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

My Moral Conscience Won’t Let It Go

Something happened last weekend that I’ve been wanting to write about, but I know that no matter how I tell the tale, I’m not going to come out of it looking like a good parent; especially since in the middle of it, I found humor in my son’s predicament.

So here goes:

MLI has been wanting to play golf with me, but he’s too young to play actual golf. So I took him to the PGA Superstore (LOVE that place!) and bought him a little driver for kids. On Sunday, I took him to the driving range with me and we hit a few balls. I didn’t want to do too much “teaching” the first time out, so I pretty much just let him sit there and hit the balls however he saw fit.

That done, we opted to go next door and play some mini-golf. This place has seen better days. Half of the astro-turf is threadbare and it’s lined with bricks rather than actual cement, but it’s cheap and MLE was more interested in looking at the large plaster animal characters than he was actually playing mini-golf.

As we neared the end, I explained to him that once we hit our balls in the last hole, they were going to disappear down a tunnel and our game would be over. This worried him, so I looked around to see if I could find where they collect the balls and sure enough, I found a wooden hatch about ten feet away. I walked over and opened it up and found several balls floating in about six inches of water. The hole was about 3′ deep and 2.5′ x 2.5′ wide and the water was pretty nasty. I called MLE over to show him where the balls went once they went in the hole and he was excited to see his ball floating there.

But his attention quickly turned and he got up and went over to play on the alligator statue while I watched several large koi swimming in a small pool overlooked by a waterfall with a giant gorilla on top. The next thing I heard was a shrill scream. I turned around and didn’t see MLE anywhere.

Suddenly it hit me…he’d opened the hatch and fallen into the ball collector hole. I ran over and opened the hatch and pulled MLE out screaming and crying. Other than a pretty good scratch on his arm and being pretty soaking wet, I think he was more scared than hurt. But as I’m standing there holding him and trying to calm him down, every news story and movie I’ve ever seen or read where someone fell in a well, flashed through my mind.

I thought about tiny Jessica McClure who fell in that well in ’87

I thought about all the miners who have lost their lives deep underground

I thought about Lassie and Little Timmie

…and in the middle of all that, I suddenly found myself trying not to laugh at the situation MLE had gotten into. He had been curious and look where it got him. I wasn’t laughing at his fear, I was laughing at the absurdity of it all and in the fact that, despite how scared he was, he was fine–and wet!

But looking back, I know that it could have been worse. What if that hole had been deeper? What if he had fallen in and really hurt himself? The “what if’s” can drive you crazy. This could have been one of those sad stories you see on the news where something terrible happened to a child and the parents are suddenly up on charges of neglect or endangerment.

When we got home, there was no hiding from CareerMom that something happened, but I’ll be danged if I was going to tell her the truth. She thinks he just fell in the koi pond while swinging on the rope, after I had told him not to of course.

I know…I’m horrible and I’m probably going to hell for blaming this completely on my son. In my heart I accept a certain amount of blame, but I also know that no good could come of telling the truth.

Sometimes a little lie doesn’t hurt anyone.

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Dad Blogs DIY Family Fatherhood Marriage

So easy, even a Caveman could do it…

caveWith CareerMom out of town again, it’s just us boys here at the house. Now, when I was single, I was a pretty neat guy. In fact, my condo was usually cleaner than most homes you find today, and I’m still pretty clean, generally speaking. However, I must say that with no estrogen-influence wafting through the house, hygiene and general cleanliness is more of an effort than it normally seems to be.

DIY has a show called, “Man Caves” and it’s basically where a homeowner carves out a spot in the house somewhere, typically a basement, for the man of the house. What the man does down in this area usually revolves around a large-screen television and a wetbar, although I suspect these are just the things publicly disclosed. Well, without CareerMom here, our whole house feels like a Man Cave.

So far, I’ve contemplated not shaving, not brushing my teeth before bed last night and I literally had to drag my butt up today and throw a load of laundry on to wash just so the boys would have some jeans to wear tomorrow should the cool weather hang around. When CareerMom is here, these things aren’t even a conscious decision; I just do them. Without her here, I have to make myself comply. It’s eerie! And this doesn’t even begin to cover how many times someone has said, “I tooted!”
I’m not sayin’ that I said that, just that someone has said it on numerous occasions. If you haven’t noticed yet, fart humor is highly prized by the “Boys under 10” crowd.

Now, in my defense, part of this has to do with the fact that when CareerMom is here, I have help–I’m not doing everything myself. So by the time I have a few minutes to myself–like now–catching up on the household chores is about the last thing on my mind.

Oh, and let me complain for just a second here: CareerMom arranged for her mom to pick up the boys from Daycare tomorrow evening to give me a bit of a break. But the catch is, I have to pick them up by 6:30.

6:30?

At the risk of sounding ungrateful…um…why bother? That’s like a whole hour later than I’d normally have them home anyway. And I’m betting there will be no free dinner involved either. Wow! What ever will I do with myself for that extra hour?

Probably the dishes.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Forget Waterboarding, Try Childboarding

carseatdanget Never having experienced true torture beyond that which my older brother subjected me to growing up, I can only judge torture by its outcome. In the immortal words of Star Trek’s Spock, I believe that,

“…the needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the
few or the one.”

With the exception of maybe paying taxes, I agree with Spock and as such, I’m all for torturing known criminals when the ultimate goal is saving lives. Recently, Waterboarding, an arguable form of torture involving holding a person’s head backwards while pouring water into their breathing passages, has become something of a debate. Some say it IS torture while others say it is not.

I say, “Forget Waterboarding!” I have a much more effective form of torture that is sure to bring a callous, grown man to tears within an hour. Here’s how it works.

Take a small-to-medium-sized pickup truck and clean everything out of the back cab area. Then, take two Graco or Cosco (or really any brand will do) car seats and force the person to install them in the back behind the front seats. Make him or her put them in and tighten them down, then remove them again and start all over. Force them to do this over and over again ’till they break. If you can do it in a hot garage, even better!

It’s that simple, and if you don’t believe that it’ll work, I invite you to come over to my house and try it out.

I know this is torture because I had to do it last night and I have the scraped knuckles and peeled back fingernails to prove it. I just don’t understand why they have to be so friggin’ difficult. I mean, I’m a small man, with fairly small hands and I can just barely get mine in that tiny little tunnel in the back of the carseat where you’re supposed to thread the shoulder belt through. And forget using the latch thingies in the back of a pickup truck because once you get two of these gargantuan seats in there, there’s no room for your hands to go digging down behind the seat in search of the buckle.

Ohmylord! I spent nearly thirty minutes struggling and swearing reasoning with our seats last night before finally coming to the conclusion that you could only do one of the following:

  1. Put one car seat in the back of cab behind the passenger’s seat and another in the front passenger’s seat
  2. Go purchase a “booster seat only” for our four-year old and put that either in the front seat or in the rear behind the driver
  3. Say “screw it” and work from home on Monday so CareerMom could take my truck to the airport, while I took the boys in to daycare. This way, I get to keep the car all week while she’s in San Francisco. (While overall the most attractive option, I hated to do this because I’m already going to work from home most of the week and figure I should at least go in on Monday)

When I bought my truck, a Dodge Dakota with a club cab (not the cab with extra doors), I did so because it was the only medium-sized truck that let you put car seats in the back without having to spend the extra $3K on the quad cab. And at the time, I was only thinking about one car seat, not two. I didn’t consider that when one child was older, and we had another one to contend with, the older child would need not only room for the carseat, but also room for his legs.

Silly me!

Anyway, we chose option # 2 and got a booster-seat-only thing and put it behind the driver’s side. It’ll still be cramped, but at least he won’t be in the front seat (although that would be kinda cool for him!)

Childboarding may not be true torture by some folks’ reckoning, but you put a clean, calm, grown man in that situation and he’ll come out a different person altogether. And maybe he’ll be ready to talk too. I sure was. Of course, what I was saying wasn’t exactly fit for a child’s ears.

Categories
Dad Blogs Family Marriage

I never saw an "over-30" Barbie

sunbathingSavvy men know that there are certain boundaries one is not allowed to cross–wait, make that should never cross–with women. One of those is giving your best friend’s hot wife a kiss, even if it’s one of those wannabe European dual-cheek kisses. Another is anything to do with a woman’s weight, and most especially, if you’re married to her, or you are otherwise enjoying a FWB kinda relationship.

Just recently, a very attractive lady at my office openly wore a maternity shirt for the first time since she got pregnant. I had first noticed that she might be pregnant a couple of months ago, but having been through two pregnancies with my wife, and having listened to her come home and complain every day about the many unsavory comments she received, I kept my mouth shut until I was certain this lady was pregnant and even when I did acknowledge it, I did so with a hearty congratulations and some joke about how I thought she was pregnant but how I wasn’t going to stick my foot in my mouth until I was sure. I thought I was very clever and witty–she probably thought that I thought I was very clever and witty–but really wasn’t.

But we men have realized that simply knowing when to play dumb is not enough. See, women test us from time to time and we men have to be ready–constantly on guard.

Just this morning I fixed myself and CareerMom a faux-egg McMuffin and it was one of those rare occasions where we both get to eat breakfast together. I sat down with my egg McFaux and the latest full-color Burpee catalog; she sat down with her breakfast and the latest Lands End swimsuit catalog.

The Lands End swimsuit catalog is not for teens or for supermodels. Nossir, it’s for normal women. Women who perhaps, have had children and who aren’t quite bold enough to go sunbathing in Brazil. So the entire catalog is full of swimsuits with catchy slogans like, “Minimizes those problem areas” and “Strut your stuff without showing too much.”

Problem areas? Stuff? I guess a problem area for a woman is like my love handles. They’re there and nothing short of going all bulimic on it is going to make it go away. So I avoid tight-waisted clothes so as to minimize the muffin-top effect.

Anyway, I’m sitting there drooling over the shiny, waxed peppers in my catalog when CareerMom reads from hers:

“OK honey, do I need a swimsuit that:
A. Minimizes my shoulders and bust?
B. Slims my tummy and waist
OR
C. Minimizes my hips and thighs?”

Dude, I froze. Time stood still. The sandwich in my mouth just sat there collecting drool while my mind feverishly searched for the right answer. The two sides of my brain warred with each other; the right side pleading for me to say something clever and funny in an attempt at diffusing the situation; the left side begging for some semblance of sanity while also reminding me that CareerMom was going out of town next week and that I’d probably want to be in my wife’s good graces this weekend.

Probably two or three seconds went by and finally, the perfect response won out and I said,

“I’m not touching that with a ten foot pole. How stupid
do you think I am anyway?”

CareerMom just smiled and nodded her head. I finished my breakfast, got up from the table and as I was putting my dishes in the dishwasher, right brain won out and I blurted,

“Do they have one that maximizes your breasts
and shoulders?”

Damn…I couldn’t just let it go could I?