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About Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dad


  
Confounding Fathers:
This section of the blog is about politics.  Fatherhood is about leadership, teaching, setting an example and equipping my daughter with the skills to nurture herself through a life full of challenges.  Politics and government should be about the same things: provide opportunity and resources while also encouraging personal responsibility.  That our current president could be elected demonstrates, to me, a crisis of fatherhood in this country.  If this tyrannical son of a bitch is what we think a good leader looks like, fathers are failing their sons.  The posts will make observations about our current political climate and, when possible, suggest new ways of doing things. 



Dad as Hell:
This section of the blog is about dealing with mental illness.  As a dad, part of my responsibility is to wrestle with my own inner demons so they won’t possess my daughter.  These posts will be about mental health struggles and may sometimes read like an essay version of an Eminem song. 





Dad Rock:
This section of the blog is about music.  Most music today is electronic but my interest in electronic music starts with The Postal Service and ends with Girl Talk.  I’m a guitar dude and guitar music today is branded Dad Rock.  In posts of this section, I’ll talk about music. 







Father Figure:
This section of the blog will be about health and fitness. 




 

  

                                                 

This is How we DeWitt:
This section of the blog will be about parenting and marriage specifically.  There will be anecdotes, observations and advice. I'm an awesome dad and an awesome husband.  You can be too! 


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More Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dad...

Dad Rock, Revisited

One of the few upsides of having been a real judgemental dickhead when I was younger is there’s all this great art I dismissed out of hand then that I can discover now.  Here are some bands and albums I used to hate that I was big time wrong about. Fleetwood Mac    I used to joke that I lived my life in a Fleetw ood Mac Free Zone, which was constantly moving, three foot radius that revolved around me.  Their hyper-produced, glistening blow rock was antithetical to everything I thought popular music should sound like. Though I’ve always loved, “Dreams” because of Stevie Knicks witch-like hypnotic abilities, the rest of their songs seemed like they were written to be listened to when you’re half asleep.  Somewhat ironically, I fell in love with “Rumours” on a trip to Los Angeles which was full of spiritual awakenings, largely triggered by a very, very stoned listening to “Rumours” on vinyl. This listening, and the guttural sobbing which accompanied it,...
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LieuteNate DeWitt

Tuesday is one of the days when I’m Trixie’s primary care provider, so I get to play Mr. Mom, or as my wife likes to call it, “Dad.”  Trixie and I spend the day together while my wife works. When she gets home around six we have dinner, give the baby a bath and put her to bed.  Last Tuesday my wife had to work late which meant I was on my own for dinner, bath time and bedtime. I don’t get too flustered by the tasks required of fatherhood, so it was no big deal.  In college, I babysat my three younger siblings during the summers. The older ones were 7 and 8 and the baby was 8 months old one summer and 20 months old the next, so I’m no stranger to changing diapers, making bottles or entertaining the endless monologue of questions which can come out of kids.  Naturally, it wasn’t a problem to feed and bathe my daughter. In fact, when it’s just me and her, I kind of love it because I get to make all the decisions. I think of myself as Lieutenate DeWitt. LieuteNate ...
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The United States Human Resources Department

A huge plank of current Republican political ideology is the idea government should be run like a business.  Let’s call it USA, Inc. The philosophy is that areas of fiscal waste should be tightened, businesses should be allowed to thrive, our defense should be strong and our international posture should be aggressive. These are corporate virtues, these are right-wing American virtues. Thinking of a government this way has led to decades of US economic and military dominance.  But amidst all this growth, a basic aspect of corporate structure has been omitted from USA, Inc. and as a result, morale among its employees is very low. We’re angry. We’re mistrustful. We’re worried about the future. It feels like nobody’s looking after We The People. USA, Inc.  doesn’t need tough leadership and a swift kick in the ass to solve these issues of morale. We’re already doing great in terms of performance and productivity, which a firm hand encourages. We now need someone in gove...
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Solitary Man (and also two other people, I guess)

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...
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