Category: Old Man Yelling at the Sky

Mar 06 2026 2026-03-06 2026-03-06 NoComment by Ross

The Only Way to Win is Not to Play…

Posted in Old Man Yelling at the Sky
I was listening to a podcast today about a guy who figured out how to hack the Spotify system. His scheme was simple in concept: create a massive library of AI-generated music and then run a program that streams it over and over so he collects the royalties. (Darknet Diaries. Melody Fraud)

I’m only partway through the episode, but the story had already gone in a direction that made my head hurt.

Before he even got to the Spotify part, he was explaining how his company used to “hack” social media platforms for clients. Their job wasn’t security hacking—it was attention hacking. They figured out ways to manipulate the systems that decide what goes viral, what gets likes, and what gets pushed into people’s feeds.

One example stuck with me. They would hide “like” or “follow” buttons inside image carousels. You’d click on a picture, thinking you were just flipping to the next photo. Instead, the click secretly followed some random page they were promoting on Facebook, or triggered a YouTube video playing in the background to inflate the view count. Then, when you clicked again, the image would finally change as you expected.

You never even knew you’d been used.

And that’s just one trick.

On top of that, there are the algorithms that decide who goes viral on YouTube, X, Instagram, and TikTok—systems that can be manipulated by companies, influencers, or even the platforms themselves.

Then layer in the bots.

Bots generating engagement.

Bots amplifying outrage.

Bots pushing political agendas.

Bots pretending to be real people arguing with each other.

Add in PR firms, marketing agencies, and even governments that deliberately stir controversy because outrage spreads faster than truth. At some point you start wondering: how much of what I’m seeing online is even real?

I see it happening to blogs I used to enjoy. Sites that used to be thoughtful have slowly turned into clickbait factories. Rage bait. Headlines designed to make you angry enough to click. They don’t care if they leave the internet a little worse than they found it. They just want the traffic.

And honestly, I’m tired of playing in that ecosystem.

So I’m opting out. No bots. No shady tricks designed to make me follow something I didn’t choose. No manipulated “viral” moments. No algorithm pushing outrage into my day.

There’s a line from the movie WarGames where the computer finally realizes something about nuclear war strategy.

“The only winning move is not to play.”

That’s kind of where I am with most social media. I’m just not playing anymore.

One of the nice things about running my own blog is that there’s no algorithm deciding what you see. No bots trying to game the system. No engagement tricks.

It’s just words on a page.

If you happen to stop by and read them, great.

If not, that’s fine too.

At least it’s real.

(While some might claim this is novel and we live in some particularly shitty information era, I could’ve used “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” from the movie Network back from 1976.  I think this is just a continued slide, but not fundamentally different)

 


Mar 05 2026 2026-03-05 2026-03-05 NoComment by Ross

If You Can’t Find the Light, Be the Light…

Posted in Old Man Yelling at the Sky

The other week I joined a new (to me) social network just to see what it was about. I heard about it on a podcast and figured I’d poke around for a bit.

The network is called the Fediverse. If you’ve never heard of it, the easiest way to think about it is this: instead of one big company running a social media site (like Facebook, Instagram, or X), the Fediverse is made up of thousands of independently run servers that all talk to each other. Each server has its own community, rules, and vibe, but users can still interact across servers. It’s decentralized social media. Think email, but for social networks.

In theory, it sounds great. No single company controlling everything. Communities are built around interests. A chance to escape the worst parts of the big platforms.

So I joined a server hosted by the podcast hosts.

I’ll admit, at first I didn’t really know how to use it. The interface felt a little like Twitter from ten years ago, and the culture seemed… intense.

What I found in the beginning was more of the same thing you find almost everywhere online: endless political rants and hot takes. Usually from one side of the aisle. And it ranged from far that side to farther that side to farthest that side.

That was disappointing.

But I kept experimenting and eventually learned how to mute hashtags and follow only the things I wanted. Once I did that, my feed improved dramatically. Suddenly, it was posts about hobbies, music, random observations, and people sharing things they enjoyed.

In other words, the internet I actually want.

Ironically, though, it wasn’t something on the Fediverse that made me rethink it. It was an Instagram post.

I wish I had saved it because I can’t find it now, but the basic message stuck with me. The post talked about how easy it is to look around and see all the darkness in the world. The bad news. The anger. The constant outrage.

And let’s be honest, that’s what a lot of social media has become. A place to wallow in whatever the worst thing happening today might be.

But the post ended with something simple:

Look for the light. Look for the good things.

And then the line that stuck with me:

If you can’t find the light, be the light.

Yes, I realize there are some pretty strong religious undertones there, and I’m 100% fine with that.

That quote actually prompted me to clean up my Fediverse feed. I muted political hashtags and followed good-news type tags. Travel. Music. Hobby stuff. People posting interesting or funny things.

But when I mentioned I wanted to keep my feed mostly non-political, the responses rolled in.

Apparently, I was “living in a bubble.”
Apparently, I needed to be political everywhere because of tyranny.
Apparently, choosing not to engage in constant online political debate was some kind of civic failure.

I get my news from plenty of places. I read across the spectrum. I stay informed.

What I don’t need is political commentary on every single website I visit.

Eventually,I just decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. I deleted the account. To be fair, I probably could have stayed and curated it better. But the moment had already done its work on me.

Because I realized something.

I already have a place on the internet that I control.

This blog.

The other nice thing about a personal blog is that there’s no algorithm. No company is trying to feed me outrage because outrage keeps people scrolling. No system boosts the most extreme voices because they generate engagement. What you see here is simply what I choose to write and what you choose to read.

No trending topics.
No rage bait.
No “you might also like this argument.”

Just a quiet corner of the internet.

Now, I know I complain here sometimes. I whine about getting older. I write pity-party posts. I talk about injuries, triathlon training mistakes, random annoyances, and occasionally yell at clouds.

That’s not going to completely disappear.

But I’d like this space to lean toward something else.

I’d like it to be a small corner of the internet that’s a little lighter.

Not fake positivity. Not pretending the world is perfect.

Just a place that occasionally highlights the good stuff. Music. Funny complaints. Triathlon adventures. Random observations about life. Maybe the occasional success story.

In other words, my attempt to be the light, even if it’s just a small flashlight in a very large internet.

And if nothing else, at least it will be a place where the comment section doesn’t turn into a debate about the fall of civilization every time someone mentions a bicycle ride.

Which already makes it better than most of the internet.


Feb 20 2026 2026-02-20 2026-02-20 NoComment by Ross

First! ….

Posted in Old Man Yelling at the Sky

We have been getting so many political ads in the mail, but one of them caught my eye.  It’s for a judicial election, and the candidate prominently notes “NAME OF CANDIDATE WOULD BE THE FIRST ASIAN AMERICAN FEMALE JUDGE ELECTED BY THE 20TH SUBCIRCUIT.”

You can probably already guess that she obviously wouldn’t be the first female elected.  You can probably also guess that she wouldn’t be the first Asian-American woman elected in Cook County. (not even close)

But what you probably don’t know is that the 20th Subcircuit was only created in 2022.  There has only been one election for that area, and two judges (one man, one woman) were elected.  There is no glass ceiling she’s breaking through.  No great history of discrimination that will end with her election.

Everyone has to be “the first….”  That’s meaningful when it means something, not when it’s trivialized to woo voters who don’t know the history.

 


Feb 13 2026 2026-02-13 2026-02-12 NoComment by Ross

More “Less Is More”…. (see what I did there?)

Posted in Old Man Yelling at the Sky

Last year I downloaded a habit tracker app. I’ve used it faithfully. Checked boxes. Built streaks. Watched little digital fireworks go off when I hit milestones.

At first, I loved it.

Lately? Not so much.

It’s not that I want to stop the habits. It’s that I’m starting to feel like I’m doing them to appease the app instead of because I want to.

The whole point of habit tracking is obvious: you nudge yourself long enough that the behavior becomes automatic. Fair enough. Maybe that worked. Maybe a year is enough runway.

But something subtle shifted.

Two of my tracked tasks are Practice ASL and Play Instrument—each for a set amount of time. On paper, that sounds disciplined. In reality, some days it feels… compulsory.

When I sit down at the bass or the drum kit because I have to hit 15 minutes, it’s different than when I pick it up because I feel like playing along to a song. I’m not turning pro. I’m not starting a band of other 60-year-olds reliving 1987. I just like playing. I like fumbling through a groove. I like figuring out a fill.

The moment it becomes a box to check, the joy drains a bit.

Same with ASL. I do want to become proficient. But I have time. If I skip a day because I’m tired or just not feeling it, I’m still going to get there. Fifteen minutes less on a random Tuesday isn’t the difference between fluency and failure.

Other tracked habits? Taking vitamins. Drinking water when I wake up. Journaling.

Those are already baked in. If I miss journaling one day, I don’t want the app telling me my streak is broken. Maybe I just didn’t have much to say. Maybe silence was the point. The mental health benefit of journaling shouldn’t come with the mild shame of a red “0.”

That’s the part I’m pushing back on.

In this phase of life—this ongoing “less is more” experiment—I’m trying to strip away unnecessary scaffolding. If a thing is truly part of me now, maybe it doesn’t need gamification. Maybe it doesn’t need a nudge.

Maybe doing it because I want to is enough.

I know habit trackers are helpful for a lot of people. They probably were helpful for me. They got me started. They kept me consistent.

But I don’t want to live inside a scoreboard.

If I play, I’ll play because it’s fun.
If I practice ASL, it’ll be because I’m curious.
If I journal, it’ll be because something is stirring.

Not because my phone says it’s time.

Less tracking.
More living.

You do you.


Feb 12 2026 2026-02-12 2026-02-12 NoComment by Ross

The Customer is Always Right (When They Actually Want to be There)….

Posted in Old Man Yelling at the Sky

I’ve spent the better part of thirty years providing services to people who, quite literally, would rather be anywhere else on the planet.

Think about that for a second.

For six years, I was a prosecutor. You know who goes to court? Victims. People who have had the worst day of their lives and are now forced to sit in a sterile room with bad lighting to relive it. They aren’t there for the “experience.” They’re there because a subpoena said so. They’re miserable, and honestly, they have every right to be.

Then I flipped the script and spent fourteen years as a defense attorney. Different side of the aisle, same vibe. My clients weren’t “customers” in the fun sense of the word. They were people staring down the barrel of a life-altering L. Nobody wakes up stoked to see their defense counsel. You’re a reminder of their mistakes or their misfortunes. You are the person they pay because they have to, not because they want to.

So, naturally, I thought teaching would be the pivot.

I’ve been at it for eight years now. And look, I like the job. But let’s be real: I’m currently staring at a room full of high school seniors who view a 50-minute law lecture like a prison sentence. To them, homework isn’t “learning”—it’s an obstacle between them and whatever they’re doing on their phones. I’m still the guy standing between them and where they actually want to be.

I’m tired of being the guy at the door everyone is trying to walk out of.

I want to work somewhere people are actually trying to get into.

I want to work at a ski resort. Why? Because nobody gets dragged to a ski resort by a process server. People save up their hard-earned money, pack the car, and brave the cold because they want to be on that mountain. They’re chasing a flow state. They’re happy. Even when they’re cold and tired, they chose the struggle.

I want to work at Wrigley Field during a Cubs game. I want to work in a National Park. I want to be the guy providing the service that people actually put on their calendar with a smiley face.

I know, I know. I’m being naive. I can already hear the comments. I’m sure there are entitled POS at Vail who complain that the snow is “too crunchy.” I’m sure there are drunks in the bleachers at Wrigley who make everyone’s life miserable. I’m sure there are tourists at Yellowstone who try to pet the bison. People are still people, and a certain percentage of them will always be a headache.

But at least they’re there by choice.

At least they want what I’m selling. There is a fundamental difference in the “aura” of a room when the people in it are there because they’re pursuing a “win” rather than trying to mitigate a “loss.”

After thirty years of managing human misery and teenage apathy, I think I’m ready to trade in the “Must-Do” for the “Want-To.” I want to provide a service for people who are actually glad to see me coming.

Is that too much to ask? Or am I just the old guy yelling at the sky again?

Either way, if you see me scanning lift tickets next winter, mind your business. I’ll be the one smiling.


Feb 12 2026 2026-02-12 2026-02-12 NoComment by Ross

Getting Off the Double-D Bus….

Posted in Old Man Yelling at the Sky

Yesterday, my household received 17 pieces of U.S. mail. Fifteen were campaign mailers.

Fifteen.

Having been part of a few campaigns myself, I know exactly why we get them. We’re what the voter files call “Double-D’s” — voters who have pulled a Democratic ballot in the last two primaries. When a candidate wants to do a mailing, they don’t just blanket the city. They buy a voter list and target likely supporters: people who are registered, who actually vote, and who have voted in their party’s primaries before.

In Chicago, that’s the play.

There are no Republican primaries that matter here. If there are Republicans on the ballot, they’re often token candidates with no realistic path in a one-party town. Countywide judicial races? Zero Republicans. Why would I pull an R ballot when there’s literally no one to vote for?

So everyone — regardless of their actual politics — pulls a Democratic ballot. It’s the only place where the election is decided.

And because I’ve voted in every primary and general election since 1984, I’m prime real estate. Reliable. Predictable. Engaged. A campaign consultant’s dream.

Which is why my recycling bin is a campaign graveyard every two years.

The irony is that I mostly vote in primaries for judges. They’re often unopposed in the general election, so the primary is the only meaningful vote. If you care about who ends up on the bench, that’s the moment. Sometimes I’ve had friends on the ballot. Sometimes former colleagues. It’s hard not to show up.

But this year?

No election in my sub-circuit.
No meaningful countywide vacancies.
A crowded congressional field where the candidates seem to be competing to prove who can run the furthest left, the fastest.

My choices aren’t moderate vs. progressive. They’re progressive vs. more progressive vs. most progressive. There’s nobody even pretending to occupy the middle.

And so I find myself contemplating something I’ve never done in 42 years of voting: skipping a primary.

Not switching teams. I’m not taking a Republican ballot — that’s equally futile here, and it doesn’t solve the “no moderates” issue. Just… stepping off the bus for a cycle. Removing myself from the “Double-D” category. Quietly slipping off the mailing lists.

It feels oddly disloyal, even though it’s not. Voting is something I’ve always taken seriously. I’ve never missed. Ever. Through law school, through young kids, through brutal work schedules. Snowstorms. Busy seasons. I showed up.

But voting only matters when there’s something meaningful to decide.

If there isn’t — if the ballot doesn’t offer a real choice, if there’s no competitive race that affects my district — is showing up a civic virtue or just muscle memory?

I don’t know.

Part of me thinks I’ll cave. Some acquaintance will pop up on the ballot, and I’ll think, well, I should support them. Or I’ll tell myself that consistent participation matters, even when the choices are thin.

But part of me is tired of the performative mailers. The glossy cardstock promises. The environmental waste. The constant nudges from campaigns that already know exactly how I’ve voted for four decades.

Maybe for one cycle, I let them wonder.

Maybe I’ll retire my Double-D status.

After 42 straight years, I’ve probably earned a sabbatical.


Feb 07 2026 2026-02-07 2026-02-07 NoComment by Ross

On further reflection…

Posted in Old Man Yelling at the Sky, Something Good

 

The pity party in the post below should be read as minor. I know I have it good. My health is still pretty darn good. This isn’t a cry for help or a “woe is me” entry.

I just finished reading Do No Harm, written by a neurosurgeon, and it’s filled with heartbreaking cases—people blindsided by tragedy, bodies failing in sudden and cruel ways. That alone can mess with your head. But closer to home, the last four months have been… a lot.

I’ve known three young people—22, 21, and 21—who died suddenly. One by suicide. One murdered. One rumored murder, though in no event was it natural or a disease. I’ve gone to visitations for two of them, and I honestly can’t imagine the pain their parents are carrying. That kind of loss feels unbearable.

To be clear: this isn’t about me. This isn’t “look at me being sad about horrible things that happen to others.” It’s just the backdrop.

Add to that my wife’s co-worker, who died of glioblastoma, and two friends’ brothers, both gone in their mid-50s. It’s been that kind of winter. One loss stacked on top of another. So much tragedy, all at once.

I feel deeply for the people left behind. If there’s a lesson I’m taking from all of this, it’s a simple one: enjoy it all.

I usually walk around with a pretty strong awareness that I could die at any moment. I literally tell my students every day when they leave class, “Have a nice rest of your day. See you tomorrow—if I don’t die.” Mostly it’s a long-game joke, because one day I will die and they’ll all be like, Dude. He totally called it.

Anyway, that’s about it.

People can stay angry. They can yell at the TV, doom-scroll blogs, and go on partisan rants about the outrage of the minute. That stuff will still be there tomorrow.

I’ll be over here hugging my kids, playing with my dog, enjoying dinner with my wife, and doing my best to savor every minute.


Feb 07 2026 2026-02-07 2026-02-07 NoComment by Ross

Pity Party for One…

Posted in Old Man Yelling at the Sky

I know this is a bit of catastrophizing, but for the first time in my life I’m really feeling my age. Fifty-nine. I’m sure my body complained when I was younger too, but I wasn’t aware of it in the same way. Back then I bounced back from injuries. A small cut healed in a day. I got out of bed and walked down stairs without a second thought.

Now? Not so much.

Everything hurts.

Some of this, I know, is temporary. I’ve had a cold for the last week. Nothing dramatic, but enough to knock me down. I took two days off work. I sat around. I didn’t exercise. And as always, not moving made everything worse. Weak, stiff, sluggish. The good news is I know how this part goes: next week I ease back into exercising, slowly rebuild, and claw my way back to baseline. It sucks, but it is what it is.

The broken arm is also mending. I’m just about a month out now. I still feel it, and I’m not eager to put weight on it, but I should be back in the pool next week just to keep the range of motion. That helps… except it also means that even though I feel weak, I can’t really do much strength training yet. So I wait. Another two or three weeks, then I start building strength again. Again, not permanent. Just annoying.

Then there are my wrists. Both of them. They’ve hurt like hell for a month. Some of it is clearly overuse — too many pull sets with paddles — but they don’t seem to be getting any better. It probably doesn’t help that I keep learning drums, playing bass, and generally refusing to ice anything or take NSAIDs like a responsible adult.

My knees have hurt for years. That’s not new. I walk down stairs one step at a time now — both feet on each step — which is a sentence I never imagined typing. The back of my right knee has been tinging for a while, and now the front of it has started popping. Because of course it has.

And to top it all off, I wake up in the morning and can’t fully straighten my arms.

That one is new.

It goes away after twenty minutes or so, but still. What the hell is that?

As if my body decided to pile on, my senses have joined the rebellion.

My hearing is going. I can’t really hear my wife unless she’s in the room and looking at me when she talks. If she says something from another room, it might as well be a different language. Half the time I respond based on context clues and hope for the best. This has not always gone well.

My eyes aren’t much better. I’ve had one cataract removed. That eye is still wonky, and the other one has a small cataract of its own, plus generally poor vision for good measure. My glasses help, of course, but most of the time I just wear cheaters — even when I’m not reading — so both eyes are equally fuzzy. I can’t see especially well, but it’s easier on my eyes. Low expectations, evenly distributed.

I know — none of this is catastrophic. I know a lot of it will pass. I know I’m still running, biking, swimming, working, living my life. This isn’t despair. It’s just… awareness. The slow, creeping realization that my body no longer quietly resets overnight. It negotiates. It complains. It needs warm-ups. And apparently, it now has opinions about sound and light.

Anyway. Pity party for one. No gifts, no RSVPs required. I’ll shut it down shortly and get back to doing what I always do: moving forward carefully, grumbling a bit, and pretending I’m still indestructible — just with more stretching, louder voices, and bigger fonts.

 


Feb 06 2026 2026-02-06 2026-02-06 by Ross

Less Is More…

Posted in Old Man Yelling at the Sky

As I get older, I’ve adopted less is more as a mantra. It applies to most things, especially where I see dysfunction.

I know I said I wouldn’t talk politics, so this may be a slight violation, but if the U.S. government spent less money, we’d get better service. More money means more agencies and less oversight. You simply can’t follow all that money, and billions get stolen or wasted.

And it’s not that people along the chain don’t care—it’s that they like it this way. They are stealing or wasting the money. They’re getting money, votes, power, or influence, and the system protects them. The people at the bottom of the line don’t have the political acumen or leverage to complain, and even if they did, the answer would be to spend more money to fix the problem.

Spend a heck of a lot less. Make states pick up anything beyond the bare minimum, and I’ll bet a ton of that fraud disappears. This isn’t new. Twenty years ago I represented clients who ripped off Medicaid. Same behavior, different scale.

The same principle applies to schools.

Trying to push through the curriculum and doing more work doesn’t improve learning. It kills student motivation and achievement. I hear so many colleagues talk about being “behind” in the curriculum. Behind what, exactly? According to whose calendar?

I’ll work on a topic until students actually master it, then move on. Less coverage is more learning. Learning is a lifetime thing.  There’s plenty of time to “get through the curriculum,” and getting through it is far less important than students learning the underlying skills—how to read carefully, think clearly, ask good questions, and figure things out on their own. If they leave knowing how to learn, they’ll keep learning long after they’ve forgotten whatever unit we rushed through in March.

Political anxiety is another version of the same problem.

I wish there were a social movement to boycott social media, blogs, and 24/7 news. So much of it is click- and rage-bait. The authors don’t care. They want eyeballs, which lead to ad sales. Same with nonstop news channels. They have to fill the time even when there isn’t any news, and outrage keeps people watching. They’re selling soap.

If people stopped engaging—Twitter, BlueSky, Reddit, blogs—we’d deny them the eyeballs. Go outside. Get sun. Exercise. Play music. Make art. Read. Volunteer. There are endless things to do that don’t involve ramping yourself up over the outrage of the moment.

I’d make a horrible therapist. A friend mentioned how many clients she sees who are deeply anxious and depressed about the U.S. Really—Trump. (I live in a very liberal town.) If I were the therapist, I’d say: turn off the TV, delete the social media apps, and find one volunteer commitment a week. Tutor kids. Work at a soup kitchen. Whatever. Done.

I keep a daily habit tracker specifically to avoid doomscrolling: read for 30 minutes, play an instrument for 30 minutes, practice ASL. I’d tell them to do the same. Make brownies for a neighbor while listening to music instead of the news. Anything but feeding the beast.

Life isn’t that bad. The standard of living in the U.S. is fantastic. Access to medical care, technology, information—it’s not perfect and never will be, but too many people have a financial or political interest in keeping people outraged.

Honestly, when a friend shows full-blown Trump Derangement Syndrome—or the right-wing version—I tend to think they’re being used and don’t realize it. Especially since most of them are educated, upper-middle-class, employed white people who aren’t personally suffering any of it.  That doesn’t mean they can’t work for change, but the mental melt-downs seem both excessive, performative, and attention-seeking.

Less really is more.


Jan 19 2026 2026-01-19 2026-01-19 by Ross

Random Thoughts

Posted in Memories, Old Man Yelling at the Sky

When I was a child, my father had partial-season tickets to Chicago White Sox games. We’d go on some weekends. Great memories. Driving down I-94 and spotting Comiskey Park, and going early to get autographs. I can still name the lineups for those teams. So, I was saddened to wake up this morning and learn that Wilbur Wood died. He was one of the best pitchers on those teams. He was 84, so it isn’t a surprise, just still sad. Time passes.

On that, I mentioned before, my wife is turning our oldest son’s room into a guest room. I was talking to someone who put what I was feeling into better words than I did. When I walk into the room, I don’t see the furniture, paint scheme, or artwork. I see my son as a toddler, a young child, and a teenager. I see the younger son wrestling with him, both of them giggling like mad. I see myself reading him a bedtime story. That’s why I was so against it. I miss those days and THAT kid terribly. I love the man who has replaced the child, but I feel a loss of the child. OTOH, he probably sees something similar, but wants to look forward. He may not want to walk into a room where he feels like a child and not a grown man. I get it.

The other day I saw an ad for the Hatch 3. It’s an alarm clock with a built-in sound machine and a “sunrise alarm clock” that wakes you up with light. It looked cool until I saw that, if you want the full library of features, you need a subscription. I HATE subscription models for anything other than streaming services and magazines. If i buy you product, I want the product. I don’t want to rent it or pay more to use what I purchased. I detest Microsoft these days. In older (read: better) times, you bought Word or the suite. Now, you pay monthly. Just sell it to me. I don’t like paying for a monthly subscription, so my car dashboard works only partially (I don’t pay and thus don’t have “full” access). I get why businesses like it, but it’s an instant turn-off to me.

Last, my daughter is heading back to college today.  Back to the empty nest.  I’m okay with that.  The kids are all sorting themselves out and doing well.  Like my son’s childhood bedroom, time to start seeing them as adults.  Still, I hurt when I see pictures of them as kids.  I wish I could play with them just one more time.  Hug them.  Wrestle like we used to.  Color at the dinner table.  Anything.   Best I can do is keep building good memories with them now (and maybe hope for grandkids….I TOTALLY get grandparents now…reliving toddlers but without the big hassles 🙂  )