Laid-Off Dad

It's a marathon and a sprint

Congratulations to the sisters and brothers of the parental bloggerhood who were mentioned in the Paper of Record's Sunday Styles page. And many thanks to Jay over at The Zero Boss for the reflected love. If you're new here, I only wish I could stand and welcome you properly. As it is, I'll be over here on the floor for a while.

Here's a fun idea. Click over to the article, then to Zero Boss, and then back here. Then do it again and again, faster each time. NYTimes, Zero Boss, Laid-Off Dad. NYTimes, Zero Boss, Laid-Off Dad. Faster! Times-Zero-Laid! Times-Zero-Laid! Times-Zero-Laid!

Do you feel agitated and spent because you got yourself all up in a lather but ended up in the same place you started? Welcome to my day.

Now say it backward: Laid-Zero-Times! This, too, is relevant.

My wife is out of town until tomorrow night, having left the two knuckle-draggers to forage for ourselves during Operation Give Daddy Something To Think About During His Golf Weekends. And today, the activity was nonstop, from 7 this morning until he passed out in his high chair after his friend's seismic birthday party.

Since there's another day to go, I'm off for some carbo-loading and a hot shower. Or perhaps a cold one.

UPDATE 1: Sunday morning on "In the Papers" on NY1 (our local news station), Kristen Shaughnessy highlighted the Times's blogger piece and editorialized that the featured blogger-parents are "those you might not necessarily want to run into on the playground." Clearly, we have much more work to do before the Normals can accept us.

UPDATE 2: In the print version of the Styles page, right below the blogger article, appeared a piece about the limousine frenzy leading up to Sunday's Super Bowl. Apparently, there is great demand for "extralong Hummers." Well, obviously.

Roughage

Let's take a moment to discuss the myriad things that have made contact with Robert's mouth. The oral fixation is in full bloom, people. Mostly, it's the licking. He licks his friends, he licks their mothers. He licks the fridge. He licks bus windows. He licks his snow boots. He'd lick the cat if she'd let him, but she's still smarting from the glue fiasco. If you are to pass muster in his addled worldview, you must survive a rigorous taste test, filth or no filth.

Then there's the added affliction of mouth gravity. If you measure up to the lick test, and your volume is less than 2.6 cubic inches, you have an inevitable date with the insides of his plump little cheeks. If Robert sneaks off on his own for a minute or two and we call out to ask him what he's up to, it's even money the response will be "Nuffinmmg!"

Case in point: Just before dinner, we saw Robert chewing on something. I told him to spit it out, and he obliged:

Before I recognized it as the gloppy remains of a lime-green postcard, I asked Robert (for I think the 10,000th time—I'll have to check my records) what he had just put in his mouth. And he replied, "It used to be a card, but I made broccoli out of it!"

Whether you’re a brother or whether you’re a mother, you'll always find us out to lunch

When I was younger and more interesting, I used to go out. Honestly. I would leave my home, alter my consciousness, and pay to be entertained—often by musicians. Some of these musicians are in a band called Lesion, a quartet of gleeful nihilists who have authored such classics as “Clone Boner” and “You Ruined Christmas Again.”

When my wife was eight months pregnant, Lesion held its first “Classic Album Night,” a mélange of covers off of Kiss’s Destroyer and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. (I've reproduced the band's artwork here because its brilliance defies description. You can view the rest here.) We rocked out to a spectacularly raucous version of “Second Hand News,” and the mid-song segué from “Do You Love Me?” to “The Chain” was particularly inspired. It was Robert’s first rock concert, and he spent much of the show kicking furiously, in perfect 8/4 tempo, within my wife’s pleather maternity pants.

Apparently, the band has gotten word that we’re expecting another child, because its next fusion show is upon us. This time, Gibbs and Pistols will be mulched together to form “Saturday Night Bollocks,” and already my mind is racing. (What combos will they come up with? “Flayin’ Alive”? “How Deep Is Your Wound”?) I’m also gratified and astounded that these two watershed events in the history of ironic performance metal-rock would coincide with our pregnancies. Like most parents, I want each kid to start off with an equal footing.

So tonight, this born-again homebody, who reads Time Out New York strictly for the vicarious thrill, will be boogie-moshing alongside a hot mama with a big belly and shiny black trousers. We’ll let you know if the new kid has any rhythm.

Tales from the crypt

One of the consequences of my misleading URL is that many first-time readers have arrived here expecting to hear about being out of work. (All hail Lord Google.) Even though I'm sort of between layoffs right now, this blog's driving influence has always been fatherhood rather than unemployment. Basically, the best way for me to deal with the stress and the penury was to dwell on the positive—the unique chance to watch my son grow from a sweet little Weeble to the fully functional mini-person he is now.

Thanks to a handful of e-mails, I got to thinking about the summer of 2003, when the blog's first posts went live (and my writing and I were in a far different place). These entries have been lying dormant at the old site, so I've dusted off the cobwebs and migrated them to my archives here. So if you're sitting in your bathrobe right now, taking a breather from sifting through all those worthless job listings on Monster while your little one gnaws on the coffee table, I've been there. And I'm here now—better off for the experience, and content to wait until the kids are grown before I get those bite marks buffed out.

Why I love my wife

One of my favorite aspects of Griff's blog is his "Why I Love My Wife" category of posts. Since his blog appears to be in limbo, I feel moved to take up the mantle and sustain his wonderful message steal his idea.

Last night, after we got Robert to sleep, my wife and I tuned in to meet the newest contestants on The Apprentice. I was intrigued by the new premise: this season, the contestants are divided into "school smarts" (MBAs) and "street smarts" (high-school grads with real-world experience). After I winced through the first 10 minutes, I was gratified to learn that the limits of one's schooling have nothing to do with one's ability to act like a raving asshole.

As the 18 names and faces flashed across the screen, my wife pointed at one of the interchangeably angular and overcoiffed babes and said, "Well, we know which one will be posing for Playboy when all this is over."

With a capital "G" (and that rhymes with "P" and that stands for "Puddle")

I ask you: What kind of man would commit himself to a stay-at-home lifestyle for over a year, so that he and his wife could have an equal share in the rigors of raising their first child, then impregnate her right before taking a job that keeps him out of the house for 10 hours a day?

A man drowning in Guilt, that's who.

Even though I know I'm doing my part for the family, slicing my little bits of bacon from the Great Sow of Commerce, I can't keep my mind off three forces of nature that are becoming unsustainable: my wife's distending belly; my son's boundless energy; and this nutcracking deep-freeze. It's just too goddamn cold to take Robert outside and let him burn off those Kiddie Kilowatts, so he bounces off the walls in this little apartment while my ever-heftier wife tries to play goalie, and I'm stuck 60 blocks away, unable to help corral the little bugger.

I'm wracked. Wracked, I say.

The other day I called home, just to check in, and my wife told me that, during one of her numerous trips to the bathroom, Robert got a hold of some Elmer's glue and squirted it on the cat. So she put the TV on and told Robert NOT TO MOVE while she rinsed the cat off in the tub. (Please take a moment to let that visual sink in.) When she came back, Robert was dutifully watching Noggin and sitting quietly ... in the puddle of glue on the chair.

So basically, I called home in some pathetic attempt to make myself feel better, and instead I got this: “I can’t even go to the bathroom without him gluing the cat to the chair!”   

I don't call home as often anymore.

Pushback

Robert’s new volatility is the damnedest thing. It’s impossible to gauge when a fit will strike, because there’s no pattern. One day, you can announce bathtime and he’ll gleefully strip and race you to the tub; the next day, he’ll wedge himself behind the armchair and keen like a banshee. It’s a good thing Bruce Banner got hit with the gamma rays as an adult. If the Hulk were three years old, he’d have ripped through about 30 pairs of shoes per day.

Robert and I spent most of Saturday morning in the park, trying to run over living things with his trike. (He pedals like a champ, but he still doesn’t grasp the importance of focusing your vision beyond the front wheel.) On the way home, the Red Hand started blinking across Third Ave., so I steered him south and waited for Walking Guy.

 Oh, the effrontery!

He: “No, no, no! We have to go that way!”
Me: “Sorry, but that’s a red light. We can go this way. It’s still on the way home.”
He: “No! It is not the way home!”
Me: “Yes it is. We live right down there.”
He: [pointing in the opposite direction and shrieking] “NO! We do not! We live up thaaaat way!”

Several minutes of pointless bickering gave way to a startling revelation:

He: “I’m never going home again!”
Me: “Why?”
He: “Because I don’t like you. You’re very old, and you have to go to the hospital and stay there!”
Me: “Then we really should go home, so you can take care of Mama.”
He: “No! I don’t want to see Mama!”
Me: “Why not? Mama wants to see you because she loves you.”
He: “No! No! No! Mama does not love me!”

It is also a peculiar quirk of nature that a child’s tantrum reflex becomes so sensitive right when he’s gets too big for a stroller. Because, according to Newton’s little-known Fourth Law of Motion, bringing a child anywhere on a tricycle against his will is impossible. You can bargain, cajole, and threaten. You can even try leaning on the rear wand and pushing him along while he pops a wheelie, but that just pisses him off even more. Eventually, the only thing to do is to hoist 40 pounds of distraught, flailing boyflesh in your right arm, drag the trike with your left, and plod home muttering.

Me: “Jesus, what a fiasco.”
He: “NO! THIS IS NOT A FRIASCO!”

Just another epic battle in the struggle between good and evil

It's been a fun couple of weeks with the BoBs, and I want to thank everyone for the remarkable support that has propelled me into the lead for Best Daddy Blog. And as the voting nears its conclusion, the very worthy field has been narrowed to two:

• a three-year veteran of spit-up, teething, ER visits, bedwetting, and tantrums—and is so enamored of it all that he's signed up for another tour of duty; and
• a smack-talking newbie who's been a parent for less time than I've been re-employed.

The margin is close, and the choice is clear. I am a devoted and remarkably virile caregiver whose son just told him, "You're a great daddy because you keep the monsters outside." The challenger, conversely, is a death-cheating occultist who controls his minions through the ritual sacrifice of Himalayan snow leopards.*

* Allegedly.

So do the right thing. Pull the lever for LOD, and strike a decisive blow for truth, decency, and forcible monster eviction.

Oops! Gotta run. There's just enough time to give my gorgeous, pregnant wife her daily foot massage before we head off to church.

Paying the price for my debilitating stupor

My new job requires lots and lots of writing. (That's good!) But not the type of writing I particularly enjoy or would recommend to anyone. (That's bad!) It serves as great training for thinking quickly and writing on deadline. (That's good!) But my latest project has kept me up the last few nights, because it's just too goddamn easy to procrastinate and watch "Family Guy" reruns. (That's stupid!)

As the father of an active toddler, I've inured myself to the fatigue that has become a part of my existence. But when a man my age tries to pull off his daily routine on half the sleep he's used to, the Gods of Common Sense will at some point have to reach down and teach him a valuable life lesson.

As I type to you now, I am a tired, tired man. Dead-dog tired. Dead-menagerie tired. And, sadly, a little bereft. See, I just started a load of laundry out in our hallway washing machine, and I realized the washer wasn't quite full. So I returned to the apartment, grabbed a fistful of boxer shorts from the hamper, walked back out to the hallway ... and dumped the whole bundle down the garbage chute.

Working stiff

Ever since he could turn a doorknob, Robert has exulted in throwing the apartment door open and skittering out into the hallway, often punctuating his departure with a door-slam that rattles the lobby mailboxes.

And ever since I started working again, he's enhanced the charade by grabbing my shoulder bag and announcing that he's "leaving for work" or "going to a meeting" and will "see-you-later-bye-I-love-you" *SLAM*.

So here's the new wrinkle: He still likes to announce to anyone who'll listen that he's off to work "just like Daddy." But lately, when he leaves, he's been stripping off his pants and underwear and sprinting half-naked toward the elevator, often cackling like a loon.

It makes me wonder what he thinks I do for a living.