Roche Brothers Can Be an Adventure

Hey Pete!
Its Thursday afternoon, and you just fell asleep after a pretty long morning of burning energy. We went to the grocery store around 11, and today you decided to be even more trouble than you usually are (even though everyone that you met absolutely adored you and would say how well behaved and cute you are). Usually, when we go to the grocery store together, I bring a toy with you so that it keeps you occupied when you start getting fidgety; nine times out of ten it works, but then there are times like today where all you wanted to do was reach back for items in the shopping car, maybe look at them for a second or two, and then immediately try to throw them out of the cart.

We went to Roche Brothers to do our shopping today, and that fact produced an inherent problem with your love of tossing things out of the cart. I love Roche Brothers, but they have very unique shopping carts that are wildly different than the usual cart you find at most grocery stores. Where locations such as Stop and Shop or Shaws have a cart with a deep basket and an elevated seat for children to sit in (which by design distances a child from the groceries so that they can't easily grab, say, a mango, and throw it on the floor), at Roche Brothers, they decided to go with a cart where the main basket to place your groceries is exactly level with the seated position of your little buddy. This allows you, Pete, and other troublemaking kids, to easily grab at anything within arms length in the car and cause as much chaos as you can before I notice that you are holding a glass jar of salsa looking like you want to throw it on the floor.

To be fair, their carts do have a bottom storage section; theres a small platter-sized grate directly below where you seat your child, as well as a larger grate below the main top basket; usually these are meant for larger, heavy items like birdseed or cat litter, but in my case, a majority of breakable and fragile goods found their way below deck. My cart looked pretty silly once I had made my way through the store, having a few items pushed as far away from you as possible at the top of the cart, and everything else below the cart.

Honestly, it was a bit frustrating because you were absolutely relentless and laser-focused on grabbing things and throwing them, and were getting upset because I wasn't letting you. A few times I had to stop and take a deep breath and find the humor in the situation, but in the moment it can often be hard to step back like that as my first instinct. Usually, I start off by calling you a ding dong and taking groceries away from you, and trying to distract you with other things. It can be exhausting on the nerves.
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After the grocery store, you mom came home and the bunch of us hung out and played and talked about stuff that was going on in the day. I spent a while looking for these darned dress pants I liked but have somehow lost, and your mom was sleepy after a bunch of long days and early mornings at work, so around 3 she took an hour nap while you and I hung out and played some more, and then I cooked some dinner. You are too small and picky to eat the steak tacos and Mexican grilled corn that I made, but we made you a nice cheese quesadilla and some eggs for dinner, and I grilled you mom a cheeseburger because steak isn't really her thing. Oooh man though, once you are a bigger boy, I'm sure you're going to love these steak tacos.

Now, Game 1 of the NBA finals is on, and I have to work in about 7 hours so I will be going to bed soon. I've been watching a lot of basketball this season, and my favorite team the Celtics had a really great season that ended because once again, Lebron James is an unstoppable player continuing to add to his legacy. I was hoping that the Houston Rockets would beat the Golden State Warriors, but the Warriors have also been a dominant team in the western conference, so once again the Finals are the same two teams playing against each other. Next year should be a different story; we got through to the eastern conference finals without the two best people on our team, and I am so excited to see how the next season turns out when we get Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward back.

Bedtime for dad, I'll write again soon!
Love, Dad

Quick Entry, 5/30

Hey Pete!
Its your dad again. Its about 11pm on a Wednesday night in May, and today as well as tomorrow we are having wonderful weather; its mid to high 70s, sunny, and not very humid, though the temperature has been dropping to the 50s at night lately. Its going to be some truly perfect springtime weather, and I have the day off with you! Your mom will be working early in the morning and should be home to hang out with us around 2pm; I worked the evening tonight, and today was the first day of my store changing their hours to extend being open from 9pm until 930pm. I don't think a single person came in after 8:45. Its pretty annoying so far, and it definitely stinks getting home so late that you and your mom are already fast asleep by the time I come in the door.

I was hoping to write some more tonight, but I'm a bit sleepy, so I think the best thing to do will be to head to bed and get up early with you. You're a very busy boy, and you don't like sleeping any later than 7am, so instead of writing now, I'll get extra sleep and at some point try to do a little more writing about where we live, our apartment, our pets, and who knows what else!

Hey Pete! 5/29/18

Hey Pete! Its your dad again; I'm gonna try to keep this journaling thing going for you. I heard something on NPR recently about a dad that gave his 18 year old daughter a journal he kept during the first 5 years of her life, just writing about how she was progressing as well as the things going on in her parents lives and the world, and man does that sound like such a neat thing to give your kid. So I'm going to attempt to journal for you! So today is Tuesday, May 29th; you have been one year old for 17 days already! Sheesh that whole year just flew by. You recently got your first haircut (which was traumatic for you); you are walking pretty confidently now, but when you see a large distance between where you are and where you want to be, you decide that crawling is the fastest and best way to get there (also, you are a bit shy, and your crawling habits come back when you are around people you don't know); you are also starting to climb. Mostly just to get onto the couch, but you are discovering that you can use things around the house as improvised "steps" to get you to higher places you couldn't get to before, so all that being said, its obvious that you are just all kinds of trouble. Your mom and I have babyproofed the apartment we live in as far as "Phase 1" of life with Peter is concerned. Phase 1 consisted mostly of finding means to block you off from things and places we didn't want you to have access to, namely the staircase to the 2nd floor and the kitchen. Our apartment consists of 3 floors; the main floor has a living room, a connected dining room, and a kitchen which is small and is accessed by a doorframe shaped opening. In the kitchen is a staircase that leads to the basement, and right inside the main door to our apartment is the staircase to our two bedrooms and bathroom on the 2nd floor. You are mostly confined to the living and dining room to do as you please, which you are more than happy with, and in one single year you have gained so much skill at messmaking. Often times we will wake up, and I will let you loose in the living room while I get some coffee going, and by the time my back is turned you have pulled a majority of your toys off of the shelves and spread them throughout the room. Speaking of toys; one of the funniest things about you so far is your strange, confounding love of organizing and stacking. There are all kinds of toys of varying shapes and sizes, and often times you will busy yourself "organizing" them in ways that only make sense to you. You will put a bunch of toys in a basket, then immediately take them out, one by one, to empty the basket again, and then reorganize the toys into the basket, sometimes omitting one or two toys and adding others. Its really fun to watch. * * * * * * * * Well, to get into my life with and without you; Right now, I am a shift manager at Starbucks, and your mom is the manager of a different store. Recently, some bad things happened that Starbucks decided to take responsibility for and use as a learning opportunity for the entire company. A few months ago, two black men went into a Starbucks in Pennsylvania and had the police called on them, and they were removed from the store in handcuffs. It was a very sad and unfortunate thing to happen two these two gentleman. So today, every Starbucks closed business from 2:30pm on, so that its partners could have a meeting to address racism and bias. I won't get into all the details about the meeting, but it was a very rewarding and emotional experience to be a part of. The biggest advice I could give you as far as bias and prejudice and, basically, fear is concerned, is to me a pretty basic and fundamental approach to life in general. Always expect the best out of people, whether you have known them for years or are just meeting them for the first time. Make eye contact with every person you come in close contact with, and make the act of holding their gaze be a wordless way of expressing that you are completely present in their presence; the further technology seems to advance, the easier it is to find ways to find yourself in the presence of others but absorbed in your own personal devices and distractions, and leaving those distractions behind to truly share even just a moment of personal connection is a special thing that seems to be becoming a lost art. I can't remember where I heard it, but I remember a wise person explain that the way they approached life and people, is by pretending everyone you meet is an old friend that you haven't seen in a long time. You're going to meet a lot of people in your life, and looking someone in the eye and being genuine in your time spent with them will affect people in a very positive way. This is a pretty hefty subject, so I will probably have to return to it. But I got the ball rolling on this journaling stuff! I'm hoping to be able to devote 30-60 min a night to this; wish me luck. Love, Dad

Some Thoughts on Life; 5/25/18

I was thinking recently about how I would like to do some purposeful writing, mostly for the sake of my eight month old son. Right now, I am a 34 year old man, and I now have this small boy who is growing and learning way faster than I can keep up with. He is something else; I'm sure all parents feel the same way about their children, but this little boy is so smart, and has so much energy, and watching him progress while I am at the end of a plateau looking towards regression makes me want to record some thoughts that I have for him to be able to read much later in his life, because actually speaking on certain subjects can be very difficult; finding the right words in the moment is hard, and I would like to be able to give him a collection of thoughts on life and this world that I held at this point in my life. * * * * * This whole idea began as my little Peter and I were driving home one night, and we were listening to a report on NPR called The Hard Problem of Consciousness. The speaker, David Chalmers, was explaining a lot about consciousness that I have studied and agree with whole heartedly; the idea that consciousness itself is one of the greatest mysteries in the universe, and that its nature and origins will be a subject of debate as timelessly as the chicken and egg conundrum. He talked about the mind, and its function as basically a device that records and judges all that you experience, organizing these judgements and feelings meticulously into a database of your memories, and then uses that database to mold the conception of your present and future experiences with these stored memories as the foundation for how you will interpret your life. Kind of heavy philosophical stuff; humans have been both blessed and cursed with this thinking mind, which is a very interesting and curious thing, as no other species on this planet has the capability of really interpreting the past, present and future, and how these accumulated events constructed through time affect an individual. Animals are purely instinctual creatures; for a human to experience the mindset of an animal, the practice of meditation will guide you towards the moment by moment purity where absolute contentment resides. * * * This is tricky stuff; I am trying to summarize a lot of things to reach yet another point; maybe I am missing the part where the point may be buried in the process. Thats a though worth revisiting. Let me try to cut to the chase: a major point I want to get across is the nature of our reality, as far as I am concerned. As humans, with our insatiably curious nature, we have made incredible strides to understand the world around us: the big world, of Earth and all its materials, and what we can learn and create from what has been provided to us; the small world, studying our own bodies and what makes our physical forms function, as well as understanding the diseases that afflict us and how to cure them; and the outside world, of our Earthly skies and outer space, where we have yet to progress enough to do more than probe into and study intently. As far as I am concerned, with the knowledge we have been able to accumulate so far in our existence, the internal studies have provided the most insight into our universe for me. We found that, working inside ourselves seems to be complete universes of cells, atoms, molecules, etc., simple small things that, functioning as a whole, make up the components of an individual human being, as well as making up all other earthly things we have collectively studied. We understand their importance, but to flip that thought, if a single blood cell were to possess the curiosity to try and understand the human being named Peter that it served, the ability for it to comprehend Peters complexity would be lost upon it in the scope of its incomprehensible subject. To me, we are another small cog in a much larger system that we simply can not comprehend. We are the blood cells that are functioning simply to try to keep Earth alive, learning and adapting in our simple mission that, even in its failure, will not matter in the greater scheme of a galaxy inside the incomprehensible depth of our universe. Thank you for sticking with me if you did. This will serve as a springboard for plenty more writing for Peter. He deserves it; so many people find earthly reasons to be sad; Pete, i promise you for as long as I can, I will help you be as happy as you possibly can for as long as I exist. Love, Dad