Brilliant Idea

 

Saturday morning, I was making Kiki breakfast. I stood at the stove, moving the scrambled eggs in the pan, and looked at a plate of peanut butter chocolate chip cookies I made the night before. I took a sip of coffee and thought of how well the two would go together; the cookie and the coffee: the series bite, sip, bite, sip.

These were cookies I made after watching a reel my sister sent me, of a foul-mouthed lady aggressively giving the recipe for her world-famous flourless cookies. They are equal parts sugar and peanut butter, with an egg, a splash of vanilla and a bag of chocolate chips. It was the sugar content that had me questioning my desire.

I knew if I ate the cookie, I would feel like shit. I don’t have the stomach I once did, and eating a cookie with the sugar content of a can of Coca-Cola would leave me with a stomach ache.

I ate the cookie, and then I ate another one.

After I brought my daughter her normal breakfast of eggs and sourdough toast, I lay on the couch, waiting for the corrupting backlash. It was significant, compounded by the six cookies I had eaten the night before.

This day was meant to be a writing day, and I intentionally withdrew myself from the game by giving myself a wretched stomach ache.

Around noon, I figured, I would lay back and close my eyes to try and think about the story I’m working on. I had binaural beats playing on Spotify and because I’m too cheap to pay for the membership, I deal with advertisements.

Listening to the same ads over and over is annoying. Sometimes I listen to an ad for toilet paper and the next ad will be for a different brand of toilet paper. I have the ads memorized, but I use them as goalposts at the gym. I’ll say, “Go at the fastest pace for the length of three commercials.”

But as I laid down, the ads served a different purpose. I love how Thomas Edison would sit in his rocking chair with a silver spoon in his hand. His goal was to get into the state of mind right before drifting off to sleep. The mind goes somewhere we don’t see when awake. He wanted to go there because it was when he had eureka moments, and ideas came to him that he couldn’t access after prompting the mind, “Give me something great to work with.” 

So as he rests, he starts to drift off to sleep, the muscles in his hand relax, the silver spoon drops, and he’s brought back to being fully aware. Well, Spotify ads are the silver spoon. I laid back and enjoyed the wonderful time traveling to my dream brain, but right as I was about to power down the brain and sleep, the Spotify ad and its out-of-place, increased volume, jingle intro would pull me back to fully awake.

I didn’t have a brilliant idea. The blog I wrote afterward went into the computer garbage can because it wasn’t funny. 

Actually, I had one brilliant idea. I went into the kitchen, saw the last two cookies on the plate, and ate them. I’d already wasted my day, and I wouldn't waste another.

Ghosts and Deoderant

 

I saw a deodorant commercial. This is a multipurpose deodorant, I learned as the lady talked about her “crotch smell.” When she said crotch I nearly fell off the sofa. Then I did fall off the sofa when she followed that up with instructions. She said, “Rub some deodorant cream between your fingers and apply in your butt crack.”

She made a sweeping motion with her fingers as if applying the cream to an invisible butt crack. I looked at my daughter who seemed unfazed, and said, “What the hell has civilization come to?”

She listens to music that breaks my heart, not because it is touching but because it can be so vitriolic and self-critical. I hear her repeating lyrics that sound like, “A-B-C-D-E - Eat shit, fuck you and your dog… your mom’s crotch smells like shit.” Something along those lines. Whenever I hear her unconsciously singing lyrics of this sort, I blast Cat Stevens through the house, to replace the messaging.

I saw the deodorant at Target. A man was standing in front of the shelf examining the different scents. I imagined he was buying it for his girlfriend, and then he handed her this offering, “Oh babe, I was at Target and I picked you up some crotch deodorant.”

That guy is probably dead somewhere.

My older sister is a nurse and she told me that wearing yoga pants all the time will cause vaginosis. Vaginosis is the medical term for crotch smell. Would the word swap have elevated the commercial? I’m not sure.

I’m wearing fewer yoga pants lately because I canceled my hot yoga membership. It's surprising because I was talking about yoga like the middle-aged-California-gal I am. I’ll miss the meditative benefits of yoga, but to be honest, I feel ridiculous chanting in a room full of women with Botox foreheads, collagen lips, and three-hundred-dollar Lululemon outfits.

The yoga studio times didn’t fit into my schedule so I am back to the regular old gym. I forgot how chugging a Red Bull and running six miles is just as effective at clearing my mind. So now I am working out around a bunch of people with earbuds instead of being surrounded by people who attribute their mediocre existence to the superpowers of crystals. I get it; it’s hope, and sometimes you want a tiny rock to solve all your problems.

Last week I woke up at 3 am and scared the shit out of myself thinking that a ghost could, at any moment, touch my foot that was sticking out from the cover. This made me then pull my foot back into the comforter, feeling safe from that potential ghost-touch, but it’s hot August nights, and having my entire body baking under a down comforter is not sustainable, so I’d have to stick my foot back out, then starting up the escalation of dread again.

While I work around the house, I play TV shows in the background. I like to watch investigative reporting on UFOs, Big Foot, time travel, psychics, and ghosts. I hit the ghost stories a little too hard. This indulgence keeps me from criticizing people who love to binge Fox News or CNN because I binge the equivalent of The National Enquirer.

So as I lay awake scared that a finger was going to poke me through the thin veil, I pulled out all the Catholic stops to prevent this from happening. Asking my angels to protect me and praying to the saints to keep anything scary away. My cat doesn’t help the situation, as she looks like she could be in cahoots with an alternate dimension. See picture below.

My daughter is turning 13 this year and she started her classes for confirmation. Confirmation in Catholicism is like a bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah, it is the ceremony when you become an adult. The church does not make the process easy. She has to attend classes twice a month for two years and do various volunteer and service projects. 

Keeping religion active in my kids’s lives is hard as a divorced person because they get to indulge in this notion of choice. My daughter said to me, “Dad said I should be allowed to choose my religion and if I don’t want to be confirmed, I don’t have to.”

I responded with, “That is what someone who doesn’t have a religion says.” But I really wanted to say, “He ought to go to church... it just might be that sad-boy cure." 

She said, “I will do it because it is a family tradition.”

My son needed to be convinced with the insight that there would be a bounty of monetary gifts from the family after the ceremony. I did feel bad having to use this tactic, but he is not as “spiritual” as my daughter, and I don’t think he would lean into anything I had to tell him other than that. 

I told them, “You will go through periods when you might not believe in God, and thats okay because you will always have this for when you have a moment where you can’t deny that God exists.”

On a smaller scale, the institution of family will do the same. There will be a time, not too far off probably, when my kids will think their parents made terrible decisions, and they’ll resent us. But, they grow through that, and the ego that ballooned with the onset of “freedom” starts to deflate, and they learn to be empathic, eventually towards their parents and the choices they made.

The other day talking to my mom, I realized she is my best friend. I don’t know how it happened but I am so much like my mom it is bizarre. I ended up being a teacher, like my mom, and this was never on my radar as a kid. I’m a writer, and my mom spent a decade working as a children’s book author. And, we both can get spooked in the night to heart-attack-inducing levels.

After I told my mom about being up all night, scared half to death there was a ghost waiting for an invitation at 2 am to chitchat, she said, “I hate it when I scare myself in the middle of the night. That’s why I sleep with an eight-inch screwdriver under my pillow.”

“Aren’t you afraid you’ll accidentally kill Dad?” I asked. She confidently replied, “No.”

It’s a good thing my dad is smart enough not to buy my mom deodorant… of any kind.

Jersey Summer

 

I was in Geoffrey’s room. We were in his bed reading. I insisted he listen to me read a Mary Oliver poem. As I read the end, a tear trickled from my left eye. After I finished reading, I nudged him, and when he looked at me, I pointed to the tear that now traveled down my cheek and said, “It moved me.” He laughed and cozied up to the pillow next to him.

Mid-July we visited my sister in Philadelphia and she took us to The Jersey Shore for a week. It was fun, and coming from bone-dry July-Sacramento I was blown away by the July-Philadelphia climate that felt like coastal Mexico. The first day up the shore the eight of us adapted to the two-bedroom apartment, and my kids and I took off to explore the boardwalk. We did a silly haunted house and then played haunted house-themed mini-golf. The golf game started fun but ended with only Kiki and me playing because Geoffrey couldn’t handle his jealousy after watching his sister get a hole-in-one, so he threw his ball and had to wait for us by the exit.

Everyone is allowed one meltdown on vacation because being away from home can be hard. Kiki’s was triggered by our walking eight miles a day, and she insisted on one-on-one time which was awarded by us leaving for our evening boardwalk walk five minutes before everyone else, and meeting them at the end an hour later.

My three-year-old nephew fell to his knees, crying to the heavens, when his sister found the biggest sea shell I have ever seen. He was driven mad with treasure-hunter energy to try and find a shell that was bigger than hers. While he screamed from the injustices of the universe,  Geoffrey followed him gently explaining that sometimes life isn’t fair. I laughed at the irony and told my sister about the haunted house mini golf debacle and then she told me about my Grandma and cousin getting so scared walking through one of those roadside attraction haunted houses, that they made the workers turn on the lights and escort them from the building.

The day we were scheduled to fly home, the Philadelphia airport was the saddest sight. It looked like a homeless shelter because of all the stranded people from the great-software-update-debacle. I should have known things would go wrong. After many delays, our flight was canceled, and our trip was extended another three days. This is when I should have had my meltdown. I should have screamed, “FUCK YOU DELTA AIRLINES!!!” But I didn’t want to stress my kids out, so I went inward.

Luckily my sister didn’t have to work those days, so we had a bonus trip where we went to an amusement park, swam, ordered an 18-inch cheesesteak, and hit up some American history sights in Philly. I had a great time, but in the back of my mind I was homesick, and to make myself feel better, I made plans to organize, rearrange, and clean out my house.

When we made it home my body made it impossible for me to leave; I came down with the flu. This kickstarted my week-long cleaning frenzy. I worked my way through every inch of the house. After Geoffrey and I stood on one side of my massive dresser and pushed with all our might, we couldn’t even get the thing to move a millimeter, I decided to hire people to help me move the furniture later.

I wanted to nest, but my little sister and I made a deal. If she watched my dog while we were on vacation, then I’d babysit her kids so she could have a weekend trip with her husband. Babysitting her four kids was fun and it wasn’t that hard because we all stayed with my parents, so I forced them to babysit with me. They were happy to help. My dad did all the cooking, my mom was the woman who got them snacks, and I was the one who had to put them to bed. The three youngest were sleeping on a queen-size mattress and after I read them the book they requested, the symphony of “I’m hot,” “I’m thirsty,” and “I’m bored,” started. They reminded me of the bud-weis-er frogs. Hot-thirsty-bored. I sat bedside for an hour, but it felt like three hours. After a while, I played a Spotify bedtime playlist, and they were immediately hushed and lulled to sleep by the sounds of waves crashing on the beach.

During the day we took all the kids to the pool. My mom and I sat on lounge chairs, and I saw Geoffrey walking towards us from the changing rooms. I looked at him, and shouted, “Hey there, babe.”

I didn’t notice a man walking in front of him, but my mom started laughing so hard after watching this man react as if I had shouted this out at him.

She also was unsure of what I was doing, and said, “I had no idea you were so bold.”

After babysitting, the kids and I had to prep for the new school year. Kiki was in my room going through my clothes. She dressed herself up and pretended to be me introducing myself to my students on the first day of school. She stood up straight, and in an authoritative tone said, “My name is Alicia Davis. I like my coffee black and my tampons super.”

This made me laugh so hard, and I quickly scribbled it down on an index card. I do this when something tickles my fancy, I jot it down because I want to remember the moment and it's excellent writing material.

I brought the card to the now organized stack. I found cards all over my house when I did my cleaning. I flipped through them and pulled one out from Geoffrey. I think he gave it to me on Mother’s Day. The card said, “I love you a lot so take 34.76 USD.” He presented it to me with all the money he’d saved. 

At the time, I laughed at a ten-year-old writing USD and I told him I couldn’t take his money. He was deflated and sad I wouldn’t accept it, so I said never mind and kept it. 

This time, when I read the index card I laughed but then a tear came to my eye, and I felt it trickle down my cheek. Unlike my furniture, I was moved.

The Long Recital

 

Last night was Kiki’s dance recital, a three-hour show where her two-minute dance was two hours and twenty minutes in. She decided to take tap dancing in January, and from her second lesson till last night she screamed, cried, and pouted before each class. The timing was not ideal, it was Fridays at 4, and after a long week, she wanted to binge Bob’s Burgers, play with her makeup, and make snacks in the kitchen.

Two hours into the recital Geoffrey told me he was hungry. I forgot to feed the kids dinner because I ate two sandwiches and a small cake at lunch and the thought of food wouldn’t enter my brain for at least twelve more hours. I didn’t plan to eat so much, but Kiki said she was full after two bites of her sandwich, so I had to eat her leftovers. When it is 100 degrees and you just ate two sandwiches and cake, all you can do is sleep like a boa constrictor digesting a cow. The perfect place for a nap is a three-hour dance performance in a dark air-conditioned theater. 

I brought a book too and went between dozing, reading, and endearing smiles at groups of five-year-olds spinning around to their interpretation of a dance routine. The pageantry is like Toddlers and Tiaras, all these kids wearing clown makeup and up-dos. 

It’s cute when little kids get glamour shot ready, but it is bizarre when older women dress like children, and it’s so easy to do with the cute accessories at Claire’s. An adult woman wearing pigtails is usually a sign she is allergic to cellphone towers or oblivious to the emotional abuse of cats. She carries an NPR tote bag as a purse and always has an anecdote to share about the lack of elasticity in socks.

I’m not thinking about infantilizing stylish pigtails like Chrissy from Three’s Company, I’m thinking more of shooting-out-of-the-side-of-the-head pigtails, like Boo from Monsters Inc. This look on a woman tells you she will either drive you crazy or be so unintentionally charming, you’ll be mesmerized by her weirdness.

On my sober app, there is a community message board. A few people post often, and they graciously offer trigger warnings before going into lengthy posts wondering if they were molested. I never comment, only read. Someone gave the strangest introduction, claiming to be the oldest soul in existence, descendant from aliens, but also having had a past life as an alien. I imagined her unashamedly typing up this overly confident pile of garbage with two pigtails bopping in rhythm to the keystrokes.

There are women at yoga who wear their hair in pigtails. It’s obvious when the hairstyle is done to minimize soaking straightened hair, there’s a functionality to the style, and usually, the pigtails are at the base of the head below the ears. But there will be a woman, with those pigtails shooting out the side of her head, right above her ears. Her demeanor is as happy-go-lucky as her hair indicates. When I get a good look at her, I know she used to love doing LSD.

I hate showering at the yoga studio, but sometimes it has to be done. There is only one shower, and a line can build up. One of these LSD-loving, pigtail, hippie women was in line behind me. These women tend to make me nervous because I’m afraid they're going to say some psychic shit to me that will stress me out. She decided to give herself a whores bath with the sink, and said, “We used to all just get in the shower together.”

I gave her a “what are you gonna do” shrug, and looked at the ground.

After the kids and I came home from the performance I made them dinner. Geoffrey was exhausted and went to bed, but Kiki and I stayed up chatting. I told her I saw someone from her school in the bathroom at the recital. She asked, “What did they look like?”

I told her, “They had long brown hair.”

Before I could add more, she said, “It doesn’t sound familiar.”

The most common of hairstyles, yet the least memorable.

Then she talked about the recital and to my surprise added, “I think I’ll do jazz in the fall.”

And I said, “I’ll try and get you in a Monday class."

The Lottery

 

I was searching my mom’s bookcase for a new read. It was a trip down memory lane, so many books I abandoned on one of the moves I made in the last twenty years. I pulled out a book How to Win Lotteries, Sweepstakes, and Contests in the 21st Century. My mom said, “You can have it.”

The book was from 2004 and was a second edition, so I’m not sure how things changed in the first four years of the 21st century, but obviously, I was reading this book. I flipped through the pages, and lucky for me, my mom highlighted all the important parts. I didn’t know we were so alike.

Last summer I read The Power of Positive Thinking and made a set of flashcards to have on hand. My son also has this delusional optimism that the lottery is ours for the taking, evident by him jotting notes while listening to the audiobook Think and Grow Rich.

Last week, I stayed with my parents for a few days while my kids were on vacation with their dad. My mom and I went to TJ Max and Ross and every night my dad would make us dinner.

I secretly check the expiration dates on everything because they won’t. Those dates aren’t even a suggestion to my parents. I’m strategic after noticing they’re trying to feed me something old, and I pretend I don’t have the appetite for it rather than mentioning its toxicity. Refusing to eat salad dressing that expired in 2016, I might as well slap my dad across the face. He is just like his mom, in this way. My older sister Lacey ruined a family dinner one night after spreading the news that my grandma scraped mold off the top of salsa before feeding it to us.

My mom isn’t as sensitive about my adherence to expiration dates, but she thinks it’s dramatic. Of course, I started my period the day I arrived at their house, and forgot to buy tampons when we were out running errands. I told her, and she ran off to grab some she had under the sink.

I flipped the box over and saw the year 2009. Maybe I would have considered it if the applicators weren’t plastic, but I told her, “No way, I’ll just keep making homemade toilet paper pads.”

My mom said, “That’s ridiculous. If you’re really that worried, take it out after four hours instead of six.”

One night we watched Expendables 3. Well, my dad left ten minutes after it started to go work in his office. We wouldn’t have picked the movie if it weren’t for him, but the agony of picking out another movie was too overwhelming so we committed to it. I’m glad we did. The ridiculousness of the cast, every 90’s action star, was hysterical. We nearly fell off the couch laughing when Dr. Frasier Crane strolled on the scene.

I read about a movie at the Cannes Film Festival getting an eleven-minute standing ovation. Eleven Minutes!! Even the best movie I’ve ever seen, I don’t think I could clap longer than one minute. Wouldn’t clapping for eleven minutes cause nerve damage, or make your hands fall off?

The Hot Chick, a Rob Schneider classic, is a 21%. You can’t trust the critics. My childhood favorite, Pretty Woman, did better than I would have thought with a 60%. 

Tomorrow I’m turning 42 and I feel more like Margot Tenenbaum than Vivian Ward. I remember, as an eight-year-old thinking how amazing adulthood would be. There’s Julia Roberts, making money, getting high fashion, and aspiring to finish high school. And here I am reading the highlighted parts of “How to Win Lotteries, Sweepstakes, and Contests in the 21st Century.”

I guess I missed the key takeaway from Pretty Woman, don’t kiss them boys on the mouth, it will only bring on trouble… unless they drive a Lotus Esprit and are best friends with George Costanza, then it’s like winning the lottery.

Shameful Summer

I’m on summer break and my kids are on summer break. It started for them on Tuesday, but mine started two weeks ago. I took the first few days to binge every docuseries made this year. I watched Brandy Melville, The Jinx, Ashley Madison, the Kevin Spacey one, and a few more probably about cults. 

A brief review of each: Brandy Melville is more a representation of our times; the A-story is about the objectification of beautiful women by a misogynist and the B-STORY(!!!) Is about slave labor in fast fashion and how the coast of Ghana has turned into the world’s Sally Anne, with literal mountains of used clothes spilling into the ocean. I’m not saying these girls’ stories weren’t moving, I’m just saying there was a much more important story to focus on. The Jinx was analyzed from the front, back, ear, mouth, and nostrils, there is nothing that was not said in this 20-hour story. Ashley Madison just gave me anxiety that my ex-husband was on the website, and as I started trying to figure out if he was on that list, I had a moment of STFU, where Rafiki hit me on top of the head with his stick reminding me to let go of the past. Lastly, the Kevin Spacey doc, ummm, I hate to say it, he did some fucked up shit, but it was not even close to being categorized as rape. After we found out what his dad was likely doing to him as a kid, I think we can forgive him if he promises to only pull his dick out around people who consent regardless of him helping their career. That’s also why I say, “Free the Menendez brothers and give them all that damn money.”

Back to the kids’ summer vacation. The first day was very chill because both of them were sent home sick, so we watched twelve hours of TV. Unlike me, they’re unable to do this two days in a row. They recovered and needed to be stimulated beyond The Simpsons and Bob’s Burgers.

I will start complaining: I’m becoming increasingly bothered by doing dishes seven times a day. My son is a morning person, he wakes up before six am and gets in the shower, he’s textbook seize the day, and my daughter is a night person, who will start talking at remarkable length from 9 pm - 11 pm, kindly asking to make another point after I tell her she needs to go to bed, and without waiting for an answer, continues on her analysis of Jojo Siwa’s recent transformation. This all means that I am getting no sleep.

My son brought me coffee this morning and when I dragged myself out of bed thinking he was the sweetest of sweetie pies, I noticed coffee drops spotting the carpet down the hall. I had to bite my tongue and hold on to the sentiment.

My daughter loves making face masks. When she asks if she can make face masks from things in the kitchen, she might as well ask, “Can I make a huge fucking mess, put us at risk of salmonella poisoning, and invite all the ants to parade around the kitchen to these undetectable drops of honey on the speckled countertop?”

At the moment, there are mysterious wet spots on the carpet all around the house and when I ask the kids what’s going on, they shrug their shoulders like I’m stepping in phantom puddles. Seriously though, I think they’re walking around the house with steins full of water and sloshing their cups as they move about like they’re eight Coors Lights in. 

When Geoffrey feels the slightest tinge of boredom, he antagonizes Kingsley until she screams like an asteroid is headed straight for our house. My neighbors are probably grateful for the heatwave because I had to shut the windows to turn on the air conditioning. For the entire last month, when we were in that delightful time of year we went to bed with the windows open, they had to endure my daughter screaming in agony to wake up at 6 am for school. I run up to her, and stage whisper, “The neighbors can hear you!” She doesn’t care.

This afternoon after their bickering reached a frenzy, the three of us sat around the beat-up IKEA table to have a RAP sesh about basic conduct. I explained to my son that when my brothers and cousin called me a fatso as a kid, it fucked me up as a young woman. I told my daughter that screaming your head off is the fastest way for the world to tune you out. It’s sad, but true.

I turned off the TV. The amazing TV with free and easily accessible entertainment. The kids are in the kitchen making a stop-motion video with an iPad. I know, it’s still an electronic device, but they promised to stay off of YouTube and only use the app. I enjoy hearing them have funny conversations while I’m down the hall in the comfort of my bed with a laptop on my lap.

I really can’t dole out parenting advice because I have a special situation where my kids leave three days a week. So when things get tough, I (ashamedly) say to myself, “I can get through this,” since they will be leaving soon.

Their dad is on a work trip, so I have them for a long stretch. It will be twelve days; we are five in, but who's counting? I love having them around, and I miss them terribly when they’re gone, but I need to hide in my room every once in a while, which is probably what people who live with their kids full-time do. 

Tomorrow I’m taking them to SunSplash water park. They’re thrilled, even though I have threatened to take this opportunity away from them seventy-five times in the last three days. I’m bringing my book because I’m delusional. I see how in the olden days moms used to buy their kids passes to these types of parks, and drop them off in the morning with a verbal warning to stay away from people who look like Kevin Spacey and enough money to buy a candy bar for lunch.

I have another horrible thing to admit: I’m in the process of quitting vaping. I know, gross. I started over the pandemic, and then I turned into one of those teenagers in the anti-vaping commercials, who rummages through all her shit to find her vape, so she could happily suck on this nicotine stick while pretending to take a shit on the toilet.

I have to eat nicotine lozenges, and when I feel myself turning into a short-fused asshole, I eat two. I lied to pretty much everyone I know that I picked up this filthy habit, and because I want to live to be over a hundred (I’m just like a tech-bro) I need to cut this shit out.

I’m unsure when I officially quit because it was a long time coming. It might be mid-May when I took the last puff from those adorable fruit-flavored little cubes of calming smoke producers, but also deadly fog that ravages your insides.

My kids think smoking is akin to prostituting yourself to support a meth habit, and that is why this will probably be the only blog post I delete when my kids turn sixty and decide they’d like to understand their crazy mother by maybe reading some of it. I would rather give them a list of my sexual history than ever admit that I vaped.

What sucks about not vaping? The surprising way that my clothes have shrunk. I told a friend of mine, I just need to get through a month or two of completely kicking the habit before I worry about the weight gain because I need to pick one battle at a time, and if I fixate on this extra five (maybe ten, FUCK) pounds then I will end up right back on that poisonous nicotine stick. This is another thing I could share with Geoffrey about fat-shaming for the sake of exerting dominance, it will make someone think cancer is worth the risk.

Anyways, to the women who do this full time, all the time, I really tip my hat to you. Summer vacation is a whole different level. I have no idea how anyone could homeschool their kid. I know I would turn into a shelf of a human which is probably why I’m divorced in the first place, a subconscious need to be alone kind of a lot. 

We’ll get our asses on a schedule, I’ll remember there are many factors at play when I process my emotions after walking into a destroyed kitchen, and I hate to say it, but after the kids’ dad gets back, they’re going on vacation with him for a week, and when things get overwhelming, I can always look forward to missing them.