Circus Clowns Visit Sick Boy (circa 1934).
Totally the stuff of later nightmares.

Yesterday on the way to lacrosse practice my 13yo son G- ran out of steam. We were driving towards the practice field and I could just see him collapse, and when he tilted the car seat back and put his arm across his eyes and complained about fuzzy vision, I called it and turned around. Heading home, I texted my older girl (16) that we’d changed plans and were en route back, to which she responded “uh oh, I’m feeling mediocre and K- is looking pretty pale too.”

Arriving home I didn’t find either girl in a particularly bad state but my boy? It was like he’d hit a brick wall without an airbag. He was completely wiped out and promptly went upstairs and collapsed in a dark room, only to resurface for about 30min the entire night. This morning, after 12hrs of him sleeping almost the entire time, he’s still looking pretty wan, though at least he’s moving around and not crying about his stomach and headache.

To add to the fun, however, A-, my 16yo, has gotten the same bug and is also home from school this morning — and just a few days left before summer break! — complaining about her stomach and general lethargy. Fortunately, the little one woke up peppy and ready for school, and she, at least, is enjoying one of her very last days of third grade. Yup, they’re all poised to bump up a level in school, and this autumn I’ll have an 11th grader, an 8th grader and a 4th grader. Yegads.

It’s crazy hard to have sick children when they’re too young to manage their own ailment and I have vivid memories of caring for babies and toddlers with various ailments, memories strong enough to make me exhausted just thinking about them. But we’re parents, we persevere and hope that tomorrow will be easier and more restful than today, right?

At these ages, however, the good news is that they can manage the yechy stuff and it’s been a really long time since I’ve had to deal with any gross cleanups that parents don’t tell other adults about lest the human race come to an abrupt, screeching halt. Indeed, we have a secret phrase now “can someone get the bowl for me, please?”

Yeah, that’s how parenting works. ‘nuf said on that topic.

What’s really changed is that as they’ve gotten older, the experience of nursing them has changed from a sort of high-intensity energy black hole to something far more manageable. As a 2yo, I’d have had to hold and cuddle them non-stop. No break, not even when they were dozing. Now, however, they’re more self-contained, more able to come up with things to break the boredom. Much nicer. Now it’s “here’s a new book and some soup, sorry you’re feeling poorly.”

Every time any of my children are sick I am also reminded how blessed we are with generally good health and I am grateful that 90% of the time — or more — the worst we deal with is an evening that’s a bit short on sleep or someone who forgot to eat lunch and is a bit grumpy.

Now if they can all just get better, we’ve got a big weekend planned…

But it’s not just here that’s pretty, it’s our planet. Really, if you take a deep breath, slow down and think about it for a minute or two, Earth is a pretty astonishing place, an extraordinary planet that offers stunning vistas, amazing sunsets, beautiful terrain and quite varied bioclimes.

Which is all the more reason why it’s painful to read of weather related and other natural tragedies like the terrible tornado that leveled the sleepy little town of Moore, Oklahoma. Man-made disasters sometimes feel like our own collective hubris or greed, but when Mother Nature just turns her wrath on us, the results can be quite devastating and deadly.

The photo above? That’s what some brave soul in Oklahoma photographed then, one hopes, ducked inside and found shelter before it arrived.

Initial reports have between 25 and 50 people killed from the Moore tornado — a tornado that was over a 1/2-mile wide, with 200mph winds — including a number of children who were taking shelter at their local elementary school, along with their teachers.

Weather happens and we can’t control it. But we’re not powerless. You can do what I did: donate a few dollars to a charity that can help get some relief to the locals, to help them try to rebuild their lives and to be able to mourn the loss of so many people from their town, so many children, without having to live in a tent or tiny FEMA trailer.

Me? I donated the equivalent of a few meals out to the American Red Cross to help them out. I can’t jump in my car and help dig out or rebuild, but I can help in just this one small way.

Now, how about you? Isn’t it your turn to help out? Just click…

Booyah!

Those of you who are paying attention to my weight journey here on my blog will recall that my goal for my four months on Nutrisystem was to be “around 240 pounds”. Well, with two weeks left to go I’m sure getting close. In fact, as you can see from my Withings reading this week, I’m at 243.1 which means it’s not much of a step to get down to 242.

Actually, if 1.8 pounds is my average weight loss, I should be able to slip in just under 240 by the time I hit my 16 week mark. Amazing.

I’ve also been using a really slick Withings WS30 wifi scale that calculates weight, body mass index (even though that’s probably a fairly useless measure, as I’ve written about before) and percentage of body fat. All useful to track and the online graphs and mobile app make it fun and easy. But this week a new Withings scale showed up, the WS50. This one’s black instead of white (see pic below) and adds a few more interesting data points: heart rate and air quality.

Yes, it’s sitting on the floor in the bathroom and it’s measuring air quality.

Withings WS-50 Smart Body Analyzer

Hmmm… did they think that through? :-)

Actually, it’s measuring CO2 — carbon monoxide — levels and while I can’t find an hour-by-hour measure through the app, the scale itself shows this data and it’s fascinating to see how in the middle of the night my CO2 is at zero, while in the middle of the day it’s high enough for the scale to flag “bad” air quality. Meanwhile, 40′ away, my high-end Kidde CO2 detector hasn’t budged from its reading of 0 since I installed it (see my video). I’ll be asking Withings what it all means, needless to say.

Oh! And last week I said I’d post a photo of the slimmer me. Here I am, and this is from a few weeks ago:

Now it’s time to finish my smoothie and get to the gym for my daily workout!

Want to lose weight and get healthy on Nutrisystem? Join today by calling 888-853-4689 or by visiting Nutrisystem.com

As Samuel Clemens is reputed to have said, “ I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” That rather applies here: it’s easier for me to natter on for a few hundred words about what family and happiness means to me, but in 140 characters? That’s, like, a tweet, man.

Then again, I think I can handle it, having sent over 20,000 tweets on my @DaveTaylor twitter account. Indeed, here’s my first stab:

Hmm… or…

I dunno, maybe that first one’s better.

Or…

Dunno. Which one? Which do you think is a better entry in their competition? If I win, I could score a new iPad Mini. And who doesn’t want an iPad Mini? :-)

Princess Merida, Before and After

First off, you can see that the style of illustration is different, Merida from the original film looks almost like claymation or some other stop motion animation figure (especially in the rounded face) while the more traditional hand-drawn illustration on the right — the “new improved” Merida — has a slimmer waist and more mature facial features. She’s also traded her practical leather belt that holds her quiver of arrows for a more fanciful belt that looks a bit like a prize from the County Fair.

Is she more buxom in the new illustration? Maybe, or maybe not. Is she slimmer? Definitely. But not by much.

But otherwise, what do you see that’s so different that over 110,000 people have been inspired to sign a change.org petition asking Disney to “restore Merida” to her original Brave appearance? Original Brave writer Brenda Chapman (who was fired from the production before it made it to the theaters) claims the makeover is “blatant sexism”. She explains, in florid rhetoric:

“I think it’s atrocious what they have done to Merida. When little girls say they like it because it’s more sparkly, that’s all fine and good but, subconsciously, they are soaking in the sexy ‘come hither’ look and the skinny aspect of the new version. It’s horrible! Merida was created to break that mold — to give young girls a better, stronger role model, a more attainable role model, something of substance, not just a pretty face that waits around for romance.”

That would be all well and good if the original Merida in the animated feature had been overtly heavy and dressed as a tomboy, but if you look at the image above, Merida was always a pretty young woman dressed in the romanticized period garb of a peasant woman. Yes, perhaps Disney might not have needed to give the new Merida a slimmer waist, but otherwise when I look at the two images above, I don’t see that dramatic a difference, and as a father to two girls, one 16, one 9, I am very sensitized to the sexualization of women in our culture and especially those presented as “role models” by companies.

My take: If I were Disney I’d quietly let the new Merida snarf a few bacon cheeseburgers and milk shakes to end up with a princess whose waist line and bust line are a bit more similar, but otherwise the eyes really aren’t “big and sultry” and the hair looks about as wild as it does in the original film. In other words, much ado about precious little.

What’s your opinion on this brouhaha?

I have found that my whole approach to eating and food has changed for the better, but, to be completely honest, I haven’t become the World’s Healthiest Eater. Probably an unrealistic expectation, but seeking to continue traveling down that road is good.

A few friends came over yesterday and we sat around playing some fun, lightweight games (Eight Minute Empire and Zombie Dice) while munching on chips and salsa. Not a big deal, but I like noshing and it’s definitely a caloric danger zone of mine. Retrospectively, I probably should have switched to a bowl of carrots or something similar because tortilla chips have an alarming number of calories, even the healthy stuff. I had organic “Garden of Eating” red corn tortilla chips in the bowl and every 11 chips is 140 calories. Yeah, yikes. And that bowl of chips consumed at a Mexican place while waiting for your food?  An easy 500-800 calories, I’m sure.

One thing that I have changed is that I simply don’t buy foods that are that awful combination of tempting and unhealthy for me anywhere near as much. It’s a bit more wasteful, but if my son gets pizza with a friend and there are leftover slices after they’re gone, I throw them away rather than be tempted to have one (or two or three) as a mid-afternoon snack. Better wasteful than waistful, right?

According to FourSquare, I have now gone to the gym 50 of the last 60 days, so that combined with the easy Nutrisystem foods should help me continue to lose weight at a good 1-2 pounds/week rate.

My target weight for this last month of Nutrisystem is 240 pounds, which would represent almost 30 pounds lost in less than 5 months. Honestly, if I can do this, you can too, whether it’s Nutrisystem or another approach. Just do it, don’t debate, don’t waffle about it, don’t argue yourself out of it.

And now, I have to get back to the gym and listen to the audio book Brave New World while burning off those tortilla chips.

Want to lose weight and get healthy on Nutrisystem? Join today by calling 888-853-4689 or by visiting Nutrisystem.com

The rules were simple: they sent us a bag of Cheetos Mix-Ups Cheezy Salsa snack mix (a combination of four different flavors and styles of crisp cheese snacks: Crunchy Salsa Picante, Cheddar Puffs, Chipotle Cheddar Grids and Jalapeño Cheddar Mini-Puffs) and we had to make “cheesy” art out of it.

After some exploration and brainstorming, I was ready to crush the different flavors to make different color sand (essentially) and try my hand at a Mondrian or, when I was feeling particularly ambitious for a few minutes, a Van Gogh, possibly Starry Night. Yeah, that didn’t last long.

Meanwhile, my genius children A- (16) and G- (13) had decided on a cheetah face, and what better surface to create it on than the box from a cheese pizza we had delivered?

So here we are, step by step, producing our cheesy portrait of Chester Cheetah!

First up, the raw materials, in all their glorious colors:

We actually ended up sorting them so we could work faster, but initially it was like a sort of rainbow of moon rocks or something, a really interesting texture. And to think, I wanted to crush them all down to powder. Moon dust. Yeah. Not so much.

Then A- copied the cartoon cheetah face onto the pizza box:

She’s such a talented artist, she didn’t think twice about resizing the image to fit the box as she went. :-)

Once she was done. G- took over and inked it with a permanent marker so we could see what we were doing:

Once he was done we were ready to start arranging the different flavors and shapes of Cheetos to fit as best we could:

Different colors made it far more interesting, as you can see in this photo in process:

Once we finished spelling out Chester’s name, it was time for a quick Instagram break:

Back to work it didn’t take too long to fill in the missing pieces, and voila! The finished masterpiece:

I’m impressed with the creativity and imagination of my kids. Not only did they help me create this (well, they kinda did most of the work) but they didn’t snarf down all the Cheetos along the way.

Now, Life of Dad, is this a winning cheesy art piece or what? And as for you, dear reader, go check out all the entries in the contest. Amazing. That’s a lotta Cheetos!

Disclaimer: Life of Dad sent us the Cheetos. That’s it. No money, no gift cards, no obligation to even eat the entire bag of cheese snacks. Just a bag of Cheetos. In a big white box.

Nowhere is that more of a problem than with the program Snapchat. It’s the ultimate in transient data: you post images to share with your friends and after ten seconds, just like the cheesy intro to Mission: Impossible, the images self-destruct and vanish. No evidence, no trace, no regrets.

Right?

Wrong. In a completely unsurprising turn of events, a forensics company out of Orem, Utah has published an exploit that demonstrates how smartphones that are running Snapchat actually save all the images in a folder called RECEIVED_IMAGES_SNAPS, using an Android / iPhone trick to “hide” the image.

It’s a good reminder to all of us that the “delete” feature on the Internet is really more akin to a “hide” feature and that every image you post, every status update you submit, every geo-checkin you do should be considered as part of your permanent digital record.

It’s the latest generation of an adage that the online world has talked about for many years: Don’t say something online that you wouldn’t want published in the New York Times. Now we just get to expand that to include photos shared, comments left, status updates and every other element that combine to create the cyber-potpourri that we call The Internet.

In the words of Sergeant Esterhaus from Hill Street Blues, “Let’s be careful out there.”

Part of that is related to some bullying incidents earlier in my life, but a lot of it is simply a reflection that I think most people are peaceful and non-violent at heart. I mean, would you prefer arguing with your kids and getting angry or playing a game with them and sharing a laugh and some bonding time? Yeah, I thought so.

And yet the latest addition to Chez Taylor this weekend is a boxing setup, courtesy of my son G-’s accumulated gift cards and Dick’s Sporting Goods being the right store at the right time with the right display. We even jammed the (unassembled, don’t worry) bag and stand in the back of the SUV with a full-size cello. A tight fit, but what a perfect metaphor for the curious nature of life as a parent.

Truth be told, I have zero tolerance for my children hitting each other or hitting other kids (other than playful sparring or scuffles, which I think are healthy and necessary if they’re not overwhelming to either party). They can hit me, but hey, I hit back (gently, don’t worry). A life lesson.

Nonetheless life can be frustrating and sometimes there is upset, anger — even fury — that builds up inside and whether you’re 10, 18 or 50, where does it go? What do you do when that energy is boiling inside of you? I’ve learned to take it to the gym and sweat it out so I can get back to a healthy mental state, but for my children, learning how to deal with these emotional tsunamis is a tremendous lesson.

And so we’re now the proud owners of an Everlast boxing bag and heavy-duty stand that just barely fits in our basement room. Now we officially have something that they can kick, punch, smack and yell at, without any dire consequences. Maybe even a baseball bat in extreme cases, but I’m not sure the bag can handle it.

The most entertaining part of this whole experience was that G-, my 13yo son actually survived having his little sister K- help us assemble the unit. It was a fine example of why something like this can be so healthy: He kept grumbling at her about wanting to keep the unit pristine as we assembled it and she basically ignored him, as is her wont. By the time we had it built, he was primed to fly at it and get that frustration out with a flurry of kicks and punches. Subsequently, the two of them were more mellow with each other than I’d seem them the entire weekend.

Score: Dad: 1. Boxing bag: 1. Hostile kids: 0.

We’ll see how it plays out, but for now, this is something I’ve thought about getting for the kids for quite a long time, since before the divorce even. Because whatever the household dynamics, children get mad and it’s up to us parents to not just tell them how to deal with those emotions, but demonstrate through our own behavior how adults channel anger, frustration, stress, disappointment, etc.

Speaking of which, where are those gloves…?

This week I was a bit surprised to find that I lost less than a pound compared to last week’s weight, weighing in at 247.0 pounds, but that’s how it goes some weeks. I figure that if things stay on schedule, next week I’ll be down a few pounds, which is good. For now, however, the Withings scale teeters between 246.9 and 247.0. Given that my new goal is 240 pounds by my birthday (August), I think it’s quite attainable. 12 weeks to lose 7 pounds? I can do that faster!

Because of the oddities of timing and deliveries, I’m starting week 13 of Nutrisystem and am still waiting for my fourth month food shipment to arrive. But it’s okay, I have another week’s worth of food in this batch. The upside? Four months of Nutrisystem is going to last at least 18 weeks, if not 20. Which means I should be able to get down to 240 before that 16 weeks of food have run out.

Meanwhile, I’ve really changed my behaviors in this first three months, now getting to the gym just about every single day, rain or shine, for 45+ minute workouts, which has not only helped me drop my body fat percentage (from 31% down to 29%) but has undoubtedly improved my cardiovascular health too. Truth be told, at my starting weight of almost 270lb and sedentary lifestyle I was at serious risk of heart problems.

But now? Definitely on my way to being considerably more healthy.

And next week we’ll see if I can hit 245. Who knows. And I’ll post a full torso photo too, so you can see what I’m talking about!

Want to lose weight and get healthy on Nutrisystem? Join today by calling 888-853-4689 or by visiting Nutrisystem.com