Category: Family

Posts that discuss family life in America.

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Dad Blogs DIY Family

You Know You’re Getting Old When…

We bought the house we now live in late last year and when I first toured the house with the Realtor (I’m not sure she’s an actual REALTOR) one of the first things I did was look at the backyard. After walking out on the deck and peering over its edge onto a backyard that had a severe slope that started right after the deck supports and ended up about 12 feet down the hill, I immediately said, “No way!”

But after looking at a dozen more houses and finding nothing comparable for the price, I did what we all do when we REALLY want something, but when there are valid reasons for not getting it…I rationalized.

I rationalized that I could plant grass and shrubs on it and it would be beautiful. I rationalized that I could build steps down the side leading to the flat area down by the creek. And indeed, all these things have come to pass (well, I wouldn’t call it “beautiful” at this point just yet).

However, having had to weed-eat this hill (since it’s far too steep for a mower), while trying to keep from sliding down the hill at every step, I finally decided maybe it was time to re-think my idea. And again…I rationalized, except this time I started thinking about this hill and my caring for it when I’m in my 50s. It went something like this:

“Do I really want to be trying to cut this grass without breaking my neck when my body is 15 years older and more beat up than it is now? Will I be able to afford some kid to come do it for me? What if they don’t do a good job? What if he hurts himself while trying to cut it and he sues me?

So, I finally decided that, while I could leave the shrubs and small trees, perhaps I should just lay down a thick carpet of pine straw and be done with it. And so, I headed to my local Mega-Home Upkeep Mart and bought 12 bales of pinestraw.

It didn’t even cover a 1/3 of it. And have you ever tried to walk on pinestraw? It’s very slippery, especially on a 15 degree slope. There’s apparently some trick to laying down pinestraw on a hill and as far as I can tell, it’s basically that you put the bale on your left, grab some in your hand and throw it on your right. Forget trying to do it uphill/downhill. As I found out, you’ll only sliiiide down the hill every time.

So now I’m considering having someone drop me off another 30 bales and finishing the job. They wanted about $5.50 per bale (spread) for someone else to do it and I can buy just the bales for $3.49 at the Mega-Home Upkeep Mart, so that’s a good bit o’ savings. My only question now is how I’ll refresh it every year. I won’t be able to climb all over the hill to lay a new layer like I did this time. I might just have to stand at the top and toss it down. I’m sure the coverage would be excellent (NOT!).

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Why We Have Children

In the last three years, I’ve often pondered how we as a species, continue to populate the planet. Parenting is not easy and statistics show that affluent families are having fewer children, or waiting to have them much later than their parents did, while lower income families (often single parent ones) are having the same numbers or more children as in the past, and at a relatively early age.

When you consider the cost of raising children, one wonders how we do it. Those who can conceivably afford to get help, have elected to forego children. As I often do, I again come back to blame the dual income family. This lack of children among the affluent almost always coincides with a dual income household. The really interesting thing is that I can watch this little mystery unfold in my very home.

My wife comes from a very large family of 7 children. Dad always worked and mom was always there for the kids. My wife always felt that she wanted lots of children; in fact we used to have mini-arguments about how many we would have. I wanted 2, she 4. Nearly eight years into our marriage and two boys later, my wife recently turned to me and declared, “If I say I want more children, shoot me.”

My my…curiouser and curiouser.

The question is then, “What changed?” Had my wife never become successful in her career, would she be happy as a stay at home mom? As it is, weekends wear us out watching just two kids, much less staying home and watching them for a whole week. I find it interesting that this whole “nurture” thing we’ve grown up expecting women to feel towards their children is all but a thing of the past.

The point being, that raising children is not easy. We thought we dodged the “terrible twos” bullet with our older son, only to have it rear it’s ugly head in his “threes.” And now of course having a newborn in the house, old questions as to “why” and “how” this whole children thing continues its popularity plagues my soul as I’m sitting in the Dutallier rocking my grunting son at 2:30 in the morning.

There’s an old saying of mine: “You can do a million things right and never get any credit, but you do one thing wrong and people never forget you for it.”

With children, I think the opposite is true: “Your children can act like the spawn of satan for a solid week, but when they get up in the morning, come over to you and give you a genuine hug–you know, one of those that they don’t immediately pull away from–you realize that it was all worth it.

Don’t get me wrong, I still only want two children, but it is in times like this that I realize how and why our species will survive. We thrive on love and acceptance, and children offer these without asking anything in return except our own love.
I get it now. It took two kids and months and months of sleepless hell, but I get it now.

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Dad Blogs Family Life in these United States

Artistically speaking, where would we be without drugs?

As a family, you tend to gather pictures like old habits. One minute your walls are bare, the next you’re taking down one picture in order to move it to a new location so that you can arrange a multitude of pictures on the wall. With two boys now in our house, I’m forced to look at a series of pictures taken over the last few years and I gotta tell ya folks, it ain’t pretty.

At some point, I went from a trim runners body, to a stocky weighlifter’s body, complete with a small belly that threatens to grow wider than my shoulders. Oh, I could make excuses, such as less leisure time to hike and exercise. I could blame my back surgeries which have all but made running (the one thing that really burned off the fat) a thing of the past. I could make several excuses, but if I’m being honest, there are other, equally valid reasons for why I put on weight that have nothing to do with my lifestyle.

Plain and simple, I eat more junk than I used to. When I was single, and before there were kids, you wouldn’t find leftover pizza or cookies laying around. Dinner was cereal or stir fry, not hamburgers or some gourmet chicken with a fabulous wine sauce.

This isn’t really the direction I meant to take with this entry, but these things tend to have a mind of their own. What I meant to get to, was how things change as you age–and not just physically–but mentally too.

For instance, someone commented on my last post where I admitted I’d never smoked pot. I didn’t say it because it’s something I am all proud of and want to force on the rest of the world. As someone who has enjoyed the benefits of hydrocodone for nigh on three years as a way to enable me to sit in an office chair, pick up my kids without hitting the ground in pain, and walking without a limp, I’ll be the first to admit that drugs have their places. And drugs is one of those areas where I imagine I’m not the only one to have a change of heart.

As much as I like to make fun of them, public service announcements do have an affect. I didn’t do drugs, not because they weren’t available, but because I morally felt they were wrong. Now, as an adult, I’ve known some very intelligent people who regularly smoke pot and get by in life just fine. Do I agree that they should come to work baked, or use it prior to a long roadtrip as a way of staying alert? No, I can’t condone that, but I also don’t see a problem with a person using pot recreationally. I realize this opens a whole can of worms regarding public safety and work productivity etc., which is probably why, more than any other reason, pot isn’t legal in this country. If you legalized it, then you’d have to have a slew of follow up laws regulating where, when and how it could be used.

Legal nightmare, I get it.

But times change, we change–our bodies, our minds, our morals. Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I wonder if I should continue to cling to that image of myself in my youth in some vain hopes that I’ll be able to some day get back to it when life isn’t so demanding of my time. Other times I think that maybe this person in last month’s picture IS me. It’s the new me, or…the old me depending on how you want to look at it. There is no going back, there’s only going forward. That’s depressing, but I don’t suppose it isn’t anything billions of people ahead of me haven’t gone through.

I don’t know. I’m not yet ready to give up my youth, despite what my hair and my bones are telling me. But some things can and do change, like your opinion on things. Whether or not those changes are for the better, or simply “changes”…well, only time will tell.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Billions of government PSA $$…down the drain.

“Just say no.”
“This is your brain on drugs”
“The more you know”
“Give a hoot, don’t pollute”

Those good ol’ Public Service Announcements. Billions and Billions spent trying to persuade the public towards a viewpoint that someone in the government decided is the right one. And here we are, decades of PSAs later and as a 34 year old adult, I’m still falling prey to peer pressure!

Oh, I’m not taking drugs or setting forest fires or anything like that, but my wife and I have bowed to parental peer pressure and it’s just as insidious as anything you might find peddled on the streetcorners of today’s inner-cities.

At my children’s daycare, in addition to the activities that they provide in-house, they apparently also allow outside vendors to come in. One such vendor is a company called “Playball.”

For a paltry $80, your child can enjoy 8 weeks of 30 minutes playtime sessions (1 per week) with their friends. Do you see the genius here? If you don’t “let” your children take advantage of this wonderful program, then they must endure 30 minutes of exile while their friends have fun. Who wants to be that kid? What parent wants their child to endure such horror?

But let’s do the math. If even 8 kids per class of 14 does it, and they can do 4 classes each day, that’s a cool $360 a day for 2 hours of work. Not a bad racket.
And really, how much does each child get to do in an “instructed” play class in 30 minutes when there are several other children also involved? So really, for each parent that pays for their child to take the class, they aren’t paying so that their child can actually improve their ball skills; what they are really paying for is “inclusion.”

Peer pressure. Criminey! I never smoked pot and I never set a forest fire, but by golly, my children have caused my fall! But it doesn’t have to be so with you.

Remember, “You could learn a lot from a dummy!”