Top: Ava, Tyler, Markus
Bottom: Kaya, Gia, Elliot, Jake
Who’s Picky: I just found out my wife, Terry, all of a sudden doesn’t like potatoes in soup. She enjoys good french fry, a well prepped tater dish, but doesn’t like taters in soup. This is new. I’m picky but consistent. If I don’t like something, I don’t like it. But she can like a dish one month and a month later be sick of it. And she can like a food prepared one way but not another. And I’m not talking preference, but “delicious/disgusting” dichotomy. There’s no middle ground. Cooking for her is an existential nightmare (ok, not really, that’s hy”Terry”bole).
Kaya waiting for a rebound
The Plastic Spoon: We used to give our girls metal spoons for lunch for applesauce, peach cups, or whatnot, but they’d lose them after one or two days. So we went to plastic spoons.
Environmental Dilemma: I’ve heard the plastic in the sea outweighs the fish, I have no idea if this is true, but the point is there’s too much plastic. So rather than throw ’em out, or recycle (which is overrated and inefficient), I’ve tried to get my daughters to bring them home. Fail. They thought washing and reusing plastic spoons was “gross.” Well, we solved it, they take metal spoons and have learned to bring them back. We may be destroying the planet, but not as quickly as we otherwise would.
Pudding: My wife’s pickiness does not apply to chocolate pudding. Sunday evening mom brought home a container, we have a little, but there’s a viking’s portion leftover. Next day girls come home from school and discover an empty plastic pudding container (we recycle them, as much as I’ve tried to talk my wife into using plastic containers as bowls) in the trash. I told ’em the “pudding momster” must have eaten it.
Then and Now
Small World: In the 50s my mother and John Dankowski went to the same high school in New Jersey. Fifteen years later they bumped on a street in Taipei. John has known me since birth. We’re still in touch.
Photos: My dad sent me the collage on the right.
Top Left: 1970, Taiwan, Dad, me, John Dankowski w/his wife.
Top Right: Dad & John
Middle Left: 1970 Dad holding sister Sarah, John’s wife holding me.
Middle Right: 1970 Mom, Dad, Sarah, me.
Bottom Left: 2004, Taipei Del Christy (I met Del in the UAE) & John (who, except for a couple years, never left)
Bottom Right: 2003 Woodinville. Wedding w/Terry, little sis Min, bro-in-law Somjait, Mom.
Notes of a Sexist Stay-at-home Father 