Author: Chris Souther

Chris joined the Air Force out of high school. After four years of supporting communications for the Department of Defense, the White House, and stations around the world, he left the military and moved to Atlanta. For the next six years, Chris continued working in the telecom field, eventually traveling around the country teaching companies like MCI, Nortel Networks, and Cabletron, how to do what he did.

When the dot.com crash happened, upon recommendation from his wife, Chris re-enrolled in school and earned his B.S. in Communications (PR & Marketing).

Since then, he was worked in network security, healthcare, banking and finance (and FinTech), general high tech (AI/ML, Cloud, IoT), and most recently, application development fields. Now, with more than 15 years of both Marketing and Communications under his belt, he helps organizations grow their business through the proper application of marketing, communications, and content.

And he blogs on the side. It keeps him sane.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Doing our Best

“Dude, I’m so much better a father than you are.”

Ever catch yourself saying that in your head? Is it usually when you’re out and about and see some dad doing something that you would never in a million years do to your kids?

I gotta admit that I do this a good bit. I know, I know…it’s egotistical, it’s obnoxious, and worst of all, it’s probably not even true.

What I have to remind myself, is that I have no idea of the events leading up to the moment I just witnessed. That dad might be a single father struggling to hold down a job and keep his kids happy and well-fed. Or, maybe the kids have just been real bastards for the last hour and a half and what I witnessed was his last straw after an hour and a half of patience and honest-to-goodness trying.

As an example, at a recent gathering of the in-laws, my BIL brought his daughter over without his wife. He walked into the house (he’s also an in-law), grabbed one of the hamburgers I had made especially for MY family (everyone else was having Pork Loin…on Memorial Day!) and sat down and started to eat without hardly a word of greeting to anyone. Then, when everyone was finished, while I was off watching my two boys destroy the house, along with his 3-year old daughter, he sat there at the table as if she didn’t exist, letting others take care of his kid for him.

At the time, I was pretty darn ticked. The NERVE of him coming over and doing that.

But then later, I had to remind myself that his wife is at home, overdue pregnant and she is no easy person to live with (by my standards) under normal circumstances. Just recently, she “made” him check the family into a local hotel the other night because she was “just over waiting on this baby” and they all needed a change of scenery. This also means he’s doing the lion’s share of everything around the house, including taking care of their daughter. So maybe I can’t begrudge him a little downtime and thoughtless feasting.

But I think it’s healthy to compare ourselves to others sometimes. If we’re really being honest, it can lead to improvements in our own day-to-day. And just as I have to cut other guys some slack, I try and do the same for myself. I’m not perfect—heck, I’m not even “pretty darn good.” I’m just me and I’m doing the best I can while juggling flaming swords and cantaloupes.

Be safe on the road this summer gents, and have fun!

(NOTE TO ALL: I will be suffering, having a blast with the family at the beach this week. Might drag the old laptop along, but dunno if I’ll have time for any posts. Don’t stop reading. Check back often. I’ll update when I can!)

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Dad Blogs Family Life in these United States Marriage

Another church bites the dust…hey hey!

church“Dear Lord, thank you for this day, thank you for this summer season; a time when we slow down with family and friends and we remember you…”

After the Assistant Pastor spoke this bit o’ prayer this morning during church, I wrote it down on the back of a tithing envelope during (as shown here) because I felt it quite succinctly illustrated the vast chasm that we have discovered at our current church. With our busy schedules, we find that the early service is the way to go. Unfortunately, this means we’re in there with all the lil’ blue haired ladies and the organ music. I think the later service is a bit more up-tempo, but not by much.

What struck me about this opening prayer this morning, and what I whispered to CareerMom, much to the chagrin of the worshiper behind me was, “Slow down in the summer? What are they talking about?” But I got to looking around and realized, “Hey, when you’re 65, and the heat rises above your age, you probably DO slow down.”

So anyway, I guess this means we’ll be church hunting again. We thought we’d found a quasi-home in this new Baptist church, but small issues with the children’s rooms (waaay too young for our kids), coupled with their trying to pull the wool over unsuspecting folks’ eyes today by supposedly broadcasting the pastor’s message from Israel while a bunch of people are there on a mission, has just done it for us.

I mean, they didn’t come right out and say the service was “Live from Israel,” but they didn’t say it wasn’t either, leaving those who are geographically challenged to believe that 9 a.m. Atlanta time, is also roughly breakfast in Israel–an oversight I had a hard time swallowing as completely honest.

Oh, and the pastor’s reading the entire “Sermon on the Mount” from Mathew, since he was standing roughly where Jesus was supposed to have preached the sermon, was just too much.

It’s all good though, being raised a Pentecostal of the “X of God” sort (e.g. “Church” of God, “Assembly” of God, etc.) and CareerMom being a reformed Catholic, these Baptists beliefs were sometimes difficult to attenuate to, so it’s probably all for the best.

But man, I do seriously hate trying out new churches. Guess I’ll put on my fake smile and my, “I’m so glad to be here” pants and give it a whirl!

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Marriage

Our High Standards Hamper Us

twisterNot that I was ever that much of a partyer, but I’m finding that even among our married (with children) peers, both CareerMom and I are boring, with a capital “B.”

Looking around, I’ve found that there are apparently two types of parents in this world:

A) Those who lead active social lives prior to having children and who, once they have children, see no reason not to continue doing so. They’ll pack the kids up and drag them to the ball park, Disneyland at the age of 2, Hockey games and other places, which to me, seems a bit nonsensical since you spend all your time watching the kids rather than whatever it is you’re there to see!

Then there are these folks:

B) Those who are somewhat social prior to having kids. Then after having kids, they realize that dragging all that baby crap everywhere is just a big ol’ pain in the butt, and anyway, who wants to see and hear my screaming youngins when they paid good money to be here!

CareerMom and I are most decidedly of the “B” group, while it seems like everyone we know, is in the “A” group. Case in point, we recently were invited to a neighbor’s house for something they have called, “The Event.”

Billed as something only offered to a “select” group of people, The Event promises:

  • South African wine tasting
  • Martini bar
  • Craft brew bar
  • Chair massages
  • Cigars
  • Complimentary drive home
  • Couples pool tournament
  • Beer pong
  • Afternoon pedicures and manicure

Does this not sound like the best! It does to us too, but we’re already finding problems getting a babysitter now that all the high-school kids are out of school and at the end of the day, CareerMom and I both seem to have come to the conclusion that it’s too much of a hassle to get someone to watch the kids. It appears that we’ve reached a silent agreement that we’ll just skip The Event altogether rather than making the effort to find a new sitter. How pathetic are we?

Now granted, there are probably 50 teenage girls in our neighborhood and we’ve barely scratched the surface in trying to find one, but part of the problem is CareerMom’s high standards for babysitting. Apparently, they have to meet the same standards originally set forth by CareerMom’s recently graduated youngest sister, and our longtime “old standby” babysitter:

1. An affinity for playing with children (Most teenage girls qualify: check)2. Be able to determine when water is hot enough to scald child in bath (Most teenage girls qualify: check)3. Doesn’t need to be motivated to clean up after playtime and/or dinner (Most teenage girls qualify: check)4. Be able to figure out how to manipulate the three remote controls required for proper television viewing (Most teenage girls qualify: check)5. Know our kids already (Most teenage girls qualify: OH! So sorry…thanks for playing!)

So really, it’s that one criteria preventing us from being social. Or are we just using it as an excuse? I suspect it’s a bit of both.

Are we really that boring or are we like our own little saboteurs, hamstringing our inner-partyer so that we can play the martyr while everyone else is having fun?

I tell ya, right about now, I could use a martini bar, some beer pong and maybe even a game of naked twister if the mood’s right.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Marriage

Confessions of a Errant Parent

colsaveWe parents are hard enough on ourselves. Why, just this past weekend when my dad visited us, no fewer than twice did he start a sentence with, “There are a lot of things I regret; things that I wish I’d done differently.” And though I did my best to ameliorate any bad feelings he has, I know that this is simply one of those things that each parent feels as he or she gets older.

So, it really bothers me when we parents, as a whole, make it seem like there are things that other parents should be doing; especially when those “things” are not endangering the child’s life, or for that matter, even making the child sad in any way.

Here I am then, about to admit to something that has been plaguing me since my kids were born–something that I’ve (we’ve) not been doing that I’m sure many folks out there will frown upon and which might possibly shock some considering that according to U. Sam, we don’t deserve a government “pre-bate.”

Here it is:

We’re not saving for our kids’ college!

There ya go. Fire away. I know we’re scum. No, we’re worse than scum, we’re incompetent parents who apparently can’t think 18 years down the line well enough to know that we’re jeopardizing our children’s future–nay, our children’s children’s future even.

Ok, in the name of theatrics, I might have overstated the situation a bit. We do in fact have savings accounts (with ING) for each of our kids where we deposit all the checks from the various family. What we don’t have is a dedicated college savings account.

Call me crazy, but right now, the $20K we’re spending each year on daycare pretty much sucks up all the free money we might normally have to put in a fund. Add to that gas prices, food prices and just simply the cost of “living” (i.e. satellite TV so the kids can TiVo Iron Man and The Superfriends), and we’re pretty much just treading water here.

Now I will say that once these boys are in school (probably public), we’ll start funding those accounts more heavily but right now we’re not and quite frankly, I’m not losing too much sleep over it. I didn’t go to college until I was 29, and though I wish I’d done it right off, things turned out OK for me.

But I’m wondering how many other parents out there are carrying around a dirty little secret that wouldn’t really be dirty if society weren’t such a pain in the arse about it.

Care to come clean?

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