Category: A Boy’s Life

Categories
A Boy's Life Dad Blogs Society

My Secret Shame: Custom-Fitted Ladies’ Undergarments

When I was a young tween, my mom starting selling bras out of a suitcase. It was not my proudest period. Too young to leave at home, I was often whisked along as she made house-calls for women who needed–a little more support than that afforded by the under-garments sold at the local mall. Or so went the sales pitch anyway.

These were Norvell bras. I can still see–and smell–the dark blue, pleather suitcase which housed her inventory. It had a silk-screened, white outlined face of a generic woman on the outside. It was almost as large as me at the time and it didn’t have wheels.

Continue reading “My Secret Shame: Custom-Fitted Ladies’ Undergarments”
Categories
A Boy's Life DIY Family Fatherhood

The Best Laid Plans

Sometime back in the summer, when everyone in my family (but me) and everyone in my wife’s family (but me) were all at a house on the North Carolina coast (all 40-something of them), my two boys (MLI and MLE) conspirated with their two similarly-aged girl cousins from Texas, to get together before Thanksgiving.

Wanting to foster this “cuz-luv,” my wife tried to schedule a “meet in the middle” trip to Memphis, but her brother (father of the girl cousins) wasn’t going for it.

So, my wife, bowing to peer pressure from the boys, scheduled a trip to Dallas, leaving today and returning next Tuesday evening. I would stay home with the recovering dog, and generally enjoy some quiet time.

Seeing as how we also have a daughter who is a good bit younger than the rest of them, we kept trying to convince her NOT to go since “5” is always an odd-person-out, but she had major FOMO and was insistent on going.

So, you remember that part, back when I wrote, “Best Laid Plans”?

This morning, my daughter woke up with a bit of a scratchy throat and, fearing she’d get sicker on the trip, away from the comforts of home, decided to stay home and NOT go on the trip that was scheduled to leave in less than an hour.

OK then. Needless to say, I was mentally ready (OH SO READY) for several quiet days at home, doing catch-up projects, NOT having to cook for anyone, or generally tell anyone I was leaving the house and having to worry whether or not they were safe. There was probably going to be an adult beverage or two. But not now. When you’re home alone with a kid, you can’t ever really let yourself go. You have to always be in physical and mental shape to tackle any emergency–real or imagined.

I also had a massage scheduled (the gift card I’ve been sitting on since Father’s day) and a very large, DIY project. None of that is happening now and in fact, I’m reconsidering the days I took off from work next week to accomplish these things.

I was FINALLY going to tackle this disaster area. How I HATE metal wire shelving!

20191122_102150

I love my daughter y’all like nothing before, but I still haven’t mentally adjusted to weeks of planning to the contrary.

Categories
A Boy's Life Dad Blogs Family Life in these United States

Can’t Blame My Mom For This One


I have an unnatural aversion to old people. I know a lot of people shy away from old people out of some desire not to interact with the inevitable, but mine is really more of an aversion I think, than just a simple “ick” influence. And I think I know where it started…

When I was young, my brother and I would spend a couple of weeks each summer with my grandparents in North Carolina. This was back when the airline industry was revered and you got those cool little gold “Delta” wings when you flew. We were only like, 6 and 9 years old then (I was 6) and we flew by ourselves. The crew always made sure we were safely tucked on board and they walked us off the plane upon arrival into the waiting arms of my grandparents. The funny thing was, once there, we didn’t do a whole lot with my grandparents and because of that, I gravitated to my grandfather’s sister, Aunt Marjorie.

She was old back then even. But she lived in the house with my grandparents and pretty much acted like the maid, butler and all-around babysitter. I loved her like…well, like nobody really. I slept in her room in a twin bed on the other side of the nightstand from her and at the crack of dawn, we’d both get up and start making breakfast. I can still smell the frying bacon and taste the cool, graininess of the homemade apple sauce that she’d bring up from the bare-earth basement.

But once breakfast was done and the house chores were finished, often Aunt Marjorie and I would go for a drive. In her younger years, she worked at the Biltmore House and we would often drive around the estate and she’d rattle off how she used to do so and so there, and over there she took care of this or that. We’d also usually drive parallel to the French Broad River—a deep, fast river that runs from North Carolina to Tennessee and that I simply loved.

On rare occasions, we would stop by one of the many volunteer stations where my Aunt worked and one day we went to an old folks’ home. We didn’t stay long, but I remember walking in with her and being told to “stand right there” while she dropped off some covered dish or something. She turned to speak to someone and, like all little boys, I had to look around and see what was going on. There were old people everywhere, which was fine…I was OK. But then, this old lady about ten feet away, sitting in a chair, beckoned to me and said, “Come here. Come here little boy.” Now, being used to doing what adults told me, I obeyed. I walked over to her, a bit stiffly and she reached out and with preternatural strength, wrapped me in a sinewy, old-lady bear hug and began to squeeze the ever-lovin’ life outta me!

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t call out. After what seemed like ages, finally someone noticed what was going on and a bunch of them came running over and had to literally pry the old lady off of me.

I was scared…shaken, and apparently never the same again. Today, I like old people from a distance. And I like old people in general, but there comes a point at which I go from looking at them as just older versions of myself, and start seeing them as these not-quite-human “things” that I’d just as soon avoid. And this is bad because CareerMom’s grandmother has recently taken a turn for the worse and has been here visiting. We’ve done a couple of big family get-togethers and while everyone else is gathered around her trying to make the most of her remaining time, I have to literally force myself to even go into the room—and it shames me. I pray she hasn’t noticed with everyone else gathered around. To cover myself, I follow the kids around, pretending to be watching them, when really, I’m avoiding.

I know…one day it’ll be me in that chair and I’ll wish I could reach out and squeeze my grandkids. I pray I’m still lucid enough to show some restraint.

Categories
A Boy's Life Dad Blogs Family Life in these United States

Everything I need to know, I learned in boot camp.

The military taught me many things. For example, I learned that quality shoes are essential if you plan on doing any great amount of running. I also learned that if you drink two medium-sized glasses of lukewarm water before every meal, you’ll eat less. These are things you would normally learn on your own–given time. But there were other things taught to us raw recruits–such as how to shave correctly–that many people might never have learned if they hadn’t had the proper teacher(s) at home. The military assumes the very worst about incoming recruits and prepares its training appropriately.

But one of the most useful skills I picked up was ironing. Before the military, I didn’t iron. Oh, I knew how…I just didn’t. Ironing in the Me, ironing.military is not a skill; it is an art. It is an art as time-consuming and tedious as Japanese Bonsai. New recruits are taught how to firstfold a t-shirt and then, using tweezers to pull out and hold the edges of the collar so as to not burn your fingers, press that shirt into a perfect square. If you’ve ever ironed a round-necked T-shirt, you can imagine the difficulty here. From T-shirts, one moves onto the more formal uniforms and battle dress uniform (BDUs–those camouflaged things you see soliders wearing).

Needless to say, I became a really great ironer. I even bought my own bottle of STA-FLO liquid starch concentrate and mixed my own starch spray so I could control the crispiness of my creases. And so I have ironed my own clothes for years. CareerMom–notsomuch.

CareerMom has always been a dry-cleaning kinda gal. Even when the clothes don’t require dry-cleaning, she’ll send them to the dry-cleaners just so she doesn’t have to iron them after they come out of the dryer. When times have been tough and the pennies needed penching, this was an area I always criticized. Recognizing that most professional women’s clothes require dry-cleaning, I haven’t been able to make too much of a stink, but the cost was always there…hovering overhead.

Normally I don’t have to do much ironing these days. Thanks to business casual dress, I might have to iron a couple of pairs of dress slacks, but for the most part my shirts are golf-style shirts that don’t require ironing. But lately, I’ve been interviewing a good bit and thanks to it being both summer, and stressful, I’ve been sweating a lot in my shirts. To save money, I’ve only purchased a couple of nice dress shirts to wear under my suit jacket, so I’ve been washing and ironing these same shirts a lot. And I’ve grown tired of it.

So today, I dropped off my two shirts at the drycleaners. It was a pivotal moment and I expected–at any minute–for the clouds to part and the angels start singing “Hallelujah!”

Unfortunately, all I heard was the “Thank you Ms. Megan” from the Asian dry-cleaning lady who pulled my wife’s account up as she took my bundle.  I recognize that I will probably always iron the majority of my own clothes, but I gotta be honest…they do a better job than I do and it sure is more handy than dragging out that ironing board every night. Maybe I can find a relatively inexpensive men’s clothing designer whose dress shirts REQUIRE dry cleaning. That way, I wouldn’t feel guilty about having to send them off. It works for CareerMom; why not me?