8/9/03
Deb is sick. Last night she wasn't kept awake because of the baby. She was too busy vomiting. Poor girl.
Today being Saturday I thought that I'd give Deb the opportunity for some uninterrupted recuperation snoozing and take Allie and the baby into town for some shopping. Of course that meant I had to lay all the groundwork including breakfast, feedings, bathing both kids, gathering the laundry and other related chores. I realize one Saturday of frenzied fatherly activity does not make me uber parent. Although today a lady, who saw me cleaning spaghetti sauce off Allie while simultaneously attempting to get Julia to suck down a bottle, approached me. She put her hand on my shoulder and said, "You look like a very good father. God bless you and your family."
I turned around to see if anyone else in the restaurant had seen me just receive the Complete Stranger Seal of Parental Approval. Nope. Everyone was too busy trying to wave down the breadstick lady. But the truth is I have a lot of work to do before I get any fatherhood medals hung around my neck. I'm very impatient with thin skin and a short fuse. Allie often finds herself threatened with bed or a time-out (we're not a spanking family) at even the slightest transgression of my, occasionally arbitrary, rules for her behavior.
And did I mention my relationship with my wife isn't perfect? We're both pretty testy these days which means lately we've reach very high levels of frustration by simply knowing one of us is somewhere in the same zip code. In fact, I think we've successfully climbed to some of the highest plateaus of "I could make it look like an accident. . ." syndrome that we've ever achieved in our marriage.
I'm hoping it's merely a result of this period of familial transition. Not to say that I plan to lurk around the house and quietly hope that things get better. No. I've got to be proactive. I suppose this post is a start. However a good long talk would be much more effective. A good long talk followed up with us donning head gear and flailing at one another with well-padded ax handles would be best.
So before I fall head first into a full-blown treatise on the current state of marriage and the Midwestern nuclear family archetype I'll end here. Although I do want a wireless network. I'd like a laptop that I can take upstairs so that I can occasionally get out of the basement and see the sun when I type these posts. If there's anyone reading this that can let me know the cheapest way I can do this with my cable modem (where to find used equipment, router specs, etc.) and still be happy with the results, please write to me. We lean toward Macintosh here in the basement, but we also know it's a PC world out there.