DadCentric

Consistency

Yesterday was a pretty good day.  I never know, lately, how the day is going to go.  These kids are moody little critters.  One morning they'll climb out of their beds, up the stairs, and wake my wife and me with their laughter.  The next, they'll resist everything, from getting out of bed to taking off their pajamas to going to school.  Their resistance takes the form of screaming and crying, mostly. 

They're three.  I understand that this is normal behavior, and usually subsides by the time they're in their mid-twenties.

But yesterday was a good one.  Cobra woke up a little belligerent, but improved greatly after breakfast, and didn't even have to be bribed to go to the gym with me.  They had the childcare lady at the gym all to themselves, and whenever I peeked in, the girls were laughing and running and kicking balls, not trancing out on TV, as they'll do if the Kids Club staff let them.

They ate a great lunch of leftover Vietnamese soup (greens, pork, fish sauce) from when their grandmother visited, mixed with leftover noodles from god-knows-when, and played all afternoon at home with minimal pummeling of one another.  Then we heard the rumbling of "Mommy's Loud Car" pulling up in front of the house, and prepared for her arrival.

Mom was home much earlier than usual, just in time for afternoon snack.  In fact, it was a little past snacktime, and Cobra was getting ornery.  She wanted Goldfish, and she wanted them now.  And she wanted to eat them out of the bag, not out of her snacky cup.

"No, boo--you can't eat them out of the bag," Mom said.

"Yes I caaaaan..." said Cobra.  "I eat from the bag when Daddy gives them to me!"

"Really?" said Mom, looking at me incredulously.

"Um...yeah?" I said.  "I let them eat out of the bag.  I didn't...I didn't know that was against regulations."

"I WANT THE BAG OF GOLDFISH!!!" Cobra said.

"No," said Mom.  "We don't eat Goldfish out of the bag.  That's the rule."

This launched Cobra into full-on freak-out mode.  Snotty, gasping, sobs.  Eyes wide with horror and spurting hot rage-tears. 

Every fiber in my being willed my mouth to say, "Just give her the fucking bag of Goldfish, for fuck's sake!"

Another Ride Home from Another BlogHer Conference

 

Lorax and me. WTF

At the beginning of August I once again went to the big, huge, enormous, ladies' blogging conference, over there in New York City, New York, US of A, as did a few of my fellow DadCentricians and some other unaffiliated dudes.  It was really, really big, and there were plenty of ladies there.  Like around five thousand of them.  There were some speakers whose names you might recognize: Katie Couric, Martha Stewart, Soledad O'Brien, Christy Turlington, and Barack Obama (via video feed), to name a few.

 

It was a nice party.  The food was plentiful and mostly good, and mostly free.  There were a lot of talks given by a lot of bloggers and other social media types who had a lot of worthwhile ideas about which they were quite passionate.  I attended a couple of these talks and, as is usually the case, got briefly excited, and then thought about how the issues discussed pertained to me or the non-parentblogging world.  Then I shrugged, and looked for the next cocktail party.

My take-home from the official conference events and ancillary chatter was that if you don't write for one or more of the big parenting websites, and you're not ready to hustle your ass off courting sponsors 24/7, blogging about your life and your family is not going to pay the bills. This was not a revelation that hit me like a ton of bricks as I had gotten that particular cosmic memo a while back, but it did sometimes make me feel like I was participating in a bizarre charade. 

That sounds bad, I know.  But there were plenty of real moments too, and that made the trip worth taking.  And there were also plenty of amazing writers who weren't necessarily chasing dreams of buying groceries with their ad revenue.  Some of these writers read their stuff at the Voices of the Year presentation, which, for my money, blew the famous keynoters' doors off.

 

Karaoke Survivor, 4:00 a.m.

Of the three nights I spent in New York, it was only on the first, Thursday, that I didn't stay up long enough to see the hazy glimmering of a sweltering sunrise over Manhattan.  On Friday, the after-party provoked an impromptu and overly enthusiastic karaoke adventure, and I awoke around 1:00 p.m..  I tried to speak to my roomie, and found that somehow I had swapped larynxes with Harvey Firestein.  This condition persisted until at least a week later, but it didn't stop me from repeating the karaoke freakout with an even bigger group the next night.

 

Pee Angel: a karaoke casualty, Times Square, 6:00 a.m.

Blogging conferences are inherently weird because of the interfacing of online and real worlds.  But as has been my experience at the other conferences I've attended, talking to my imaginary friends in the flesh was a seamless transition.  I met some people whose words I had been reading for ages, and was not disappointed in their fleshly presences.  I reconnected with some great people I had met previously.  I met some amazing folks that I had never even known existed.  And somehow I became the darling of the lesbian momblogging parentblogging community, a distinction I plan on cherishing and nurturing until they tire of me, which has probably already happened.

 

 

 

10 Tips for Dadbloggers Attending BlogHer 2012

If you're not a parenting blogger, you may have never heard of the annual BlogHer conference, which is kicking off in two days.  Allow me to explain.

BlogHer conferences are where about eleventy-million ladies and maybe six or seven dudes get together in some glamorous location and talk about parenting and blogging and parentblogging and making money from all those things and also some stuff mostly about just being ladies in general.

Before the big conference every year, there are lots of blog posts and facebook status updates and tweets that indicate a high level of excitement and pants-peeing in the mom blogging community.  This post on Mom 101 includes a pie chart demonstrating the topics many lady bloggers are freaking out about, which mainly include clothing choices, collecting free merch, and the prospect of interacting with their blogging heroes.  Mmmm...pie.

I went to BlogHer last year, because it was just down the street from my house.  It was cool.  I met a lot of people and scored an electric nose-douche.  I screwed up and didn't pick up the bag of dildos that some of my friends got, though.  Still, mostly good times. 

This year the conference is in New York City, which is not such a bad place either.  I will be attending.  I'm looking forward to it.  I'm not freaking out so much, although perhaps I should be.

Maybe I'm just not freaking out because I'm a little sleepy and I have a lot of other stuff to be freaking out about at the moment.  But as a public service to any other dudes that may be attending BlogHer 2012, I'm going to try to muster as much panic as I can in order to fill in the blanks in this obligatory pre-conference list, even though you still have plenty of time to prepare.  Here goes:

The Tips

1. Plan your wardrobe so that you have one shirt for each day. 
2. Remember to put on the shirt in the morning, not in the evening.  That way, after you sleep in it, you'll have a fresh one to put on the next day. (Example: Put on blue shirt on Friday morning, sleep in blue shirt Friday night, put on yellow shirt Saturday morning, sleep in yellow shirt Saturday night, etc.)
3. You should have some pants too.  No one will look at your pants so it doesn't really matter if you sleep in the same ones every night.  I prefer shorts with lots of pockets.
4. Bring your analgesic of choice and some multivitamins.  There will be a lot of free booze but no free Tylenol.
5. You'll probably meet some internet famous people you've never heard of.  Pretend that you're really excited to meet everyone.  That way the famous people won't think you are a dick, and the nonfamous people will just think you're weird and who cares about them anyway.
6. You should, at some point, look at the schedule and figure out roughly where you're going to go when.  But if you don't get around to it, don't worry.  There are thousands of moms everywhere who will tell you what to do.
7. Be prepared for enormous--and completely empty--conference center men's rooms.  They can be a little creepy, so you might want to get a friend to go in with you.
8. You should probably get some business cards.  Everyone seems to have them.  Shit.  Maybe I can get some made in time for next year.
9. Don't be an idiot and stay in the hotel the whole time.  You're in New York City.  (Residents of New York City can ignore this.)
10. Bring a towel?  I don't know.  I needed something to make it an even ten.

 

Guest Post from Mrs Muskrat: Why You Should "Let" Your Man Run with the Bulls

When your husband runs with the bulls, a whole lotta people cry "Bull."  I think that's the most obvious drawback: you spend a ton of time explaining that, yes, he's really running with the bulls, and no, he's not crazy, and yes, it's OK with you that he went, and no, you're not scared he's going to die.  It's exhausting, really.  While he was training to do the run, I should have been training to explain what he was doing to people.  Of course, since his training consisted of exactly four jogs around the neighborhood, one session of practicing his drop-and-roll maneuver, and a lot of beer drinking, we're probably even.

I wasn't there when this plan was hatched, and I have no idea if it might have gone differently had I been.  All I know is one day, he came home and his office mate had bought a plane ticket to Barcelona so he could travel by train to Pamplona to take part in the San Fermin festival and run with the bulls.  Except back then, none of us really knew any of that stuff--all we knew, including the fella who bought the ticket--was that he was running with the infamous bulls, all Hemingway etc, and that Michael was supposed to go with him.

He brought me the news, I asked if he wanted to go, he replied, "I guess," and I shook my head.  That was about it.

Here's what I didn't expect: that we'd keep running into folks who would GRILL us.  They'd ask him if he was serious, he'd reply in the affirmative, and their heads would pivot toward me, give me the five-dollar-up-and-down, and ask me why I hadn't stopped him.  Which, when you think about it, is pretty ridiculous.  He's 37 years old, he has four children, and I did not take him to raise.  If he wants to go have an adventure, I say rock on.  As long as he keeps his pecker in his pants and comes home when he says he will, I'm on board.

It's hot to have a husband who likes to try new things--not the kind who wants to swan dive off 100-plus-foot cliffs, not the adrenaline junkie kind, but the kind who wants to travel the world and take you with him.  That's sexy, dude.  A husband who's always willing to try the new restaurant, who is excited about seeing a concert, who makes lists of cool things to do in any city to which we travel and none of them involves an Applebee's.  I am not the girl who will go someplace unfamiliar on her own, and I'm not the girl who meets new people easily--I'm not a social misfit, but I struggle to break out of my familiar paths.  He's not like that--everywhere he goes, he meets a new best friend; every contest he enters, he wins; when he wants to do something exciting but impossible, he asks and somehow it just happens for him.  It's extraordinary, and it's totally smokin'.

Yes, he really ran with the bulls.  No, he's not crazy.  Yes, it's OK with me that he went.  No, I wasn't scared he was going to die.  Yes, when he came home, we totally made out like bandits.  I can't wait until we both get to go together.

The Mother of Us All - Erma Bombeck

No amount of Hallmark sap or FTD pollen we heap on a single day of the year can fully express the gratitude owed the moms in many of our lives.

Not just the moms related to us, biologically or by law, but also those with which we share a spiritual bond.

For there would be no DadCentric, nay dad bloggers, without mom bloggers.

And there would be no mom bloggers without the mother of them all: Columnist, author and humorist Erma Bombeck.

Parenting Is Not a Job

 

Over the past few weeks, I've been seeing this Proctor and Gamble ad plastered all over Facebook walls, festooned with comments about the tears and squishy feelings it has inspired.  I'm sure you've seen it too.  If not, here it is:

 

 

Being that this is an advertisement for household products, I was skeptical when I clicked play.  Then I saw where it was headed: Moms make sacrifices, kids excel, sports happen, medals and glory follow, moms cry, we all buy soap.  I have to admit that , despite my fully engaged force-field of cynicism, I was a little moved.  This thing was, after all, scientifically formulated to tug heartstrings, which I still have, however frayed they may be.  And who among us can resist a good montage?  Not me.

But when the last few seconds of the ad rolled around, and the tagline appeared on the screen, my hackles went up.  I should have smelled this tired old commonplace coming from around corner: "The hardest job in the world, is the best job in the world. Thank you, Mom." 

The Faster Times Asks: Are Dadbloggers The Most Important Feminists Online Today?

Here's a mystery quote. See if you can guess who said it:

"We know that we can do what men can do, but we still don't know that men can do what women can do. That's absolutely crucial. We can't go on doing two jobs."

If you were hoping that the kerfluffle over Babble's recent Top Dad Bloggers/Top Twitter Moms lists had gone away, well, sorry to disappoint you. 

Longtime readers - or, really, anyone who's spent more than a few minutes browsing this site - know that we rarely take such lists seriously. We've been named to some, left off of others, and six years into it, every guy that writes for DadCentric will tell you that yes, it's nice to be acknowledged, and yes, such acknowledgement and $3.50 will get you a grande latte at Starbucks.

Making some subjective list was never really the point, and never has been. What struck me as interesting were the women who bemoaned the fact that dads were trying to crash an exclusive party, one reserved for mombloggers. That's always seemed to me to be contradictory and self-defeating. We know that dadbloggers are thought leaders when it comes to changing the way society looks at fathers - and, more important, the way that fathers looks at themselves. We know that our partners are our staunchest supporters when it comes to our desire to share the parenting load. And yet, when dads look for a seat at the Parenting Magazine/Website/Blogging table, we're greeted with apathy, indignation, or derision. If the online parenting space is a metaphorical tripod, it's one with a shorter, wobbly third leg. 

Over at The Faster Times, writer Nathan Hegedus - an expat dad living in Sweden, which sounds like an equal parenting paradise - finds this a bit self-defeating: "Mom bloggers need to realize something", he writes. "Dad bloggers are your allies." (Emphasis is mine.) I'm quoted extensively in the article, but that shouldn't stop you from reading it, as Hegedus makes an excellent point about the waste and futility of creating divisions where there should be none. Oh, and that quote above? Gloria Steinem.

Are Dad Bloggers The Most Important Feminists Online Today? via The Faster Times.

 

 

#OccupyBabble!

So this is happening. 

Now, here's the funny part:

We're holding steady at #9, by the way. (FULL DISCLOSURE: we nominated ourselves, because hey, why not? DadaRocks did!) Now, to be fair, Babble does have 3 actual dadbloggers (along with that Single Dad Laughing guy, who we believe is some sort of celestial being/Matrix Agent, at least after reading his descriptions of himself) on the payroll. And a bunch of us did receive a blast email in June from Babble, saying that they're "doing a big feature on dad blogs* to coincide w/the launch of a Dad section...date TBD". In any case, if Babble is a true parenting site, and not just a site for moms (although...y'know, if ESPN devoted 90% of its coverage to football, wouldn't that make it a football channel, not a "sports" channel?) then they should be stoked to see the other 50% of the parenting equation represented on their contest.

*yeah, we're under no illusion that we'll get a mention in that big dad blog feature after these shenanigans.

UPDATE (10/21/11)!

 

Bronies Are Passionate, Creepy

I've been watching, with some interest, the Bronie flame war that's erupted over at SD Momfia. Way back in June, my wife Beth wrote that post about Bronies - adult males who are rabid fans of My Little Pony - and how they're sort of, well, creepy. Since then, the Brony herd (I'm assuming that's what the collective is called?) has been piling it on, maybe protesting a bit too much about their whole deal and the greatness that is MLP. Here are some of the best comments:

Commenter "Marrik": "That man isn’t the head bronie. bronies are not lead by one individual so there is no leader at all."

Commenter "Brotaku": "...these little ponies are cute and small and sweet, and somewhere in our male minds, buried below the repressed feelings and pointless displays of masculinty, is an instinct to protect the cute, the small, the helpless. To prove my point ask any brony how he felt when Gilda made Fluttershy cry."

Commenter "Relictus": "I like the characters, and it’s a pleasant diversion from the real world of rampant unemployment and a faltering economy. Plus, you learn a little something about friendship every episode. I don’t really have friends – but ponies won’t judge me."

Commenter "Aiden Raccoon": "Oh come on. I’m in the furry community and, while true, furries find plenty of fap material, MLP is NOT one of them."

So, I don't see what the big deal is here, other than, you know, the whole "adults turning a cartoon show aimed at my four-year-old daughter into a fucking lifestyle choice" thing. Also, Hitler.

 

 

 

MomCentric - Kristen Chase, "Fathers, Be Good To Your Daughters"

Hi all - Jason here. Every so often we turn the reins over to one of our favorite moms; today's special Guest Mom is Kristen Chase, the prolific scribe who can be found at Motherhood Uncensored, Cool Mom Picks, Cool Mom Tech, and at fine booksellers everywhere. Here she candidly talks about her father, and the long shadow that he cast over her life.

I've been robbed a couple of times in my life, but none of those compare to what my father took from me.

I go through phases of remembrance, most of it fading into a sad, hurtful past that I thought had been long buried with him.

But six feet wasn't deep enough for these old wounds.

I wrangle with who to blame for my own faults, most of which are a direct result of his abuse and alcoholism and my mom's apathy and ignorance, conquered by my own willpower and ability to scrape by, a good many years in therapy scrubbing off the protective layers one by one. But there is one I am only now fully grasping.

He erased an entire word from my vocabulary. Like it never even existed.

Intimacy.

Part of me wants to believe that I never actually had a fighting chance with that asshole of a father, and I often wish he had taken something, anything else.

My right fucking arm.

I've come to realize that the only true love I've ever known is what I feel for my children. It's like a punch to the gut that's magnificent even as you fall to the ground breathless. The thought of losing them impossible to bear for even a millisecond.

But men? Never.

I did what I thought was love until I was hurt, and then I pushed it aside and moved on to the next. Now I have kids and am less able or willing to do anything.

But I often wonder what might have been. Or could have been.

Before my dad died he told me I'd die a miserable person, and at the time, I laughed at him.

"No, you will" I said. "I have friends and people who love me."

But maybe he knew. Maybe he was right. The slaps on my face during the last moments I ever saw him a stinging reminder that he'd win, with my new life imitating my old life like a chapter in a psychology book.

I am strong. But not strong enough.

"In my next life," I whisper to myself. And then I put on my mascara, fold the laundry, and pray that I'm wrong.

Very very wrong.