Tag: Roswell

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Dad Blogs Family Marriage

Just keeping my big mouth shut

I work out in the gym about 4-5 times per week, going on nearly 15 years now. Since I’ve been in the gym for so many years, I’ve created an “as-of-yet” unpublished list of Gym Etiquette rules and whenever someone violates those rules, I get really annoyed.

Topping the Etiquette list are:

  • not using a towel (there’s few things worse than getting on a machine or bench and finding a wet, sponge-like spot of sweat on the bench where the previous person didn’t use a towel…ugh!)
  • standing right in front of the weight racks when you are exercising (hey, others are working out here too ya know!)
  • sitting around on a machine doing little more than people watching or reading the newspaper  (really folks, just stay home…)
  • talking on the cell phone (OMG! Get a life. Can’t you go 45 minutes without talking on the cell phone?)

My workout routine typically consists of 2-3 days of nothing but weight training, and then usually 1-2 days of half cardio/half weights. When my knees and back aren’t bothering me, I’ll jog for my cardio; otherwise I’ll use the elliptical. Regardless of what I’m doing, I always have my headphones on blasting my favorite tunes, but sometimes when you’re right next to someone being loud, you can still hear them.

The other day my knees were bothering me and I opted to use the elliptical machine rather than do my usual 2 mile jog before hitting the weights. I had been on it for about 10 minutes and I was in the zone. I mean, the music was pumping and I was tranced out staring at a spot on the wall across the gym. Peripherally, I could see people coming and going and part of me noted that someone got on the machine beside me, but I didn’t wanna ruin my buzz by looking, so I just ignored them.

About five minutes later, I noticed that I could hear this person talking on the cell phone. Trying to ignore them, I turned my music up and worked even harder. But like all annoying things, such as the theme song from The Wiggles, once you’ve noticed it, it’s in your head and you can’t ignore it. So, I turned my head to give the person next to me my most menacing stare, only to see that the person beside me was…drumroll please…CareerMom, my wife. Of course I didn’t say anything to her, opting rather to keep the peace and say, “Oh hi, didn’t realize you were there.”

I have since noted that she has a habit of talking on the cell phone while on the elliptical machine and while this still annoys the crap out of me, I just make it a point to avoid working out next to her. Needless to say, she has also NOT seen my Gym Etiquette guide, although I am tempted to print it out and just leave it lying about the house somewhere. But that would probably be mean…

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Baby Spit

It’s fairly rare, but every now and again my youngest son (of 10 months) takes a late afternoon nap at daycare. This means that he’s actually in a relatively good mood when he gets home rather than being a whiney, drooling sleepy head that we have to try to keep awake for another two hours. On those days that he naps past 4 p.m., he comes home laughing and crawling around and is the cute baby we all hope we get from the good Lord.

Last night was one of those nights and after I bathed him, I took him to his room where he promptly grabbed his toothbrush and started sucking on it. After it was good and wet he took it out of his mouth to study it like a cat might study a mouse right before it rips its head off and brings it to lay at your feet.

So he’s sitting there holding the toothbrush in one hand and he grabs the bristles with the other and flips it towards me like you’d do food on a spoon during a foodfight. Baby spit went flying all over my face and I let out an involuntary, “Oooh!”

For some reason, known only to babies, this cracked him up something tremendous and for the next five minutes he flung spit at me while I pretended to be disgusted (it wasn’t much of an acting stretch) and when that wore thin, I’d cry “oooh!” and then give him tummy noogies, much to his delight.

He has a memory like an elephant, so I foresee more of this in the coming evenings. I’m just going to add this to my list of “Things I can’t imagine myself ever doing….ever.” Now if I can just get my oldest son to give up his Spider Man costume, I’ll be golden.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Life in these United States

My own private festivus thoughts…

catered-ham-1.jpgI gotta tell you that this Christmas, for me, was a terrible disappointment. But not because of any gifts I did or didn’t get. I particularly like the holidays because of all the family get-togethers and the food and quite frankly, there was no good family get-togethers or food really and that’s just a shame.

We had some family come and stay with us, but as usual, they didn’t get engaged with the boys. Mostly, they just sat on the couch and slept (BTW: they don’t read this blog!). My wife’s family were nearly all in town and when we did get together, it was mostly over at her parent’s house. Even though their house is large, when you put 20 people in one house, including three children under the age of 2, what you DON’T get is a fun, relaxing family yule-tide meet and greet. Add to that the tummy bug that went through the house ravaging random intestines (we were thankfully spared) and it killed any post-Christmas football watching with the family; another staple of the holiday season.

From a food perspective, we ate well at our house, but again, the family dining adventure where you’re supposed to be able to sample something from everyone’s own kitchen, turned into a catered affair complete with flavors completely foreign to most of our experiences.

On Christmas morning, we ended up with two major purchases having to be returned (shame on you Fisher-Price!), but otherwise, it was a grand success. On top of that, I spent an inordinate amount of time on a DVD of the boys over the past two years and not one of the people I sent it to has commented on it. I’m not looking for over-the-top gushing platitudes mind you, but a “How Cute!” would have been nice. (Uh huh, don’t try now…it’s too late!)

I know I should be thankful that we were all together and blah, blah, blah; but Christmas only happens once a year. Is it too much to ask for everyone to put forth a little extra effort into making it memorable? Maybe, stay awake and play with the kids? Cook your own dressing and cranberry sauce? Maybe have regular sweet tea WITHOUT fruity flavoring crap in it?

I told CareerMom that next year, if I have to, I’ll cook Christmas dinner for the whole family myself if it means we don’t have to eat another catered meal. I’m just bummed that I have to wait a whole year for a taste of good, home-cooked turkey and dressing.

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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.