First off, The Kid decided to run and go and tripped and fell. She hit her elbow on her door frame. There’s a small cut that she took forever to let me clean and bandage, but she’s gonna be in more pain tomorrow from whacking it at high speeds on a door jam.
We left the house today to run some errands and came home to find my dog ACQUIRED A HAM BONE AND LEFT BITS AND PIECES THROUGHOUT THE HOUSE.
I have to go back to work tomorrow after two glorious days off, only to have to deal with my least favorite time of the week. It’s a time consuming task and basically takes all day.
The Hubs got me a diamond painting kit that includes ten small (3in x 3in) canvas based on space.
It took me too days but I finished the first one and I’m hooked. Now, if I can stop losing the little “diamonds”.
My sister said she didn’t know what to get me and ended up fueling my addiction to stationary getting me a nice leather journal and pens. I want to start writing in it but I don’t want to ruin it with my usual nonsense. I’ll think of something good.
My truck hasn’t been started in like five days and I’m sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it’ll be freezing in there. Honestly I’ll be surprised if she starts.
Yes it’s a she.
I’m gonna start working on the next drawing challenge soon, but I wanna do some research on the topic first. And plan for the video’s content. If I’m gonna keep doing it I need to at least improve.
These last few days of very little stress have been a beacon of joy for me. I have had slightly less tummy issues, and it’s nice to not have to worry about work. And knowing the holiday season is over (except, that is, for the clearance) just makes me happy.
Like any good, well-intentioned parent I told myself, before I had kids, that I would not let my child spend its time with its nose in a device.
And like most parents that was a bold faced lie. “No devices” is a fib we unwittingly tell ourselves because we want nothing but the best for our children. But then we ourselves spend all our time with our noses in a device. And guess what?
THEY LEARN FROM US. Children learn by seeing and hearing someone else do it. That’s one of the first ways humans learn. So they see us with a device and they want one too!
My child divides her (device) time between YouTube Kids and Roblox. I have her Roblox account set (I’m pretty sure) so she cannot communicate with strangers. I need to double check that.
But YouTube Kids is pretty well half decent filtered content. But as a grown adult person who has used and posted on The Tube, I have seen some things that can slip through the cracks.
So I decided I would “look into” some of her favorite YouTubers. My first victim—I uh mean subject is LogDotZip.
What’s The Kid Think?
Of course my child’s opinion of the YouTuber in question is important. Of course I could have just written down what she had to say. And of course it would have took less time. But why would I deny you the sound of my child’s sleepy voice? That’s all you get, internets. Her voice.
Who is ‘LogDotZip’?
Image “borrowed” from Tubefilter.com
Before getting into the deep research into who this feller is, let’s first state what I know. By side-eyeing The Kid’s device screen, I can gather that he is an expressive, chatty, Minecraft player. He has made her laugh a few times, and his videos are some of the few that she will either watch in their entirety or over again.
When you google “LogDotZip” the first things that come up are, of course, links to YouTube videos. The next thing that comes up is Google’s helpful “People Also Ask” feature. And the first thing right off the bat is his name. “Who is Tyler Pappas?”
Of course I knew his real name isn’t LogDotZip, which, by the way, google has informed me is his gamer tag, which he derived from “LordofGods” which comes from “Yu-Gi-Oh”. After he tweaked it so as to not offend anyone, and added .zip, it became LogDotZip.
To be perfectly frank, the first time I heard The Kid say the name I thought it was jibberish. Lucky for him he picked something super unique.
Mostly because he turned a fun time with some games into a business.
Tyler Pappas now owns what appears to be multiple companies, all because he became popular playing games on the Internet.
I also found an article from 2018 on Tubefilter.com, where he discussed starting out playing RuneScape at 14 years old. It took years for him to start playing Minecraft where he really developed a fan base.
The four year old article also talks about some plans to work with Microsoft (who own Minecraft) and the original creators of the game. This turned out to be his own game, which was released on MineCraft Marketplace, called Block Island. I can only assume my child doesn’t know about it, or else she would have said, “Mommy I wanna play that.”
But lets get to the real dirt shall we? What’s the fastest way to find out what you can about a perfect stranger? Social Media of course! And Mr Pappas has an Instagram!
I have learned several things scrolling through his instagram. First of all dude is in his 30s. I would have guesstimated him to be mid to late twenties at the most. That means half his life has been on YouTube in some form.
Second. He as a beautiful family, who he spends lots of time with. He posted an image from December 2021 where he met some fans. LogDotZip, which is the name of his company, hit 30 staff members that same year.
A quick glance at the only valid next social media site, Twitter, shows me that he is religious. As someone who is decidedly and wholly open about being absolutely not religious, I’m not mad. Or judging. From what I’ve seen he doesn’t seem to put any of it into his videos. But he does display it, not overly, in his social media presence. Which he has every right.
Okay, so I’ve found absolutely nothing to tell me to immediately go block this dude from my child’s YouTube Kid’s account. The next logical step is it *shudders* watch his videos.
The Viewing
While I enjoy playing Minecraft myself, I tend to not watch videos about it, and I also don’t typically watch videos that might be made for kids. That’s not to say that I don’t watch absolutely ridiculous stuff there either. But, it’s time to stop avoiding the high possibility that I will completely ruin the YT algorithm and search for LogDotZip.
The first video that comes up is one from four years ago.
This video is about the number on piece of advice one has for a newbie playing Minecraft. DON’T DIG STRAIGHT DOWN, and when to completely ignore it. To make this short and sweet, you should never dig straight down because you might land yourself right into a situation that, well, might kill ya. From lava to a ravine. This particular video has over 33,000,000 views. If this man made a dollar off each view that’d be over 8 million dollars a year. I don’t know how getting rich of YouTube works, clearly, but that’s a lot.
This post is not about the things you should and shouldn’t do in Minecraft (I mostly just like to build and craft things), it is about the creator of the video. And the first thing I must make note of is one of the things briefly mentioned by The Kid in my video. Tyler Pappas’s voice. Dude has a voice fit for voice work. He has a unique voice that makes watching the video interesting. But he doesn’t do a simple voice over, he does a picture-in-picture type of situation where he floats himself up in the corner as he plays on the screen.
His facial expressions and reactions when something’s not working or doesn’t go the way he wants it too are kinda funny too. That adds to the watchability. I think it adds to it especially for my kid because let’s just say, momma has a funny face, and The Kid likes funny faces.
This video is almost right at 15:00 minutes long, and there wasn’t a single boring moment, there was always something happening, or he was saying or doing something dunny. He describes everything he’s doing and instructing on how things work.
From my brief scrolling and watching of his YouTube page, he does nothing but Minecraft videos there, and those videos are mostly mods or other code related features, and often reviews and detailed descriptions of new updates to the game.
With over fifteen years on YouTube, and more than one channel, the dude is doing something right, and I’ve not encountered anything that could be considered negative at all something children shouldn’t encounter.
While I’m not entirely comfortable with how much device time, whether it be YouTube Kids, Roblox, or whatever my child has, I can with mostly confidence say that I’m not mad at her watching just about anything LogDotZip or Tyler Pappas himself puts out.
Today’s Blog was going to be a “Draft Day” post, but to be honest, my head wasn’t in the game. So I thought I’d share a story from today.
But first some Backstory
I used to work with a woman named Patty. I can share her name here, cause reasons. Patty was, well, you know how people say, “Older people are set in their ways”? Well, Patty knew what she would tolerate and what she wouldn’t. Patty had good and bad qualities, as we all do.
Patty, once she learned that I had a degree in education, wanted me to get back into teaching. This was when I wasn’t so far removed from the profession that it would be like teaching a caveman how to twitter. She even provided a reference for me, for the single solitary time I interviewed for a teaching position (we all know how that worked out). Also, Patty was a teacher before she worked in retail.
Whatever Patty may or may not have been, she had a big heart when she opened it up to people. If she liked you, you knew it. Sometimes.
Anywho
I was doing some price changesretail related tasks when I heard a voice. “There she is.” I turned my head to see not one but two former coworkers. Lets call them Mildred Lane and Opal. If you know who I’m talking about that could be hilarious. Anyway, apparently these two were out and about running errands. If this is what retired former retail coworkers do then sign me up.
Anyway, Mildred Lane was talking about me when she’d said, “There she is.” Mildred Lane, who is Patty’s twin sister, had retired about a year ago because an injury that wouldn’t quite heal, I think. Opal, I think, had just had enough of Retail Establishment’s nonsense, and had retired about the same time.
Mildred Lane had something for me. She had found it when going through Patty’s things. You see, Patty, had always been kind of quiet about anything she was really struggling with, health wise. I think she was just raised to not talk about things like that. But after retiring (she retired a few years before these two had) her health went downhill quickly. I don’t know the details, but she passed last year.
While I wasn’t super close with Patty, and some of my memories of her weren’t always positive, there is one thing I will absolutely never forget about Patty. She LOVED my baby. She was so happy for me when I found out I was pregnant, she got us baby shower gifts, and she even got The Kid gifts for Christmas. One of her favorite books, “The Night Before Christmas” is from Patty.
One Christmas, during my first polymer clay phase, I made Patty this cat, modeled after what I thought her beloved cat looked like. He looks a little like a child made him but by golly I thought it looked good. And Patty seemed to like it.
But I knew what this thing was that Mildred Lane had for me. She’d been in the store just a short while after Patty passed. She told me she found this thing she had for me and needed to bring it to me.
And here she was, handing me a blue grocery bag with what I knew was a picture of my baby. Literally, a picture of baby The Kid. In a frame.
Baby The Kid, circa 1,000 years ago. In a Snow White dress. I still have that somewhere.
I remember the day the picture was taken, vaguely. I remember Patty asked me if she could take her picture, and she then proceeded to take it to the photo center and have a copy printed off. She’d told me she was going to frame it.
Now, I realize to an outsider this might sound kinda creepy. But at this stage I had known and worked closely with Patty for the better part of five years or more. She went from being someone I was a bit intimidated by (literally everyone for me for a long time) to someone “you just need to know how to handle”.
But the fact that Patty had a picture of my kid, framed, in her home, well, I think it would make anyone feel good to know that someone you know loves your child.
I told The Kid about someone bringing me something, and I showed her that it was the picture. She got a little emotional, I think. Even though she probably doesn’t remember Patty much, I have told her about her before. She said exactly what I knew she’d say. “I’m going to keep it in my room!” And she did. It is by her bed as she sleeps right now. HOLY CRAP ITS ALMOST MIDNIGHT.
Turned things around, a little.
I had been having a bad day. I had a bad day yesterday, and today had been shaping up to be about the same. This is both all my fault and not at all my fault. But when someone brought me a framed picture of my own child, a picture that someone chose to display and possibly look upon daily, well then, that pushed my day gently in the opposite direction.
If you do not know, I work retail and have for quite some time. And I tend to spend money at said place of employment. I buy my lunch there.
So when my paycheck hit my bank account. Well…
So I told myself I would only spend money on water or Gatorade. So the first thing I did when I walked in, before I clocked in, was buy a bottle of water. I’d meal prepped for the next three days the night before, so I was ready for the challenge.
But as I was waiting on my equipment for the day, I get a FaceTime call from The Hubs. The Kid was not acting herself and just wanted to sleep.
I informed my boss that I was leaving to be home with her.
The good news? I successfully spent very little money today.
Some background before the bad news.
Two days ago (Tuesday night) The Kid was complaining about her tooth hurting. I thought maybe she’d gotten something stuck in it, so I tried to look and didn’t see anything. She’s also quite squirmy. The more the evening went on the more it bothered her. I was off the next day (Wednesday) so we took her, as a team, to the dentist.
We thought she maybe had a back tooth coming in (it’s a top molar that’s bothering her) turns out, she has a chipped or cracked tooth (she’s a grinder) and she has a canker sore.
The dentist, who we are fans of, he’s great, sent us home with some medicine for the sore, and called in some antibiotics. He said she had some inflammation so it was to be safe.
We sent her to her grandmothers instead of daycare Thursday, and that evening we noticed she had some facial swelling. This morning (Friday) as he was getting her ready, The Hubs noticed her lethargy, and so I came home.
The bad news is that we took her to her regular doc (the dentist wasn’t in today) and she has some drainage, white spots all over her gums. They wrote her a stringer antibiotic, and were hoping to kick it soon.
She seems to be doing ok, and is playing now. And I’m sure she’s happy that she’s gotten to sleep in mom’s bed for two nights. Mom’s not thrilled, to be honest, but the snuggles are nice.
Almost falling out of bed… not so much.
But I do plan on sharing my recipe for my meal prep. It’s the best tasking thrown together just came up with thing I’ve ever made. The Kid even liked it.
She sees a thing and wants said thing. She’s had it in her head before, but it’s been a while. I’ve had to explain to her multiple times in the last 48 hours that it costs money we don’t have.
It goes without saying that she has, at least once, said, “But were RICH!”
I wish kid. I wish.
I understand that kids her age don’t really understand how hard money is to come by, or inflation and gas prices. But she’s just repeatedly reminding me how broke I am.
Even though she’s had some trouble the last year or so, she is an amazing kid, and she deserves all the things she wants in life. I just don’t have the means with which to give them to her.
But here’s how silly my child can be. She asked, when we were supposed to be going to sleep, if they (Build-a-Bear) has unicorns. Unicorns are the be all end all for her. I said I don’t know, probably. I told her if I were going to Build-a-Bear, of course I’d want to make one, I wonder if they have T-rex’s. She said, but what’s your favorite animal? BESIDES a TRex. I said, I dunno, a bird probably?
So we insisted that we look at their offerings. We saw a lot of animals, including a TRex and a velociraptor. We had to search for it, but we found a unicorn, and she loved it.
My hope and goal is to save up enough to take her to Build-a-Bear for her birthday. It’s toward the end of the year, so maybe about six months is enough time. The closest location to me, I believe is in Charleston. it would be an amazing thing to be able to give her.
This is not unusual she “hates” it. “I don’t want too!” She says.
So I gave her a warning. “You have until I get this bath run…”
So dad decides to walk in the room. I know full well he ain’t gonna be able to get her to do anything. And then I hear her crying over the sound of water running into the tub.
I go in there and cannot keep a straight face. The Hubs is just sitting in the chair and The Kid is crying in the loveseat. But I can tell (you just can as a parent) that these are not true tears. These are crocodile tears. She’s faking it. She’s getting really good at faking it.
So I straighten my face up, ask her if she’s done. She stops the fake tears, and I have to raise my voice. Not yelling or screaming. But clearly showing her I am the boss, not her.
Eventually she reluctantly comes to the bathroom for the bath. And no time later, she’s back to telling me, “you’re the meat mommy in the whole world.” And “guess whose my favorite in the whole world?” And the ever amazing, “you’re my favorite mommy.”
Kid I’m your only mommy. But I ain’t mad.
She is young yet. Less than ten. She has not been jaded or broken or wounded by the world, or worst of all, a parent. She’s not had her heart truly broken by someone she can trust, someone she loves.
It’ll happen one day. If it is by lort, punish me for eternity because I would never harm that child if I can help it. But if someone else does it they have me to deal with. And my wrath will be mighty.
But seeking vengeance for my baby’s broken heart will not heal it. And one day she will be hurt and she’ll see she cannot be so quick to forgive. Though I wish I could keep her pure and loving and happy for ever.
I’ve been pretty sick recently. Okay all of 2022, actually. But lately it’s been the flu. She got it from school and passed it on to her family. Mostly me. So yesterday, my day off work, I said, “I’m going to sleep all day and read.”
So after her and the hubs left for school/work, I went back to sleep. At around 10:30 I woke up and stretched, which caused the start of a devil cramp (a persistent muscle cramp in my legs that cannot be easily ended or reversed by stretches, that also hurts like hell).
I already felt like trash, sinus pressure in my head, coughing, etc. and I just wanted to sleep. But I had to get up and walk off this cramp instead of flexing it away and going back to sleep. So yes. I cried.
Eventually it went away and I made a big old cup of ice water and a sandwich and had lunch.
Fast forward to the afternoon (I took another short nap later) and I’ve picked the Kid up from school and we’re doing homework. Now, when she has a bad day her teacher emails me after school. These emails, while greatly appreciated, usually don’t come until too late. IE after we’ve finished homework and she’s gotten her iPad time.
If she’s had a bad day, and we know in advance, we do not let her have iPad time and we have a conversation about her behavior and what can be done.
I did not get the email until after she was in her iPad and we were having dinner. We had the conversation anyway, and I made sure she understood that had I know beforehand about her behavior, she wouldn’t have had her iPad.
But it turns out her bad behavior began at about 10:30. The same time I had a mini emotional breakdown due to a muscle cramp.
Now, she has been sick lately and is on the tail end of getting over the flu (her school excuse had her going back today). So it could be and was still feeling off and needed to transition back into her school routine. in fact this was probably it.
But the exact same time?
Anyway I’ve been thinking about this for some time now, and I’m going to experiment. Today is Tuesday. My least favorite day at work, and I tend to have emotional breakdowns, just not visibly, on these days.
My experiment will be me trying to have the best day ever. Let’s see if she does too.
In which I share a question The Kid asks and the answer I give her.
I make it a point to not outright lie to her about stuff. I think at her age it’s a good idea to just tell her the truth. Unless it’s something traumatizing, she gets a reasonably straightforward answer.
Mom, how are nuggets made?
How are nuggets made? Well, let’s see. They’re made from chickens. And as you know they have to kill the chickens to make things out of them. So they kill the chicken and cut them up. They get all the best stuff off them like the breasts and the wings and legs, and they use all that to make that stuff.
Now, the stuff the that isn’t the best stuff, like the fingers, they put into a blender and mush it all up. Then they take that mush and they make shapes they want out of them. You know like how you can make shapes out of slime and Playdoh? Like that.
Then I think they take and they freeze the shapes. And when they’re frozen they take and they bread them. They take eggs and bread crumbs and they dip them. Then they fry them up, and then freeze them so they can put them in bags and send them to stores so we can buy them!
So, once or twice a week my kid’s teacher has her students write their numbers. This week it’s 401-500. The Kid struggles with it because “it’s boring”. Also the ADHD doesn’t help. I, however, have discovered ways of distracting her into thinking it’s a game. One such way was telling her I would write a story while she wrote her numbers. And I wanted to see how many she could write before I finished the story.
The random words were: Unicorn, Honey badger, and Potato. This is that story.
Once upon a time, Huey the Honey Badger was looking for dinner. He was running through the forest, his tummy was growling. He stepped in a hole abs rolled down a hill into a part of the forest he has never been in before.
When he picked himself up, he looked around. What he saw could only be described as magical! There was a pond sparking with glittery pink water. The trees were hung with mysterious and delectable looking fruit, and the gentle breeze smelled of cotton candy.
Huey was so hungry he couldn’t decide whether he was dreaming or not. Then from between the blue and yellow trees there stepped a beautiful creature he had never seen before. “Are you all right?” It asked. It was white with rainbow hair and tail, and silvery horn in it’s head.
“I’m okay,” Huey said. “Where am I?” He asked.
“You are in Candyland. I am Ursula the Unicorn.”
Just them Huey’s tum rumbled. “Oh dear,” said Ursula, “you sound hungry! But if you eat anything here you can never leave!” She said.
Huey was sad. He had friends back home.
“Oh wait!” Ursula said. She used her nose to push something toward him. “This plain brown thing is not of this land. Perhaps you can eat it and return again!”
Huey looked at the brown thing. “Oh that’s just a potato!” He said. “I love potatoes!” Huey munched on the potato filling his empty stomach. “That was satisfying, thank you!”
“You’re welcome!” Said Ursula. “If you leave you will be able to return and we can become friends!”
Huey found his way home but promised to return so he and Ursula could become friends. It took many days for him to find the hole he had tripped him, that caused him to fall down the hill into Candyland. But he made sure to take a tasty potato snack when he went!
And Huey the Honey Badger, and Ursula the Unicorn did become best friends!
It worked.
I managed to drag it out for a bit so she could “beat me” and she finished writing the rest of her numbers!
This story is absolutely silly, completely bonkers, and total nonsense. But I kinda love it. If I had more time in my hands and the skill with which to do it, I would illustrate it!
Anyway, that’s my post for today, even if it’s after 10pm and I’m about to doze off! Have a good one, folks!
Crash Landing 