Half Changed World

I don’t think I’ve mentioned here that I’ve signed up for a triathlon that’s next month.  I’ve figured out that I just don’t carve out the time to exercise unless I have a goal.  Back before I had kids, I ran marathons.  I still have dreams of someday qualifying for Boston, but I knew I wasn’t willing to make the time commitment needed to train for one.  So I got this crazy idea that I’d do a tri.

What makes this really crazy is that I didn’t learn to ride a bike as a kid.  I grew up in NYC, and my parents were never going to let me ride in the streets anyway, so it wasn’t a priority.  They spent a few evenings running around hanging onto my bike while I tried to balance, but when I didn’t pick the trick up, they didn’t persist.

At this point, I’m neither sufficiently trained to be confident that I can complete the race, nor so untrained that I think it’s stupid to try.  My goals, in decreasing order of priority are:

• Have fun
• Don’t get hurt
• Finish
• Finish in less than 3 1/2 hours.

I went for a ride yesterday, and was really pleased that I made it up to the top of a hill where I had needed to walk the bike the previous time.

We had a pretty unscheduled weekend, so on Saturday I asked the boys what they wanted to do.  They both said they wanted to go to the water playground (which we did do) and I said that my priority for the weekend was to get a bike ride in.  D promptly said that he wanted to go for a bike ride too, and he wanted us to take his training wheels off.

So we’ve been running around hanging onto the back of his bike helping him get the feel of it.  He’s actually got pretty good balance for a 5 year old — he’s going a few feet at a time each time we help him get started.   The problem is that he’s getting scared as soon as he picks up some speed, so stops, and then promptly falls over.  The nice thing is that everyone walking by has encouraging words for him.

Meanwhile N is completely uninterested in pedalling his tricycle, but has decided he likes scooting it along like a flintstones car.

I had an interesting conversation with an acquaintance the other day.  She was talking about how she had prepped her daughter for the first day of camp, explaining that her daughter doesn’t cope well with loud, chaotic settings, and is also quite short.  So, they’ve been going over strategies, such as bringing a quiet toy to play with, and telling the other kids how old she is when they meet.  I commented that my son, D, is also short for his age, but that I don’t think he’s noticed.

It’s hard for me to know whether it would be helpful to try to give D some social skills advice before he starts kindergarten  — try to learn the other kids’ names, don’t sit there waving your hand every single time the teacher asks a question.  As a parent, there’s a desire to protect your child from obvious traps.  And yet, it’s not clear that such warnings would be helpful.  D’s much more of an extrovert than I ever was, and makes friends easily with kids on the playground.  He’s convinced that everyone he meets wants to be his friend, and his belief often makes it true.

There’s also the complicating factor that, based on the school’s demographics, D is likely to be either the only white kid in his class, or one of just a couple.  And he may well be the only Jewish kid in the school.  So, he’s going to stick out.  I can’t help but worry that it’s going to make any social sins he commits much more obvious.

Any thoughts, stories, suggestions?

I spent this afternoon at the beach with the boys, my father and my sister.  It was perfect weather, sunny and warm without being unbearably hot.  The boys dug in the sand, collected bits of seashell and played at the water’s edge.

I can’t tell you how pleased I was to watch D dashing in and out of the water, getting splashed by the waves, and laughing like mad.  He cried a few times when a wave hit him full on and splashed into his eyes and mouth, but didn’t get hysterical, and was back playing minutes later.  It’s hard to believe this was the kid who wouldn’t walk on sand (even with shoes on) a couple of years ago.  Whatever sensory issues he had, he seems to have outgrown them.  (Well, he’s still a ludicrously picky eater.  We were listening to NO! in the car yesterday, and he asked "Am I a supertaster?"  I said "I don’t know.  Maybe.")

In looking through my archives, I realize I wrote a similar post about him playing in the snow this winter.  I’m not sure I’ll ever take these simple joys for granted.

We had a close to perfect Fourth of July — swimming in the city pool, halfway watching soccer while cleaning and cooking, grilling dinner with a group of friends, watching the fireworks on the mall from the GW Parkway — only slightly dampened by the early evening downpour.  I got lots of compliments on the grilled salmon, and was slightly embarrassed to admit that it was one of the meals I prepared at Let’s Dish (yes, I did go there when one opened nearby — I should do a post about it someday).

I think the highlight for D may have been the chemical "glow stick" that I gave to each of the boys for the walk back to the metro.  I could argue that the sticks helped them be seen by the cyclists going way too fast on the crowded paths, but the truth is that I gave them to the boys mostly to keep them distracted and happy when they’re tired and overstimulated.  I feel a little guilty about using them, since I’m sure the chemicals in them are terrible for the environment. 

On the way home, I was thinking about how much pleasure the boys get out of the cheap plastic crap that is sold by Oriental Trading Company (which is where the glow sticks came from) and given out at fast food restaurants.  The conventional wisdom is that these toys are bad because kids play with them for 10 minutes and then forget about them.  Not my kids.  If the kids forgot about them, they wouldn’t be such a pain in the neck.  The problem is my boys adore them, play with them, and get hysterical when they break, which they do all the time, or when I try to throw them out to stop us from getting buried alive.  On the other hand, it’s sort of charming to see the boys in ecstasy over something that cost 95 cents.  When it’s so easy to make them so happy, it’s hard to resist.

Book review tomorrow — too tired tonight.

This is still true.

Today HHS published regulations implementing the budget bill’s changes to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), aka "welfare."  I worked on them while I was at HHS, and my frustration with both the content and the process was a good part of what led me to jump ship.  It’s very strange to read them from the outside now.

We’re trying to get a draft of our preliminary analysis out to advocates who we work with by tomorrow.  So I was in the office at 7:15 this morning, left at 6:30, and will go online to work some more when I finish this up.  But I’m not complaining — I don’t mind working long hours occasionally, when there’s actually work to be done.  And it’s a lot more fun to spend all day writing when you get to say what you think.  I’m feeling pretty good about my decision to take this job.

I even get to talk to the press.  Yesterday, one of my colleagues called me and said "hey, Jason DeParle’s on the phone; can you talk to him about the regs?"  (No, I wasn’t using inappropriate insider knowledge — the regulations were on public display at the Federal Register’s office yesterday.)  I’m not sure I was at my most thoughtful and coherent, though; I was sufficiently impressed that I managed to accidentally turn on the speakerphone in my office, and I wasn’t sure how to turn it off without risking hanging up on him.

The short version is that overall, I think the regulations stink.  I mean, the welfare reauthorization was truly lousy lawmaking — it was tacked onto the budget bill in the middle of the night, with lawmakers desperate to go home, having no idea what they were voting for.  HHS only had limited flexibility to improve things in the regs.  But instead, they made things worse.  They made it harder for people on welfare to go to school, harder for states to help people who need services like substance abuse treatment or counseling.  And after all those years talking about state flexibility, it turns out, surprise surprise that the Republicans only believe in state flexibility when the states choose to do what they want them to.  Feh.

(There will be a polished version of what I’m working on up on my organization’s website in a couple of weeks.  If any of you are interested in reading all 25 pages of detailed analysis sooner, drop me a line and I’ll forward it to you when we have a sharable draft.)

As you might know, people in DC freak out when there’s even the slightest chance that it might snow.  Flurries in the western suburbs are enough to shut down the Fairfax schools for at least two days.  So I’m finding it somewhat amusing that it is rain that has wreacked more havoc than any snowstorm I’ve seen in the 10 years that I’ve lived in the area. 

The morning commute was just brutal today.  I left 20 minutes early because I had a 9 am meeting, and still got to work 15 minutes late.  And I was one of the lucky ones — most of my waiting was on the platform, rather than on an overcrowded train.  My boss left work early because her basement was flooded and there was water running out of the light fixtures in her kitchen.  Several federal office buildings and Smithsonian museums are closed.

(The lights have been flickering as I type.  My laptop has plenty of power, but the wireless network will go out if we lose electricity.)

I know the hardest rain was yesterday, but the most impressive electrical storm was Thursday night.  My bedroom is right under the roof, with two skylights, and it was unreal to watch.  I couldn’t fall asleep because it was so loud.  The boys slept right through it.

Back from a very short trip to New York to celebrate the bris of my new nephew.  If we hadn’t just come back from a week away, I probably would have taken tomorrow off as well and made a long weekend of it, but since I had, I went up after work yesterday and came back this evening.  Even so, I was a bit nervous about walking into my boss’ office on Monday and saying, yes, I know I just started this job a month ago, and I know I just took six days off (with pay) to go to Spain, but I also need to take this Thursday off.  But she didn’t blink or suggest in any way that I shouldn’t go, which makes feel good about having taken the job.  One of my coworkers even rescheduled a doctor’s appointment so we could have the meeting scheduled for this morning tomorrow instead.

An economist will tell you that adding an option to the market always improves utility.  Either it’s better than the existing options, so you take it, and you’re happier than you would have been, or it’s worse, so you ignore it, and it doesn’t affect your utility at all.  I’m not convinced that’s true.

Today’s case in point is the ultra-cheap buses from Washington DC to New York (often generically referred to as the Chinatown buses, although there are now ones that run to different neighborhoods).  They typically charge $20 each way, $35 round trip, versus $84 for Amtrak.  (It’s a lot more for the high speed Acela, slightly cheaper if you can travel off-peak).   They’re slower than the trains — and can be much slower if you get stuck in traffic — and the seats give you a lot less room to spread out.  But if money is your top priority, they’re a great deal.

My problem, is that before these buses existed, I’d just take the train and accept the cost as non-negotiable.  (Yes, I could have taken Greyhound, but that offered all the inconveniences of the low-cost buses, but much smaller savings v. Amtrak — a clearly inferior option.)  Now, if I take the train, I feel like I’m being spendthrift, since I could suck it up and take the bus.  So, I’m less happy paying the same price for the train than I was several years ago.  And if I take the bus, I’m much less comfortable than I was taking the train.

This is a nice example of one of the points that Barry Schwartz makes in The Paradox of Choice.  He argues that you compare your real options to an imagined alternative that combines the best features of both — a ride as fast and comfortable as the train, but as cheap as the bus — and they always fall short.  And that reduces your pleasure in the real options.

So what did I do?  I took the bus up last night (which was a drag — an accident closed a section of the NJ turnpike) but the train back today.

Sorry for the long gap in posts, and thanks to those who posted or emailed to make sure I was ok.  Actually, I was better than ok — my parents took the boys for a week, and T and I headed off to Spain for a slightly early 10th anniversary trip.  I didn’t mean to worry anyone, but didn’t want to advertise to the whole internet that we were away from home.

We spent two nights in Madrid, one in Toledo, and three in Barcelona, and had an absolutely wonderful time.  We walked all over the place, ate ourselves silly, explored the sites, and had conversations that lasted more than two minutes without interruption.  I took a lot of photos, and have put a few up on Flickr with more to follow as I get the chance to edit them.

It’s the first time we’ve been away from the boys for more than a weekend since D was born, so we were a little nervous.  When my parents headed out with them, I expected to feel liberated, but actually felt a bit bereft.  But by the time we got on our airplane, we were relaxing and having a good time.  We called twice to check in on them, and the boys had to be pried away from their activities to say hi to us.  My parents said that they were a lot of fun and didn’t give them too much trouble at bedtime, etc.  Their only complaint was the constant level of noise.

In other news, I met Leslie Morgan Steiner, D graduated from preschool, and I became an aunt.  More details to follow…

D is becoming aware enough of the days of the week that he wanted to know yesterday why I had today off of work (and he had it off from preschool) and why we were going to a party. 

T and I explained to him that it’s Memorial Day, a day to honor people who were soldiers for our country and who died.  He wanted to know how they died, and I said that they could have died lots of different ways — that some were shot, and some maybe fell out of airplanes, and others just got sick and couldn’t get to a doctor.  But that war generally involves people getting killed.  He suggested that some of them might have been cut with knives, and we agreed that was a possibility.

Then he wanted to know why there were wars.  And T said that people fought wars for lots of different reasons.  Sometimes we go to war because we’re invaded, and want to protect ourselves, and sometimes we go to war because there’s something bad going on and we want to stop it from happening.  (With more time to think, I would have added that we’re not very good at figuring out other ways to resolve disagreements.  But I’m not a pacificist — in 3rd or 4th grade, I was the only one in my class in my hippie elementary school to say that I thought war was sometimes justified, with WWII and the Holocaust as my main example.)

And then I talked a little about how sometimes when people die, the things that they cared about or fought for live on.  I talked about I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night, which T used to sing to the boys as a lullaby.  (Yes, we may well be raising the last red diaper babies in America.)  And we talked about Martin Luther King, who D learned about in school, and how lots of people believe in the things that he worked for, even though he was killed.

And then I told D that our country is right now fighting a war in a place called Iraq, and that I and his daddy don’t think the reasons we’re fighting this war are very good, but we still honor and are thankful for the soldiers who are fighting, since they are fighting because we asked them to.  And he asked if the soldiers in Iraq would die, and we said that some of them would, but not most.  (His class has been writing letters this year to a soldier in Iraq who is the older sister (I think) of another student in the school, so I think he may have been thinking of her.)

And then he wanted to know if there would be goodie bags at the party.  I said no, it wasn’t a birthday party.  I told him that Memorial Day is considered the start of summer, and so people like to do things that they can only do in the summer, like barbecue and eat strawberry pie and play in the sprinklers.  All of which we did.