Tag: CareerMom

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Dad Blogs Family

Well, there is the water, and caves and horses to ride…

Roadtrip I ‘m in a bit of a quandry. Help me out here.

My mom (one of them anyway) lives in Tennessee, in a tiny little town called Walland. It’s just on the other side of the mountains from Pigeon Forge and Dollywood and all of that tourist greatness.

She also lives right on Little River. In fact, I can wade right into the river from her back yard.

All of this adds up to a whole lotta reasons why I should go see her…more often. Except that it’s a 3.5 hour drive from Roswell and the drive isn’t especially kid-friendly. We’ve only been up there once this year, and that was in the spring, so we’re really due to go back up.

CareerMom is in New York this week on Thursday and coming back Friday afternoon and we’ve discussed my taking MLI and heading up to see my mom, leaving CareerMom and MLE at home. What really shouldn’t be that tough of a decision, is laden with choices:

Pros:

  • Getting a break from the constant attention needs of MLE (who is a HUGE daddy’s boy!)
  • Getting to spend some quality time with MLI playing in the river and drinking too much soda pop (what an “old” phrase) on the road trip
  • Seeing my mom
  • CareerMom suspects she left her glasses there last time and without them at night after she takes her contacts off, she can’t see much of anything. I could verify whether or not this is true and potentiall retrieve said glasses, thus potentially saving CareerMom loads on a new pair!

Cons:

  • The price of gas
  • The 7 hours of drive-time
  • My mom really wanting to see MLE since he’s “the baby” and arguably, quite the draw from a personality standpoint

Frankly, the price of gas isn’t THAT big a deal, but I felt I should throw it in regardless. And admittedly, a huge thing for me is that I feel guilty leaving CareerMom at home to deal with MLE by herself all weekend. At least when I’m home too, we can switch off for a few moments of sanity.

Whaddya think? Suck it up and take a road trip, or stay home and keep CareerMom sane?

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Parenting Philosophies

Universal Laws

I think most parents come into parenting with a “Parenting Philosophy.” It is probably a mix of things that their parents did with them, as well as some personal observation tweaks on parenting skills they have gleamed by watching the successes and failures of other parents.

I am no different. My parenting philosophy goes something like this:

  • I am your father first, and your best friend second (or maybe 5th or 6th after your real friends and your mother)
  • I ate vegetables and so can you. If you don’t eat them tonight, when you get hungry enough, you WILL eat them
  • After the approximate age of 3, you’re old enough to clean up most of your own messes and get your own toys and blankets from wherever in the house you’ve left them. I’m not your maid
  • When you’ve tuned out my threats of taking away your favorite toys, a spanking usually will do the trick
  • Just because we have kids, it doesn’t mean the house should look like a pigsty
  •  You can entertain yourself sometimes
  • anything else that I make up along the way

The problem with a philosophy, is that it’s just that—a philosophy. A philosophy is “a system of principles for guidance in practical affairs” (thank you Dictionary.com). The quick among you will see the fallacy at work here—the fact that a philosophy comprises principles. And what is a principle exactly, but a, “personal or specific basis of conduct  or management.”

Plainly put, a philosophy consists of a bunch of generally unproven beliefs. Which means then, that a philosophy is not proven and therefore seldom holds true in the real world.

Take last night. I met CareerMom and the boys out for dinner at the local binge-n’-purge. Things went well for the first 20 minutes as our oldest contented himself with coloring the little menu thingy and our youngest donned a bib and commenced to eat pretty much whatever we put in front of him. But then all that wore off and we were left with, “I’m ready to go home” whining from our oldest and, “Hey, let’s see how many times I can make mommy and daddy pick this up off the floor” from our youngest.

Once dinner was over, I volunteered to take our youngest home while CareerMom and my oldest went shopping for a last-minute Christmas gift for her Administrative Assistant at work who had made a point of telling CareerMom as she walked out the door that, “I have a Christmas gift for you tomorrow.”

When we got home, I put our youngest on the floor with some plastic containers to play while I washed up bottles and generally cleaned up. Well, he didn’t like that and he decided to cry.

Now, I had two choices here. I could A) Stand by my philosophies and let him entertain himself (or continue to cry) while I cleaned, or I could B) Pick him up, leave the mess and keep him happy.

Have I mentioned I’m stubborn? Well, I am so I stuck by my philosophy and treated myself to pretty much a nonstop 40-minute cry-fest because once he got started, nothing would stop him. It finally got close enough to bedtime, so I bathed him, put his jammies on and put him to bed.

God Bless the quietness!

But I’m at an impasse here because I don’t think he “learned” anything, which is really the whole point of sticking to your philosophy when things go south. So I’m not sure I won anything here and I’m sure that the next time the situation arises, it’ll play out similarly.

The only question that remains is, “How strong is my resolve?” I don’t know the answer to that, but what I do know for sure is that I will be tested; Oh yes, I will be tested still.

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Dad Blogs Life in these United States

Those Little “Oh crap!” Moments in Life

By now, most of you know that I recently went back to work for a company that I used to work at as a contractor. Well, actually, the location is the same, but the company was bought out by Mega-Corporate, so the theology is different, but the general culture and politics are the same.

At any rate, when I worked there previously, I was a writer of all things product oriented. Now, I’m back and while I still basically do that, my official title is much for “official” sounding and I have more responsibility.

OK, so stage set…on with the story.

I was brought in on a project today because…well, it’s my job now. There were two papers being written for a single subject, but each with a slightly differing focus. Due to some daylight savings time scheduling issues, I went ahead and dialed into the 2 p.m. call just to make sure that I wasn’t supposed to be on it rather than the 3 p.m. call as my MS Outlook showed.

During the call, one particular high-level guy at my office was talking about some changes to the paper (not the one I was supposed to on the next call for) and someone mentioned my co-worker who was supposed to be on the next call, but for whom I’d taken over. Well, someone said, “Oh, she’s delegated this to some Chris person who will be on the next call.” Well, this high-level person said, “Yeah, well, Chris is just a writer.”

Now, writers by nature have thick skins. It comes with the territory; otherwise anytime someone edited or critiqued a story, we’d be popping the anti-depressants and calling 911. So, this didn’t really phase me, but ever since I saw this particular high-level person walk out of the bathroom stall with papers in-hand, not wash his hands and then proceed to put those same papers on my boss’ desk, I’ve really just not liked the guy. I tell ya, it was straight out of a Seinfeld episode (“I’m sorry sir. This book has been in the bathroom; you can’t return it.”).

So, I un-mute my phone and chime in, “Oh John, that’s not entirely correct.” There was a pregnant pause at which point he attempted to backpedal while simultaneously attempting to ascertain my new role while explaining to everyone on the call about my former duties.

I tell ya, it was priceless. Others on my team seemed much more distraught over the whole thing, but I surprisingly had a very “zen-like” calm over it. Dunno why.

So that was my fun for the day. To his credit, high-level person called later and apologized. That was nice of him, but I still won’t shake his hand.