Laid-Off Dad

A popular alternative to skin rash!

By now, you may have learned that the print medium has come a-callin', and that this blog has earned its first big-time media mention: a column-inch in the "Dads" section of Parents magazine. And the traffic burst has been sizeable. Who'd have thought that 22 words set across from an ad for eczema ointment could cause such a stir?

If you're new to the place, thanks for clicking over. Please remove all jewelry, turn off your cell phones, and jump in feet-first. Below, I've linked to a few of my favorite posts, many of which were written back when I was still laid-off, my days were spent chasing my two-year-old around the playground, and tumbleweeds skittered across my hits page.

Enjoy, and good luck with the eczema.

• Crossing guardedly
• Up with the son
• Vive la resistance!
• Duffer
• “Home office” is an even more ridiculous oxymoron than “head butt”

UPDATE: There's also this one, whereby the world learned that my wife and I had developed a taste for more chaos in our lives.

• Burying the lede under a series of Darling Vignettes

Hold the sausage

The volatility of Robert’s urination urge is just plain funny. He’ll be tootling along totally normally, and then his bladder will suddenly declare DEFCON 1. Once the launch sequence has been initiated, he knows he has about 30 seconds to evacuate. Many times, my wife and I have been in the kitchen, preparing dinner or whatever, when Robert has thud-thud-thudded in from the living room, shouting “Pee! Pee! Pee!” and holding his crotch, and scampered past us into the bathroom. And each time, we’ve stood silently and listened for Clank! (Seat goes up.) Zip! (Pants go down.) Whizzzzz!

When we’re not at home, it's a different story.

Whenever the three of us go out to eat, we case the joint, mapping out direct and auxiliary routes to the toilet(s). Because the bladder wants what it wants, and when the boy sounds that sweet little high-pitched cry, there’s no time to think. Instinct takes over; it’s wet or be wet. You take him by the hand and proceed calmly but briskly to the restroom, all the while praying it’s free. And when you gain access, and your son waddles up to the bowl, and the sound of liquid against porcelain caresses your ears like church music, the last thing you’re thinking about—as you decide “When in Rome” and casually unzip your own fly—is whether you locked the door.

This is how I would have explained the situation to the young hipsterette who barged in on us at brunch on Saturday and got herself an eyeful. (Naturally, I also would have tried to console her, because it must have been tough to grow up in a strange, alternate world that disdains knocking on the closed doors of public, unisex bathrooms.) But she fled, like Cinderella at midnight.

Then she reappeared— returning, of all places, to the table next to us. And frankly, it was a little anti-climactic. She grabbed her coat, dropped a bill, and left rather abruptly. For some reason, she avoided eye contact.

A special, heartfelt message for all you black-hearted photo thieves

Last summer, I had a problem with some bottom-feeder who swiped a picture of Robert off my old site and slapped it up onto his own, with a caption describing him as a Lebanese newborn named Antoine. (Seriously.) I've long since abandoned trying to understand your motivations, but I've become especially sensitive to photo theft. Therefore, I've taken down the photo I attached to the previous post and replaced it with this one.

Enjoy, suckers!

On the subject of me

For those of you new to this site (thanks to all the new BoB-alicious traffic), I should probably tell you that "Laid-Off Dad" is a bit of a misnomer. I began writing this blog under a different URL in June 2003, when Robert had just turned one and the large, corporate stink-palace that signed my checks decided it didn't want to anymore. So they gave me a package and 30 minutes to clear out my desk. A week later, LOD was born.

For 15 months, I worked as a freelancer and funneled most of the money I scraped together directly toward my usurious COBRA payment (since insurance carriers tend to think that if you increase your family size by 50%, your premium should go up by 800%). My wife worked too, and even though making rent was an adventure, we somehow made it work. And I got to spend several quality hours a day with this face.

Overall, a pretty good trade-off.

We sustained this stay-at-home family lifestyle for as long as we could muster. But this was Manhattan, where ATMs think $100 is "fast cash." It soon became time to get another full-time gig—albeit not with another large, corporate stink-palace—and start paying off back rent. (I thought about changing the blog's name, but then I would have been stuck with all these banners.) So now I haul my ass out into the street before sunrise five mornings a week, and the best part of my day is coming home to conversations like this:

Me: "You know what we're going to do this weekend? We're going to take the Christmas tree down."
Robert: "Why do you want to do that?"
Me: "Because Christmas is over."
R: "Oh."
Me: "And you know what that means? We're going to do a lot of sweeping."
R: [eyes becoming large as golf balls] "I'm going to help you!"
Me: "Absolutely. We're going to need a lot of your help."
R: "OK, but this time I'm a big boy now, so I get to use the big broom with the yellow straws on it."

Not even three, and already bargaining like a champ.

Burning his candle at both ends

The single greatest thing about being three-ish years old is the ability to explore using pure mathematical rigor, long before it is socialized away and supplanted by rote memorization of esoterica. No preconceived notions, no grade anxiety. Just the innate desire to satisfy wonder.

Such is the case with the boy, who spends much of his waking life testing his boundaries and trying to unearth the answers to so many of life's vexing questions, such as:

• Will my face fit in the hole of my potty seat?
• Are books washable?
• If I pull hard enough on the cat's tail, will its head vanish down its neck?
• How deep is my nose?
• How many parts of my new toolkit can I stuff into my socks?
• What do store windows taste like?
• How many times can I pop Daddy in the nads before he hangs me by my ankles and zerbits my belly?

Anyone who no longer wonders about anything is, as I think Einstein put it, "as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle." Well, Robert's candle isn't the only thing burning. Long story short, our little Einstein has learned that you shouldn't store dish towels in the broiler.

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it; and—which is more—you'll be full of Beans, my son

One of our saving graces when we’re at our most exhausted and/or broke is the neighborhood Mexiteria, which makes burritos that are delicious, massive, and cheap. I can’t say how much one weighs, but, in a decidedly unscientific experiment, we have determined that three of them are heavier than our wiry, high-strung housecat (which tips the scales at a spokesmodel-thin 4½ pounds and is not a fan of the experimental method).

Whatever its exact mass, each burrito is a formidable slab of exquisite beany goodness. I can usually finish one, but rarely in one sitting. Generally, I get most of the way through and then get up and walk around for a bit until my digestive tract realigns and I can return to the table.

When the family decides to have a Burrito Night, we’ve heretofore been able to buy two of them and split them three ways. Last night, however, we were feeling a little extra beanworthy and decided to plunk for a third. We placed one in front of Kid Knievel, just to see what kind of damage he could do, and he finished it. In one go. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t watched it myself, my jaw dangling helplessly in my lap.

As I think ahead to the kind of daily cash outlay I'll have when my kids are teenagers, I suddenly have the impression that, when it’s finally time to try to pay for college, the tuition might come as a welcome discount from our monthly grocery bill.

Get a BoB (Sha-na-na-na, sha-na-na-na-na)

The fine people behind the 2004 Best of Blogs (BoB) awards have named this solipsistic little textfest as a finalist for Best Daddy Blog. If you are so inclined, you may click here (or on the icon in the right column) every day until January 17 to show the world that democracy is indeed on the march.

I want to assure my readership that I will do my best to maintain the proper decorum we have all come to expect from any public candidate, political or otherwise, and resist the temptation to “go negative.”

[That said, some say the Swift Blog Veterans for Truth are reporting that a competitor was once arrested for a series of repugnant, unspeakable crimes and has since paid off a lot of people to have his record expunged.]