MR. MOM!

Building Blocks are a nice start for enabling youngsters to experience dexterity, grasp dimensions, and the laws of gravity. However when you, as Dad, have spent an entire afternoon sitting in cross legged position on the floor of the living room in front of the television which is showing rerun episodes of Barney and The Big Comfy Couch while you fight over puzzle pieces with your little one then you’ve been in the primary care role a little too long! If you haven’t banged your head silly from the “I love you” Barney song by then you might be a lost cause! It will take you years to get that blasted song out of you head.

Breaking traditional roles from a male perspective is a good thing but after a prolonged period of time the male constitution that Mother Nature has cultivated and been fostering in your overly testosteroned lineage for centuries will begin to turn your brain to mush. Don’t watch the afternoon soaps during nap time without a box of Kleenex, a phone, and a support group of stay at home moms in the neighborhood!

You can bet that you will start becoming a completely different individual. You’ll begin to see things in a whole new and yet foreign way. Dare I say that when pastel colors, fashion tips, and vacuuming the carpets become hallmarks and priorities of your week’s accomplishments then its time to reconsider your career choice.

Nothing can replace a parent being there for the first three years of a child’s life. Having a parent in the child’s life at every moment for these first years are crucial, but there are consequences! My wife and I chose the path where I would eventually become Mr. Mom because she was just beginning her career at the time and we knew down the road it would help establish her money making prowess that would dwarf my meager skills. Maybe that was it or maybe it was that my hair was longer than hers so we wanted to make sure the child had a positive long hair mommy model at home. Either way it was a wonderful experience for my daughter and me.

My wife suffered a bit for it but managed to fight all of those mommy instincts by trodding off to the office while her boobs were still leaking. I can’t imagine being in the boardroom looking like I had been attacked by a group of Shriners at an Atlantic City convention during the annual water balloon battle where I had been repeatedly nailed on the chest. The Mrs. was a good sport! I’m sure her bosses were not exactly amused. “Leaking” in the office is generally frowned upon. Men don’t know how to handle normal bodily functions. Gaseousness after all in the male repertoire is something viewed as high comedy! I on the other hand was left to fend for myself in this foreign land of diapers, house chores and grocery shopping.

At first it may be strange but the more time you spend focusing upon that little developing child a new perspective comes into view. It is actually a rediscovery for you! You relearn how marvelous the first time discoveries of life can be all over again. Jumping out of the crib, removing diapers and playing with what is found in there and putting everything and anything in ones mouth over and over again is great. Your kid will do that too! Even though you tell ‘em “no” their behavior reminds you somehow of your own first experiences on some subconscious level. As the walls close in on your adultness your inner child is released and you find joys you had forgotten existed from your own childhood. Napping becomes your friend!

By the time kindergarten comes rolling around you will not be recognizable as the same human being. You will be picking out drapes, doing the dishes, the laundry and having tea with your own bridge group.

Scared yet? Okay I jest; it’s not bad at all. As a matter of fact being with my daughter day after day for those first 3 or 4 years might have been the best time in my life when I look back upon it. I know it served a purpose
for its time and for the development of my daughter. If you are able to do it for your child I would urge you to give it a shot. Once in your life getting in touch with the mommy instinct within yourself would be a good thing.

I on the other hand may have another go round. I keep having this reoccurring dream. It has to do with my wife telling me she’s pregnant again. “There goes another one of my careers,” I think. Next I wake up to realize that I’m the one who’s done the leaking! Like the boardroom that isn’t funny in the bedroom either!

KEEPING UP APPEARANCES!

At our house there are some peculiarities that I wonder about. I question if these unusual rules apply universally in other households or if I have somehow slipped into a domestic twilight zone. In our main bathroom, for instance, there is a set of special towels which hang from a rack. That’s not unusual. His and hers towels are on a different rack of their own as are the ones for the children. This special set of towels consisting of 2 full size ones, a single hand towel, and two wash cloths are hung in a choice location completely separate from everything else. You’d think they were guest towels. You’d be wrong! According to the lady of the house they are not to be used! Okay I can accept that they are decorative in nature. There are no instructions about this peculiar set of bath gear for the out of towner. Unsuspecting males however who make the wrong assumption about this set of decorative linen and use them for drying hands or (God help them for drying their body after a shower) may suffer a fate akin to castration.

The expression upon the face when guests make this faux pas is priceless; not their face but mine. It’s not often that anyone else gets yelled at in my house, but me when the queen is on a premenstrual rampage. When it happens to someone else I can empathize with them and yet I delight in it because it’s not me enduring the irrational wrath. A bewildered confused look is usually followed by a ducking motion as the woman flings the closest thing within grabbing range. I must have great (Bruce Lee-like) moves because she hasn’t nailed me yet!

That is not the strangest part of it however. Once the word has gone out to the regulars in the house that those towels are merely for observing they are left alone. They do just what the Mrs. has intended for them. They just hang there, look pretty and add accent to the room. No one uses them. The crazy woman however, still takes them down and launders them! Something is wrong with this picture! I mean we don’t go around washing our clothes then putting them in dressers only to take them out in their still cleaned state a week later to wash them again. Using them is what normally denotes their need to be laundered! Is this washing of clean items a common practice in other houses?

Another one of the domestic peculiarities is the brand of toilet paper in our home. Is it just a coincidence that this is another bathroom topic or have I developed some kind of fixation? Chosen for how many sheets are on the roll it is not such a bad thing to save money. We have three bathrooms and there are enough women around to use up a dozen rolls a week. What do they do with that stuff? I think they must be supplying the local track and field team with the rolls to use as finish line tapes for local events. Are they unrolling it looking for gold? Where does it go? Just once I’d like to go grocery shopping and not have to lug the 24 pack through the checkout line. I get some funny looks from cashiers who look like they’re thinking “This guy needs less fiber in his diet.”

Normally a roll of a thousand sheets would go a long way to help the bottom line so to speak. But when you start sacrificing comfort for economy it can really put a hurting on ya. The texture of newspaper is one step down from our brand. It’s not all that economical in the long run if you have to go out and buy Preparation H to help ease the problem you’ve created with the toilet sandpaper method of human hygiene.

In the bedroom (see there are other rooms in our house beside the one with the moon cut into the door) the sheets must be changed several times a week. Compared to the amount of fun things that happen on that bed it seems to me that maybe once a week would be sufficient. I’m not saying there is no action that goes on in there. As a matter of fact we are a prolific love machine reminiscent of an episode of Fritz the Cat behind closed doors working in close and yet sloppy unison. It’s just that bed breaking Kama Sutra techniques can be performed anywhere not merely upon a mattress.

The central air conditioning system that sits at a comfortable 77 degrees is normally in the man’s domain of adjusting. Ours keeps going up and down by itself! The fluctuation seems to coincide with phrases that the lady of the house makes like “I’m freakin’ cold,” “it’s freakin’ hot,” or “get that freakin’ thing off me!” I’m sure you know she doesn’t use the word freakin' during a hot flash either! She swears that she doesn’t touch the thermostat.

There is a ghost in our house who likes it cool when its 60 degrees outside and wants heat when its 90. Go figure. I think maybe there’s some sleep walking going on but haven’t been able to prove it yet. It’s either that or the previous owners keep coming back while we’re sleeping and changing the damn thing. That’s scary ‘cause they’re deceased!

Cleaning up the floors and such are often left to the man of the house too. Sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, and carpet shampooing are my specialties. If I didn’t write so much of the time the house might be cleaner. I however chose literary antics over the custodial arts. I usually sweep all of the dirt under the carpets. Soon I’ll have to open a spot in the floor boards to sweep all that dust down into before the rugs get too lumpy and guests start to notice. The problem is that I don’t think we own a dust pan!

I once offered my honey the opportunity for her to have outside help come in to clean the house on a regular basis. It was a birthday present. Now you know I’m a romantic at heart. She declined in favor of having the live-in staff do the stuff. I didn’t know at the time she meant me.

Still in between arriving guests, weekend drop-bys, and other more frequent visitors the place is a wreck. The reason is that we have children. The word children is Latin for “throw it on the floor!” Any logical place to use something such as a dining room table for food eating is mocked. Kids only know how to take their plate to their beds, desks, vanities and stereo systems. They also apparently try to eat off the floors. It just makes more work for the carpet shampooer; me! Each room has trash cans which of course stay empty until a parental tirade urges the kids to use the floor for walking instead of a refuse collection station.

When I was growing up there were not TV’s in bedrooms either. Heck there were only a maximum of 5 channels you could view on the tele and no one wanted be in bed with Captain Kangaroo. Today not only are there 150 channels in the bedroom but there are video game systems, CD players, DVD burners, Tivo, and premium channels with body parts flashing across them that I never even knew existed until I was an adult.

Actually it is not that the culture has changed but the youngsters now wag the dog with a manipulative, sniveling bag of tricks of contortions designed to make parents feel like cretins from a distant planet if all of the comforts of royalty are not placed at their young ever pampered feet. Have you ever had a pedicure? My kids get them monthly! Don’t paint those toes go kick someone with them!

Don’t try that manipulation shtick upon parents when they are in their prime because that is when they have fire in their bellies. They’ll knock you down a peg every time. By the time the last child comes along however parents are so tired they give in to their selfish desires because elderly nervous systems can’t take the screeching, crying and high piercing whaling perfected by the young ones. Adults just want quiet and will give most anything to achieve it. How nice it feels as we get older to discover the comfort of midday naps in bed. We’d be there more often but the sheets are usually in the wash!