction the reasons why they are wrong or that what they themselves are using for an argument is based on flawed data or rhetoric that has been proven as bad or misleading or incomplete.

I am sad and angry and hungry.

Duality

I have a problem sometimes with optimism.  Generally I am able to stay fairly optimistic, as a whole, while things may look down.  The best allegory I can think of would be in the Battlestar Galactica reboot where they keep searching for Earth, suffer through a bunch a crap and then they say 'screw it, good enough!'  That is my outlook at times, like now.

At heart I think though I am a Stoic, not the unemotional type but trying to find inner calm through outer control.  The old philosophy of it is something that I can relate to.  From Wikipedia:

"A distinctive feature of Stoicism is its cosmopolitanism: All people are manifestations of the one universal spirit and should, according to the Stoics, live in brotherly love and readily help one another. In the Discourses, Epictetus comments on man's relationship with the world: "Each human being is primarily a citizen of his own commonwealth; but he is also a member of the great city of gods and men, whereof the city political is only a copy."^[30] This sentiment echoes that of Diogenes of Sinope, who said "I am not an Athenian or a Corinthian, but a citizen of the world."^[31]"

That echos quite nicely to me and it is something that I try to bring to my life though sometimes I fail, miserably.

I get angry, as we all do from time to time, but I get a lot more angry than I let on.  Rarely to the point of seeking to do actual harm to a person for whatever they'd done but more than once I've broken something in a pure red rage and felt quite fine with it.  Case in point, I've done this to my hand and in truth, I don't really regret it.  It still hurts sometimes but it serves as a reminder of a last resort and is as such useful.

I think I've babbled enough.

In which I am a glutton once again.

There is a podcast that I listen to, The Let's Go Eat Show.  It was started by on of the morning show hosts from Radio From Hell, Bill Allred.  Bill is an adamant supporter of local businesses and fond of good food and drink.  He also happens to be a great interviewer and quite knowledgeable, he does his homework and generally doesn't come off as a mook.  Anyhow, on The LGES's most recent show he talked to Froddy Volgger, the Sausage King.  As you may have guessed already I was interested in what this man had to say.

Two words.

Two words that made me drool.

Buffalo.  Pastrami.

I loves me a good pastrami and given the opportunity I usually don't shy away from taking a bite out of something new.  This sounds up my alley to be sure.  Unfortunately it seems it is a little difficult to get a hold of.  However in searching for this buttery sounding delicacy I've found jalapeno chedder buffalo brats, so not all is lost.

The Boy has been labouring under a cough for the last few days and it seems it has transferred to The Girl.  The wee thing does not like it when I suck her nose with the bulb but thankfully she calms quickly.  It didn't stop her from keeping me up quite a bit last night.  Burbling as babies are wont to do.

Mood music.

Everyone does it, either intentionally or not, but we all tend to associating music with moods or points in our life.  It adds color and brings back memories.  They've (the grand THEY, you know, scientists) done studies with Alzheimer's and found that songs from the patient's past allowed for greater recollection and function.  More information Here.  In short, music is powerful JuJu.

I find that I quite like the moods that certain music can give me.  Right now I am feeling the need for something melancholy and so I am listening to Pink Floyd's The Division Bell right at this moment.  It is close to what I want, but not quite there.  I have a Silent Hill station on Pandora that comes up with stuff that closer matches what I am looking for at the moment.  Something sad and lonely, lost in the fog, dark and beautiful.

I guess in review I am mopey and I wish to wallow.  Boo hoo, poor me. :P

The loneliness of a middle distance runner.

I am tired.  It is something to be expected with a newborn as any parent will share.  Its kind of like our version of scar stories.  You talk about how at X am so and so puked up and I had to scrub the floor in the dark or how it was like in the Exorcist when she puked but in your case it wasn't puke.  I feel guilty though because I know I get more sleep at night than my wife.  I've been averaging 5 hours, she is probably at 2.

We are getting there though, every day it seems like the Girl sleeps more at night and that is a victory of a kind.  She does however balance it out with 5 diapers in 5 minutes poop fests.  More poop for more sleep is apparently how it works out for this baby.  I'll take it, I'm not proud but I am sleepy.

It's Tuesday, that means food according to my tags and so I present to you an experiment that I am going to try soon.  I say experiment and that makes it sound grand however it really is just more laziness.  One of my favorite side dishes growing up was broccoli and cheese or green beans with cheese.  My mom would melt Velveeta on top of the veg as they cooked and I couldn't get enough.  What I am going to try is putting Alfredo sauce on top the veg as it would need much less cooking time/prep.  If it works it means a cheaper way of getting tasty vegetables with dairy goo and that is a good thing.

Also bacon, I've got bacon that I am going to add to it.

A moment,

I don't know sometimes what to make of the world.

Over the weekend a young black man was shot by the local police, several times.  From behind.  According to what I read there are witnesses that state the man was running away from the police.  He was also cosplaying at the time and part of his costume was a dummy sword.  Meanwhile there are white old dudes going around with guns openly carried and complaining quite loudly about the people that are uncomfortable with them doing so.

As I grow older I find that I have a larger aversion to guns than I used to have.  I think it is due to shootings like the one above.  Someone, regardless of whatever circumstances there are, decided that the easiest way to end it was with one or several bullets.  Not a taser or pepper spray, handcuffs or backup.  Just lead.  I don't have words for how exactly I feel about this.

Oh yeah, I'd forgotten.

We've been parents to two children for two weeks now and I have something to share.
I had completely forgotten about how much wee babies like to be awake at horrid hours of the night.  I suppose it might've been an omen of sorts when on the night she came we did not sleep at all. The Boy had a marvelous time though, he was helping to do laundry and playing with his Aunt and Gramma.  He was only running off of maybe two hours sleep but it did not slow him down in the least.

Ah, youth.

While I am tired, I do have an entirely different perspective on the situation.  Between the two children I've gained more patience in some aspects of my life but I've found I'd lost it in others.  These last two weeks I did snap at my family and was depressed, still am a little but that is something that can be worked on.  What I am finding more patience with is with the crying.

You see, with the Boy I had never really handled babies, never changed a diaper, fed them or tried to calm one.  His was a steep learning curve and I can remember on more than one occasion getting angry enough with his crying to hit something.  Never him, but usually a wall or something else.  He was a loud baby and I can still remember getting sick to the gut with anger when there seemed to be nothing I could do to calm him.  Remembering it makes me more than a little sad.

I have found with the Girl, so far, that I don't get angry or concerned.  I just talk and eventually, so far, it has worked.  Fingers crossed.

I am trying hard not to get angry or sad with being tired.  I don't like being angry and over the last week I've been trying some different methods of countering that rising red sea.  My family doesn't need me angry and I feel awful when I do become so.  They don't deserve it and I don't need it.