I Work Hard For No Money, So Hard For It Honey

I was joking around with my wife the other day thinking about how long it has been since I have been in the work force, officially?  It has been over three years since anyone besides my family, especially my three year old, has ordered me around.   We make a lot of sacrifices for me to stay home, mostly budgetary.  My wife kicks ass and would have me be a kept man indefinitely (an older guy in a coffee shop called me a kept man once as I was struggling to get my drink, dealing with two kids, needless to say I wanted to kick his teeth in, I can barely keep myself), but I foresee myself staying home another year and a half, then back to the grindstone.  Talking to adults, a sense of accomplishment, pictures on my desk, stupid work drama, pointless meetings, fighting with the copy machine, having the I.T. guy make me feel stupid, these are the things I am missing?  Shit maybe I will stay home and be a kept man.

It is a common series of events for stay-at-home people, getting back in the job market.  I will have a huge hole in my resume.  How do I list my current position? Do I list it as Stay-at-Home Parent, or Kept Man (like the old bastard called me), or Marginally Showered Guy Dragging Two Kids Through the Supermarket?  I could dress it up a bit just like they do for janitors, Home Manager, or Child Rearing Engineer (gotta be careful with that one), or Neonatal Specialist (has a nice sci-fi ring to it).  Maybe I could organize it like this:

Home Manager                                          September 2006-Present

In charge of Department of Sanitation, Culinary Experimental Research, Toxic Waste Removal, Animal Trainer, Department of Accounting, Transportation Specialist, Director of Entertainment, Mechanical Toy Technician.

Or I could go with the more honest and direct approach:

Dirty Dad Playing Trucks                           September 2006-Present

Changing and washing friggin' putrid child excretions, cooking meals for ungrateful clients, occasionally cleaning when the shit hits the fan or guests come, cohabitating with animals I ignore, paying bills when the 1-800 number shows up on the caller ID, carting around two kids in a bike, stroller or car always running late and trying to keep the swearing to minimum, planting my children in front of the TV for a daddy sanity break.

I am proud of what I do and most people respect it and even envy my choice to stay at home with my boys; however, it doesn’t seem like it’s a valued position in society generally speaking.  It will be interesting in an interview sitting across from someone, and they ask me the question, “What have you been up to the past five years?”    I can say this much, I hope it’s a woman asking me that question.

My good friend asked me the other day if I get bored staying at home.  I laughed and said, “What do you think?”  It isn’t a high-powered position with the stress of climbing the ladder, unless it’s a playground ladder, it’s not a job that requires me to build clientele, maybe play dates count here, and it certainly isn’t a sexy job, as I usually am covered with boogers on one shoulder and milk on the other, but it is work and for the most part selfless dedication.  

Paternity Leave

It is an interesting idea. The Good Blog talks about Paternity leave coming to a vote in England here.  Can you imagine six months?  It especially interesting in conjunction with this article from the New York Times that talks about more men marrying wealthier women.       

Come on times lets do some changin'.  My wife only received four weeks of maternity leave with our last baby.  It was ridiculous, not even close to enough time.  It would have been exponentially worse if I had to go to work.  We need to step up here in this country and give mothers the proper maternity leave and give fathers the opportunity to stay home and be there for both mom and the baby.

Cooking Indian Food

I have been trying to cook good Indian food for a couple of years and have nailed a couple of dishes.  Mostly because of a couple of good friends Swami, who is best cook I have met yet, and Krishna, my neighbors in Cooperstown.  They were nice enough to put up with my questions and taste the crap I cooked to tell me what was wrong.  I recently have been using Vah Chef and Manjula’s Kitchen from YouTube.  You can follow their steps on the videos and make unbelievable meals.  If you aren't a fan of Indian food because it’s too spicy than you need to raise your tolerance or just add less chilies to the recipes.  

Indian food is easy on the budget as well, using mostly dal, rice, spices and a few vegetables.  A trip to your local International Grocery or Coop is essential to pick up the ingredients.  

Starter Kit List

Dals                                                 Rice

Toor Dal                                          Basmati              

Chana Dal (small bag)                     Jasmine

Urad split Dal                                   Brown Rice

Moong Dal Split

Spices

Dried Whole Red Chilies

Curry Leaves (harder to find but awesome to use)

Bay Leaves

Whole Cloves

Cardamom Pods

Turmeric

Mustard Seeds

Cumin Seeds

Cinnamon Sticks

Cumin Powder

Coriander Powder

Tamarind
Its easy to go crazy at the International Grocery just make sure you have enough room to store it all.  I have a three year old bag of Coriander that I will be using for the next decade.

Here are two Videos that are great to start with and friggin’ delicious.

Awesome Rice Dishes, I just add whatever veggies I like to the recipes like cauliflower, green beans, peas, carrots, or whatever.

Tomato Rice

Lemon Rice

Both of these dishes are great with yogurt on top or Rita (yogurt sauce)
Just look up the dish you like to eat at a restaurant and try to cook it. It really isn't too difficult.

My Dog Ate My Sick Kids

If you are a previous or future employer, besides my wife, you can go ahead and skip this entry.

I'm color blind that's why I dress this way, or my computer crashed and I lost my term paper, or its genetic, or, my favorite,  they have weapons of mass destruction.  Everyone loves a good excuse.

I was a teacher for five years and I heard a lot of flimsy reasons for not turning things in on time.  The great thing about a good excuse is that it makes you use your imagination.  I loved the details, the more elaborate the story the more believable it became.  When it was a clear lie devoid of creativity, I used to use one of my dad's sayings, "I can smell a lie like a fart in a car." The students would usually look at me and as if to say, "why are you smelling farts in cars and what does a lie smell like?" or sometimes they would just laugh and fess up.
    
I really never cared that much, but I did appreciate the art of the excuse.  Everyone, or I hope at least most people, have given the sick phone call to work doing your best coughy sick voice so that you could have a three day weekend or get over the hangover from the night before, no need to fake sick there.

Now, I see the real advantage in the excusal arts, kids.  Once you utter the words my kids are sick, or even better go into details about their ghost ailment, most people have instant sympathy.  What asshole is going to grill you about your kids health and whether you should stay home, and you don't have to do the embarrassing fake sick call, I am not much of an actor.  Additionally, you don't have to walk into work looking sick, you maybe just fake a tired look, which is usually real when you have kids anyway.  But really we don't stop there, I mean we use the excuse for getting out of just about anything, going to dinner somewhere we don't want to be, appointments that suck, jury duty, breakfast at a friends that we totally flaked on (sorry Alex), or if we just need some cheap sympathy from relatives hundreds of miles away.

Swine Flu, or H1N1, is ruining this gem of an excuse.   When I come up with their fake illness now, I have to look up facts on swine flu and avoid any similar symptoms.  Faking swine flu is a real commitment, like if you need to get out of something that lasts a couple of weeks, Christmas with family or parent teacher conferences.  But be careful, if you say your kids are sick too much, people will think you don't take care of them, that your house is a hovel of human and dog hair, you feed your children coke and cheese puffs for every meal, and they will stop inviting you and your walking petri dishes around to play or for dinner.  It's a balancing act.

Some people would say that I am inviting "bad karma" into my life and my kids are going to be sick more often.  If that is true than I guess I will have more legitimate reasons to get out of things.  If I have told you my kids were sick, it may well have been true.  Even after reading this, I mean, are you going to be the asshole that questions the health of my kids, probably not, that is why it is the supreme excuse.

My New Year Resolution: Guilt Free

It is the new year and with it comes the usual resolutions to get in shape, do yoga, join a gym, be a better person, you know the same old crap.  I am a seasoned failure at resolutions at this point in my life, so I know not to commit to anything long term, i.e. gym memberships.  They get you to join and sign a contract even though its 40 dollars a month that you know you are pissing away.  I mean with the money I have wasted over the years on gym memberships, I could have bought pectoral and ab implants.  I did it anyway because the idea felt good.  I could be that person with enough discipline and drive to workout three times a week.  This year was no different for me, I made the usual empty resolutions and goals, but I got wise to the gym membership and bought two pieces of equipment for my house instead.

The first is a pull up bar that goes in a doorway(that's me in the picture on the left).  It has some catchy name I forgot(looked it up and its the Iron Gym).  I bought it at Walgreens on sale for 20 bucks.  It is actually pretty sweet and doesn't require any bolts or screws to keep it up.  I leave it in the doorway all the time in case the spirit moves me to do a couple pull-ups here and there (wouldn't recommend it if you are over 6 feet tall though).  It doubles as a push up bar on the floor so you don't have to touch your floor and think about how dirty it is before you exercise.  Probably, the most useful function is just swinging on it like a monkey which I am sure is good for my abs or shoulders or something.

The second piece of equipment I picked up at Goodwill for $1.99, the Ab Wheel.   Goodwill is a treasure trove of outdated home gym equipment, thigh masters, nordic tracks, and anything by Chuck Norris.  Essentially the ab wheel is a bar with wheels.  It is nearly impossible to do properly in the kind of shape I am in right now, but sit ups also require me to think about how dirty my house is and thus inhibit a good workout.  Fundamentally, with this thing, I don't have to touch the floor either.


If nothing else, buying new equipment for under 30 bucks makes me feel like I accomplished my goals guilt free, and I didn't have to commit two years of 40 dollar a month.  If I end up not using this stuff, Otis and Moses love to hang from the pull-up bar and they play with the ab wheel like its a truck.  Win/Win situation.  Happy New Year.

A Wine I Enjoy

Let me just start off by saying I don't know anything about wine.  My two categories of wine are usually suck and doesn't suck.  Boom Boom obviously falls in the doesn't suck column.  I found out about this one from my friend Eric, my on call wine guy.  We drank it with some cheese and sausage.  I usually try to keep it under 10 dollars but I spent 15 on this one, and it was worth it.

Charles Smith makes the wine in Washington State.  I guess he is some ex-rocker.  The labels are pretty cool.  Click on the picture above for more info.

Hilarious Article from The Onion

I think a lot of us can relate to this.

Beck's Record Club

Beck, Wilco, and Feist jamming together.  There are some gems on this site.

Parental Guilt: An Inevitable Part of Our Lives

Just the other day I was trying to force my son, Otis, to eat some vegeable matter of any kind.  He just won't eat hardly anything.  He subsists on air and crackers, I swear it.  His own hunger strike, his demands are crackers and Elmo.  I swear, this time, I am going to starve him out until he eats what I have prepared.  As time wears on and more guilt sets in about not feeding him, I gave in and feed him enough calories in crackers to fulfill his daily intake.  I thought, "Damnit, what am I doing?  I am a terrible parent. He should be eating the garden of eden, organic of course, and finishing it off with whole grain whatever, not processed crap. I am letting a three year old get the best of me."  The guilt ensued.  Guilt is a common emotion of my day.   Discipline is always a source of guilt.  Today I was handing out timeouts like halloween candy.  I think I even gave him a timeout for asking too many questions, terrible.   I know its common among parents to feel this way.  Its even worse for my wife.  Women destroy themselves with Mother's guilt.  Going back to work, childcare, breast feeding, prenatal diet, they blame themselves mercilessly.  Heck, my mom still feels guilt about how she raised four kids by herself, 15 years after all of us are out of the house. Even though we all are college graduates, and none of us are currently in prison, we beat the statistics there. But it sucks.  No matter what we do, no matter how long it is after our kids leave, guilt remains.

I wasn't satisfied with this conclusion.  There are plenty of articles on the subject of how to deal with it.  Most of them give tips on balancing life and parenting and the myth of the perfect parent , or good parents feel guilty, bullshit, all parents feel guilt good or bad.   Finally, my personal favorite, downloadable hypnosis to deal with parental guilt, I am one bad day away from trying this one.  It all is well and good, and there is some good advice in these articles.  But something I learned after having my first child, advice is really hard to apply sometimes and can seem more like judgement.  "Oh, when my son acts like that, I just ignore him," or "You know, you shouldn't feed a baby Sunny Delight."  The latter advice I agree with, but when you are in Target with two kids, both of whom are breaking down, I will let them free base sugar if they stay quiet until we get home.  Honestly, the only thing I have truly learned from having kids, do not judge another's parenting.  We are all out here struggling,  give a helping hand if anything.  I am no hippy, but the whole "it takes a village" thing does make sense.

What has made me feel better about my guilt and parenting as a whole is comedy.  Louis C.K. is one of the best comics for parents to watch, unless you offend easily, he is well versed in the swearing arts and his comedy hits hard.  But, he captures the the essenense of parental frustration and guilt.

I love the Carnival Cruise bit.


Another skit I enjoy is Mr. Show's "Teaching Parents to Deprive." I couldn't find a clip 
but its on the second season. I like the idea that my screw ups and misdoings translate 
directly into potential jobs for my kids. If I deprive them just enough, they will become 
a good lawyer, but if I really do a number on them, they may end up an artist.

I know there are many right ways to parent, but it seems to me that the wrong ways are 
easier to point out, and no matter what I do right or wrong, I will feel guilt.  
That's why its important to have a beer with lunch on Fridays or any day really, 
share ridiculous parenting stories with strangers at the park, offer help to someone 
struggling with kids at the supermarket, and save money for my kids therapy sessions.


Merrick

Music That I am Excited About

I am big fan of pop music.  I like the idea of a well crafted song spanning a few minutes, catchy and accessible.  I really enjoy Gnarles Barkley and basically everything Danger Mouse has had his hands in, The Black Key's album "Attack and Release", the Grey Album mixing Jay Z and the Beattles, Gorillaz "Demon Days" and even Beck's "Modern Guilt" album.  His new project with James Mercer, lead singer of The Shins, has me really excited.  They are called Broken Bells.  Check out the link to hear their song "High Road".  The moving pink orb is a great added feature of the website, it's Otis's favorite.

Another great pop band, Spoon releases their new one in a few days called Transference.  NPR is streaming the whole album here.  Its sparse like their early stuff.

Finally, Vampire Weekend came out with their latest "Contra".  Here is a video of them on Pitchfork.  It is very similar to their first album which is very catchy and and great to wash dishes to.

Hot Hungarian Paprika(HHP)

My new favorite spice is Hot Hungarian Paprika.  It is very versatile spice adding a subtle heat with a good flavor.  My favorite is to brown mushrooms with butter and HHP and add it to an omelette with cheddar cheese.  Friggin' delicious.  I add it to the indian food I attempt to cook, pinto beans for tacos and nachos, and in my flour covering for fried fish or french fries.  Give it a try, I picked up mine at Jenifer Street Market.

www.spice-co.com

Old couch Project Ongoing

Just thought I would post the first upholstery project I did a couple of years ago.  This was a rabbit hole. Everything was wrong with this one, wood repair, fabric choice,  lots of jerry rigging.   I took the fabric off and it turned it was holding the couch together.  I learned a lot though.

It was confusing to stitch on the spring at first but once I figured it out I rolled throught it.

Pretty sweet.

Still have to sew the cushion, but it turned out nice.  I love the fabric my wife chose now it looks sweet on the couch.

Reupholstering My Old Rocking Chair

I recently visited my brother Matt during Thanksgiving, fried turkey and naps, and he gave me the little rocking chair we used as kids.  It was still in pretty good shape considering it has been through four families totally 12 children.  The thing can take a beating.  Anyway, it is about 50 years old and has been reupholstered one time.  The black vinyl was cracking and I thought it would be time to give the chair new life for my boys to enjoy.  I really wanted to redo it in real leather.  I called the local upholstery shop and found out that leather is not cheap, no shocker there.  I really could just order the amount I needed for the small chair would have to order a whole hide, price ranging from 400-700 dollars.  Needless to say I was unwilling to spend that much.  I searched on the interweb and found some improperly stored leather hides for 50 bucks!  They suggested on the website that they wouldn't be good for upholstering, but I ordered it anyway (http://newtoto.stores.yahoo.net/asislehic.html).  I know cattle are big, but when this things showed up I was in awe of the size, easily bigger than the floor rug in our living room.  The damage from it improper storing was minimal, a few creases in the hide from folding, but I was excited.

I took apart the chair and found the usual surprises found when cleaning any furniture especially one kids use, old cereal, dirt, and an old penny from 1956.  I saved the old vinyl because I would need it for  pattern when cutting the leather.  It was also the time to make minor repairs to the base of the chair reenforcing it a bit because I still like to sit in it.   he spring were still solid but the foam and batting had to go.  I striped and stained the base a dark walnut color that I bought at Home Depot for 70 cents on clearance.   I replaced the cardboard like backing on the chair with a traditional burlap webbing.

Basically, the next steps involved stapling the foam and batting into place.  I will spare the step by step but it was pretty uneventful.  The chair looked white because it was basically fully covered in batting.  The leather was the trickiest part.  Cutting it was easier than I thought it would be, I just used ordinary scissors.  What sucked was the idea that the old vinyl would make a good pattern.  It did not.  Leather and vinyl are very different and I also had made the chair with a high lofted foam and batting.  After a few design areguments with my wonderful wife, she was right, I just started staping the leather on and guessing.  It turned out okay and I am satisfied with how it looks and more importantly Otis loves it.  He has the sweetest chair in the house, I have chair envy.  I was watching the Packers game in his chair until he kicked me out of it.

You can see the imperfections in the leather, but I think it adds character.

The seat back is held into place with decorative upholstery tacks.

The finished product.  Total expenses:
52.25 for the leather
70 cents for the stain,
3.15 for the tacks
Grand total:  $56.10
I also have about three quarters of a cow hide left for other projects: chaps and rocker pants.

I hope it lasts another fifty years.

Otis using his chair like the distinguished gentleman that he is.