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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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Been Meaning to Update this Site...

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...
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The Iceberg

I’m going to assume you know about the Titanic, the colossal boat that sank in the North Atlantic, not the 1997 film about the two lovers on the colossal boat that… well, I won’t spoil it for you.  You may not know that the Night Captain who spotted the iceberg was inexperienced and thought putting the engines in reverse would help; instead, the swirling water created a vacuum, pulling frozen doom even closer.  Still, the luxury liner was engineered to withstand a head-on collision with an iceberg. There would have been damage of course, but the ship, 1,503 people and that enormous diamond would not have been lost. However, the newby Night Captain thought it wise to turn the ship, trying to avoid a collision.  In so doing, the iceberg caught the side of the hull, where the ship was weakest, fastened together with cheap rivets to save money. As a result, water flooded areas no engineer imagined it could reach and, after a harrowing struggle, the ship was swallowed by...
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Hop on Pop as Queer Children's Lit

Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss has been delighting children for generations and my daughter is no exception. I've probably read it to her 100 times by now.  Unlike many children's books, each new reading of Hop on Pop reveals something new in the text.  Buried in the subversive narrative, I think I've found evidence which can prove Hop on Pop is an early example of Queer Children's Literature.   First, let's consider the title.  The idea of 'Hopping' on pop is subversive as it suggests leaping atop conventional symbols of power, in this instance "Pop."  The title also connotes "Daddy" imagery which is popular in gay culture.   In further examining Hop on Pop's homosexual connotations, we come to Red, Ned, Ted and Ed, four males seen here sharing a bed.  It's possible this image is just a rendering of young boys at a sleepover, perhaps there's nothing sexual or gay about it.  However, considered in the larger context of the na...
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The Value of Couples Therapy

My wife and I are trying to build a house.  We have a lot of know how and raw materials.  I have lots of hammers and saws, my wife nails and screws and fasteners.  We have everything we need. But the house I grew up in flooded in the basement when it rained and my wife’s was cold and dark every winter.  We know what we want to build, but we don’t have any blueprints. Our couples therapist, along with our spiritual practice, allow us to become the architects of a home in which we can flourish. Ilene helps us use our tools and resources to build something substantial and sustainable, with solid supports.  Otherwise my wife and I would be like some kind of Three Stooges act, with me clobbering myself in the hand with a hammer while she spins around trying to hoist too much lumber. We still gets splinters and we screw things up but Ilene helps us remember why we put on our hard hats and come into work every morning.
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