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

High on Weeds

I have a surefire test to tell if something in my yard is a weed. Is it growing? Then it’s a weed. The system is never wrong.I’ve enlisted the help of my children to keep the unwanted plants under control. I have a line of bushes along the alley on one side of our house. I planted them many years ago to give our yard some privacy from pedestrians walking from apartments in one direction and businesses in the other. I’d rather not have them think less of us by giving them accurate information about our lives. Nothing should be growing underneath those bushes. Naturally, it’s one of the most fertile spots on my property for unwanted greenery. It’s basically the Garden of Eden for trash plants. To eliminate them, I turned to the most destructive force on the planet: my own kids.I created a system for the girls where, every time they walk down the alley, they’re supposed to pull up at least one plant. I thought they’d be excited for a rule that required them to destroy. They were big fans of my kick-the-mushroom policy. Occasionally, various unknown fungi pop up in our front yard after it rains. I encouraged my daughters to obliterate them with their feet. They loved it. If you’ve never kicked an unsuspecting mushroom as hard as you can, you haven’t lived. I’m sure a scientist will pop up in the comments and tell us we were just spreading fungus spores. You’re right, but that’s more mushrooms to kick. My perfect system came to an end for two reasons. First, Lola didn’t want the kids getting mushroom guts all over their shoes. We didn’t know if they were poisonous. I guess it was better to leave potentially poisonous mushrooms in place in case anyone got hungry later. The second reason is that nature realized we were having fun. Our mushroom supply dried up after that. The weeds are still here, though, since nobody liked them. Not even killing them was fun. The girls never complied with my plan for them to pull up one alley weed with every pass. Instead, they stopped walking down the alley. I admire their malicious compliance. They got in so many extra steps going the long way around the block. At least I accidentally made them healthier by helping their cardio.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. It’s like PBS, but completely unhelpful and slightly evil. Join today!I eventually got one kid to help thanks to BSA Scouts. To get her next rank, my thirteen-year-old, Mae, had to set a goal for an item she wanted to buy. After researching prices, she was supposed to come up with a plan to earn that money. Once she had the funds in hand, she needed to decide if she’d rather keep the money or have the item. The goal seemed to be to turn children into misers early. It’s never too soon to start hoarding material wealth. Remember, kids, you can take it with you, but only if you set up a wire transfer directly to heaven. Mae decided that she wanted some new headphones. She had a pair of hand-me-downs from Lola, which Mae promptly lost. She might be great at starting fires and surviving in the wilderness, but she’s terrible at keeping track of electronics. If only her phone and other devices were constantly glued to her person. Fingers crossed that she’ll soon grow an unhealthy phone addiction like her fellow teens.After searching a few websites, Mae found a pair of headphones that were normally $150 but that were on sale for twenty dollars as part of Prime Day. All that was left was to come up with a way to make money. The most obvious way was to run her own cryptocurrency scam. I refused to let her tie up the computer for that long. Instead, I told her that she could weed under the bushes for ten dollars an hour. I wasn’t sure if that was a fair rate for a child. My kids do many chores inside of the house, none of which they’re paid for. They also don’t do a good enough job to deserve money. They work slowly and loudly, spending more time fighting with each other than doing the actual tasks at hand. They never do any duty more than half way, but that’s still half that Lola and I don’t have to do for them. It’s worth it for us to assign them jobs as long as we aren’t home to hear the screaming.Despite the poor results, I pay the kids an allowance. I give them one dollar a week per year of age, rounded up to however old they’ll turn during that year. For example, Waffle will turn ten in November, so I have an automatic bank transfer set up to give her ten dollars a week from my bank account. That seems like a huge amount of money. I think I got a dollar a week back in the day for chores I also didn’t do. I offset my children’s high allowances by stiffing them on tooth fairy money. I’ve heard that in some households, the tooth fairy gives twenty dollars per chomper. In my house, she still gives fifty cents, which is how much I got when I lost my teeth back in 3000 BC. We believe in mythical beings but not inflation. Regardless of whether or not my kids get too much of an allowance or not enough, it fails to serve as an incentive of any kind. We don’t make much of an effort to tie it to the chores they’re supposed to be doing. They also don’t remember that they’re getting an allowance. It’s just a number on a banking website they can’t see or access. Money is only real when it’s cash in their hand that they can spend on a shopping spree in the candy aisle. Dollars might not be on the gold standard any more, but, in this house, currency is still backed by sugar.As with nearly everything else I worry about, my deliberations about Mae’s pay rate for pulling weeds were largely pointless. Mae agreed to it because she didn’t have any other options. Even in Indiana, which is aggressively rolling back child labor laws, you can’t get a job at thirteen. You have to be at least fourteen before you can quit school to work in the mines. Mae spent two full hours pulling weeds from under the bushes. She amassed an impressive pile of plants she had slain. Then I looked under the bushes. She had barely made a dent. If anything, it looked like there were more weeds than when she started. Mae didn’t care about that. She got her headphones, which I had already purchased, violating the spirit of the BSA exercise. Rather than giving her the money and letting her decide if she wanted to keep the cash or buy the item, I bought the item in advance while it was still on sale. The real lesson she learned was to always give in to false urgency.My eleven-year-old, Lucy, also pulls weeds sometimes. She’s my gardening buddy. I got her two raised planters, which she set up on the parking slab behind the house. She planted flower seeds in one and vegetables in the other. One planter is now absolutely overwhelmed by onions, which none of us eat. The pigs won’t touch them, either. Maybe we can give the squirrels bad breath. Meanwhile, the flowers are doing all right. She planted a dozen different packets of seeds. There’s something growing in there, but it’s hard to say what any of it is. If it’s weeds, it’s protected by our ignorance. They get the same benefit of the doubt as the flower beds in front of our house. Lucy has inadvertently become the trash plants’ greatest ally.Early in the season, she planted additional seeds in the flower beds out front. We don’t remember exactly where. Anytime something new sprouts, I have to leave it there on the off chance that it’s one of her flowers. It never is. When I built the beds, I laid down landscaping fabric and mulch around the big plants that are supposed to be there. My preventative measures partially worked. There are fewer weeds out front than on other parts of the property. Yet, somehow, a certain number of weeds make it through. When they do, I’m required by parenting law to give them a grace period to see if, just this one time, it might be a flower. Inevitably, it’s one of the same six weeds that swarms every other part of the property. I’m sure some people in the comment section will try to convince me that natural plant life is beautiful. When they say that, they’ll be picturing wildflowers in a ditch or lush, powerful grasses on an untamed swath of prairie. That’s not what I get here. My property is host to weird, viney, and often tentacled plants that never have a flower of any kind. That last part is perplexing. Flowers are supposed to attract bees and spread pollen, which I was taught is the most effective method of plant reproduction. Apparently not. These weeds can grow anywhere, from a tiny hole in the lawn fabric under a layer of mulch to the smallest crack on the back parking slab where there’s no soil at all. Some of the weeds I pulled from back there had roots reaching to the center of the earth. Meanwhile, Lucy’s flowers generally can’t be bothered to bloom unless we absolutely baby them. She’ll eventually have some flowers in her raised flower bed, but everything outside of those secure confines has been overtaken by the naturally monstrous plants that inhabit this land. It’s a wonder that farmers in Indiana are able to grow corn instead of just large bales of weeds. The industrial scale application of weed killer might help. I should get a poison guy. That’s definitely what I’ll call him on my contact list.There are some areas where I can’t use the children to assist with weeding. It’s always disappointing when I have to forgo indentured labor and do something myself. To complete my bush wall and hide the shame of pig ownership, there were some areas where I had to grow bushes inside my wooden picket fence rather than outside of it. Naturally, the pigs ate any bushes inside the yard when they were still saplings. I had to build a series of progressively tougher interior fences to defend the fledgling plants. Those fences have no gates. If I want to get over them to weed things, I have to use my overly-long, cartoonish legs, which the kids lack. That’s my fault for not giving them taller genes. I spent an inordinate amount of time weeding around those inside-the-fence line bushes this weekend. I don’t know why it mattered. I’m literally the only person in this suburb who will ever see those weeds. They were hidden from outside view by the wooden fence. But spy satellites overhead could still see them, and that was enough motivation for me to get out there. I don’t want America’s enemies laughing at my poor yard maintenance.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.It took me multiple hours over two days to tear out all the stuff that wasn’t supposed to be there, which was pretty much everything. As I shredded nature, the pigs became very interested. Instead of tossing the weeds directly in a trash can, I threw them on the ground where the pigs could get them. The pigs dove in like I was feeding them a delicacy. Later, I looked at what they left behind and realized they just snouted it around before leaving it all. It was the same experience I get cooking meals from my daughters every night. I then had the privilege of picking up those weeds for a second time to throw them away. I wish the pigs did better at controlling nuisance plants, but they have standards. It’s a shame. If they liked weeds, I’d never have to buy pig food again.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

New Old Things

My wife and oldest daughter both suffer from a dangerous and costly condition called antiquing. There is no cure. Symptoms include vanishing for hours on Saturday afternoons, a strange fixation with colored glass, and unexplained gaps in our bank account. No surface in my house is safe from ornamental containers of unknown purpose and origin. Maybe they once held apples or sugar—or the elixir of life itself. There’s no way to know, unless the containers are labeled, which they often are. That Ball jar once contained balls, likely of the husband who was dragged along to buy it. These days, I stay home.As much as I hate to admit it, I see the appeal of the hobby. I myself am a recovering antiquer. It’s what Lola and I used to do on weekends in the days before kids. Having babies snapped me out of it. I no longer wanted expensive, fragile things. If it wasn’t made of plastic—or possibly steel—it wouldn’t survive more than a few minutes in our house. Lola still loved shopping for antiques, but she put the hobby on pause until the kids were older. That was poorly planned. Now that they’re bigger, the girls are better at breaking stuff. Even concrete reinforced by rebar doesn’t stand a chance. Waffle is a Miley Cyrus song. She came in like a wrecking ball, and she never left.The kids love to destroy, but not as much as they love to buy. It’s hunting, not gathering. They track down rare items and pounce on good deals. Betsy is especially into it. She likes nothing more than spending one-on-one time with her mom searching for pretty things. The downside is that, when they find them, they bring them home. We don’t have enough room for yet another set of vintage spice tins. We don’t even use spices. All the frozen foods I cook come pre-salted.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. It’s like PBS, but completely unhelpful and slightly evil. Join today!The accumulation of stuff was always the part of antiquing I liked the least. I prefer a catch-and-release approach. I see no reason why I can’t appreciate the items while they’re in their booths and leave them there. I treat antique stores as museums of oddities. I’m fascinated by the things other people think are valuable. Stuff I wouldn’t pay twenty-five cents for at a garage sale is listed for dozens or hundreds of dollars. The opposite is seldom true. I almost never stumble across something truly valuable listed at a fraction of its true worth. By virtue of being in an antique store, an item is already overpriced. Those Happy Meal toys and leftover issues of National Geographic aren’t precious just because they’re from decades ago. Trash is trash, even when it’s old.Lola and Betsy aren’t bringing home garbage. They’re picking out visually appealing items to refresh the decor in our home. Not that it needs refreshing. I thought it looked fine with the decorative glassware Lola brought home a decade ago. Our existing antiques are now even more antique than before. We should keep them forever, if not longer, especially if it means we won’t have to buy new old stuff.My opinions on home decorating were disregarded, and rightfully so. If it were up to me, there would be nothing on most of our shelves, save for board games. The glassware competes for real estate with my most treasured cardboard possessions. Were it not for the various decanters and glasses on the higher shelves, my board game collection could be twice as big as it is now. Not that I need to expand it. Board games might be the only hobby on earth more expensive than antiquing. As two cheap people, Lola and I both found the worst possible ways to entertain ourselves.Lola decorates some areas where I would never put board games, mainly because I forget those spaces exist. The best example is the area above our kitchen cabinets. I don’t know what rational person would ever look that high. I keep my focus at eye level and lower, where the food is. If I glance up, I’ll only see dust, cobwebs, and new cracks in the ceiling. I’m much happier if I don’t know what’s above. Apparently, we’ve had various decorative red ornaments and containers above the cabinets for years. I should have known that. I’m likely the one who put them up there early in our marriage. Lola hasn’t gotten any taller in the last eighteen years. Back then, we only had a step ladder, which wasn’t sufficient for her to reach above the cabinets, and a giant twenty-two foot ladder, which wouldn’t fit in the kitchen. I must have moved the items, likely while Lola stood back and guided my placement to the millimeter. There might be a reason I don’t remember that day. You don’t have to forgive what you’ve already forgotten. Short memories keep our marriage strong.While I hadn’t thought about the tops of the cabinets in years, they recently came to the top of Lola’s itinerary. She and Betsy set out on a mission to redecorate the upper reaches of the kitchen. They raided every antique store in the area, seizing reasonably-priced items matching a new aesthetic known only to them. They came home with boxes packed with paper-wrapped glassware. They had more fun unwrapping them in front of the rest of us than they’ve ever had unwrapping a gift that was actually a surprise. That makes sense. Any gifts they didn’t buy for themselves would have come from me.The new theme for the top of the cabinets was fruits and vegetables. That had some overlap with the old theme, which was red. Congrats to anything featuring a strawberry, which made the cut to stay in the kitchen for another few decades. Lola’s favorite new old item was a cookie jar shaped like a head of cauliflower. Inside the jar, there was a warning not to use it to hold food. It was a no-cookie jar. That’s on brand. Cauliflowers are the symbol of a diet. They’re sadness in food form. I will continue not looking up.Before the new old stuff went up, the old old stuff had to come down. Lola handled the removal process. We now have a more reasonable six-foot ladder that helps her just barely reach above the cabinets. Everything she brought down was covered with a mix of grease and dust. Whenever I filled the kitchen with smoke, I gave the top decorations an extra layer of unwanted adhesive. In addition to being gross, every vase and tin she brought down was also highly flammable. We’re lucky she didn’t sneeze and burn the house down. She was able to clean the old antiques in the sink. The tops of the cabinets were another story. We didn’t want to put our new antiques on the old dust and grease. We were heading down a dangerous path. Chores beget more chores. There is no stopping point.While Lola could reach high enough to add and remove items, she wasn’t tall enough to bend her arms and scrub the tops of the cabinets. That sounds like a convenient excuse. I’m going to be so mad if it turns out she’s been 5’10” this whole time and is just ducking down. Before we got married, I should have insisted on measuring. Allegedly unable to handle the task, she asked me to clean the cabinet tops. I knew it was a trap. I agreed to do it anyway. I can’t resist a chance to lord my height over my fellow man.The grease proved to be my equal. It was impervious to scrubbing with paper towels and water, no matter how much brute force I applied. If at first you don’t succeed, do it harder until you break something. Usually, that mantra serves me well. In this case, it was clear that the cabinet would come off the wall before the grease came off the cabinet. I tried bleach wipes, but they were equally ineffective. I looked for our spray bottle of grease remover. It was missing in action. It was likely hidden by the grease itself, which had been in the kitchen long enough to become sentient—and evil. No inanimate substance ever wakes up with good intentions. Revenge is the spark of life.Recognizing my plight from far below, Lola saved the day with science. She handed me a jug of liquid dishwashing soap. Thanks to various chemical mumbo jumbo, it cut through the grease like a knife through fingers. I mostly eat with a spoon. Even with the grease dislodged, it took lots of scrubbing to get it all off. I went through rag after filthy rag. Finally, I had the top of one set of cabinets clean. The other set was on the other side of the room. We only have two sets of upper cabinets because our house was built at a time when each household only had one plate and one cup and everybody had to share. By those standards, two whole sets of upper cabinets was decadent overkill. It wasn’t a straight shot between the two groups of cabinets. From on top of the ladder, I could see numerous other greasy surfaces that needed to be cleaned. At ground level, I could ignore them, but now I was soaring with the eagles. If I did nothing, knowledge of the secret filth would haunt me until my dying day. I had to clean everything. The chore creep was in full swing.I scrubbed the molding above the windows. I scrubbed the molding above the doors. I scrubbed the tops of the doors themselves. I scrubbed the top of the fridge. What was supposed to be a quick favor to help Lola took over my entire afternoon. This was no longer for her and her new antiques. This was for me. I pushed the grease back to its final redoubt: the top of the other cabinets. I used more liquid dishwashing soap than ever. I banished the filth with a tidal wave of cleanliness. It was done. Satisfied, I climbed down the ladder to admire my handiwork from the floor. The room looked exactly like it did before. There was no sign I had done anything at all. I never should have climbed that ladder. If the sentient grease wants all the upper surfaces, it can have them. I’m sticking to ground level from now on.At least Lola was happy. She artistically arranged her various ceramic and metal vegetables and vegetable-themed objects high above the ground. They look good. The old old stuff looked good, too. She’s never had bad taste. I just wish she enjoyed antiques by turning them over in her hands a few times in the store and leaving them there. The world needs more window shoppers.Now that the kitchen is done, the other rooms won’t be far behind. Lola and Betsy are amped up for more mother-daughter antiquing adventures. You never know when the next booth might have a non-food-safe cookie jar shaped like a rutabaga or an artichoke. The lead paint really makes them pop. As far as hobbies go, this one is pretty harmless, assuming Betsy and Lola respect the warning labels. They’re buying ceramic knickknacks, not Faberge eggs. Our budget can likely accommodate a few more fake vegetables as long as they were all made five years ago in a country with no safety laws.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.More importantly, as new old stuff comes in, old old stuff goes out. Lola has been great about getting rid of the antiques she doesn’t want anymore. It’s that churn that stops us from being hoarders. I breathe a sigh of relief every time I see a colored glass object leave the house, even if I couldn’t tell you where it has been in the house all these years. Just because I didn’t notice it doesn’t mean I won’t notice that it’s gone. Lola feels joy when objects come, and I feel it when they go. We complete each other in the most emotionally unhealthy ways.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 Exploding Roads

Roads shouldn’t explode. That’s my controversial hot take, and I’m sticking to it. The interstates in Wisconsin disagreed. Our path from Indianapolis to Minneapolis was more fraught than ever, but we pushed on all the same. This is that tale.This weekend, we once again attempted to reach my aunt’s house in Minnesota for the Fourth of July. She throws an annual reunion for her nine hundred siblings, nieces, and nephews. Those numbers are an exaggeration, but not by much. The actual count is 852. Unfortunately, between our house and hers, there’s an impassable road block known as the city of Chicago. Lola and I decided that we are done falling for its tricks. The massive metropolitan sprawl takes up a critical junction between four states. The only options are to go through it or to take a very long detour around. The estimate always says going through Chicago is faster than going around it. That estimate is a work of creative fiction. When we get to the outskirts of the city, there are suddenly delays that materialize out of nowhere and slow us down by minutes if we’re lucky and months if we’re not. Each time, the app acts totally surprised that this happened, as if it didn’t have data points from thousands of people’s phones on that very road that could have warned us hours in advance to avoid the area. Earlier this summer, we ended up parked for an hour in a Chicago traffic snarl that Google Maps claimed it had no idea was there. You can only lie to my face so many times in a row before I catch on. That number is roughly two dozen. For our twenty-fifth trip in that direction, I finally caught on.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. It’s like PBS, but completely unhelpful and slightly evil. Join today!Although it killed me to do it, this time, I deliberately picked a longer route that showed a much worse time on my phone. Google Maps practically screamed at me for making a suboptimal choice. It kept trying to reroute me to the Chicago Pit of Despair, even after I picked a fake interim destination that should have taken us in a completely different direction. I can only conclude that Google’s software engineers were bribed by Chicago’s tollway system and continue to get kickbacks by sending people into that trap. It’s like wandering through Mirkwood Forest in Middle Earth. No matter which path you pick, you always end up at the giant spiders. I had to turn off my phone and navigate by compass and sextant to avoid arriving at Willis Towers. I successfully avoided the city, but I’m sure Google Maps will try again next time.As Lola and I battled technology to stay on rural interstates, the kids behaved themselves. They all have their own phones. Usually, that’s not enough to stop them from fighting. No device will ever be as entertaining as open combat with your sisters. To our infinite shock, on this trip, each kid remained in their own world. Betsy slept for half the drive and then spent the other half working on her online classes. Even Waffle, who generally can’t resist stirring up trouble with everyone in arm’s reach, stuck to YouTube reels. We made it four hours before our first bathroom stop, which is close to a record for our family. If only the total route wasn’t estimated at over nine. We reached the seven-hour mark before our next and final (we hoped) pitstop. That’s when the asphalt erupted out of the Earth.We were in the middle of nowhere in Wisconsin when traffic suddenly ground to a halt. I had immediate flashbacks to my worst moments in Chicago. I thought the vindictive Google Maps software team sent all those urban Illinois drivers to slow us down. The origin of the stoppage was a half mile ahead. We figured it must be a car crash. Surely, the police would scoot one or both cars to the side and let one lane of traffic pass, if only on the shoulder. Instead, nothing moved. Gradually, more police officers arrived on the scene, but not to free us up. The first one we saw simply pulled up beside us to block the illegal u-turn spot that I definitely wasn’t considering using. We were completely trapped.After half an hour of a dead stop, traffic finally began scooting along. I craned my neck to see the source of the problem. It wasn’t a crash at all. The pavement had erupted upward, like two tectonic plates had smashed together to create a new mountain range. Huge chunks stuck out, waiting to destroy a tire or an entire chassis. It would not have been fun to hit that at seventy-five miles an hour. I wasn’t looking to do any involuntary stunt jumps in my minivan. I had never seen an asphalt volcano before, but Lola said she read about them recently. Leave it to literacy to ruin a good mystery. It’s been so hot that roads across America are buckling. To me, “buckling” indicates sinking rather than bursting upward, but I guess we all have breakdowns in our own way.At the site of the fracture, a road crew with a skid steer was carefully scooping away debris. A police officer eventually waved us past. Nothing could stop us now. An hour later, the road exploded again. We pulled to a stop on another isolated stretch of interstate. This time, we knew what was going on. So did the road crew. They only stopped us for five minutes before letting us go by on the shoulder. They must have figured that any driver who had made it that far into Wisconsin could handle a little exploding asphalt. We drove on, holding our breath to see if the road would explode again. It did not.Ten hours after we set out, we arrived at my aunt’s house. We got there with enough daylight left for the kids to swim. I would have thought the sun would wear itself out melting Wisconsin’s roadways, but it had enough energy left to light her backyard. It doesn’t matter where we go in the world or what we paid to get there. All my kids really want to do is splash around in the water for a few hours. It makes me question every elaborate vacation plan I’ve ever made. While the kids frolicked, Lola and I caught up with my parents, who met us there, and the first wave of my aunts, uncles, and cousins, who I only see once a year. Conversations got louder as the night got later. I’m sure there were a few noise complaints from passing cars and low flying airplanes. Eventually, it got dark, which meant we all had to run inside as mosquitoes the size of minivans showed up. That’s also a slight exaggeration. The mosquitos were only the size of four-door sedans. We kept the conversations going in the kitchen for another hour before we remembered we were all very old. There’s nothing more exhausting than catching up, except maybe for dodging exploding roads. That also gets kind of tiring.The next morning, the sun was also feeling lethargic. We awoke to cloudy, overcast skies. The forecast called for intermittent rain all day. We weren’t sure if the kids would get to swim at all. That was less than ideal for an event where swimming was the main draw. If they had to stay indoors, they would break everything and get us disowned by our extended family. It wasn’t raining yet, so my girls hopped in the water under ominous clouds. The precipitation stayed away. The kids were gradually joined by cousins, second cousins, and cousins once removed. I can never remember the definition of those last two terms, but both must have applied. My girls mainly played with the kids of my oldest cousin and the kids of my youngest aunt, who, by coincidence, lined up with my children by age. Well, it wasn’t that much of a coincidence. When you have enough relatives to populate their own public high school, every age group gets saturated. My oldest cousin is nearly fifty and my youngest cousin is nine. That’s not hard to keep track of at all. Everyone at these gatherings should wear not only a nametag, but also a diagram of their place on the family tree.The clouds came and went, but the rain mostly stayed away. The younger generation kept swimming. It was one of the most relaxing days I’ve ever spent by the pool. I watched as my two youngest daughters, Lucy and Waffle, darted about like fish in the deep end. While they’ll always need adult supervision, they’ve reached the age and swimming level where they’re more likely to save me in the water than I am to save them. That was a nice change from previous pool parties, when I was afraid one of them might drown if I accidentally blinked. The only dangerous moment was when Waffle did her best Mario impression and jumped on Betsy’s head. Video games really do cause violence. The incident was unfortunate, but it was to be expected. If you don’t have to go through concussion protocols at least once, did your kids even play together?Luckily, Betsy was fine. The swimming continued. Meanwhile, the sun and clouds battled for control of the sky. The rain held off all day until, with no warning in a moment of full sun, there was a sudden downpour. The adults ran for shelter. So did a small frog. It made it inside the door of my aunt’s house. My uncle scooped it up and tossed it toward the door, where it hit my cousin’s wife and fell into her bag of towels. Her husband heroically retrieved the frog from the bag and relocated it outside, earning what I assume was a million marriage brownie points. During the whole ordeal, the kids continued to swim, unperturbed by the weather. Five minutes later, the rain was over. It stayed away for good. We remained outside for the rest of the day. By the time the children finally got out of the water, half of them had grown gills. I’m sure that won’t raise questions at their annual physicals.As darkness fell, we once again ran inside. This time, the mosquitos were the size of school buses. They had bulked up after feeding on us the night before. Nobody was ready for bed. Instead, we reconvened in the kitchen and discussed the terrifying noises wildlife makes in the dark. You do not want to hear what the fox says. From there, we logically pivoted to how your arm span compares to your height. We pulled out a measuring tape to test our hypothesis. When we hang out, we get science-y. The main thing we learned is that my uncles have long orangutan arms far out of proportion to their bodies. Their case studies will be coming soon to a biology textbook near you.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.The kids didn’t want to wake up the next morning. I forced them out of bed anyway. I’m a monster, but I also didn’t have a choice. The return trip always takes longer than the trip there. The universe knows we’re tired and cranky and just want to get home. We had a choice of driving through Wisconsin past the Dells or taking a longer but less busy detour south through Iowa. We took a chance and went through Wisconsin. I wanted to see what the roads looked like when they weren’t erupting out of the ground. Apparently everyone else in the state wanted to see that, too. We lost an hour to standstill traffic. We were surrounded by every RV in the country. The silver lining was it gave us more time to listen to the Harry Potter series. All the same, I’d rather not be stuck for long enough to hear all seven books on one trip. We arrived home late but unexploded. Now I have another year to figure out a faster and less stressful path to Minneapolis. That also gives the Google engineers a year to find new ways to send me on an involuntary vacation to Chicago.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

Girls with Fire

My daughters got back from summer camp Saturday. They returned with wonderful memories I was glad they had and frightening new skills I wished they didn’t. Girls just want to have fun, but “fun” is swinging hatchets and starting fires. If my insurance company reads this, they’re definitely going to drop me. There’s no way my house makes it through the year.My thirteen-year-old, Mae, and eleven-year-old, Lucy were supposed to be back Saturday morning. I didn’t hear from either one of them until close to noon. I started to get concerned—and slightly hopeful. Maybe the kids decided to stick around at camp for another week. The house had been unusually quiet while they were gone. Normally, when one kid is away, the other three girls get louder to make up for their absence. This time, the overall volume actually went down. With the middle two children away, there was a huge gap between my fifteen-year-old and nine-year-old. They still yelled at each other when they accidentally found themselves in the same room, but for the most part, they were in separate wings of the house doing separate things all week. Obviously that peace and quiet had to end. Yet, I didn’t receive any updates from either Mae or Lucy to say that they were on their way home. In fact, I didn’t get any updates all week.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. It’s like PBS, but completely unhelpful and slightly evil. Join today!Summer camp is different than it was when I was a kid. When I went, we didn’t have cool inventions like fire and the wheel. We had to walk the entire distance to camp and then shivered all night once we got there. Mae and Lucy had those technologies plus cell phones. They could have reached out to me anytime they wanted. Well, half the time. Their scoutmaster made a rule that they were supposed to leave their phones in their tents and only use them at night. During those hours of darkness, they had better things to do than give Lola and me updates. Those YouTube reels weren’t going to watch themselves. Or maybe they weren’t on their phones at all and instead chose to live in the moment having fun with their friends. I don’t understand modern kids at all.Lacking updates from afar, Lola I could have gone to see the girls in the middle of the week. Wednesday night was parents night. Unfortunately, summer camp was an hour and a half away. We couldn’t justify a three-hour round trip to see the kids when they’d be home a few days later. We’re not that exciting, and neither are they. We could do without each other for a bit longer, especially if it saved us gas money. We told Mae and Lucy beforehand that we wouldn’t be there. I prefer to pre-disappoint my children. The key to managing expectations is to make sure my children don’t have any.In the previous two years, Mae called us because she was terrified of the huge storms ravaging the campgrounds. This year, there wasn’t a drop of rain. Instead, the scouts were greeted by a scorching heatwave. All three times my daughters have been at summer camp, the forecast has been a biblical disaster. This year was the one where God held up a giant magnifying glass to light people on fire. Mae must have thought her mom and I could protect her from storms but not from the heat. As the temperature soared, she didn’t bother calling us for reassurance. We’d have to wait for whatever she had to say until she got back. Late Saturday morning, I started to wonder when that would be.I checked Lucy and Mae’s locations on my phone. They were scattered all over the woods. The app noted that might not be accurate. Cell reception is spotty in the middle of the wilderness. They should cut down more trees and build more cell towers. It’s what Smokey Bear would have wanted. Finally, Lucy responded to one of Lola’s texts to say they’d be home at 11:30 a.m.. I made my way to the local church parking lot that serves as their departure and arrival point. Lucy beat me there. Mae did not.I was briefly concerned that BSA was only returning half as many children as I sent out. If so, I expected a partial refund. Mae showed up ten minutes later. She and Lucy had ridden in different cars. Mae’s was the good one. Her driver stopped at a gas station to get everybody a drink and a snack. That’s an unimaginable luxury in this house. We would never pay gas station prices. We buy all our road trip junk food at the dollar store beforehand like the financially responsible adults we are. Those $1.25 bags of gummy bears add up.When Lucy saw me, she gave me a huge hug. She hadn’t forgotten me completely. That was a good start. When Mae got there, She only gave me a brief sideways hug. She had outgrown the need for a father. The difference in appearance between the two girls couldn’t have been starker. Mae was covered in bug bites. Lucy looked like she’d been inside for the last week. Apparently Lucy used bug spray the entire time while Mae stopped after her first bug bite. She figured, if one mosquito found her, there was no point in using the spray any more. The point would have been to prevent the next nine hundred bites. In case you were wondering, science works. The bug spray wasn’t the only reason Mae had more bites. She also had a secret mission in the woods.The first thing Mae told me when she got back—after talking about the gas station snacks, which were the highlight of the week—was to tell me that she was a Firecrafter. I’ve heard that term used at her scout meetings before, but I didn’t fully understand what it was. It’s a service organization similar to Order of the Arrow. The difference is that, instead of being voted there by a group of your peers, you gain entry on your own by achieving technical proficiency. That seems like a misstep. Everyone knows popularity contests are the best way to judge outdoor survival skills. Mae earned entry into the organization by building a fire with a bow drill, which is the absolute hardest way to make one. It’s a task I saw demonstrated at scout camp decades ago. The camp counselor showed us and then said don’t bother doing it yourself because you can’t. It takes time, dedication, and working your arm until it feels like it’s going to fall off. My children aren’t exactly blessed with great upper body strength. I cursed them with my genetics. Mae overcame those challenges and stuck with it until she had a roaring fire. She now has an actual survival skill, which is one more than I have. If I ever need to light something on fire in the slowest and most cumbersome way possible, she’s the first person I’ll call.If you’re a new BSA Scout, stop reading now if you don’t like spoilers. I’m about to reveal some secret society info that will probably get me killed. The scout illuminati are everywhere. As part of my induction into Order of the Arrow in 2000 B.C., I had to spend a night outside. We were at summer camp, where we were already ostensibly outside. This was a more outside-y outside. I had to sleep on the ground without a tent. My main memory is of a single mosquito flying around my ear for the entire night. It was a million degrees, but I stayed inside my sleeping bag to protect the rest of my body from that lone insect. He’s been my arch nemesis ever since. I assume he’s been waiting for me all these years in case I ever again make the mistake of going outside.Mae had a similar experience for Firecrafters, but with a much more productive objective. She wasn’t merely supposed to stay outside all night for the sake of staying outside. She and the other Firecrafter candidates had to tend to a fire all night. They built it using their difficult, manual method and then had to keep a vigil maintaining it. They were allowed to sleep in shifts. Mae said she slept for an hour and a half. Her friend slept for six hours. That girl has management potential.In the morning, the girls had to use their fire to cook a meal. They made scrambled eggs without any pots or pans. They poked a hole in the top of the eggs and put the eggs in the ashes to the sides of the fire. When the eggs were almost done, they began to sweat. That’s the point when the kids should have pulled them out. They left them in. The eggs exploded. That was the right call. To finish the requirement, they just had to cook the eggs, not eat them. They might as well go out with a bang. Regardless, they had achieved technical mastery of all things fire related. That’s an impressive skill. Mae is the dad of this family now.Lucy is following in Mae’s footsteps. Someday, she’ll get to stay up all night maintaining a fire without a tent. That’s something I’d be dreading rather than looking forward to, but we’re all built differently. Mae was guarded when describing to me what happened because she didn’t want to ruin the surprise for Lucy, even though the surprise had been spoiled for her. Shockingly, kids talk. I’ll have to be careful when narrating this part of the newsletter so Lucy doesn’t overhear. Like all my children, she’s great at ignoring me, so I don’t imagine she’ll notice a word I say. Even without building a fire by hand, she had her own challenges at camp. She mastered basket weaving and woodworking. She came home with two wicker baskets and a woven stool. I was warned that the stool wasn’t load bearing, which seems like a design flaw. It’s suitable for use only by ghosts. She also carved what she said was supposed to be an Enderman trap, modeled after something in Minecraft. For all I know, it looks exactly like what it’s supposed to be. She knows more about both topics than I ever will. I’m not sure when my kids became smarter than their dad, but I’m not a fan. Please use small words around me.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.When I finally got them home, both girls were exhausted. Mae laid down after lunch and slept till dinner. We made her unpack first. She and Lucy both had a week’s worth of sweaty clothes that needed to be washed—or burned. If we needed a nice, sanitizing fire, I knew who to ask. Despite being at camp for a full week, the kids can’t wait to go back again. Not that their other sisters were eager for them to leave. Waffle, who usually has the aloofness of a house cat, was practically hanging on Mae and Lucy when they came back. It won’t be long until Mae leaves again. She has a special campout in August to finish her Firecrafter initiation. Lucy wants to follow in her footsteps someday. So does Waffle. She finished her own stint at Cub Scout day camp earlier this month. In a few more years, she can hang out at overnight summer camp with the big girls. Then the house truly will be quiet. I’ll have to play a soundtrack of volcanoes and jet engines to make up for it.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

Whining on the Waves

We survived another family vacation to the happiest place on earth. If you thought I meant Disney World, you’ve clearly never been to Wisconsin, which has shorter lines and more cheese. We ate too much, slept too little, and had entirely too much fun. We once again took advantage of our friends’ generosity to invite ourselves over and have a great time at their expense. I now understand the importance of networking, or maybe just the importance of spacing out our visits so the people who host us forget how relieved they were when we left the last time. For us, it was the perfect stay at the perfect place. For them, it was the most stressful week of the year. Naturally, my kids found something to complain about the entire time, as is their custom. If they aren’t whining, you can assume they’re dead.I gave them grounds for grievances early. The drive to visit my and Lola’s college friends, Rocco and Phoebe, should have taken five and a half hours. That sounds long, but by Midwestern standards, it’s practically a quick trip to the store. For anything less than twelve hours, there’s no reason to even consider a plane ticket. Unfortunately, that five-and-a-half hour estimate was based on normal traffic patterns and not the vehicular hellscape known as Chicago. The metropolis blocks the roads to nearly every state I want to get to (and to some I don’t). It’s too big to avoid completely. Taking the long way around would add two days to the trip. Going directly through it can either keep us on schedule or stop us dead in our tracks. That uncertainty is the problem.Two out of every three times, driving through Chicago is faster than the alternative. But on that third time, the city is simply impassable. All the cars on the interstate park in place for no discernable reason and all forward progress stops forever. You would think the cutting-edge traffic app on my phone would help me avoid such snarls, but, every time, it seems just as surprised as I am. On this occasion, the app directed me to take a route straight through the heart of downtown. It was obvious why. We are passing through at 1:30 p.m. on a Wednesday. There was no reason for anyone else to be on the road on that day at that time. I neglected to remember that, in Chicago, drivers don’t need a reason. Deep in the city, we found ourselves in stand-still traffic as far as the eye could see. Minivans are good for many things, but one of those is not lane changes around aggressive drivers on congested interstates. My blind spots were the size of some small countries. Every time I attempted to merge, it took two years off my life.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. It’s like PBS, but completely unhelpful and slightly evil. Join today!We hit the time when we were supposed to be halfway through Wisconsin and we were still in Chicago. My girls wanted to know how much longer we had to go. It’s the only time in my life where I’ve had a kid ask, “Are we there yet?” and the answer was that we were still in the same spot we were an hour before. When we finally left the city, I had to blink back tears of joy. I can’t calculate the exact length of the trip since I’m bad at time zone math, but Chicago added between an hour and a week to the trip. There was one positive development. I got so tired of the kids asking how much longer the drive would be that I taught them how to use Google Maps. By the end of the drive, they all had it pulled up on their phones and were doing a minute-by-minute countdown. With luck, they’ll never ask the forbidden question again. If you don’t see us at our final destination, the answer is always no.Because we had an early start, we still arrived at Rocco and Phoebe’s house at a decent hour, even accounting for the two week delay in the Great Chicago Parking Lot. We had pizza on their deck overlooking the river and retold the same college stories for the hundredth time. We still laugh at them like we’ve never heard them before. It’s the best part of age-related memory loss. Eventually, Lola and Phoebe went to bed. Rocco and I stayed up. It was one of those nights where 10 p.m. somehow turned into 3 a.m. without either of us noticing. That might be connected to the memory issues. I should probably see a doctor.Our annual trips to Wisconsin have a tried and true formula: one day, we do water sports on the river, and the other, we hang out on a sandbar on the lake. Which comes first depends on the weather. This time, we started with the river. Our combined seven kids were delighted as we dragged them behind the boat on various flotation devices. The only complaints were from children waiting for their turn. My eleven-year-old, Lucy, didn’t add to the congestion. She opted to stay inside the boat and simply enjoy the ride. I chose the same. It was the first river day when I’ve managed to stay dry the entire time. I was so proud of myself. Normally, I’m undone by all the liquids I consume. If I chug enough two-liter bottles of soda, I eventually have to jump in the river to take advantage of nature’s bathroom. I managed to hold it until we got back to shore, where I aggressively waddled to the porta potty. My ground speed rivalled some of my times from track. It was an ideal afternoon. All the youths who wanted to do water sports had multiple turns, and I avoided having a catastrophic accident in front of my adult friends. Goals really change as you get older.The most impressive feat of the weekend came next. For most people, backing a boat into the water is so hard and stressful that they do everything they can to avoid it. Rocco did it twice in one afternoon. He put the boat in the river that morning for water sports, then pulled it out and took it back to his house to vacuum it out. Children are messy. By “children,” I mean me. An hour later, we were back on the water for an adults-only cruise with pizza and wakeboarding. Rocco once again backed the boat into the water flawlessly. For reference, I had trouble reversing my minivan down Rocco’s driveway. To me, putting a boat in the water twice in one day is on par with landing on the moon. The only difference is no one thinks Rocco’s boat launching is a hoax. Then again, this is the internet. I better not check.For the evening boat ride, we left the kids at Rocco and Phoebe’s house to watch themselves. Having older children is magnificent. I don’t know why anyone starts out with babies. Phoebe graciously let the kids Doordash food from anywhere they wanted. They chose Arby’s. They like the finer things in life. Meanwhile, we went up and down the river with eleven adults. Three guys took turns wakeboarding. I refused to try. I’m old enough to know I don’t enjoy being dragged behind anything. I have enough trouble staying alive without adding water and velocity to my life. Despite my cowardice, I failed to stay dry. Our outing was cut short by sudden sprinkles. We headed to shore as the first drops fell. We opted to go to a bar a short distance from the landing. A few minutes after we got inside, the skies opened up with a torrential downpour. Soon, the crowd that had been waiting on the shore for a ski show crammed in as well. It was incredibly packed. I was in the coolest spot in town completely by accident. I didn’t belong. The next time I try to get into that same small town bar, I’m sure I’ll be rejected by a bouncer.The next morning, we kicked off lake day. We took the boat across the largest non-great lake in Wisconsin. Our destination was a sandbar on the north end where we could stand in shallow water. There are a few such sites on the lake. We picked one based on which way the wind was blowing and where we thought the algae would be clumped up. It was a Friday afternoon, and we were the only ones at this particular sandbar. That was our clue that we had chosen poorly. We were buffeted by strong waves caused by an extremely light breeze. With a lake that big, it doesn’t take much air movement to get things rocking. We put out a lily pad for the kids to play on. The children eagerly jumped in the water. Even Lucy got in on the action. Everyone was having a good time. By “everyone,” I mean all the kids except for one. At least one child has to be unhappy at all times. It’s the first law of parenting.Given the wind and the waves, Lola and I decided that Lucy and Waffle had to wear life jackets, even though we were in shallow water. We didn’t want to worry about them getting swept into deeper areas. That didn’t sit well with Waffle. She begged us for permission to take off her life jacket. She desperately wanted us to let her die. We politely refused. She responded by spending the afternoon sulking in the boat. There’s nothing worse than knowing you’re safe and well-cared for. I was out there crushing dreams one aspiring daredevil at a time.After a few hours, the wind was getting stronger, so we headed in. The waves were rough. The trip back felt like we were crossing the high seas back when much of the world map was still blank. If we had drifted off course even slightly, we would have discovered a new continent. Rocco pulled the boat out of the water for a third time in two days without swearing once. Other boat guys have his poster on the wall. Meanwhile, I still have trouble parallel parking. You can’t revoke my man card if I never had it in the first place.That night, we went to a nearby town for a carnival and music festival. Waffle finally got her fill of danger. She rode several creaky carnival rides that were far more likely to kill her than anything on the water. In a few years, I suspect she’ll join Betsy and me on our father-daughter roller coaster adventures. I just have to keep her alive till then. That life jacket is never coming off. The kids had food truck cuisine and ice cream for dinner, which covered all the basic food groups. Afterward, Waffle had trouble staying awake on the seven-minute drive back to Rocco and Phoebe’s house. All good vacations should leave you angry, thrilled, and utterly exhausted. Waffle’s biggest roller coaster will always be her emotions.For some of us, the adventure didn’t end there. We headed back to Indiana Saturday morning, much to Rocco and Phoebe’s relief. When we got home around dinner time, we rushed to do laundry. Mae and Lucy had BSA summer camp starting the next morning. They’re busier over summer “break” than they ever were over the school year. I just hope we sent them with everything they needed this time. Last year, Mae didn’t have a pillow for the entire week. This parenting thing is harder than it looks.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.I plan to keep inviting myself over to Rocco and Phoebe’s house every summer, if only to give the rest of my children their turns being the unhappy one. Lola and I had a blast the entire time, which is what really matters. Money is also important. While I was up there this time, I found out that Rocco and Phoebe each became paid subscribers to this newsletter without realizing the other had already signed up. Their failure to communicate doubled my income. I hope they never start talking. Every awkward silence brings me five dollars closer to retirement.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