Category: Dad Blogs

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Dad Blogs Family Life in these United States

How Not to Spend Your Evening

WildwoodGenerally speaking, I’m happy with my Homeowners Association (HOA). Having moved from an older neighborhood with absolutely no neighborhood standards, I have no problems with rules such as,

“Garbage cans must not be put along the curbside prior to 6 p.m. the day before pickup and must be removed from the curbside by 8 p.m. the evening of pickup.”

Rules are OK, when they are logical and when they are evenly enforced.

Every year we have our HOA meeting and last year, though it was abysmally boring, they at least served beer and wine and kept everyone from getting too annoyed with the 2.5 hours it took to listen to each Committee chair.

This year, in the announcement for the meeting, the President of the HOA made it very clear that they were going to try and limit each Committee head to a five-minute presentation in an effort to keep things moving along.

So, I cooked an early dinner, ate, and then headed down while CareerMom stayed home with the boys.

When I walked in, the first thing I noticed was, “Hey, no beer!” And I wasn’t the first to notice either. It seems that a Georgia law was passed that says non-profit Corps (which our HOA is) cannot serve alcohol during meetings. So, even though we are just a bunch of homeowners sitting around a clubhouse, because we are technically part of a non-profit, we can’t drink.

Wow! What a worthwhile law.

Anyway, things were going smoothly until some woman stands up and–get this–makes a motion to abolish the $5 charge that any resident who plays in the local tennis league (using our courts and others to do so) must pay.

$5!  Let me say it again…$5.

Would you believe that her complaining, and our HOA president’s explanation of why this charge is necessary, went on for 45 minutes!

By the time it was over, I was about ready to go home, pour myself a drink and walk back down for the remainder of the meeting!

But finally she shut up and we voted the very same incumbents in that have been there forever because nobody else wants to be the target in the front of the room for stupidity such as this women had just shown, and THEN, once we had adjourned with a very official-sounding, “Yes, I second the motion to adjourn” agreement, we were allowed to drink.

But by then it was 9 p.m. and I needed to get home. Man, what an enjoyable night outta the house. Tonight, CareerMom’s youngest sibling graduates from High School, so while she goes and celebrates, I’ll be home with the kids. I could go with her and drag the boys, but I’d just end up watching them anyway, and at least tonight the swim team (for which residents pay $85 for each child on the team) doesn’t have practice and we can get in before 7 p.m.

Hooray for me!

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

What’s next? Nudist camp?

flutter I can’t believe I’m about to jeopardize my creative integrity, but I feel I must. I’m about to devote an entire blog to butter. Well, fake butter (futter) actually, but in my dietary world where the war against fat is a constant, futter IS butter.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve eschewed real butter thanks, I’m sure, to some public service announcement in my youth telling me how bad all that butter is for my arteries. Course, they also said that about eggs, and I consume probably a dozen and a half eggs (mostly just the whites) each week for the protein content and last time I checked, my resting heartrate was about 52 bpm, so take that state of Alabama!

Anyway, my futter of choice has been “Country Crock” for years and years. Considering we never really slathered our food with much butter growing up, my taste for Country Crock came more from a “can’t miss what you never had” background moreso than out of any love for the actual flavor. Country Crock has always come in this big tub and even with my family of four now, it usually lasted nearly two months.

But the other day when I went to the grocery store to pick up a few items, futter included, I couldn’t find my usual tub of futter and instead, there was this half-sized container of Country Crock futter proudly proclaiming, “Now with Omega Plus.”

Omegas? That’s the nutrient you get from fish right? I mean, isn’t that the big secret weapon in salmon and tuna and all those wild Alaskan swimmers we hold so dear? Well, I’m not sure what fish oil would taste like in futter, but I’m game. So, I purchased a container and sure enough, it tasted just like my old Country Crock.

But thing is, the container is about 2/3 the size of the original and guess what? Yep, it’s the same price!

Well, fool me once and all, I decided that the next time I needed futter, I’d break out of my 20 year rut and try a different brand, so I picked up a full-sized tub of “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” figuring anything that’s been around at least as long as my Country Crock has got to have something good going for it.

OMG! What I can’t believe is that people believe the name! This is quite possibly the nastiest surprise I’ve put in my mouth since my brother and his friend convinced me that giant mushrooms growing wild in the woods are tasty and delicious!

It’s so bad, it has me reconsidering just how bad REAL butter can actually be. I mean, it’s all natural right? My mom believes that all the processed food we eat is making everyone sick and while I actually tend to agree with her to a certain degree, I also don’t see me whipping out the Fry Daddy and cooking up a batch of fried chicken and french fries just because canola oil comes from…Canolas? Come to think of it, where does Canola oil come from?

So I am torn, I will admit. I’m torn between feeding my kids something that might clog up their arteries, but which is probably not going to give them cancer, OR I can keep feeding them a low fat butter substitute and pray that their consumption level doesn’t approach that of those poor lab rats with IVs in their veins that have futter dripping through them 24×7.

But if I go down the all natural path, I’m going to have to do some serious fridge cleaning out.

Do you all eat the fake stuff or is your family au naturale (with food I mean)?

(Later: As if I needed another reason to not like Country Crock anymore; I went to their Web site to leave a complaint and their input screen will not let you use apostrophes. Which means “no contractions.” What kind of grammar-Nazi’s are they? I suspect they do it to frustrate users into NOT leaving complaints, but I’m a writer and crap like this fuels my bravado!)

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Society

"It seems my hypocrisy knows no bounds…"

DaddydaycareAs I admitted (gasp!) to CareerMom this weekend after she scolded me for saying, “Dammit!” in front of the boys, I’m not perfect. I drink a beer in front of them every now and then. I get annoyed when they keep asking the same, or similar, questions time after time. And OMG! When MLE starts crying in the car, I could scratch my nails down a chalkboard and find a happier place. I’m not perfect, I’ll freely admit it.

I am also, I’m discovering, a sexist and a hypocrite to boot!

See, despite my, “Hey, men are just as qualified as women to be child-care-givers,” attitude, I’m finding myself having a hard time accepting the fact that a man now runs our daycare facility.

What happened is, our daycare, which was previously run completely by three generations of women (they all worked there at the same time) has apparently made so much money off us parents that after only five short years, they are selling to a national chain of daycare centers (sounds like, “Grids R Grids”). We actually found out about this poorly kept secret this past weekend, and it was confirmed this morning as CareerMom greeted the new daycare owner, a man, in a wedding-reception-like gladhanding session as she dropped the kids off.

And I’m not too thrilled about this. I think part of it stems from the fact that another large chain of centers in our area (sounds like, “Snoddard School”) is also run by a man who just creeped the hell outta me each time I visited there; so much so that right after enrolling MLI after he was born, we pulled him out based almost entirely on the “creep vibe” the dude put out. So, I was already biased against men running daycare centers.

Call me crazy, but I can’t for the life of me, figure WHY a man would WANT to run a daycare center! I’m pretty sure that I lack several a gene that I consider prerequisites to caring for children over extended periods of time, such as:

  • the “sit on the floor and endure hours of monotony” gene
  • the “don’t react violently every time one of the kids swings something at crotch level” gene
  • the “fix three different really good things for lunch/dinner only to have them go and try to eat the dog food” tolerant gene

…and there are others I’m sure.

So here I am, finding myself railing against my kids going to a daycare run by a man, when some of the most well-adjusted men I know, are stay-at-home dads. Admittedly, running a daycare is probably more about project management than it is hands-on with the kids, but still…I can’t shake the bad feeling. I can’t shake the feeling that a man is more likely to cut corners if it’ll save a buck than a woman would.

See, hypocrite. That’s me.

What do you folks think?

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Dad Blogs Family Life in these United States

The non-southerner’s guide to the south

dollywoodThough I was born in Monterey, CA, thanks to my father being in the Army, I’ve lived almost my entire life in the deep south–mostly Alabama–the place Leonard Skynard immortalized back in 1974, the year after I was born. My best friends growing up listened to country music, though I probably hunted and fished more than most of them, and I’ve driven a pickup truck pretty much since I purchased my first house and realized that you can’t tote sheetrock in a sports car (I had a 240SX).

Despite all that, I’ve never really fit the redneck profile that so many non-southerners hold so dear, thanks in no small part, to the media. And truth be told, most of the people I know from the south, aren’t like that either (that includes you DN!)

But those people do exist, as I found out on my recent trip to Dollywood.

Dollywood is located in Pigeon Forge TN, which is touted as the most visited tourist attraction in the country. Pigeon Forge is also right smack dab in the middle of the Great Smokey Mountains, in the middle of Tennessee, in the middle of the south…

Do you see where I’m going here?

My mom and her husband moved to a town just outside Knoxville, TN about 14 years ago. This year, for whatever reason, they purchased season tickets to Dollywood and with those tickets came some 1/2 off tickets for guests. When we went up this past weekend, they  suggested we all head on over to Dollywood for an afternoon of fun and frivolity.

Now, anyone who knows anything about me, knows that I abhor crowds. I’m that really good looking guy standing just outside the crowd (holding a beer) at parties. I don’t do large concerts. I don’t like to sit next to people I don’t know at church. Heck, I don’t even like answering the door at home if it’s someone I don’t know. People just make me uncomfortable! Despite all this, I’ll do just about anything for my kids, and so we all drove over the mountain (literally) and went to Dollywood on Saturday.

I can now report, with great certainty, that the people that Jeff Foxworthy jokes about, do actually exist, in a-plenty and they apparently love them some Dolly Parton!

When I wasn’t squirming in shame for the aged Wal-mart rejects working the kiddie rides and saying things like, “We’d like to thank you for riding the “Lucky Ducky” and please enjoy your visit to Dollywood,” I was dodging sweaty, plus-sized, halter-top models and doing my best to stare down Bubbas determined not to deviate from their path while walking five across and taking up the whole avenue!

Don’t get me wrong, on the whole, these people are the salt of the earth. When aliens finally figure out we’re more tasty than we are smart, I’m robbing the closest gun store and heading for the hills, where I’ll slip into my best southern drawl and where me and my family will hunker down until it’s all over. But I gotta admit, the stereotype isn’t completely without merit!

So if you’re planning a trip to Dollywood anytime soon, gimme a holler. I’ll be happy to give you the lowdown on the 1/32% of the park that we saw before the kids got too hot and tired, forcing us to beat an early retreat back to our oasis on the Little River.

Oh, and for all you Tennessee fans out there: ROLL TIDE!