Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dad

Ever since becoming a dad, I’ve been grumpier than usual.   Some of my negative mood could be attributed to life as a new parent and adjusting to the new responsibilities which come with this new reality.   Some of my negative mood could be attributed to the insomnia which, like some Twilight Zone, Monkey's Paw plot twist, comes hand-in-hand with the new workload and stakes of parenting.   All your decisions have new weight to them, there’s a human being you have to keep alive and the twist is you get to do it all without sleep. Some of my negative mood could be attributed to the fact we bought a house and had to deal with realtors and lawyers and banks and movers and contractors and the rest of the people whose job it seemed to be to screw us over as we tried to make a home.   Some of my negative mood could be attributed to the junk food I ate as a coping mechanism for the aforementioned stresses, which paradoxically made me more anxious then groggier, neither o...

It’s polar vortex season which means it’s a nice time or year to stay inside. The idea of a few days bundled up indoors used to be daunting or carry the risk of boredom, but thanks to streaming video I now have access to just about every movie or TV show that’s ever been made. The hours can go by surprisingly quickly.   Shows these days are so engrossing it’s easy to zone out.   My wife and I turned on Netflix’s RUSSIAN DOLL and I think the only thing we said to each other during the entire four-hour run of the first season was when I turned to her after episode one and said, “So we’re staying up late to finish this?” and she replied, “Duh.”      We’ve watched a lot lately.   RUSSIAN DOLL (Netflix, A+++), FOREVER (Amazon, C), I’M SORRY (TruTV/ Netflix, B+) THE GODFATHER (HBO, fell asleep), OCEAN’S EIGHT (HBO, fell asleep), 20 TH CENTURY WOMEN (Amazon, A++++). It’s easy to snuggle, mesmerized, engrossed, sitting in silence and slowly drifting apart. ...

Been meaning to update this site, it’s just I woke up last September to find the dog had crapped on the rug so my wife and I set to work cleaning that up with water and vinegar and that smelled terrible then the baby woke up and needed her diaper changed and didn’t exactly smell great and she got very upset when there was a picture of Minnie Mouse on her diaper instead of Doc McStuffins so I calmed her down and got her dressed and my wife took her to daycare while I went to yoga then took a shower and tried to do the dishes but the disposal was broken so I called the repair guy Steve and made an appointment then got an email from my dad soliciting a list of grievances I have with him – he thought maybe I’d have 25 of them – so I wrote that salivating and contemplating and what I sent was whimsical and empathetic and downright kind yet he complained it was too mean even though he asked for a list of grievances and all I want is for him to take some basic accountability for being woefu...

From the age of eight I was placed in accelerated learning classes and told I was Gifted and Talented. GT courses again and again reiterated the idea I was special and I believed it wholeheartedly. I thought I was smarter than everybody. I was perceptive: I saw truths other people ignored. I thought I was better, more capable, quicker witted, sharper tongued, more logically coherent and just superior to pretty much everyone, even my GT peers. My success was assured.  My confidence in my success came from movies and books, rap songs and other capitalist pop culture promises of perfect romances and limitless wealth; it came from GT programs which told me I could be anything and which were relatively easy for me to navigate given the structures of a scholastic environment; it came from the fact I was pretty good at most of the things I bothered to try. By 22, I assumed virtually boundless capabilities were innate in me just waiting to blossom.  My success would be as glorious ...

As a man, I value my alone time; as an academic, solitude is integral to my scholarship; and as a writer, you can’t be in here right now, I’m closing the door and putting a 25lb kettlebell in front of it, I’ll be out in a couple hours, bye!  There’s a Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee on which Jerry Seinfeld jokes his first words weren’t “mama” or “dada;’ rather, they were, “leave me alone!” I’ve never agreed with another human being more.  When I say, “I want to be left alone,” it’s a cry for help, and the help I need is for you to get lost. It’s a miracle I ever found a partner who understands. Thankfully, my wife values the work I produce in my alone time, so she's as understanding as a person can be when i tell her to scram. My isolation solution has been hampered considerably by the addition of baby. My baby is a brand new person who requires constant attention; more than that, she’s reliant on my wife and me to teach her everything. Since she would not exist on thi...

Have you ever been around someone who constantly belittles themselves and beats themselves up for the way they act or the way they acted in the past?  Have you ever noticed these people who beat the shit out of themselves all the time aren’t even any good at it? First and foremost, they’re usually beating themselves up for transgressions or ‘flaws’ which, in all honestly, are rarely even one of the Top 10 Biggest Problems This Person has. My mom, for example, a World Champion of Beating the Shit Out of Herself, was recently visiting and she was mercilessly self-critical as she thought back to when she was 19 and she started smoking cigarettes so the people she met while studying abroad in Spain would like her.  Not only is this reason for starting smoking - to be thought of as cool or to be liked - the reason every person in the history of cigarettes started smoking, my mom also quit smoking 28 years ago. In other words, this decision from 40+ years ago which my mom is hold...