Note

Testing, testing, one, two, three.

Alright, it's 8.46 am on day March 2nd. On the 101 North about to exit on to the 580 to get on the Richmond San Rafael Bridge. Feeling a bit tired and sluggish this morning. The weather changed a little. Or a lot, maybe there's a lot of winds. There's a lot of winds last night. And it has seemed to... Like, my opinion, warm up. So that... I don't know the actual weather report in which direction the winds would come in. They seemed pretty strong and... Last night, I could hear them in the windows. So, yeah, but anyway. What happened over the weekend? Well, I'm going to work backwards here. It's Monday, so yesterday was Sunday. And I took Leila to San Francisco, and we had kind of a... Our own day together where... I didn't tell her, but I parked at Chrissy Field so that I knew we could walk all the way to Fisherman's Wharf from that direction. And... I got my exercise in, and she got fun in and talking to daddy. That was fun. We made a lot of jokes together. We went to Bubblegumps first. She had popcorn shrimp, and I had flounder with rice. And after Bubblegumps, and Bubblegumps is on Pier 39, Fisherman's Wharf, essentially. And then after Bubblegumps, we walked over to the Ripley's Believer, not Museum. And I guess she was too young at the time to remember, but... And maybe Kareem was... Maybe about a year older than she was at the time. I can't remember, but we went. There was no one in the museum. It was really nice. We had to laugh and cringe at all the stuff that's on display there. I remember walking through this like optical illusion hallway tunnel kind of thing, and the room spins, and you feel the walls spin around you while you're walking across the bridge. And it's definitely a dizzying effect. But anyway, after the museum we walked to Jerodellie Square, and I had some ice cream. I had a scoop of black cherry vanilla, and Lulu had a root bear float with chocolate chip cookie, or cookie dough ice cream. So yeah. And again, Jerodellie ice cream parlor was totally empty. It was a really nice just us there, no one else. And... Very peaceful and we walked all the way back. She was tired, but laughing. But as we were in the Jerodellie kind of mall area, decided to buy Kareem and Lulu. I mean, she wanted something from a store. So we got Kareem this block that you put together. It looks like a Rubik's cube, but it's not really Rubik's cube. It's just something made out of wood. And it's colored, and you put it back together. Or you can make new shapes out of it. That's what I'd like to see. And then Laila got some gel pens and a Mad Libs set. And she was writing Mad Libs all the way home. It was fun, laughing. We stopped off at the pizza in the way home. And she got a bagel and I got a hibiscus tea. We went to the city because Kareem and Heidi were doing their own thing today. She decided she wanted to take him zip lining because he had been begging for it. And I'm guessing it's a week before his birthday. So I guess that's why she did it. But again, the winds were really crazy. So apparently I wouldn't have been able to go. There was a 150 pound maximum on the zip lines because of the wind. So yeah. But they were about 300 feet up in the air. You know, in the Redwood canopy of Sonoma County. About five minutes outside of Oxidental. And yeah. They had a lot of fun together. Sorry. It's an easy one. Should that sound of the phone on the mic? What else? Next. Come on. Saturday. Kareem had a basketball game. They got their first win. He played. The team. I forgot their name, but they were undefeated. And I. I was on the other team. Jonathan, Catello. And he's one of our neighbor kids and a Quincy. And he's a happy and micless son. He's really good. They had good moves. I think they lacked teamwork because there's a bunch of showbos. But that's okay. They'll figure that. And so what else? I didn't really get to do a lot of woodworking as much as I wanted, because I'm still trying to figure out if I ordered. So I'm trying to build my broad boards. And I think I may have bought two thin of a stock for the loose tenons. I think maybe I need to order one that's, you know, what's it? One eighth of an inch thicker. Yeah, I ordered three eighths inch thickness. I think perhaps I need half inch thickness. So, I mean, the recommendation is that if you're, if you're, I'm at an inch and a half thickness for my panel. And the recommendation is if it's over an inch, they even recommend that it should be at least a half inch. So I'm trying to decide if I should stick with the three eighths inch stock or go one up. Now, I should say it's obviously not. It's only structural in the sense that I don't want my breadboard sagging one day. And I think a sagging breadboard is, yeah, would partly be due to, um, a loose breadboard. And I think they can be fixed. But in addition to that, I think there, there would have to be some warping of the tenon stock as well. Uh, so, or you're not using a loose tenon and you're using quarter song, quarter song, but, um, there, there must be some going in the actual tenons themselves. But, um, more, more likely, loose than anything else. So, maybe that's the first thing I need to do is order, um, new tenon stock probably should have done that. Probably should have done it. There's got to be, be locked tenon stock somewhere else other than Rockwood. I mean, that's just so lame that I got to order three of you guys and takes forever. I don't think it took like ten days to get here because UPS pushed it to the max. Because they, you know, you didn't, I mean, they really do push it to the edge. So, seven days, probably if it would be normally post office three days. So, that's kind of, that's really annoying. Um, I could ask James if he knows of this story and if it's post bi, and if it is, maybe he could just buy it for me. Um, but yeah, that's, that's a whole different, he's probably not in the air, conquered the way I think he is. Um, so anyway, what else Friday was when I saw Dr. Stern and a couple of things was trying to tell her that I had a stressful week, but I was awkwardly laughing through it all. Not laughing, but I guess she thinks it's laughing. I'm, you know, she, if she knew me better, she would know that I'm, I'm really just, you know, I don't know what else to do. There's, you know, I'm just tossing my hands up, what's done is done, kind of laughing. I certainly can't be upset about it anymore because that's it. So, um, and I'm about to go see my work on display at the art wall. But, uh, I'm, um, but she, you know, she, she said, why are you laughing? And I, and there's obviously this hair about her that I'm struggling with, which is, she, she, she honestly comes across like a very strict, you know, kind of parent almost. And so perhaps that's what's motivating me to kind of follow what she has to say. But yeah, I'm not, I'm not really sure. But yeah, my gut reaction was, what the hell? What are you talking about? Why, why am I not allowed to laugh at something that's stressful? And she, I didn't say that. I said, well, what do you want me to say? I mean, what's done is done. I can't, I can't change the past. I can't not, you know, and, and I knew that if I just calm down for five seconds, I could figure out a solution. And, and then once I figure out a solution, I'll feel better. So, to me, it makes no sense to cry over spilled milk, because that's all it is is spilled milk. The last milk in the world. And no one got hurt. So, I mean, she didn't really push that, but we kind of put a pin in it, I think, or at least I could, you know, she didn't really have anything more to say. But, she, you know, she would ask probing questions, but I was also very talkative. I think, you know, the conversation transitioned into, you know, because I was trying to figure out why, why am I, you know, she, she wanted me to explore why I wasn't, why I didn't, why I was apprehensive or perhaps not even, why I personally don't, I, I'm, I discourage myself from expressing the feelings as they come, like letting, you know, emotion come first. And, we explored, you know, maybe, you know, it had something to do with my upbringing, not really sure, you know, she, she wanted to know if, you know, I, I kind of talked about how I was raised very strictly. And so, she seemed to think that that had a lot to do with it. I told her how I wasn't allowed to say, oh God, in the family, you know, and at the same time, you know, I was raised with a strict Muslim kind of way, even though I thought there were those who were raised stricter. And she seemed to think, then she asked me, you know, like I told her about how I went off to, to Muslim camp. And, and she's like, did you, you know, so you didn't want to go to that. And I was like, no, no way did I want to go to that. And, well, she's like, did, did your mom want you to go to it? And I was like, yeah, she wanted me to go. She was planning it with another friend and I, and, and so, yeah. And she's like, so did you ever tell your mother you didn't want to go? I was like, not really. It wouldn't have mattered. I probably did, but I can't remember. I didn't protest enough. I was like, so you did it for your mother, not for yourself. It's like, yeah, I knew that. It would make her happy. So I did that. And she knew I didn't want to go because like, I mean, I tried to get kicked out. And she, she saw how they weren't going to kick me out and everything. And so, you know, we, and, and then she, she just, we basically, she said, we explored really why I was trying to, why I had this like willing to please attitude with my mother. And, um, she seemed to think that I was, not giving myself enough time and space and room to be in, be my emotional self or, or, you know, to just be myself. It was her impression that I was raised very strictly. And, uh, there was no room to disagree. And she asked, um, you know, why did you want to please your mother? And I was like, well, it was my impression that, you know, I could take away her pain from, you know, or at least I, I knew I wasn't stupid enough to think I could take away her pain, but I didn't want to cause any more pain. And, uh, so that was just what I could try and do for her. But that's, that's what put me in, in this situation of ending up doing things that I didn't want to do and creating, you know, obviously, sense of frustration that I got to live with. Not just frustration, I'm sure there's a lot more. She's like, it sounds like, you know, and then she asked, was my mother like this before my father died? I was like, no way. She was social butterfly happy, good lucky. You know, always smiles. And I just wanted that back. There were times when we did have it back, but not always. And, uh, I have a feeling we're going to explore more of this or I'm not done with this. I think there's a lot of mother guilt that I have. I'm sure I'm creating it for Korean, father guilt. If you over here this one day, Korean, I'm sorry. It's a human condition. You know, if you don't do this to your kids, in some ways, you're going to feel as apparently you don't love them. But what's more important is that when they're old enough to think for themselves, you let them do it. So hopefully one day. What else? Yeah, so I concluded basically that my awkward laughter was, you know, this. I was actually frustrated, but did not feel like I could express those frustrations because I either didn't want to repeat what I saw growing up, which was, you know, my guilt around my own, you know, irrational feelings were like, if I feel, something that's rationality is questionable, I feel like frustrated because it just broke a piece of glass that's replaceable and not urgent. I air on the side of, come on, compose yourself. Don't, don't, don't lose your shit over this. And I probably could be giving myself a little bit more room over this than I'm allowing. And so yeah, I think that's what's going on there. But anyway, I'm at, I'm at safe right now. I'm going to go to the bathroom before I go to work and then, yeah, park. Out.