Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell Podcast (private feed for andy@afbray.co.uk)

Moon Miles

I know a lot about a few things and almost nothing about everything else. Ask me about D-Day or the Pacers’ off-season personnel moves and I can talk to you for hours. You’ll beg me to stop until you finally have to make up an excuse and run away. The wall behind the toilet won’t paint itself. But if you bring up something that’s actually useful or relevant, expect me to lapse into awkward silence for the rest of the afternoon. All of my interests and expertise are confined to things that aggressively don’t matter. It’s easy to always be right when no one cares about what I’m saying enough to argue or even listen. Recently, and completely against my will, I was forced to venture into the realm of the practical. If you were to check my browser history, you would see nothing but web pages and reels about used cars. I’ve become obsessed with finding a vehicle for my fifteen-year-old, Betsy, for when she finally learns to drive—if she ever learns. At the current rate, she’ll finish the online portion of her driver’s ed course when she’s thirty. Finding a vehicle might take me nearly that long. I’m becoming a reluctant expert on something in the real world. I don’t even recognize myself anymore, which is for the best. I was a pretty awful person in the first place.As we approach the monumental decision on what car to buy for Betsy, my wife Lola and I have learned some things about each other. Before we got married, we had extensive discussions about what kind of family we wanted to have and where we wanted to go in life. We never shared our philosophies on buying used vehicles for our children. Shame on the priest for not bringing that up in pre-marriage counseling. I think we should get the cheapest vehicle possible that’s just barely capable of getting Betsy to and from school a mile away for the next few years. Lola believes we should get something that’s actually nice. “Nice” is a polite way of saying “expensive,” or at least “not currently on fire.” I’m willing to tolerate some flames as long as the car will still make it all the way to school before it burns down. Clearly I’m the reasonable one here.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. It’s like PBS, but completely unhelpful and slightly evil. Join today!Lola views vehicles as a tool. She wants a good one that will last a while and get the job done. I view them as tubes of toothpaste. They’re something that gets used up and thrown away. I heard a philosophy on Facebook that I’ve since adopted as my own: You should expect to get about a year out of a car for every thousand dollars you spend on it. That idea is based more on vibes than mechanical engineering, but I choose to believe it’s true. If we spend two thousand dollars on a car, we should expect to get two years out of it. When it needs to be fixed, we’ll get rid of it and buy something else. In that price range, the vehicle would be totaled by the cost of an oil change. Lola would prefer something that will last longer than a Dixie Cup. She wants it to survive for ten years, which would cost a corresponding number of thousands. In a decade, Betsy will be twenty-five, which is about how old Lola and I were when we had her. No starter car should last that long. I can’t afford a generational vehicle. This disagreement won’t be what ends our marriage, but it might be what makes us not buy a vehicle until the last possible second, if not a while after. At this rate, I’ll never be done giving Betsy rides. I might be the one who has to drive her to the hospital when she has her first kid.The biggest problem with my approach is that a few thousand dollars doesn’t go as far as it used to. I should know. My parents bought an entire fleet of vehicles in that price range, only about half of which turned out to be total lemons. My Mom and Dad purchased countless cheap cars over the years to accommodate their legion of children. Like me, they were eager to never drive their offspring anywhere again. The vehicles were swapped freely between us over the years depending on who needed what and what was falling apart that week. None of us actually owned the vehicles until we moved out for good, at which point the game of musical cars ended and we were given the title to whatever we happened to be driving at the time. Some of those vehicles ran for years. My favorite was the one I took from college and into marriage: My 1997 Geo Prizm. It’s the closest thing I had to a dowry. It was a rebranded Toyota Corolla built at a joint GM-Toyota factory. It was mostly a Toyota under the hood, which is why it worked. The leather on the seats cracked and all the knobs fell off, but the engine ran without a single problem. It was like me: ugly on the outside but extremely hard to kill. It ultimately gave its life to save mine, crumpling effectively in a collision with an out-of-control truck driven by a teenager. I would love for Betsy’s first car to be a Toyota Corolla. However, everyone else knows how good Toyotas are, which is reflected in their prices on the used car market. The only ones in my ideal price range have enough miles to have driven to the moon. That’s not much of an exaggeration. The moon is 238,900 miles away. I tried to convince Lola we should buy a 2004 Camry with a mere 198,000 miles. The conversation did not go well.Lola doesn’t believe in spending money on a vehicle that’s older than our children. I can sympathize with her reluctance, even if I don’t share it. Just because a car type has a reputation for lasting decades doesn’t mean your particular unit will. The Honda Odyssey is supposed to be extremely reliable on average. Yet my 2011 van basically imploded. The electrical system mysteriously failed, the oil disappeared despite no detectable leak or sign of burning, and the cords connecting the motors in both doors snapped, making them impossible to open. I wrote multiple newsletters about how I thought my van was haunted, yet most owners of that same make and model had a far better experience. You can’t tell a vehicle it comes from a good brand and expect it to behave itself. If shame worked, I would pay much less for car maintenance.My father-in-law, Bob, recently gave us a lead on a vehicle. He has a friend with a Mazda6 he may be looking to get rid of. Like Bob, Bob’s friend keeps his cars immaculate. Unlike Bob, he almost never drives anywhere. Bob’s friend takes his seldom used car to the car wash twice a week, which is the same number of times I go in the entire lifetime of a vehicle. It’s only worth it for me if I’m going there in place of an actual vacation. For my kids, those automatic scrubbers are more exciting than Disney World. Bob’s friend’s car is a higher trim package with all the bells and whistles. I’d prefer none of the bells and at most one of the whistles. I’m willing to pay for windshield wipers, but only if there’s a lot of rain in the forecast. I’ll only buy a car with all the extras if I don’t have to pay for any of them. Selling to me would be the worst decision this guy could make, but it might happen because friendship makes people do dumb things. He already sold his wife’s car to Bob’s son for a great price. I’m banking on the fact that Bob’s friend doesn’t want to make thousands of extra dollars by talking to a second person or driving to literally any dealerships. If he charges a fair price, I’m officially out. If he gives us the friends and family discount for his mint condition used car, we might be in business. Unfortunately, that would still be more than I want to pay. If this goes forward, Lola will win for the millionth time in a row. That won’t stop me from arguing with her again next time.The niceness of the Mazda is actually a problem. It’s far too good for a kid. It’s newer and better than Lola’s van. That’s not just an opinion. According to the estimate website, it’s worth about twice as much as hers. If we buy it, we’d actually be buying it for Lola. That would mean Betsy would inherit every child’s dream: an eight-year-old minivan. Actually, nine since she wouldn’t get it until next year. It would look super cool in the high school parking lot. All of her friends would be jealous. Giving her a minivan would have several advantages. It’s big enough for her to transport all of her sisters with ease. It’s lame enough that none of her friends would want to ride with her, thereby increasing the safety factor. It’s also big enough to hold its own in a crash with an SUV. In an impact with a compact car, it would roll over it like a monster truck. We already know everything that’s wrong with it. It comes pre-dinged. Each bump and scratch was lovingly earned. New ones would blend right in without causing additional trauma. With a new vehicle (even a new used one) we’d feel bad the first time we damaged it. With our existing van, new scratches would merely add to the aesthetic we’ve already established. I’m not implying that Lola has been hard on the vehicle. She’s a better driver than me, as our respective crash histories reflect. But we’ve had to take her van in once to repair thousands of dollars in hail damage. A new scratch from hitting a curb won’t be a big deal. It’s mom-tested and kid-approved.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.Another downside of the potential Mazda deal is the timing. Betsy won’t be able to get her license until the end of next summer, when she’ll be sixteen and three months. At first, Bob said his friend wouldn’t be ready to sell until next spring, which would have been perfect. Buying early doesn’t help us. That’s just longer we have to pay insurance on an unused vehicle sitting on our property. Today, Bob texted me that he was driving around dealerships looking for a new vehicle with his friend. So we’ll need to be ready to buy sometime between immediately and the middle of next year. In the meantime, I’ll hold off on looking online for other cars in case this one pans out. If we wait on it for months and then it falls through, we can do a panic search at the last minute. That’s my most likely path to get an old vehicle with a year or two left before it explodes. If the Mazda deal does go through, however, Betsy can look forward to many adventurous years of minivaning. I’m hoping my van was the only cursed Odyssey. Perhaps Lola’s van will achieve moon mileage while in Betsy’s possession. Some day, she could load her own kids in it, or better yet, actually drive it to the moon. We can’t be that many years away from a space highway.Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.James This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesbreakwell.substack.com/subscribe

Hogwash

Pigs don’t stink—unless they take a bath.Specifically, they smell bad if they bathe in the water they’re supposed to drink. My small herd of small swine doesn’t have its own bathtub, but it does have two plastic water troughs. Those are apparently the perfect places to take a dip. My hoofed friends wash off their grime and leave the dirty water behind to bake in the heat, resulting in an odor that measures somewhere between sweaty feet and a decomposing whale. Don’t ask me how I know what both of those things smell like. As someone with many unfortunate and unexplained scents in my house, I’m qualified to rank them. It’s like having my own indoor stagnant pond. Lucky me.The pigs have other options to stay cool. They could hang out all day in the pig room, which is fully air-conditioned. There’s also plenty of shade in the backyard. Instead, they choose neither. They like to hang out on the enclosed back porch. Usually, I leave the door open for better ventilation. It’s cooler than a sauna, but not by much. The pigs like to heat themselves up and then splash around in the water they’re supposed to drink. Yet, if I try to spray them with the hose to cool them off—or, heaven forbid, to clean them—they run away like I’m trying to send them to market. They only want to play in the water if they’re not supposed to. The disobedience is what makes it fun. I’m raising pig sociopaths.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. It’s like PBS, but completely unhelpful and slightly evil. Join today!I’ve made at least three separate attempts to give the pigs a kiddie pool of their own so they can stop wading in what they’re supposed to drink. My efforts were about as successful as when I tried to introduce a new food to the kids. If it’s not some form of a chicken nugget, it might as well be poison. The pigs had no interest in stepping in any of the plastic pools I bought. I moved the pools into the shade. I put food in the bottom. I cut down the sides so stepping in and out would be easier. I pushed the pigs in. None of it worked. They could sense that I wanted them to have fun and did the opposite. I should have tried reverse psychology. If I had posted a “no swimming” sign, I’m sure they would have done swan dives.Finding an external source of cooling is supposedly a high priority for pigs. They don’t sweat. For animals that are at risk of overheating, mine certainly sun themselves a lot. I might have the rare cold-blooded variety. Beware of the lizard pigs. Their natural instinct is to dig mud wallows. Equally naturally, I would prefer they not do that. My yard has suffered enough. Only my smallest and nicest pig, Luna, is a digger. She roots in the spot where we cut down a dying ash tree and ground down the stump. She can’t resist commemorating the tree by creating the biggest crater possible. She doesn’t lie in the hole. She just digs it and then walks away, fully satisfied with the destruction she’s wrought. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing edible down there. If there were, the other pigs would fight her for it. Gilly and Onyx ignore the spot. Yet, whenever I give Luna access to that half of the yard, she immediately recreates her depression, no matter how effectively I filled it in after her last excavation. Through all that, she never sticks around in it when it gets wet. She doesn’t want mud to stay cool. She just wants to commit an act of violence against my lawn. I can’t be mad. She’s adorable when her face is covered in dirt. She knows she’s cute enough to get away with murder. That makes her the most dangerous animal of all.My pigs seek out extra heat, avoid mud, and never, ever get in swimming pools. That makes their sudden obsession with jumping in their own water troughs all the more perplexing. I have two twenty-six gallon troughs. I originally positioned them outside, where they grew algae, no matter how many tablets I used to kill it off. It was the only thing on my property to actually grow, probably because algae are protists and not plants. If they were reclassified as greenery, they would have died like everything else. The troughs were also a death trap for birds. My feathered guests would land for a quick drink or bath and never get out. Apparently the plastic sides were slippery. Somehow, it never occurred to the birds to just fly away. Maybe the standard dinosaur descendant can’t handle a water launch. That seems like an important fact to consider before landing.Eventually, I got tired of scooping out algae and dead birds. I moved the troughs onto the enclosed back porch. The roof and walls kept out the unwanted lifeforms. Recognizing that I had solved two problems, Onyx decided to create a third. He began eagerly and aggressively tipping over the troughs. The water cascaded across the wood floor, soaking the boards and peeling the paint. I’d refill the troughs, and Onyx would repeat his vandalism. Maybe he just hated hydration. Not everyone believes in drinking eight glasses a day. Besides the inconvenience of refilling the troughs, the spilled water was damaging the porch. My house is falling apart fast enough on its own without the help of the pigs. I had to do something, which is always my least favorite course of action. I reluctantly pulled out my tools and got to work.In the basement, I found towel rods and some fancy brackets meant for a shelf. I screwed them into the floor to hold the troughs in place. The water containers couldn’t move a millimeter front to back or side to side. I forgot that the world exists in three dimensions. Unable to budge the troughs along the ground, Onyx simply used his snout to tip them up. The water spilled as easily as ever. Worse, the towel rod in front kept the trough from falling back into position. Once Onyx dislodged them, the troughs stayed tipped for the rest of the day. Not for the first time, I had been outsmarted by a pig. I would have to try again.The only thing stronger than a miniature hog is cold, hard steel. (Pig iron need not apply.) To defeat Onyx, I chained the troughs to the ground. I ran a string of links along the top of both containers and fixed it to a point at either end. I thought that would be the end of my troubles. It wasn’t even close. The chain wasn’t tight enough. There was enough give for Onyx to tip up both troughs. I tried adjusting the chain a few times, but I could never get the tightness right. I’m only good at creating tension in relationships, not metal. The chain didn’t slow down Onyx, but it got in the way when I tried to put the troughs back in place. I had made my life more difficult while having no effect on the pigs. I’m an expert at thwarting myself.If I wanted to win, I needed to block Onyx’s snout. I went into my basement again and scrounged up three pieces of scrap wood that fit perfectly along the sides and front of the trough with no cuts necessary. That was key. My goal is always to avoid using a saw. I’d like to keep my pigs and my fingers. I went to the hardware store and bought small brackets to secure the boards to the ground. The pieces of wood were tall enough to completely block curious snouts from getting under the lip of the troughs without stopping the pigs from drinking. For added insurance, I screwed in a second set of brackets upside down at the top of each board to pin the troughs in place. There was no possible way a pig could dislodge them. It also wasn’t particularly easy for me. If I needed to dump out the water because it was dirty, I had to bend the boards and wiggle the troughs free. Luckily, I wouldn’t have to empty them out very often—except that I did.If the pigs couldn’t spill the water, they had to mess it up where it was. Gilly led the charge. When it got too hot outside for her comfort, she walked onto the sweltering back porch and had a relaxing sit in the water. Plopping a hundred-pound pig in a full plastic tub displaces more than a little liquid. The flooding was back without budging the troughs an inch. Pigs really are evil geniuses. Gilly is shameless about it. If I catch her in the act, she looks up at me like she has no idea she’s doing something wrong. More often, I only see her afterwards when she walks into the house with only her back portion clean. There’s a clear line on her skin showing where the water stopped. All that dirt and grime had to go somewhere. She transferred it from herself into the trough. Without a pig lounging in it, the water will stay crisp and clear indefinitely. With swine intervention, I have to change it almost daily. That’s made all the more challenging by my excellent defenses. I have to empty the troughs with a bucket, dumping scoop after scoop onto the nearest flower bed, until the containers are light enough for me to wiggle them loose. Then I toss the remaining water in the yard and rinse them out with the hose. Finally, I squeeze the empty troughs back into place and refill them there. All the while, my pets watch me, waiting for their chance to defile the troughs again. I work for them, and they know it. I miss the days when my only bosses were children and not pigs.If the pigs insist on using the troughs as a pool, I’m tempted to give them a pool again. Only this time, I could disguise it as a trough. I could buy another plastic container identical to the other two and leave it in the middle of the yard. I wouldn’t do anything to prevent the pigs from tipping it over or swimming laps in it. I suspect they like the plastic troughs better than the plastic kiddie pools because the troughs are less slippery on the bottom. Then again, the only difference might be spite. There likely wouldn’t be any algae because they would empty it so fast. Hopefully, that would also prevent more avian deaths. The Council of Birds already views me as the chief suspect in past disappearances. If any crow detectives knock on my door, I want a lawyer.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.With the pigs distracted outside, they might leave their actual drinking water alone. They also might see through my ruse. It’s possible they would dump the outside decoy trough while continuing to bathe in the inside ones. Either way, I would have to refill the outdoor trough all the time. The spilled water might finally make my grass grow. It also might turn the barren dirt into barren mud. I’ve been in a prolonged, months-long water fight with a group of pigs. If they don’t watch it, I’ll start using water balloons. Who knows how they’d retaliate? My Super Soakers did mysteriously disappear a while back.Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.James This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesbreakwell.substack.com/subscribe

The First Two Days

Two days of school down. One hundred and seventy-eight to go.The kids kicked off the academic year Thursday with an intense two-day week. Middle and high school students get picked up at the same time on the same buses. Betsy, Mae, and Lucy all boarded their shared yellow chariot at 7:11 a.m.. That left Waffle alone in the house. Her bus didn’t arrive for another hour. It was up to her to lock up the place and get to the right corner on time. Last year, when Lucy was still in fifth grade, she and Waffle could tackle that task together. It was helpful to have some checks and balances in case one of them lost track of time playing Roblox or internet poker. The best card sharks start early. So far, Waffle has managed to get herself onto the bus two days in a row. I can only assume that means she’ll have a perfect record for the rest of the year. We’ve impressed upon her how long she’ll be grounded if she ever misses the bus because she’s on a device. She would effectively be Amish for the rest of her childhood. She plans to get out to the bus stop fifteen minutes early every day. Fear is the ultimate motivator.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. It’s like PBS, but completely unhelpful and slightly evil. Join today!Catching the bus is the easy part. Her real struggle starts when the first bell rings. Due to rezoning, she’s at a new school. We thought a bunch of her friends from her old school would be there, but in her new classroom, it’s just her. Perhaps she was moved for their protection. Waffle is the most adaptable and resilient of all my children. She’ll make friends and then followers. She’ll be class dictator in no time. The process is exhausting. She had a chance to spend the night with her cousin Friday after school. She chose to stay home and recharge instead. Either that or she just wanted to make up for the Roblox time she missed by going out to the bus stop early. She takes my threat of permanent grounding seriously. It’s only a matter of time until she calls my bluff. Then she’ll also be the dictator of our family.At least Waffle’s new school is fully built. Mae and Lucy are learning in an active construction zone. Work began last year, but it was mostly focused on building new spaces outside the existing walls. Only the cafeteria was closed off. Kids had to eat in the gym, which was awesome. Every good Hoosier wants to eat square pizza while shooting hoops. Now, the renovation has moved into the main part of the building. Hallways are divided in half and sometimes closed. The sixth grade lockers are off limits entirely. One gym has been converted into seventh grade classrooms. The space is divided by temporary ten-foot-high walls with no ceilings, transforming the room into the world’s most depressing cubicles. Spending eight hours a day there is the most effective real-world training they could possibly receive. Those kids will be more than ready for the work force.Lucy’s biggest complaint so far has been the temperature. She said the new cafeteria feels arctic. That sounds like heaven to me. If I can’t see my breath, the thermostat needs to be turned down a few notches. I told her to take a hoodie in her backpack. She said she didn’t have room. She already has to carry every book she needs for every class since she doesn’t have a locker. I said before that she’ll develop the strength of a pack mule, but that goal was misplaced. I now think it would be better to send her with an actual pack mule as a helper animal. If there’s no rule that says a dog can’t play basketball, there also isn’t one saying you can’t bring a beast of burden in a pinch. I’m sure a mule would do great on the bus rides to and from school. At home, he’d be great friends with the pigs.Betsy is also in a construction zone, but a less severe one. At the current stage, most of the work is focused on adding new square footage outside the existing structure. Next year, the work will move indoors. It will be there to greet Mae when she moves up to high school. It’s like the slasher in a horror movie or road work in the Midwest. There’s simply no escaping it. The biggest disruption for Betsy is that much of the parking lot is blocked off and covered with construction materials. Actually, that’s more of a disruption for me since I’m the one who has to pick her up and drop her off for after school activities. Betsy still can’t drive, which isn’t her fault but is also entirely her fault. She’s not old enough for a license yet, but she is old enough for a learner’s permit. After an entire summer of not having a job, she managed to finish an underwhelming twenty-eight percent of the online portion of her driver’s ed course. In her defense, she was also taking a different online class that mattered more. Less to her credit, she had many hours a day to take naps. I want her to finish the class so I can start getting her hours on the road. The sooner she can drive, the sooner I can retire from parenting and let her raise herself. She isn’t as eager as I am to hit that milestone. She likes having a personal chauffeur who has to accommodate her every whim. She hasn’t tipped me once, but she has given me some referrals. She’s more than happy to also make me drive around her friends.With the start of school came the start of sports. Betsy has transitioned from mostly mandatory summer practices to completely mandatory fall ones. Saturday, she had a practice at a nearby state park that included a cookout and parent meeting. All the moms and dads gathered around to hear the rules and expectations from the coach. Cross country is by far the least burdensome sport for spectators. Mostly, the coach and team mom just wanted us to donate money and Gatorade and then stay out of the way. The behavior issues that plague other sports don’t apply to us. While the stands at Little League games might regularly become no-holds-barred brawls, I’ve never seen any parents fight at a cross country meet. It’s due to the cardio. We have to speed walk or even jog slowly to see our kids at various points on the course. We’re too out of breath to fight anyone. I should try the same approach with my kids. If I made them run around the house a few times, they’d be too tired to battle each other. Actually, Betsy would be fine thanks to all her training. It’s probably best not to give her even more of an advantage. Her stranglehold on power is strong enough.We might only be two days into the school year, but I’ve already signed hundreds of forms. I haven’t read a single word. I assume most of the sheets the girls bring me are about classroom expectations. I doubt the fine print contained too many surprises. It’s always possible I accidentally signed over my house or agreed to fight in a war. I assume the rules covered the basics, like pay attention in class and turn in your homework. It’s a sad statement on the state of the world that every teacher felt the need to put that in writing. There must have been at least one student who claimed they had no idea they were supposed to do the assignments. Like parents, teachers love being ignored and just want to hear themselves talk. So far, only Betsy has had homework. That’s a welcome change from when I was in school. I used to get take-home assignments early and often. Of course, my tablet was made of stone. No wonder my handwriting was so bad.The technology situation continues to throw me for a loop. As the kids have gotten older, their lists of required school supplies has gotten shorter and shorter. They no longer need crayons, scissors, and colored pencils. They barely needed pens. Everything they do is typed and submitted online. They’re missing out on a critical part of the school experience. When my school finally got paper technology, my penmanship didn’t improve. After doing homework, my hand would hurt because of my death grip on my writing implement. The lack of legibility worked in my favor. Teachers didn’t want to spend weeks deciphering my chicken scratch and instead assigned me a grade at random. It was always higher than I deserved. If you can’t be brilliant, be utterly exhausting. That approach also works to get a wife.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.The first days of school didn’t slow down Mae at all. While Waffle was too tired for a sleepover, Mae went on a campout after the opening two-day week of school. This weekend was the initiation for the secretive Firecrafter organization. She needs to prove her adeptness at starting blazes outdoors and using them to cook without burning down the entire forest. Smokey Bear will be her proctor. As I write this, I’m waiting for her to send me a text to say she’s ready to be picked up. It’s a good thing I got all of our weekend trips out of the way before the start of the school year. That era of our life is now done. With the start of school, weekends belong to the kids and the nine thousand different activities they’ve joined. My only job is to show up and retrieve them if necessary—and to put out any fires if things get out of hand. If Mae did burn down the forest, I bet Smokey could be bribed to look the other way. I have a history with bears. I could hook him up with a nice wedding tuxedo in exchange for overlooking a little arson.Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.James This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesbreakwell.substack.com/subscribe

Chaos at the Cottage

If you only read our stories from the last few months, you’d think we were a jet-setting family, even if we never fly anywhere. We’re more of a minivan-setting bunch. We’ve left for a two or three night adventure practically every other weekend all summer. The kids only have a small window between the end of one school year and the start of the next when they have any flexibility in their schedules. We made the most of it by going everywhere and doing everything, by which I mean repeatedly visiting friends and family members who will let us mooch off their generosity for a few days. This weekend was the last of those trips. We’ve exhausted the good will of everyone we know. We’ll now be staying home until next summer. Hopefully, that will be long enough for all the people we visited this year to forget why they kicked us out. The key to any successful friendship is a short memory.For our final trip of the summer, Lola and I visited our college friends, Rocco and Phoebe, in Wisconsin. We try to see them twice a year. The first time, we bring the kids, and the second time is just for adults. Around the start of August, Rocco and Phoebe host an annual gathering they call Friends Weekend at their family’s lake cottage. Lola and I drove the farthest of all the invitees. We have to go great distances to find people who will tolerate me. It’s worth the drive. I’ve failed to make a single friend in Indiana or Illinois who owns a boat.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. It’s like PBS, but completely unhelpful and slightly evil. Join today!Having an adults-only weekend lets us do the things we can’t with our children around, like complaining about work and falling asleep early. The downside is we have to find someplace to dump the kids. This was the first time all summer that we’ve had to ask someone to watch them for us. They’re used to being on their own, but we couldn’t leave them home alone overnight when we were out of state. I shudder to think of the parties Waffle would throw while we were out. There would be hot chocolate stains everywhere. My parents were the lucky winners of the free babysitter sweepstakes. Driving to their house hasn’t been much of a detour ever since we committed to never, ever driving through Chicago again. Our cowardly, roundabout path to avoid city traffic takes us well into central Illinois. The drop-off at my parents’ house could have gone smoother. When we got there, we were blocked by a construction crew directly in front of their driveway. We had to get in through the alley. My mom and dad were both at work. The girls are fine being alone as long as a responsible adult is somewhere in the same city. Lola and I left them and took off. Four hours later, we texted to check up on them. That’s when we learned the house hadn’t had water since we left. It wasn’t my finest parenting moment. I quickly texted my brother Arthur, who lives two doors down from my parents. He said the girls could come over to use his bathroom. The next time I leave my kids somewhere, I’ll verify if the plumbing works before I take off. Or not. I’ve got a schedule to keep.When we texted the kids, things weren’t going much better for Lola and me. We had made what we thought would be a quick stop for gas and food. For years, we’d been driving by the planet’s largest Culver’s without ever slowing down. This time, we decided to treat ourselves to one of the wonders of the world. It took half an hour for Lola to get her burger. We could have been served two meals at a sit-down restaurant in that time. Don’t stop anywhere that claims to be the world’s largest. It also might be the world’s slowest. I’ll leave the Earth’s wonders to someone else. I’m sure the lines at the hanging gardens are just as bad.Even with the delay, Lola and I were the second ones to arrive at the cottage after Rocco and Phoebe. The only friend who beat us also came from Indiana. We long to escape the corn. The first night, we took a side-by-side into town to eat at a restaurant and watch a ski show. The performance was a delight. Unpaid high schoolers gave it their all, skiing eight across, making jumps, and even riding on each other’s shoulders. Sometimes, they fell, which made it even better. The stakes were real. When they wiped out, they bounced back up because they were kids. If I fell like that, I would have been out for a week. It was Wisconsin’s version of the Cirque Du Soleil, but with much cheaper concessions. Good luck getting a three-dollar Busch Light in Las Vegas. And people think America doesn’t have culture.The second morning was rough. For unexplained reasons that had nothing to do with my own poor life choices, I woke up not feeling the best. If you ever see me staying up past midnight, please hit me with a tranquilizer dart to save me from myself. There was no time to consider how I might make better decisions in the future. The rest of the group began showing up bright and early. By noon, we were on the water. We anchored at a sandbar for the afternoon. We played a frisbee game with just enough excitement to jam a few fingers and stayed until we ran low on food and beverages. Then it was time to head in to eat some more. The lake and lake adjacent properties are no places for moderation. Leave your self-control at home.One guy, who was a few years younger than us, wakeboarded on our way to and from the sandbar. That wasn’t exciting enough, so he attempted to do a backflip. On his first attempt, he did a sideways belly flop at thirty miles per hour. He assured us that it didn’t hurt that much. To prove his point, he tried a few more times. Each attempt was closer than the last. When he finally climbed back in the boat, he seemed genuinely unharmed. I was impressed that someone in their thirties could take that kind of punishment. I can hurt myself just rolling over in bed. He didn’t feel anything in the moment, but he didn’t get on the wakeboard at all on our second lake day. He might never get on a wakeboard again.It was good that the pain held off. When we got off the water the first time, we needed him to make dinner. He whipped up his famous corn tortillas from scratch. After a full day of snacking, I wasn’t hungry at all. Obviously I still ate six tortillas loaded with everything. After dinner, I forced everyone to play a board game, as is my custom. That’s how I get permanently uninvited from places. We played my specialty of Telestrations mixed with Cards Against Humanity. We took turns drawing the worst possible things, then passing them to the right. The game wasn’t as over-the-line as it could have been thanks to our limited drawing skills. You can only be so offended by indistinct squiggles. If there were any actual artists among us, someone surely would have blushed to death. The night ended with an early bedtime for me and most likely everyone else. I can’t imagine anyone would stay up and have fun after I was gone. They would probably just talk about how much they missed me.Our second morning at the cottage got off to an early start. The men drove to a disc golf course half an hour away. All the holes were deep in the woods. We made it through five before we bravely ran away. I’ve never seen so many mosquitos in one place. They must have been having a family reunion. Shorts were a poor choice. Back at the cottage, we switched to bucket golf, which is regular golf with the equivalent of plastic Little Tykes equipment. The competition was intense, and there were no mosquitos. I was having the time of my life. We spent a second afternoon at the sandbar. Back on shore, we had leftovers followed by a second early bedtime. Life gets wild in your forties.The kids had even more fun than we did. I left Betsy with money for a shopping spree at her grandma’s usual circuit of second-hand stores. The girls found many treasures, which included puzzles, fake nails, and not-second-hand candy. If I knew that second-hand stores also sell new stuff, I would have sent them with a lower budget. I didn’t realize I’d be paying for premium merchandise. Aside from fake thrifting, the girls spent three days assembling the previously mentioned puzzles and watching bangers like Kpop Demon Hunters and the Sister Act trilogy. Full disclosure, I don’t know how many Sister Act movies there are, but I’m afraid to Google it. The algorithm for my targeted ads is already messed up enough.Lola and I left the lake cottage first thing Sunday morning before anyone else was awake. We were that eager to see our kids again. Not really. Lola had dropped a can of seltzer on her foot the night before and then accidentally kicked the bruise in her sleep. There was no dozing off again after that. The drive home was largely uneventful. I took the first shift. Lola took over three hours later after she mostly regained the use of her foot. That was a relief. I didn’t want to end our adventure with x-rays at urgent care. We started the long weekend when Onyx hurt his foot and brought it to a close when Lola injured hers. The moral of the story is to always wear sturdy shoes. No one makes boots for pigs, but I sense a business opportunity. I’ll see targeted ads for pig Timberlands in no time.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.This is the most places we’ve ever gone in one summer. I went on short trips with the whole family, with just Lola, and by myself. It’s not for me to say which weekend was the best, although Lola and the kids will all agree it was the one where I left. They had an amazing time at home without me. We all had a ton of fun this summer, but it’s a relief that we’ll now be home for the rest of the year. I can toss my travel bag in a random closet and forget where it is until I have to panic pack many months in the future. Preparing for travel more than a few hours in advance is a form of cheating. Staying home will mark an abrupt and disappointing return to real life, but it has its upsides. Having fun with distant friends is good, but sleeping in your own bed is better.Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.James This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesbreakwell.substack.com/subscribe

Almost Back to School

My kids are preparing for an approaching calamity. In two weeks, they’ll go back to school.Once upon a time, I would have been looking forward to that date with eager anticipation. Now, I’m more ambivalent. I can’t decide if it’s more work to keep them home or to have them over-scheduled during yet another school year. The correct answer is that child rearing is inconvenient no matter when you do it. I’m hoping that will finally change twelve months from now when Betsy can drive, at which point she can take herself to all the places she needs to be. Currently, she rides her bike to some of them, but others are far enough away that she still requires my vehicular assistance. She can’t drive herself to the store to buy more school supplies. That duty falls squarely on Lola and me. We’ll be on a shared quest for pens and pencils in the coming week. It’s the sort of adventure newsletters were made for.As the kids get older, their school supply list gets shorter. Each year, they need fewer arts and crafts implements and more tools of sadness. It’s physically impossible to smile while taking notes. This year, my thirteen-year-old, Mae, and eleven-year-old, Lucy, won’t need crayons or markers. They’ll both be in middle school. That building is currently under construction, which led to an unexpected consequence: The students won’t be able to use lockers this year. The metal storage units are spread across multiple hallways that can’t all be under construction at once. If they were, kids would only be able to get in or out by crawling through windows. I suspect what happened is that some lockers were unusable due to construction in certain areas. Rather than depriving only a portion of students, the principal wisely decided to inconvenience everyone equally. The result is that, unlike previous incoming classes of sixth graders, Lucy will take her backpack with her all day, which will hold all of her books and supplies for every class. I don’t know how much she’ll learn under those conditions, but hopefully she can skip gym class. She’ll already have the back strength of a pack mule.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. It’s like PBS, but completely unhelpful and slightly evil. Join today!We’re still waiting to get Lucy’s oboe back from the shop. As usual, my attempt to be cheap has cost me dearly. When Lucy was deciding on an instrument, she naturally picked the most expensive one available. Kids are drawn to burning money like moths to a flame. Renting an oboe would have cost seventy-five dollars a month every month for the rest of her school career. Alternatively, we could have paid thousands of dollars to own a brand new instrument outright. Instead, we ordered a used one from the 1960s that we found online at a thrift shop in Green Bay. That cost $250. We took it to a local music store, which told us it needs $300 in repairs. Saving money is expensive. Even with the added costs, fixing the used oboe will still be thousands of dollars cheaper than either renting or buying new. Now we’re in a race against time to see if it’s actually ready for the first day of school. There’s nothing quite like kicking off middle school with a crushing parenting fail. I like to start on the wrong foot and then just keep using that foot for the entire year. I don’t think I even have another foot.Leading up to the first day, I’ll be using that wrong foot to go on more than a few tours. Waffle already took hers. Thanks to rezoning, she’ll spend the last two years of elementary school at a brand new building. There’s so much pristine stuff for her to break. I hope their insurance premiums are paid up. This will be Mae’s third year at the middle school, but she needs a tour, as well, thanks to the ongoing construction. I have no idea what we’ll find inside that building. Work went on all of last year, which made parking a challenge. The parents of eight hundred students had to fight over the same three spots. Normally, I would have Mae show Lucy around the middle school, but since the layout will be new, I’ll have to guide them both. I won’t know where I’m going, either, but I’m used to being lost. I look forward to confidently leading them in circles until they realize they should figure it out on their own. I encourage independence by proving the consequences of depending on me.Betsy is heading into her second year of high school. The construction there only recently began and hasn’t yet reached the point where it’s majorly altered the layout. That won’t save me a trip. I’ll still have to take Betsy during the closing days of summer so she can pick up her school-issued iPad. In a perfect world, she would go there herself. She’s been riding her bike to summer cross country practices, which are at a park not far from the school. The difference was that, at cross country practice, only her teammates saw her ride her bike. If she takes her bike to school, the entire student body could witness her on two wheels. There’s no way to recover from that level of shame, even though half the students there are also too young to drive themselves. Perhaps the implication is that, if you have to ride your bike, your parents must be too poor to own a car. I think it proves the opposite. The parents who can’t drive their kids have the most money because they’re the ones who are busy working during iPad pickup times. Then again, maybe Betsy just wants me to drive her because she wants me to show off our super cool minivan. It’s every high schooler’s dream.The girls are frantically trying to squeeze in last minute summer plans that they haven’t gotten around to yet. Betsy continues to ask if she can have her friends over for a Lord of the Rings marathon. Normally, that’s an activity I would endorse without reservation. The problem is that she keeps trying to schedule it when Lola and I are away from home. The even bigger problem is that her list of invitees includes boys. Specifically, there would be a total of two boys and two girls, which is the most dangerous ratio. I’ve told Betsy repeatedly that if she wants to have only girls, she can have them over at any time, even if I’m out of the country. Usually, instead of watching TV, they end up baking cookies. Daughters are a delight. Boys would ruin everything, as they always do. My proof is that I’m one of them. Lola and I have offered to let Betsy have her nerd party on days when one of us is home, but none of those dates have worked out. When Betsy is available and has parental supervision, her friends are mysteriously busy or out of town. Either that or they simply don’t want to watch Lord of the Rings and don’t have the heart to tell her. If that’s the case, she needs better friends of both genders. When Gondor calls, Rohan answers, even if it conflicts with soccer practice.In a way, the start of the coming school year is the official end of last school year. My kids didn’t empty out their backpacks until this weekend. They had maintained them like time capsules of their previous grades, preserved for months by sheer laziness. Saturday, my trash cans were suddenly full of graded assignments I’d never seen before. The scouts teach kids to be prepared. A good way to be ready is to never unpack in the first place. If we threw them into a new school year with no notice, chances are their existing gear would have gotten them through at least a few weeks. I should try the same approach with my duffel bag from all these short trips we’ve been taking. If I never unpacked, I’d have enough clean clothes to make it at least a day or two. I’d also have enough dirty clothes to be declared a biohazard. On second thought, I think I’ll continue to unpack all of my stuff. I’d rather not need a hazmat suit to do my laundry.Buying new school supplies is the easy part. School clothes are much harder to figure out. Some of the children are still growing, which is immensely inconvenient. It’d be nice if they’d stay the same size for at least a little while, if not forever. The steady march toward adulthood is overrated. With just days left until the start of the school year, we discovered that they need new shoes. I don’t know what they’ve been wearing all summer. Apparently they’ve either been in sandals or barefoot, neither of which will cut it at school. In that footwear, the schools might cut them. Lucy and Mae will need steel toe boots for their academic construction zone. Lola and I try to share parenting duties equally, but buying new clothes for the children falls squarely on her. She and the girls have all seen how I dress myself. They agree that my fashion input is unwanted. You have to have thick skin to be a girl dad.I might not handle the clothes shopping, but I deal with the paperwork. I had to re-register the kids for school. That part always confuses me since they’ve been in the same school district their entire lives. I wish they would stay enrolled by default, especially since they’re required to go there by law. Instead, I have to remind the district that I will once again be burdening them with the same four kids. That might be a relief to them. Perhaps administrators are secretly afraid that I have more children in reserve. I had to go through approximately twenty screens for each child reaffirming our address and all of our choices from previous years. Enrollment is the one time each year that I regret having four children. Single-child households only have to go through those screens once. When making my family planning decisions, I didn’t factor in carpal tunnel.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.School sports required a separate online registration. In addition to uploading Betsy’s physical, I had to acknowledge multiple times that I wouldn’t cause a riot at my daughter’s sporting event. The waivers are obnoxious, but not as obnoxious as some parents at games and matches. I doubt that a series of online forms will stop them. Like me, those other parents probably didn’t even read them. I have too many kids to register for too many things. I didn’t even glance at the fine print. I’ll have no one but myself to blame if I owe the athletic department a kidney.Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.James This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesbreakwell.substack.com/subscribe