Tag: #StayathomeDad

  • Outlining: New Possibilities?

    I am working at staying productive for this month. I was able to blog, journal, and even got in some sketching time with the kid yesterday. It was a very creative day, more than normal for me. On the fiction front, I was able to spend a little time working on an outline for a novel that I have been kicking around for about two years.

    And working on the outline was rewarding, on a level that I didn’t know existed in me. I was working on character development, and trying to figure out how to build a foundation that these characters that they would either fight against or learn to accept. And as I worked on these characters in an outline form, a narrative theme started to reveal itself to me. The story is about three guys who form a band, and I always thought the theme was about learning follow your ambitions, even through failure. As I worked on the characters, I started to see that the theme was actually about being open to possibilities.

    Most of my good friends are following their dream, and some of them have been chasing it for twenty years, and to be honest, very few have achieved that ambition that set them out so long ago. But very few of them are angry and bitter about it. (I have met my fair share of bitter actors, so don’t get me wrong, I know that chasing a dream doesn’t equal happiness.) But what keeps my friends going? What keeps me going? Is it staying curious, and being open to new ideas and possibilities?

    I don’t know, but I want to explore it.

  • Merry Christmas, Thank You, and 2020

    Say everybody, I’m going to take the next few days off for the Christmas Holiday, and won’t be consistently back at it till the start of the New Year. So, I wanted to wish everyone out there in the writing/blogging world a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and a general Happy Holidays.

    I also wanted to say thank you for following this little experiment of a blog. Since I started putting a forth a serious effort toward writing back at the end of July, I have doubled my followers, and grown in views, visitors and likes. Your support has been very encouraging, and reinforced that doing the work is worth it.

    As we all know, 2020 has been one of the strangest, most awful, and plain sad years ever. Since Thanksgiving, I have been trying hard to find some encouraging… anything to try and salvage my emotional well-being from the onslaught of this year. What I have come to see is that I should never take for granted my family, friends, and community I live in. How fragile this fabric is that connects us all together, yet how strong is our desire to be connected.

    Again, thank you readers, Happy Holidays, and if I don’t see you before, I’ll talk to you in 2021.

  • Making a Sauce

    I think I was like most people, in that I had dabbled in cooking. Before Covid, I had a few solid dishes that I knew I could make which would come out great, and then the rest of the time, I was serviceable in the kitchen. Let’s just say, I never cut off a finger.

    Now that we are in the land of Covid, I like most people, started spending more time in the kitchen; cooking, planning and prepping meals. I didn’t get all bread crazy, but I started taking a more active role in helping out with food. When it became clear that I was going to be a stay at home parent for the foreseeable future, I started taking cooking and food prep more seriously.

    My friend, Erin, writes a really great food blog, BIG SIS LITTLE DISH, which I visit for ideas and to get inspiration. It also helps that my wife is a trained chef, and spent several years working in professional kitchens around NYC. If I am in the middle of a recipe and get lost, I can call on the wife to help me out.

    I have been at it for six months now, and last night, I needed to make a gravy to go with dinner. I took 3 tablespoons of butter, and melted it in a pan. Then I added an equal part of flour to the melted butter, and stirred the mixture with a wooden spoons. When the rue was a good color, I whisked in a cup of homemade chicken stock, a little at a time. Once the stock was incorporated with the rue, I whisked in salt, pepper, and dried thyme. The last part I added was about a quarter cup of cream, stirred it in, and lowered the temperature to a simmer so the gravy would thicken up.

    I made this gravy all from memory with ingredients that I now always have on hand. I had a deep feeling of satisfaction that I could just “whip this up,” and make a sauce that would complete a meal. I had unlocked a new life skill, and I guess I realized the wholesome fulfillment of being able to provide a good meal for my family.

  • The Courage to Plan for a Future

    Last night, after we had put our daughter to bed, the wife and I had a discussion about trying to retire our debt, yet again. This time around, we had the conversation while not have a few drinks. It made the conversation more logical, but clearly, less fun.

    Yup, we have credit card debt, and student loans, and a car loan as well. It’s a lot. This weighs on us all the time, and it seems like “debt” always finds a way to work into whatever conversation we are having. 2020 was the year that we were to get on top of it, and in March, it really looked like it was going to happen… And we all know what came next.

    What we were really trying to speak about last night was, did we have the courage to start planning for the future? I still don’t think we are there yet. The debt is a big problem, but so is getting the kid back into school, and even if she does get back into class every day, that doesn’t give me the ability to go out and get a job, as she will be out of class at 2:30, and with no afterschool program for her to be a part of, then I will need to be available for pick up. So, looks like I will be Stay at Home Dad for a while longer.

    And I enjoy being a Stay at Home Dad. I love all the time I get to spend with my daughter; helping her learn, playing with her, discovering things with her, creating things with her. It really is a gift, the best silver lining to come out of this whole mess.

    But…

    But, if I want to give her a good future, and stability, we have to take care of our finances. It’s not insurmountable, and we have been in a worse situation before. It just means that a sacrifice needs to be made.

    Like I said, we need a little courage.

  • Screw It! Snow Day!

    Funny thing, snow days. I wrote yesterday about how NYC schools would stay open online, even though the buildings were closed, and in effect; no more snow days. And that is what happened today.

    But… We tried to have a snow day anyway. We went out and ran around in the snow twice today. Oh, we made snow angels, tried to have a snowball fight and to make a snowman, but the snow wasn’t the right type. Not the big fluffy flakes that pack together well. It was fine, skiing snow, in my opinion. We had fun; the kid made a friend while running through snow drifts, and we ended up at home, wrapped in blankets, and having hot chocolate. You know, snow day!

    I remember my first snow day. I was about my daughter’s age. My mother woke me up for school, as normal, but on this day, she took me to the back patio sliding glassdoor, which had it’s vertical blinds drawn. Then with a nod, my mother pulled the shades open to show me that our square suburban backyard was covered in an amazing, for Texas, two inches of snow! I remember making the tiniest of snowmen, and just playing, and running around to hear the crunch of snow under my boots.

    It’s nice to know that snow is still magical to kids who don’t get to see it very often. I grew up down south, I’m 44 years old, and I still get super excited when the weather says snow is on the way.