A different person.

23 years ago today one of my best friends in the world died. He was the very best. Full of life, joy, faith, and he was like cool and like this brother I didn't know I really wanted to have.

If I could go back in time and somehow prevent him from dying, I would, every time. 

I also don't think I would recognize myself today if he hadn't died. I'm a different person because of the way this tragedy and loss touched me as a high schooler.

I don’t know what to do with that, but I think about it all the time. 

(To be clear, I'm not at all an "everything happens for a reason" person. Especially because of loss. Just in case you thought I was inferring it, I wasn't.) 

Apples, peanuts, and crafts at Grandma's house

My grandma did daycare for us for my whole childhood. We'd come over in the morning still in our jammies and would leave right before dinner. I spent a lot of time with my grandma.

There's a bunch of things I could say about how fun and special that was, but today I want to talk about crafts. 

She made some fun crafts.

We'd make our own paper dolls, or draw pictures of ourselves and glue yarn on for big hair, or we'd trace ourselves on big butcher paper and draw in our face and clothes.  

We took paper doilies and made fancy valentine's for the people we liked extra. 

We made paper chains to countdown for Christmas, while listening to the Gene Autry Christmas cassette and eating chips and cheese and drinking hot chocolate.

I remember cutting an apple in half and it made that star in the middle and then we'd paint it and stamp them on paper. Maybe we only did that once, but I remember it was pretty special.

She also would show us how if you opened up the peanut shell, you'd see Abraham Lincoln. It's true. Ish. That's actually less of a craft and more related to foods making cool shapes, but you can see how my brain thought it made sense to include here. 

When I was older I kept doing crafts at grandma's house. Like every day. I'd sit in the guest room at the big craft table watching Nickelodeon and drawing things or painting things. One time my cousin Alexis and I took our developing skills and became young entrepreneurs: we made sets of stationary (which was basically sets of paper that we took from a drawer) and puzzles we designed out of paper, and then sold them to my grandma and great-grandma for a dollar. We made $1 each that day. They told us after the second time that they weren't going to keep buying things from us at those prices.

I love my grandma and she helped me be way more creative.  

Lutheran Amen

A lot of Lutherans can be a lil reserved and stoic and don't like to be all showy in their approval and when they're moved. If you find yourself in a crowd of a bunch of Lutherans that have just heard something particularly profound, instead of a bunch of loud "amens" (though every now and then I hear someone try one out) what you'll hear is a "hmmm." 

It can be translated to: 

• that was a good point
• that was deep
• I hadn't thought of it that way
• yes, thank you
• interesting (but actually, not a Minnesotan interesting)

Basically, amen. 

If you ever get that response from a room of Lutherans, you really moved them. Just so you know, because you probably wouldn't know.  

Jingling Keys

My dad always had like a million keys he'd carry around, all clipped onto his belt loop. When he worked at Kmart, we'd walk in to pick up something (and see him and maybe pick up a Little Caesar's) and all we'd have to do was just listen for a few minutes and usually we could find him with that little jingle. 

I was talking to some friends today about how proud we were when we'd find him working. That's OUR DAD. He's the guy with the red vest. He works here. We'd ask the other employees- do you know Paul? He's our DAD. 

I think he struggled sometimes working retail, especially in a real wealthy area, especially with jerk-heads mumbling their rude and entitled comments at him. Me and my sisters though, we were always beaming with pride. Even earlier this year, I was at my hometown Costco (where he recently retired from) and I asked one of the guys working if he knew Paul (Pauly)? He did. Me and my sisters all said real proudly, "that's our dad!!" He's the hardest working guy I've ever met, and I'm proud of him always.

He still has a bunch of keys, but a more manageable amount. 

Too many newses

I read too many newses (listen, I'm just gonna let that be a word) and now my brain short circuited. I keep trying to read the news and keep up with ALL THE THINGS and it's really pretty bad news, and then it's badder news, and on and on, and then it's like my brain says, "hey, that's too many bad newses to know about tonight, we're going to just power off" except that my insides say, "hey, we're going to swirl. we're going to remind you that there's little you can do but also we're gonna make you feel bad for not doing enough things anyway and also we're going to power on your brain just enough to imagine some worst case scenarios. at 3 am." And also my anxiety might not even be that dramatic this time.  

How are you all doing?

 

Some weirdly specific things that annoy me and endear me

 Here are some weirdly specific things that annoy me:

• when I hear my morning alarm going off at an unexpected time
• when I'm in a rush in the morning and I hear the K-Fan guy talking in the car
• when my kids ask me 8 different questions simultaneously
• When people could have empathy, but choose not to. Like the thing they went through was hard and therefore the person they're watching go through a similar thing should buck up like they think they did. 
• when people are arguing on the internet (in general, but especially this next part) and after they ask for facts to prove the poster's point and they say, "I'll wait."

But here are some things that endear me to balance it out:

• when I see people doing things that bring them joy even if it's kinda nerdy to other people
• when I catch people jamming in the car
• when grown ups play like kids
• when people check the weather reports in different cities and states for people they love
• seeing my kids dance
• when people get a little embarrassed and blushy 
• when parents get really excited to see their kids perform and wave a bunch
• when kids get really excited to see their parents watch them perform and wave a bunch
• when someone really wants you to hear this song they like or watch this show they like or see this pretty thing they like, etc. etc. 

Lesser known/ somewhat made up adhd traits

I have adhd. It's okay. 

You probably already know about the basic stuff: 

• the talking too much or zoning out
• how we can have like 3 conversations at once with various connections that make a lot of sense to the person with adhd and a lot less sense to the people being talked to
• the getting stuck in bed or on the couch or the car or any other sitting place and really really wanting to do something, but can't seem to do it until you're about to be late or in trouble or something (INCLUDING something fun and meaningful that you actually really want to do) 
• the insomnia 
• the doing an interesting task and losing all sense of time and basically anything else around you
• the busy brain and body and needing to moveeeeee
• how we can do like 8 hours of work in an hour and then turn into a potato for a while
• the lack of executive functioning and the poorly regulated dopamine
• overwhelmed, overstimulated, underwhelmed, understimulated
• forgetting things

(there's more but I got bored making this long list)

But did you know these things that I mostly learned from memes and are sorta made up, but also seem true for a bunch of us?

• Having a favorite spoon, but as an adult. It's also the small spoon.
• Bringing 3+ beverages with you (I always have coffee, water, and then a fun sparkling water)
• using a bunch of parentheses when you write stuff 
• researching weird stuff you're thinking about at 3 am.
• throwing out the almost used shampoo bottles only after they've grown a cobweb on them
• responding to things people say with a song (or at least wanting to real bad)
• getting mad at people when your clothes feel weird or everyone is talking too loud
• a good trick to get us to clean the house is to tell us you're coming over in 10 minutes

Spotify Playlist When You Have Children

Here's a list of my recent music on Spotify:

• Drew Holcolm and the Neighbors
• Paw Patrol
• TROLLS Band Together soundtrack
• Tyler Childers
• Wicked: The Soundtrack
• Doc McStuffins
• Daniel Tiger Songs

My recommended stations:

• Little Angel including songs from Cocomelon, Pinkfong and Little Baby Bum Nursery Songs
• The Highwomen
• Parry Gripp, which includes songs from Parry Grip, Mr Farts (YES, I DID SAY MR. FARTS), and Baby Yoda
• SuperKitties
• Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors. They made a nice compilation of things. :-)
• Bluey
• Julie Andrews? (I do love her, but not sure how she made the list?)
• Noah Kahan

So, you will see that I have about 1/5 of an influence on the music I listen to in the car. A church kid I love told me that they guard their Spotify playlist and won't let anyone ruin the algorithm, including if they ever have children.

I don't know if spotify will exist then or how it all will work, but if it's the same as now, I don't think they have considered how powerful a sobbing and yelling, "PWAYYY PAW PATROL MOOSIC NOOWWWW" toddler in the backseat really is. 

Here's a pic for proof. Also, you might notice an 8 year old added his pic to my account when I wasn't looking one time and changed my name to: (skull emoji) (skull emoji):-$AaronWeiss

 

Good Boy

This is a pic of our pup, Autumn. She's not actually a puppy, she's a grown almost 12 year old. She's a lab, probably 90 pounds. One time she wrapped the leash around my legs and jumped up and then I fell in the street. She's a big girl. 

And she IS a girl.

Today on our walk we walked by someone who very confidently said, "Good boy!!!"

This happens all the time. 

I think it's because she's a dog and all dogs are boys, especially big dogs. They're definitely boys. That all makes sense scientifically. 

Why do you think our brains do that?

 

Teaching kids important stuff like sunsets

I accidentally have been training my kids to love and appreciate sunsets (and sunrises if we ever make that happen). Everytime I see a good sunset, I yell to the kids, "Look at this sunset! Look at how beautiful it is! Look at all the colors" and then we look and everyone says, "wow, that's a nice sunset" or something like that and then we list all the colors we see. For a while we'd watch the sunset every day when driving home from daycare and after a while I noticed that sometimes before I'd even look up at the sky Clara would yell, "look! look at that sunset!" When it started getting darker later and the sun would still be pretty high in the sky on the way home, she'd say with much concern, "mom, but where is the sunset?'

That's probably one of the best things I've accidentally taught them. Hope you find some beauty somewhere and accidentally help other people do the same. 

Here are a few decent ones recently: