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...

My baby got all these medieval ailments.  So far she’s had croup AND hand, foot and mouth diseases -Trixie’s a real Renaissance woman!   Obviously it’s hard on us when she’s sick because it requires a great deal of extra work. Our lives, which we've grown accustomed to being run by the tyrannical rule of a baby, are now subject to the dictatorial whims of millions of microscopic germs. Their rule is marked by torrents of tears and floods of diarrhea. If she's really sick or running a fever, to free ourselves from the rule of these despotic, scatological germs we have to seek the help of medical institutions.  Doctors, nurses and insurance companie s allegedly exist for the sake of public welfare despite the fact that dealing with them usually makes me want to blow my brains out.  When Trixie was diagnosed with croup, our pediatrician, who we really like, prescribed exactly three (3) doses of the steroid Trixie needed. Not one drop more, not one drop less. She ...

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...

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...

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 ...

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.

I know I have to get older but does it have to happen so slowly? Everyday brings some new aspect of my mind or body which functions a little less effectively than it did the day before.  The suspense of seeing what’s gonna break down next is what’s really killing me.

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...

Jordan Peterson is a professor of Psychology at the University or Toronto and he taught at Harvard, which is the Mount Olympus of academia for people who don’t know much about academia or Mount Olympus. As a professor at the University of Toronto, Peterson felt he was oppressed when he was asked to refer to students who identify as queer or transgender by their preferred pronouns.  He threw and enormous academical hissy fit and took his case to the internet where he has found fame and fortune as a right wing guru railing against political correctness. Dr. Peterson’s whole POV is that human beings are capable of doing evil deeds while believing they are doing the right thing.  Drawing examples from Nazi Germany and Socialist Russia, he argues adhering to an Ideology - in this case the ideology of political correctness run amuck in his eyes - creates blind spots in personal morality. As a form of security in a chaotic world full of people who believe they are doing good but ...