Laid-Off Dad

A month of growth

I'd like to say that NaBloPoMovember 2012 served as a watershed moment in my development as a man, father, writer, and pickle enthusiast. At the least, it was eventful--more so than I anticipated, anyway. November re-elected a president, washed away countless lives and livelihoods, and celebrated two people who somehow managed to spend 2/3 of their lives together. I caught the Bourbonic plague, met the diarist of a wimpy kid, and got a heaping helping of perspective along with my Thanksgiving meal.

Mostly, though, I wanted to get writing again. Dad 2.013 is only two months away, and it could have been really easy to melt into the work that ultimately resulted in our first of three speaker announcements. The truth is, though, for all the phone calls and interviews and other opportunities to champion dad-based content, I'd have felt like a hypocrite if I'd stopped making any of my own. November helped me get the oil back in the engine and strike a work/write balance that I hope to sustain as long as I can.

About the only real growth was this comical T-shaped hair-thing on the front of my face, which--even though it clearly brought all the girls to the yard--will either be 1) be washed down the sink or 2) overwhelmed by a DecemBeard. If you'd like to salute its memory and donate even a small, token amount to the team, thank you. My mustache would definitely have wanted it that way.

One day more! Another day, another destiny!

You know how proud Jerry Seinfeld was of his non-vomit streak? And how devastated he was when it came to an end? My mind was with him this morning as I, too, contemplated the end of a streak I hold sacred: In the Post-Marriage Era, on days that the kids have been with me, neither has ever stayed home sick from school.

I'm not sure how you're reacting to this at home. You may be awed. You may scoff incredulously. You superstitious types may be chiding me for mentioning the streak so brazenly and thus inviting a jinx. (You people are the most narcissistic and sad of all.) Superstitions are malarkey, jinxes do not exist, and children do not stay home from school on my watch.

The Streak nearly ended, however, when the 10yo staggered out of his room feeling "groggy." He'd missed school yesterday (thanks to his mother, whose lenience is her tragic undoing) and asserted he didn't feel any better today. His throat was scratchy. He coughed a few times into his elbow. He looked at me as if he'd spent one day too many aboard a cruise ship. He made his case to stay home a second day, foolishly forgetting with whom he was dealing:

R: Dad, I think I should lay low today.
Me: If you do, no movies or computer. You'll need your rest.
R: That's fine. All I want to do is sleep.

Hmm. A willingness to forego electronic entertainment without protest.

Me: You might have to get dressed anyway and come to the library while I work.
R: I could to that. I'll just sit and read in the corner.

Maintaining his message. He was bringing his A-game today.

Me: You know that middle school we all want you to go to next year?
R: Yeah.
Me: One of the things they'll check on your application is your attendance and lateness record.
R: What for?
Me: Because they want to see that you're willing to apply yourself, and they know that kids who miss a lot of time can struggle to catch up.
R: [pause] Let me see if taking a shower helps. 

Miracle of miracles, the shower restored him to only slightly imperfect health. He went off to school, came back feeling fine, and my streak remains unbroken. Javert would be proud.

Seven Five Oh

Typepad tells me this is Laid-Off Dad's 750th post. Which can mean only one thing: I'm zoning in on Barry Bonds's record and will one day be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. And I've done it all steroid-free, relying instead solely on various parts of speech, fatherhood, insomnia, bourbon, joy, anguish, a WYSIWYG interface, and lots of fresh greens.

As fate would have it, the subject of this momentous monologuing milepost will be how I took my 10-year-old son to have his IQ tested. Because he will graduate (?) elementary school in the spring, and we're looking at all kinds of middle schools for him, and some of them think an IQ (or FSIQ, as they call it now) is a good piece of data to help reject sift through applicants. 

The test is the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—Fourth Edition, which a psychological assessment you can read about in this somewhat impenetrable APA report. It mentions Covariance Matrices and Kurtosis and First-Order Breadth Factors and lots of other highfalutin terms you will yearn to memorize and drop casually at your next holiday party. After which your boss will regard your false intellectual facade as a direct threat to his authority and trump up some bullshit reason to fire you. 

The process was painless enough. We arrived at the doctor's house at 8:15am, he took my son into the other room for about 75 minutes of brain rigor, and an hour later we received a comprehensive and incomprehensible report from which I hope the middle schools will derive more value than I do.

The kid has not stopped begging us to tell him what his IQ is, and we keep telling him it's not going to happen. (Maybe on his 40th birthday, Moxie suggested.) Because one thing we do understand without doubt is that we don't really care how "gifted" he is. Achievement is a vector that requires direction AND magnitude. (OH YEAH!) Without direction, magnitude can veer off anywhere. My cousin tested off the charts when he was a kid and never lifted a finger in school, and after he served a couple of jail terms for various drug charges, he sort of fell off the grid. 

The consensus says we need to laud effort, not intelligence. Otherwise, your kid will end up a drug user like my cousin. And Barry Bonds, allegedly. (I'm coming for you, you surly melonhead.)

They don't make insults the way they used to

Tonight was the first official event of the Virginia Club of Michigan, and I am its Communications Director (because I'm the one who knows how to work the Twitter). Our guest was Gordon Burris, who's been with the University for as long as I've  been alive and has more anecdotes than I have hairs on my head. The conversation took a turn toward Jon Meacham's new book, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, and how it fits in with the myriad interpretations among Jefferson and His Time, The Hemingses of Monticello, and American Sphinx.

As you've probably guessed, I'm fascinated with Our Nerdiest President, because of quotes like this:

"... I rarely waste time in reading on theological subjects, as mangled by our Pseudo-Christians.... Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus. If it could be understood it would not answer their purpose. Their security is in their faculty of shedding darkness, like the scuttlefish, thro' the element in which they move, and making it impenetrable to the eye of a pursuing enemy, and there they will skulk." [source]

Say what you will, but the man could bring the withering smack.

Mo money, Mo Giving

It's the final week of NaBloPoMovember, and now that we've spent the majority of it NaBloPo-ing, it's time to shift attention to the Movember-ing. And the good news is, there's a lot of Movember-ing going around. There are a lot more teams growing a lot more mustaches and raising a lot more dough, thanks in part to high-profile Mo-growers like Aaron Rodgers. And the Dad 2.0 Summit /NYC Dads Group team, and the teams within the overall network, have raised over $93,000 so far.

Now that we're in the home stretch, the Dad 2.0 Summit is discounting tickets to the 2013 event next January by 25%, and donating the price difference on each ticket to our Movember team. If you're thinking of coming to Dad 2.013, now's the time to get your ticket (using the promotional code "MoGiving25" and donate $50 to a great cause.

If you'd like to donate to our team (and the mustache that my ex-wife says makes me look like a poor man's d'Artagnan), you can do so here.

And if you haven't grown a Movember 'stache yet, you should consider it. This thing is a lady magnet.

   

Our (sort-of) recipe for Chock-Fulla Burgers

Since a smattering of home chefs reacted positively to an earlier Instagram about Chock-Fulla Burgers, I figured now would be as good a time as any to publish the recipe. Like all good recipes that parents can make for their kids, it's quick, easy, and as nutritious as your kids will let you get away with. For the Three French Men, it combines a boy's love of carnage with a father's love of Please Eat Something.

First of all, my boys don't eat a lot of red meat at home. We love getting burgers out for French Fryday, but in our kitchen, we're all about the turkey. And since turkey is the blandest thing ever, I spice it up with garlic powder, soy sauce, thyme, and a little Worcestershire. 

The other important thing about this meat is that it needs to hold together well during the re-adhesion phase. So I throw in an egg and follow up with as much breadcrumb as is needed. How much is enough? You'll know.

#OccupyCraw!

I'm not sure why, but it disquiets me to see people already decorating their Christmas trees. It seems like such a big rush, you know? Can't the Thanksgiving carcass be cold for a few days, at least until it's actually December? I know it's the Holiday Season, and I'm as excited as anyone (especially if that anyone is planning to spend Christmas elsewhere with his family, so there really isn't a point to having a tree at all in his own house, when you think about it). But can't we have some kind of Festivus Interrregnum when it's sort of nothing for a few days?

These are the sorts of things that lodge in my craw when it's 11:45pm, my sons have celebrated their reunion after hanging out separately all day by wrestling constantly, and I need to get a blog post up before midnight. And while we're at it, why do all Mumford & Sons songs sound so much like so many other Mumford & Sons songs do? I bet those guys wait a week or so after Thanksgiving to put up their Christmas trees. They could probably use the time to write another very similar-sounding song.

We knew the risks

Steely Dan's "Black Friday" references the small town of Muswellbrook in New South Wales, Australia. Donald Fagen says he chose that lyric because the town looked to be at the exact antipodal point from where they were at the time.

That Black Friday is much on my mind on this Black Friday, as my flight from LaGuardia has been delayed four hours (so far) because there's a light on the plane that won't light on one side. If you've ever spent any time in the filthy Habitrail that is Terminal B, you'd also find yourself wishing you were in the exact opposite place.

Ten miles and a world away

In this, the week of the Opposite, it's been a joyfully disorienting couple of days at the extremes. Yesterday, we were stocking canned goods in a ruined church gymnasium and handing blankets to people who won't have heat or electricity for months. And today, I had my first non-homemade Thanksgiving at a posh eatery on the Upper East Side.

All of which makes me feel very thankful to fall somewhere in the middle.

This has been my best year since the divorce, since the (most recent) layoff, since I'd gotten used to the idea that my life had peaked long ago.

Today I celebrated how don't feel like that anymore. If the Mayans are right, I'm OK with it. I'm going out on top.

#OccupySandy

This will be a quick one, because I'm currently in the back of a van full of diapers headed for the Rockaways. I hooked up with an Occupy Sandy crew that will drop off these supplies and work the rest of the day at a distribution hub.

A lot of the supplies we're bringing came as part of a massive shipment from Occupy Sandy's "wedding" registry, where you can find what's needed and send it off to these devastated parts with a few clicks.

It's always gratifying when genius blossoms to fend off squalor.