Tag: #family

  • ODDS and ENDS: Painting, Soccer Workouts, and Summer Playlists/Albums

    ODDS and ENDS: Painting, Soccer Workouts, and Summer Playlists/Albums

    (Saw it written and I saw it say…)

    I may have mentioned it before, but the plan this Summer, before the kid goes away to camp, is to get the living room painted. And I am one who believes that one of the best lessons we can teach our kids is that sometimes you have to do things for your family that aren’t fun; such as painting the living room. It needs to be done because the last time we painted was ten years ago, right before the kid was born. So… it’s time. There will be patching and sanding, and taping and painting. When me and the wife did it, we completed everything in two days. My guess with the kid is that it will take us four. I don’t want to rush it, because we will make some mistakes and have to go back and clean them up, and I also need to occupy as much time as possible. These summer days can be boring.

    And one of the other ways I am trying to kill time with the kid is having her work on her soccer skills. She had a very good first year playing soccer for her school team, but she didn’t start, which annoyed her. Truth of the matter is that there were girls on the team that were better players than her, simple because these girls had been playing for a couple of years already. As I explained to my kid, if she wants to start, she has to work harder, and up her skills. To my relief and happiness, the kid accepted this challenge – she likes competing and winning. I do want her to getting a starting position on the team, but I am more proud of the fact that she likes working hard to achieve something that she wants.

    And as we are now in Summer, and family road trips are coming, the pressure to build a playlist is growing. The wife has one that she has been working, and has been teasing us with selections while around the home. Even the kid has shown off her growing list of all the different artist that she’s found. That leaves me. I have yet to start, but I already have a bit of dread in me about this. Mainly because I seem to really only pick the same twenty songs, over and over. I can admit that my range of music hasn’t not grown and expanded as I have gotten older. But really, what I really want to do is just listen to albums. I used to take road trips and bring all of my Beatles CDs, or Led Zeppelin, and just go from start to finish – listening to how the band progressed. I used to do that with Oasis and Soundgarden, too. Since iPods and smart phones, I don’t listen to albums anymore, and I miss that. But, the game is about making playlists for these road trips, so I need to go and search out some deep cuts.

  • The Bored Days of Summer (Unedited)

    We got three days into Summer Vacation, and the kid announced that she was bored.

    “There’s nothing to do”

    “No one to talk to”

    “Nothing to watch”

    “Nothing to read”

    “Nothing to listen to”

    I think you get the idea.

    Not surprised to hear her say this. All kids get bored when they have too much time on their hands. When the get too much freedom, it becomes repressive. As I am the stay at home dad, I get the brunt of the kid’s complaints, and she looks to me to solve this problem of hers.

    My first reaction was to tell her that it’s not my job to eliminate her boredom.

    But as soon as I said that, it dawned on me that it really is my job to end her boredom. Look, if I don’t get involved then she will want to zombie out on the iPad, and that is the worst thing that could happen.

    I’m not saying that she won’t get on the iPad this Summer, but I want to limit that as much as possible.

    Now, I don’t want to create mindless things for her to do, such as dumping a bunch of chores on her. There is no joy or magical memories that come from that. No, what I want to do is encourage healthy habits while also spending time together. (She will help me paint the livingroom this Summer, so she does have one huge chore, but we’ve been talking about that for months now.) I want her to stay active, so we are going to go running, and work on her soccer skills. I also want to keep her reading up, so we need to set time aside for that. She’s brought up that she wants to go to a museum, so that will take care of the art side of things. And I want to encourage her to think about the food she wants to learn how to make, and then we can work on recipe testing.

    IN the end, what I know to be true is that you only get to have so many Summers as a kid. When the days are hot but not too hot, and the Summer feels like it stretches on forever. In two or three years, I really won’t see her over the Summer, as she’ll be involved in something, or will be hanging out with her friends. Until then, I want to make sure she has some memories of enjoying time with her dad. Doing stupid stuff while trying to avoid being bored.

  • The Age of Dinner Parties

    The Age of Dinner Parties

    The other day, the kid was asking me and the wife lots of questions of what our life was like before she was born. It’s a fair and very good question, or more accurately, questions that she was asking us. The wife and I were together for nine years before the kid was born, so we had a good amount of time of being a couple before we became a family.

    As I reminisced about our past life, it dawned on me that we had a very unique period of about two years, where we host other couples at our place for dinner parties. And on the flip of that, we were invited over to several couples dinner parties. It was a very specific time of us and all of our friends, as we were entering our thirties, beginning to be established in careers, all in committed relationships, but we weren’t married yet and didn’t have kids. I mean, as soon as people started getting married, kids weren’t far behind, and then some started moving out of the City.

    I still have a Spotify playlist for one of our dinner parties from long ago.

    It was a fun time. Usually we hosted on a Saturday night. The wife, at the time the girlfriend, would come up with the menu and I would shop for it over the week. We’d do some prep on Friday night, and most of that would be the making of the desert. The wife was the chef and I the assistant. My strength was in cutting veggies, and making drinks. The wife did the heavy lifting for the rest of the food. We made a really good team in the kitchen, and by the time the other couple arrived, I only had the entertain for maybe 30 minutes and then we were eating.

    The other side that I miss was the conversation. Most of the time, it always started off the same way. When the guests would arrive, we’d talk about what trains they took to get to our place, and transit in general. Next we’d sit for the meal, and the conversation would move to food; either on cooking or places we’d eaten at recently. By the time desert came around, people had a drink or two, then things got really fun. People would tell stories, or experiences they had, or a friendly debate would occur. It was the moment when we started really getting to know people, who they were, and how they worked.

    I remember that after one particular fun and engaging dinner party, me and the wife high-fived after the guests left because we were so excited and proud of ourselves for hosting such a good evening.

    But things changed, and having an adult evening over at someone’s place, only adults, is a pretty rare thing now. I’m not complaining, because it was a moment of our lives that existed for a very specific time, and place.

    Just hadn’t thought about it in a while.

  • That Nap Ruined My Day

    We all make mistakes.

    In fact, here’s the one I made today.

    The kid had a half day at school, so she was home by 1pm. Before I went and got her, I did all the tasks and errands that I needed to do; balanced the checkbook, did the dishes, plugged in and ran the AC’s, got the kid from school, and made lunch. I even wrote in my journal, and did a good bit of reading – caught up on some flash pieces I have been meaning to read and finished a book of short stories.

    The kid had some homework, and we both sat down on the couch to do it. I don’t do the homework, I’m more along for moral support, and encouragement. Anyway, as I was sitting there, being that I’m not needed a whole lot, I decided that I should start reading another book. I got about 2 pages into it, and I fell asleep. Now, it wasn’t a deep sleep, but it was 45 minutes. I only woke up because the kid nudged me to ask if I was sleeping.

    But for the life of me, I haven’t been able to get myself back in gear. It’s like I’m walking through sand now. I’m so sluggish and foggy brained. I had plans for the second half of the afternoon, but I can’t seem to focus. Honestly, it’s taken me an hour to get myself to just sit down and do this.

    Hell, I promised the kid we’d go running in the park, and I still have to make dinner. I thought I was going to review a story but that doesn’t seem like it’s in the cards.

    I swear, if I nap for fifteen minutes, I am solid and refreshed. But anything over that amount of time, it’s like a crap shoot – God only knows how I’m going to react.

    I think I can blame this one on getting older.

  • A Manic Laundry Monday

    A Manic Laundry Monday

    In case anyone has forgotten, I am a stay at home dad. Though hard to believe, blogging don’t pay the bills, and as such, I take my responsibility as the primary caregiver of my family very serious. Well… Serious enough. I’m not great at this stuff, but I do get the job done.

    And the one jobs I do on the regular is my families laundry. I do lots of laundry, and as the kid keeps getting older and bigger, I am doing more and more laundry. I have started to fear and dread the teenage years, and the amount of clothing that will be coming my way.

    Now, I have only been the stay at home dad for the past five years, but my mastery of all things laundry has been ongoing for eleven. Even before the kid was born, I took care of out clothes. Sometimes I would drop it off at a wash and fold service, sometimes I would get up early on a Sunday morning and take care of it. But for whatever reason, be it through decision or frustration, I became the laundry guy.

    And full honesty, it is my least favorite chore. Cooking, cleaning, doing the finances, going to the school meetings, dropping the kid off/picking her up – all of that I am fine with. Just not the laundry. It’s a thankless task, and no one likes it, and it eats up so much of my time. I try to get it all done on Monday, as no one likes Monday, and I have found that at my local laundromat, Monday is the least busy day.

    But I have started to wonder of late, that I can’t keep this up forever. I have to carry the laundry to the mat, and as I pointed out, each year, more and more clothing gets added to the task. I fear that at some point, the laundry chore will become so big that I will either have to split it up over two days, or I am going to have to beg my landlord to allow us to have a washer/dryer hook up. Not that we have a place for it in this tiny apartment. Surely, I don’t want to be that old man carrying a sack of dirty clothes, or worse yet, have to use a granny cart…