Category: Family

Posts that discuss family life in America.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Watch Your Kids for Goodness’ Sake

There’s a time-proven method of getting over writer’s block, and that is to just start typing and see what goes from there. I’m doing that today because nothing of note happened since Mother’s day. I suppose I could go on about Mother’s day and all, but it too was fairly uneventful. I suppose I’ve always wondered about people who blog on a daily basis. How do they come up with that much material? OK, here’s my last couple of days in a nutshell for those that are interested:

  • Mother’s day came and went with no special events. We had my wife’s mom and dad over and I grilled sausage and chicken. There was cake, we shared wine and hugs. It was all good.
  • Our neighborhood pool opened this weekened. Oh, see it worked! Now I have something to complain about 🙂

Moms…when you’re at the pool with your children, especially those of you with young children, other parents who are also there with their children and who are actually IN THE WATER playing with their own children, don’t want your children hanging all over them.

Our son met some kids at the neighborhood park over the summer. Two little girls and a boy. They were at the pool both times we were over the weekend. I, loving the pool, and wanting to get our 3-yr old used to the pool fairly quickly this summer, was in the water with him. This family’s oldest daughter (of 5 years) would not stop crowding us and trying to get into what we were doing. She’s a really cute little girl and I like her, but ENOUGH! And where’s your mommy little girl? Oh, there she is, sitting up beside the pool, fully dressed, yapping away with her friend, not in the least bit interested in what her kids are doing.

Yes, I get it that we have a lifeguard, but if you aren’t interested in watching your kids for safety’s sake, at least keep them out of other people’s hair.

It’s really funny watching kids around the ages of 3-6, and I don’t know if it’s always been this way or just our society has forced little girls to become extroverts, but the boys appear to be the well-behaved ones and the little girls are these noisy, bossy little things that want all the attention. Truthfully, I always wanted a boy and a girl, but I have two boys and quite frankly, I think it’ll be an easier road. We’ll see.

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Dad Blogs DIY Family

Digging Up Other People’s Memories

We have two rather large dogs, and like all dogs, they LOVE to chase critters, of which we have a-plenty. This means that when any sort of critter is spied and takes to ground, digging ensues. However, sometimes digging ensues even without an obvious critter hole. Such was the case when I peered over my balcony and spotted a fresh hole near one of my sprinkler heads.

Also flapping around in the breeze were two old polaroid pictures and what appeared to be the corner of some kind of box jutting out of the freshly-pawed earth. My curiosity piqued, I walked down the steps and crouched over the pictures. The were of a middle-aged woman, lovingly hugging her Golden Retriever…

Uh huh, now you know what the box contained right? Yep, the apparently cremated remains of one much-loved Golden, contained within a hard plastic box wrapped up in a plastic bag with matching Polaroids.

Part of me wanted to say, “Ick!” and throw it away. After all, the thing was only buried like two inches underground, and very close, I might add, to my sprinkler pipe. The other part of me that likes dogs and understands the owner’s intent, figures I should go bury the thing again.

For now, the box remains where I pulled it out of the ground. It seems pointless to bury it. After all, the previous owners will never know. But what if I don’t, and my basement becomes haunted by the ghost of a Golden Retriever? That would be too weird.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Accept your neurosis…and just move on

Despite having more than 20 nieces and nephews, I’ll never be that “fun uncle” that we all hope to be to our brother’s and sister’s kids. I suppose that is because whenever I’m around them, there are so many of them that I get overwhelmed and revert to my usual, “quiet Uncle Chris who gets crabby if he gets pushed” self. This is what becomes of only children when forced to play with the entire class.

So anyway, we have one of my wife’s brother’s daughters here for two weeks helping us take care of our youngest son during the day. Back home, she’s one of 8 kids who are all home-schooled by mom. They have quite a machine there where the older kids help care for the younger kids, ranging from age 15 down to 3 months. I can only assume, each share in the household chores as well.

You can imagine my surprise then, when I came home yesterday to find her holding my son, still in his hot pajamas, and the house a mess. Dishes on the counter, crumbs all over the table, and the floor littered with grass clippings. Honestly, in a day, the three of us don’t make that kind of mess.

However, I’m inclined to cut the kid (she’s about to turn 15) some slack given that this is probably like some great big vacation for her and since she didn’t get to our house till late Sunday night only to have to suddenly get up and start caring for the baby the next morning.

While I’m grateful for her help, I have my reservations, such as:

  • She stayed downstairs watching TV till midnight last night, so as I got up to feed the baby at 11:30, I had to clothe my usually half-naked self in order to go downstairs
  • How long do I let it go before I say, “Look, we’re paying you more money in a week than you’ve ever held in your hand at any one time, the least you can do is clean up when the baby is asleep!”
  • Oh, and since she stayed up till midnight last night, my wife had to wake her up at 7:30 this morning so she could go to work.

Really people, I know it probably doesn’t come off as such, but I’m really a nice guy. Anal, demanding, a bit of a perfectionist, but all in all, a REALLY nice guy.
I think…

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Dad Blogs Family Life in these United States

My Wife was Eminently Qualified; Still No Dice!

Like many men I know, I am married to a working woman. Society has made great strides towards ensuring that women aren’t “wasting” their time raising children, and are instead, in the workplace where they can put their significant talents to work making money driving this grand economy. I personally feel that we can thank today’s real-estate prices on the dual-income family, but that’s another topic for another day.

At any rate, my wife has been very successful in the workplace. She’s educated, having gotten her Master’s degree and then after college, when we got married, she went to work for a fairly small pharmaceutical company and has been there ever since.

The company is really close to where we work, which for Atlanta, is a God-send. That’s also been a bit of a curse, since, despite it being a huge “good ol boys club”, the location makes up for a lot of downsides. However, in her 7 years there, she’s gotten 3 promotions, which, if you compare that to how many in-company promotions I’ve gotten (zero baby!) is pretty darn good.

Other nice things about where she works:

  • no cubicles. Even as a newbie, she shared an office. Now has one of her own. I, on the other hand, have always had a cubicle and it looks like I always will
  • close to our daycare so she can drop off/pick up kids at will
  • they throw a decent Christmas party every year
  • yearly bonuses

So, all in all we can’t complain.

While my wife was on maternity leave, a position came open as Prod. Manager of a new drug they are coming out with. She was fully qualified and decided to go out for it. So, she went back to work two weeks early, prepared a full launch plan for this new drug (took a week), interviewed yesterday and didn’t get the job. The person who did get the job is, not surprisingly, a District Manager whose job is getting eliminated AND did I mention he plays golf with the VP? Yeah…

But here’s the deal…she really wanted this job even though it would have meant a good deal more travel, which is strange cuz she’s always going on about wanting to be here for the kids. Now personally, I’m a bit relieved she didn’t get it. Yet ANOTHER promotion aside, I wasn’t looking forward to schlepping the kids 8 miles (one way) to daycare on the days that she’s traveling. So, part of me feels bad that I don’t feel bad for her, but part of me is pretty thrilled.

Unfortunately, the excuse they gave her, if you choose to believe it, is because she never worked in the field as a lowly Sales Rep and he did. However, she has an MBA and significant marketing experience launching another product (Androgel), neither of which this guy has. So the question that she posed to the hiring manager is, “So, you’re telling me that in the future, if I want to go for a promotion, and anyone with field experience also goes up against it, I won’t get the job?” The answer was pretty much “yes.” So basically, she’s done at this company, unless they come back later and admit it was a bullshit reason for not giving her the job and they really just wanted to keep their golfing buddy eating at the family trough.

Could it be the end of the good locale job? We’ll see…