Daily Report: Unhatched Chickens and Loud Voices

I'm depressed. Stupid and depressed. Mostly depressed.

The latest date both the IRS and New York State promised me that my tax refunds would arrive was yesterday... Tuesday. Therefore, my life today was supposed to be filled with all kinds of exciting little purchases and joys and reliefs and maybe just a few carefree hours where I could say, "Screw work." Of course, my money hasn't arrived.

To make matters worse, having gotten paid on Friday, and expecting money on either Monday or Tuesday, I went out and was a little too improvident with my cash this past weekend. Therefore I've gone from the expectation of rolling in dough today to the reality of (short-term) poverty.

I'm taking it surprisingly hard actually: I realized recently that I haven't even left my room for 3 days, except to give Pot his medicine (see below), and have slept 12 hours yesterday and today. (I've still managed to keep up a moderate work level though... so thats something.)

I'm not sad or anxious or angry... just deflated. Well... the money will arrive eventually.

Anyway, moving on...

Pot had a toothache tonight while his mom was out. He was crying, so Go and I tried to give him some crushed aspirin in sweetened milk. He wouldn't take it... although he has taken it so many times before that he knows it works like magic. Instead, he wanted to sit on his bedroom floor and cry.

So, Go and I decided to just ignore him. After about 20 minutes of trying and failing to get him to drink the spoonful of milk, we left him alone with the medicine and told him that we had done everything we could to help him, and he was now on his own.

Of course, being ignored just made Pot furious, and he started screaming and ranting and raising one hell of a ruckus. I let that go on for about 10 minutes.

Then I came out of my room and with my biggest, loudest shout... and in English (because Pot can't understand it, so it's just a sonic boom) yelled "Eat your medicine Pot before I shove it down your throat!!!" Well, the force of my voice sent Pot back about 2 steps, and then I went and picked up the spoonful of medicine, asked Pot politely in Thai to eat his medicine, and Pot swallowed it without a word. Then I picked up Pot and sat with him on the bed, and gave him a tissue and within 2 minutes, he had stopped crying.

It's easy to forget that Pot never hears anything but nasally little Thai voices all the time. His mother can get really loud when she's angry, but in the speaker world, she's the tweeter... I'm the subwoofer. If you're a tiny 5 year old kid, and you have a 220-pound angry subwoofer coming at you putting out 90 decibels, you tend to forget about everything else in the world real quick.

Anyway, I'm not spanking Pot anymore. The couple of times I have spanked him, I didn't like how I felt after doing it: It's similar to how I used to feel after I got in fights at school when I was a kid — adrenalized, jumpy, and nervous. I still will give Pot a swat in the head when he does something stupid... but it's more an action than an impact. Now, I guess I'll stick with yelling.

Besides: I'm going to sign Pot up for Tae Kwon Do classes at the start of the next school year, and he'll be able to kick my ass in short order... but not able... never able... to out-yell me.