Birthday Boys

Today I went for a long walk instead of a run to rest my knee and give myself a treat for my birthday. I very much enjoy long walks as they give me a chance to think things through without distractions intruding on what I’m thinking about. Distraction is a terrible problem for a stay-at-home parent because there are always little emergencies happening everywhere all around you. Then if you get done with the emergencies for a moment there are a dozen little maintenance/drudgery items to take care of, many of which are things you’d rather not do. So you look for something to do that seems a bit more stimulating than scraping cheerios off a bowl with a fork, and you remember you need to pick a restaurant for your birthday dinner and follow up with the babysitter, so you sit down at your computer and suddenly it’s 2:30 p.m. and you’ve wasted the entire day having important cultural discourse about whether or not Hannah Montana should be allowed to go on television and pretend to fuck a giant foam “We’re #1” Finger. Obviously this is a problem for everyone, whether they work at home or in an office or at the fire department or wherever it is. But when you’re a stay at home parent those things you were supposed to do are going to be staring at you for the rest of the day, and your wife is going to come home and see them, and your kids are going to complain about them, and your friends are going to see it when they come over and you’ll be embarrassed, etc. etc. It’s a very visible form of failure when you get distracted and get behind on your work. This affects your self-image, obviously. One way to counteract this is to have a group of male friends you can go out with, who won’t care if you didn’t do the dishes and forgot to call the plumber and can’t even remember where you left the vacuum cleaner it’s been so long since you plugged the damn thing in. Stay-at-home moms might be gasping a bit at this. I get the feeling a lot of them wouldn’t think of going out with friends when the dishes are piled up in the sink and there are legos everywhere and there is a load of sour laundry mildewing. That’s probably a healthy way to be and I applaud that, but I’m not that way. It can be easy to sort of forget to have male friends as a stay at home dad, but you need them. Most of all you need people you can be honest with about important emotional matters that are hard to talk to your wife about, like which of the other moms at your kids’ preschool has the best ass. Notice I say “other moms.” A lot of what I’m going to say on here presupposes something very important which is that you find your wife insanely attractive, miles more attractive than just about any other woman you’ve ever come into contact with. If you married someone who is not a “10” on your personal sexual chemistry scale, you’ve wandered into a difficult place and I don’t envy you. I certainly do not recommend becoming a stay at home dad. It will not end well. So your lesson for the day - as you make your mom friends, reach out and make dad friends too wherever you can. Your friendships that will work the best are the ones where all the adults in both families are close and can talk to each other openly. If you don’t have that, problems can become very big before everyone who’s affected by them is aware of them, which is a recipe for resentment, mistrust, and worse. Your assignment is to have dessert, call your buddies to set up a boys' night, and remember to look at your wife and say "damn that is one fine woman."

Staying Home #1

(Even if you weigh 300 pounds and have a face like Jerry Quarry, when women see you taking care of your kids they see this fellow right here.)

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The other day at the pumpkin patch my friend Leigh (all names fictionalized) asked me if I had a blog, and when I said “not really” she said if I had one, she would read it.  

I guess I should have asked her what sort of thing I was writing about on my imaginary fantasy blog, but it didn’t occur to me, so now I’m here with no real prompt.  

I glance over at my friend Hunter’s blog to see what kind of things he writes about.  He’s another stay at home dad/Browns fan/writer/longhaired deadbeat type like myself.  He has three boys - one of them recently got his hair cut, it seems, but that’s no help to me.  I’m not really into that sort of thing, as a writer.  Also my wife takes the kids to get their hair cut and takes the lead on most hair-related matters.  

I find the nuts and bolts of parenting, and life in general I suppose, to be pretty boring.  I like writing about sex and pain and death and revenge and things like that.  It would be a strange beat, the sex/pain/death/revenge/stay-at-home-parenting beat.  I’m not sure what quarterly I’d submit my work to.  

Sex is a natural fit, I guess.  I could be the stay at home dad who just writes about sex all the time.  Sex, sex, sex.  Sex in the morning, sex in the night, sex every single moment of your godforsaken life.  

I might be able to get away with it because I’m not that guy who has sex all the time.  That annoying fucker, the one who’s like “you’ve got to keep the magic alive with little touches like roses and massages and get her some nice bath lotion” or whatever the fuck.  Eat a dick, asshole.  

Or worse, his wife, some successful novelist whose work the New York Review of Books says “simmers with the savory broth of greatness” or some gushing poppycock, who writes an Op/Ed in the Times about how to be happily married and make time for your man and keep the spark alive and blah blah blah.  Fuck you, too, bitch.  

This isn’t going well, I feel.  I don’t think this is what Leigh wants to read.  I imagine she was thinking I’d be writing about how to listen to your children and respect them as people and put your family first or some crap like that.  I’m falling asleep just thinking about it.  Let’s get back to the sex stuff.

Sex is the key thing that makes stay-at-home fatherhood hard.  The rest of it is really very easy.  Not easy in the sense of, easy as falling off a log.  I mean, it takes work.  There are butts to be wiped (h/t - Hunter) and dishes to be washed and endless, endless laundry that never stops because kids like to wear four different outfits every day and shit their pants regularly and aren’t even embarrassed about it.  

It’s easy, though, in the sense that for cultural reasons there is a very low standard of success for stay-at-home dads.  Where stay-at-home moms have this ceaseless passive-aggressive competition that’s constantly hanging over every aspect of their lives every waking minute of every day, stay-at-home dads are exempt.  The shame that Kate Winslet feels having forgotten her kid’s snack for the 47th time at the playground in “Little Children” is not really present for a stay-at-home dad, at least it needn’t be.  No one expects you to remember to bring a snack, or sunblock, or a change of clothes.  The moms fall all over themselves trying to help you out, and trying sincerely to make sure you know that these things happen to everyone, and we’re all in this together, right?

A stay-at-home dad can walk out of the house, two kids in tow, with a diaper crammed into his back pocket and figure everything will pretty much work out ok.  In fact not only will it be OK, he’ll be such a hero other dads start to hate his guts because their wives won’t shut the fuck up about what a great dad he is.  And what did he do that makes him so great?  Nothing.  He talked his kid through some stupid tantrum about what color sippy cup he brought, and how whatever was in it wasn’t exactly what the kid expected.  For this (something all stay-at-home moms do every day) women will build you a nine-foot marble statue and put it on the capitol steps if you let them.  Which you shouldn’t because you won’t get invited to poker games.  

So now, once you’ve settled in and gotten used to this treatment and made your first real stay-at-home-mom friend, you’re going to realize the situation you’re in, which is that you’re spending a lot of time with a woman who has an unaccountably high opinion of you during the day while her husband is at work.  You’re developing nice wholesome relationships with her kids, which by the way if you’re ever trying to seduce young mothers is the beginning, middle and end of the playbook, and she’s opening up to you about the problems in her marriage and how she’s not sure it’s working out.

I slipped that last one in on you.  DO NOT LET WOMEN DO THIS.  There is nothing to be gained by listening to a woman complain about her husband.  The way you do not want the conversation to go is as follows:

WOMAN

My husband leaves his dirty dishes all over the house.

YOU

Yes, my wife does that too.  It makes me feel so unappreciated.

WOMAN

YES!  It’s so nice that there is a man who understands.

This is DEFCON-1 level seriously bad shit right here, my friend.  This woman is starting a fight with her husband about this TONIGHT.  Take it to the bank.  And even if your name doesn’t come up, it’ll be hanging in the air like a stale fart.  

Let’s try this again, but with a slightly different response from our hero, the SAHD.

WOMAN

My husband leaves his dirty dishes all over the house.

YOU

Yeah, I still throw my dirty socks at the hamper like a goddamn chimpanzee.  Drives my wife crazy, makes her feel so unappreciated.

WOMAN

Wow, I guess all men just fucking suck.

YOU

I’ll drink to that, sister!

See what you’ve done there?  If your excuse for the previous exchange was that you just wanted to be there for your friend, validating her feelings, well, here’s your chance, Romeo.  Validate her in a way that 1) reaffirms how much you appreciate your wife, even though you don't always show it and 2) closes down any stray thoughts she might have about how maybe you’d be a better husband than the one she’s already got.  

Well, my writing time for the day is up.  Your assignment for the day is to Google “Hot Dad-on-mom sex” (in quotes like that) and look at what comes up.  Yep.  This page (once the spidering is done) and one other page that says “It turns out that there wasn't much enthusiasm in the room for hot Dad-on-Mom sex either.  Go figure.”  

Go figure indeed.  Til next time, Dear Reader.  

Why I Don't Write

I've been writing long enough, I think, for a worky-ass post about "process" that bores everybody to tears. So here goes.

There are three main reasons I don't write for long stretches - I don't like what I'm producing, I'm not getting ideas, or I am living too structured of a lifestyle.

The third issue is the toughest, and it tends to flow into the other two after a pretty short while. I work best in a strictly structured format when it comes to everything BUT writing, so if I want to run my life well, I need timetables and lists and charts and plans.

Writing is something completely different. My process is, shall we say, a disheveled process. It happens late at night while normal people are in bed, and it's characterized by a lot of pacing and absentmindedly leaving shit lying around.

And bourbon.

The Night is My House

All my life I've been a "night owl," a person who hangs on to the day long after the sun (not to mention most other human beings) has let it go.

I once ran across another night owl's description of his affliction by a similar malady, but his speculation on the origins of the curse did not ring true to me. The author, Stan Goff, described himself as a bad sleeper, and thus he assumed that he clung to wakefulness because he feared the fevered night itself.

I sleep like a rock. It is the day to come that intimidates me, with its clocks and rituals and obligations. In the night we are free to tell the world to go to hell, as long as we can accept the bargain - at sunrise, the world comes back, and brings hell back with her.

Yglesias Gets is Right

Matt Yglesias makes a key point in this post about Iraq:

If tactics employed in Northern Ireland can be made to work in Iraq (and maybe they can) even though Iraq has ten times as many people as Northern Ireland does and even though Iraqis don't speak English and even though the sectarian violence in Iraq is undergirded by concrete fighting over valuable resources, then does this really seem like a wise strategic undertaking?

The reason you don't see this question being addressed in the mainstream is because of the convention of pretending that the United States military in Iraq is some sort of benign actor beset by violence it cannot explain or understand.

Everyone seems to have agreed that under no circumstances is the US military to be portrayed as what it, in fact, is: one of many belligerent groups in a multisided resource war.

Obviously the US is "the good guys" from our perspective because they are fighting on behalf of US interests, but in no sense are they a legitimate or constructive ordering force in Iraq. They are soldiers in a war zone, fighting against enemies. That's all they'll be until we pull them out. Pretending that they are some sort of Extreme Makeover - Dictatorship Edition contracting crew is killing people. We need to stop it.

Bills@Browns Preview, Part One

Adam: From the shores of Lake Erie, welcome to the NFL Week 15 contest between the Buffalo Bills and the Cleveland Browns. With me in the booth today is Gus Johnson, and I hope he's as excited as I am about, really, one of the first meaningful matchups between these two teams since the days of Bernie Kosar and Jim "Machine Gun" Kelly.

Gus: Ha HAAAAAA!!!!

Adam: All right. Let's jump right in and take a look at this matchup; two very different teams who have taken somewhat similar paths to this point in the season. Both have struggled against quality opposition but have usually taken care of business in games that they were expected to win.

Gus: We know from talking to folks in the Dawg Pound before the game that most everyone here expects the Browns to DEFEAT these visiting Bills, and keep their HOPES ALIVE for the National Football League playoffs.

Adam: And what most of the orange and brown-clad faithful here have been talking about is this Cleveland offense; it's Rob Chudzinsky's offense and it's a good one, Gus.

Gus: Good enough for number FIVE in the NFL in points scored.

Adam: It's a system that Chudzinsky developed while he was a tight end coach in San Diego coaching Antionio Gates, and so it leans heavily on the services of Kellen Winslow, Jr., who's been lighting up the league the last two seasons with his tough, athletic play.

Gus: And it's an offense that is based around the dropback pass, which is why it's been perfect for THIS MAN - Derek Anderson, the third-year phenom out of Oregon State. He's on pace to throw for over 30 touchdowns, and if he does so he'll be the first Cleveland QB to throw 30 since BRIAN SIPE did it way back in 1980. Why has Anderson thrived in Chud's Offense? Cause he's got a BIG ARM, and he knows how to use it, as he showed in his coming-out party in Week 2 against the Bengals.

Adam: It doesn't hurt that he's got one of the best young receivers in the business, Braylon Edwards, who's tough to cover deep and even when he is covered, he makes catches like these.

Gus: When the Browns do turn to the running game, they've got a good one, with Jamal Lewis, former Brown-killer for the Baltimore Ravens, now killing Browns opponents as he did to the Jets last week with this bruising run to put the game away.

Adam: None of it would be possible without the superior play of the offensive line, tied for second in the league in sacks allowed with sixteen on the year. And six of those sixteen sacks were in week one. The Cleveland O-line is loaded with talent, but no one outshines the rookie left tackle Joe Thomas, who went from being the best lineman in college football for the Wisconsin Badgers in 2006 straight to being one of the best tackles in the NFL for the Browns in 2007. It's a position the Browns have had trouble with going back a long way, but they feel like they've got it locked down long term now.

Gus: It's an exhilarating offensive football team to watch, and the staduim is throbbing with EXCITEMENT as we wait for the competitors to take the field.

Everybody Gets Rich!

A couple years ago, back when Bush was still marginally popular, there was a lot of debate about his proposal to "reform" Social Security by converting it from a defined-benefit pension program to a defined-contribution program more like a 401(k).

One of the arguments he made in favor of this approach was that with a 401(k) type account, you would be able to live more comfortably in retirement AND you would be able to pass along to your heirs any excess equity left over when you died.

No one ever really took this argument on in the mainstream, but this post by Clive Crook sort of reminds me of the principle that makes the truth startlingly clear - This Idea Is Bunk.

The principle is pretty simple: Not Everybody Can Get Rich.

At first glance that probably seems like sort of a sourpuss thing to say. After all, why not?!?!

Well, imagine if you will a society that is, say, two generations into a program like the one Bush was proposing. Let's say that the society is at more or less zero population growth, so people on average are leaving their estates to two children.

After two generations of a program where people are accumulating sufficient assets to live off equity to the age of 100, but where people die on average at the age of 85, basically every person in the society is going to have inherited enough money that they don't have to work full time.

The problem with that, of course, is that wealth in a capitalist system is sort of an abstraction - it's not like wealthy people actually have a big pile of food and clothing and LearJets just sitting in their backyard. Wealth is, in a sense, the right to live off the work of others. If no one's working, there isn't anything for the wealthy to consume.

The particular program Crook is pointing out isn't nearly so crazy - it isn't intended to produce an entire generation of idle people. It's a system of investment accounts designed to create more opportunity for lower-income people when they turn 18. It's a neat system, but it can't work as a retirement plan. It just can't. And anyone who says it can either hasn't thought it through or they are lying (or both.)