OK, I know the calendar says June, the grass is green with leaves on the trees, heck my Rose bushes even have buds!  But why is it still so cold out?  The first 4 days of June have been rather chilly, in fact so cold the pool hasn't even been open.  I went this morning and it was cool and clear. 

But not so cold and clear where somebody wasn't even able to make it to the bathroom!  The had to close the pool because somebody launched a "Brown Trout" into the far end.  Yep, your thinking right, they took a dump in the pool and by no means was it a small toddler size excrement, but adult sized.  Nobody would admit it but I have a hunch it was the extra large young teenage boy in need of a bra who did it.   You see he was floundering in that end of the pool the disappeared and was only too helpful to help the women lifeguards who fished it out, dump it from the net.  I have no proof it was this kid but you don't need to be a rocket scientist to put two and two together.  Where did this kid go while Miss Katy the guard saw it and fished it out?  Probably to the men's room to finish up with the paperwork if you catch my drift.  Why did he go back and volunteer to run the net?  Heck this kid had a case of Plumbers Butt that would humble a true pro!  Think about it, for a person to leave a poop in the pool with a swimsuit on, takes effort because well you know...  If those girls had any Cajone's they would have put two and two together and figured out who did what and nailed this kid!  But I am just a Stay at Home Dad who was catching up on some reading before swimming because my kid is in school today and good thing I read, because I might have got some on me!

Those poor girls didn't know what to do because Mr. Steve was at another pool today, good thing they called him because they put Danger tape, (although it was in Spanish) around it to close the pool and Shocked it and scrubbed the skid marks the load created away.  I asked Miss Katy why they closed it, and she thought a second about the wording and while trying to be a big girl said there was feces in the pool while not trying to be too grossed out.  These were just high school girls who guard in the summer for the awesome tan, not to pull teenage or adult bowel movement from the pool.  I give these girls a thumbs up for their effort today!

1.    Chewable fever breaker with sore throat reliever and cough suppressant (may require multiple meds).  Make sure they are all compatible with each other. 

2.   Children’s Pepto, for the overindulgence of sweets, upset/sour stomach that can happen when you least expect it, a real lifesaver!  Need I say more? 

3.    Pre-moistened wipes for those unexpected blowouts, either below the belt or when extra catsup is added when you are not looking.  It is also a good idea to wipe the shopping cart down; especially during the cold and flu season.

4.    Juice Boxes stashed in your car.

5.    A pocket full of loose change, you never know when one of those gumball type machines at their eye level is going to disrupt your plans when you are jammed for time and you need complete cooperation.  Who said 25¢ can’t by peace

So, we Stay at Home Dads are in a unique position where we get to relive all the good things we had when we were kids to pass along to our kids. One of my favorites is ice cream and frozen custard! What is your favorite taste? Thinking back on it, the old DQ was pretty grand, and then came along the advent of, drum roll please. At the no. 3 position Cold Stone Creamery and their high dollar treats, No. 2 Good Times with their Spoon Bender and the best from the Milwaukee area and my all time no. 1 favorite Kopp's Frozen Custard Flavor of the Day; all worthy competitors with an awesome taste!
What is yours?

The InStep Pathfinder is a bonus compared to other tag along bikes priced more than double in price. You've no doubt seen this type of thing being pulled more often than not by a mountain bike, it connects to your seat post, has a third wheel, a seat behind a set of handle bars and pedals to push. This hybrid has no brakes and free wheels backwards too if the rider does not want to pedal they can cruise, but pedaling is encouraged.
Sticker price of $119.00 but it was on sale for $79.00, dad's bonus shopping thanks to a Miss Debbie(of the Y) tip at the clubhouse when she asked what we were doing for the day and I went off on an overpriced tag along rant.
My son graduated to his second bike with training wheels this week even though he still goes about 1 mile max, and he goes so slow I can't keep my bike balance but he rides faster than I can walk which was causing us problems and the balance I provide him will only help him, or so I hope.
Last weekend we went for a big family Mothers Day ride along the Spring Creek Trail in Fort Collins and we were able to borrow an older model InStep that my son desperately wanted to ride on but was a little intimidated and rode in a Burly with his younger cousin the first 6 miles. At the 6-mile mark I stopped with the tag along still attached to my bike and waited for the Burly to catch up and when we pulled up I said "I sure need help pedaling uphill wanna ride and help me out?" He said sure and unbuckled to get out and climb aboard my rig while wearing his helmet. We took off slow, I kept asking/telling him to hang on, which he did, and soon we were at the end of the trail ready to turn around for the cruise back down to the east. The ride was uneventful other than my son getting cramps in his hand from holding on tight for so long but I heard him singing as if I have never heard him sing before as he pedaled while loving life.
Getting back to the PF 250, setup was minimal out of the box and after a couple of test rides around the block we got the seat height right and the handlebars in a good forward position. I did have to fiddle and play with the double directional knuckle pivots the PF 250 uses when negotiating turns a couple of times. I was a little concerned about the seat post mount to my bike and the way I had to torque it down, my seat rotated as I negotiated turns but I fixed that by tightening the lever for the seat to make it tight and loosened the knuckle even further. I looked at the REI brand of tag along on their web site that runs for $159.00 and it had all the similar critical components. It had the quick release for the handlebars his and my seat post mounts where the PF 250 had Allen Bolt patterns at these locations; but hey, for $75 bucks I can turn some bolts!
In this dads opinion if you don't need a splash guard to protect junior when there is water at the curb and don't mind spinning a wrench if you change bikes (you can get an extra mount of the InStep web site for 8 bucks to eliminate the wrenching) this tag along is well worth the money! I bet we outgrow it by the time all the new tire nubs wear out and by then it will be garaged sale sold a couple of times. Time will tell, but I also have an InStep Jog Stroller that has been to Disneyworld and back while being put through our paces, miles and Sippy spills and still runs strong. I did not even blink twice about the brand in my 10 minute in and out of Target!

Kids Are Smart!

After a couple weeks of a living Hell , it seems to have worked so far as long as I keep reminding him of what he's doing. 
Last night after a couple weeks of thrash, This Stay at Home Dad sat down with my four year old while I tried to gain his attention.  I wasn't too sure I had it, but I kept talking about what big boys do and how their parents react, and what he's doing now and the way I am reacting.  He was looking away but listening to me, mark a small victory for me!
I kept going, pointing out his behavior and comparing our life to a big kid's behavior and what their parents did as a result.  We were starting to make small brief eye contact, mark a small success for me!
Slowly, I had his full attention as I continued with I know you are a nice sweet boy because I have seen it when we go out to the clubhouse, the store and Soccer, and everyplace else.  What happens when we get home?  He started to break away and look for anything else to look at but me as I continued.  He knew I was on to his game, mark another small success for me!
This morning dawned early as usual for us at 6:45 with him calling for his mom who had left for work 15 minutes earlier, and I yelled back telling him "Mom was at work already" as I jumped out of bed and took a quick three minute shower before my thrash continued for yet another day.  I got dressed, he called me into his room, I said "why?", and he said, "Because I want you to". So I went in and he just said "I want my Mommy", I told him, "Mom was at work already but I'm here" as I went back to comb my hair.  He got up and went downstairs acting like a changed man, he was polite and considerate this morning he didn't even demand his toast shaped waffles or a Sippy of Milk right away, I poured his cup of Milk and delivered it as I was guessing he was developing his game plan to reek havoc in my life today.  I went to turn on his shows before clubhouse preschool as I fired up my trusty Dell laptop to check my e-mail and yesterdays web stats.  He started asking for some waffles and I said in just a minute, he asked again so I jumped to make them and tame the evil spirit before he made an appearance. 

As of 9 AM this morning, mark a small victory for this Stay at Home Dad in a lifetime of kid conflicts to come!
Just try talking to your kids!  They're listening!

Or Another Sign of Aging

Do you remember those days not so long ago when if there were dead silence it would send you into a tizzy while scrambling for something that produced some sort of sound?  I know it did this Stay at Home Dad.  Maybe it was the stereo or radio in the days before the Ipod revolution, as long as it made sound it worked.   Do you ever drive whatever it is you drive without music on?  This was me till about six months ago; always playing some kind of music wherever I went, and now I relish driving someplace by myself, solo, while listening to nothing other than my automatic transmission shift while accelerating.  The sweet sounds of silence!

While this stay at Home Dad was sitting in the kitchen at his Dell laptop relishing the sweet sounds of nothing it dawned on him, in the immortal words of Jimmy Buffett, I grew up into one of those people my parents warned me about.  OK, not really but you get the idea, I am just as if my folks were when I was young and I swore it would never happen to me!

However, tonight after a full day of my preschoolers thrashing and ordering me while demanding me to do things I would not do; of which I ranted about here yesterday, 26 Apr 2007.  I sat here and relished calmness to the dull redundant hum of the refrigerator as I knocked back the only beer in my house, a 24 oz. Miller High Life Light as I typed this Blog to post in the morning and boy, I wish I had another.  In the modest words of Pink Floyd, am I comfortably numb?  I don’t know but it feels good hearing nothing as I do something. 

Thinking back on it, I am comfortably numb while being the person my parents warned me about!

Should I see a Gastroenterologist?   

Kind of sounds like it, huh?

  I’ve had quite the blockage lately when it comes to inputting words on screen so this morning the concerted effort I began typing these random thoughts.

·         Why is it my Comcast.com cable Internet connection only goes away during the weekday work hours of 8 to 5?  It goes down at 10 till 8 this morning after being down yesterday afternoon and mysteriously reappears at 5:10.  If I call the laimo tech support and they say “all is OK on their side of life wherever they are, more than likely Bangladesh India that it must be on your end, we can have a technician at your house in two or three days, can we schedule a meeting between 8 and noon or 1 to 5?”  Then I say “no, I’ll just reset my modem and do an ipconfig /refresh and renew at the prompt and then wait till 5 or so and it’ll be back.” 

·         Same goes with my OneandOne.com web hosting service and getting beyond 3^rd grade database tech support, the person I talk to about this has no idea so they escalate it to the next level (more than likely their level 2 support is in the states) which is never followed up on, OUTSOUCED tech support is Lame!  Tech support in general is lame, ever tried dealing with AOL support where they talk to you like you’re in kindergarten?   Yes, I had to go with this in the infancy days of Broadband so I could connect faster than 48k in my telecom black hole of a neighborhood.  It worked but was a humiliating experience!

·         This Stay at Home Dad has got Sunrocket.com Telephony phone service which is Internet dependant so the phone goes out as well, no biggy because my Sprint.com cell is my old stand by.  Only yesterday this Stay at Home Dad had all calls forwarded to voice mail (I attempted to remove the forward at 4:30 before we left for soccer as it can only be done over the web page interface) so if my wife got some employment inquiries from all the jobs she’s been applying for lately.  She can listen to what they say first hand for herself, instead of me taking notes and then be wrongly accused by my wife that this Stay at Home Dad didn’t ask the one key question that she had that I didn’t know about, and get in trouble for not asking it, so having it go strait to voice mail is a no brainer for me.  But I caught a ton of shit over it last night waiting for my son’s 5:30 Little Tykes Soccer game. 

·         Sunrocket is right on for phone service!  Even though Comcast.com  is the weak link here and leaves a little something to be desired!Well that’s it for know, my blockage is partially removed, I don’t know what Comcast.com anal problem is.; just as soon as my Internet returns I’ll post this! 
I input this into a Word.doc at 8 this morning so I could save my thoughts in between my 4.5 YO toddler thrash, his preschool drop off and pickup with Coach Steve and picking up the never ending  rain of M & Ms onslaught from the kitchen floor.  So look at the Blog entry time/date posted which in all likelihood will be later this morning or god forbid, this afternoon.

The Top 3 Jobs Aside Being a Stay at Home Dad in America Today:

 

In no particular order

1. TV Weather Person
2. Hurricane Forecaster
3. General Manager of the Colorado Rockies

TV Weather Person

You get to stay clean, be on TV, hangout the anchor women, and most important you get paid and thanked for being wrong.  If you call for rain and it doesn’t, people thank you.  If you predict big snow and it doesn’t, people are happy.  It’s like they expect you to be wrong!

Hurricane Forecaster

See TV Weather Person.  Getting paid and accepted to be wrong.

General Manager of the Colorado Rockies

You take over a team that was leading the league in attendance and on the verge of being a respectable team, and who are moving into a new stadium.  Life would be pretty sweet one would think, but if you get the team to be a bottom dweller in the standings and consecutive sell outs are a thing of the past and life gets even better!  You get a contract extension and a raise.  This guy, Dan O’Dowd doesn’t even strive for mediocrity, they just plain stink as a team.  I would take his job for the difference in pay between his old contract and new and love my life.  My team sure couldn’t do any worse and the Monfort’s who own the team would be saving big bucks!

OK after a bunch of thrashing and language barriers with outsourced tech support folk I got a Stay at Home Dad survey active again.  Today really sucked, between toddler wars and language barriers with folk who would admit no wrong, my database is working again so I am reposting.  There were a few dads who took the survey and had no results post, would you guys be so kind as to take it one more time?  My work will hold up this time, knock on Indian wood!  Text from my previously deleted post is below. After reading Mr. Baylies web site which has survey results from 2004 at http://www.angelfire.com/zine2/athomedad/index.blog?topic_id=17189  and thought we needed more recent data.  Survey link Survey results linked there as well. It now collects no user data after I saw what it did with the first two submissions.  I will now be working on a web query to subtotal results.

       

 

Top Ten Reasons Geeks Make Good Fathers

 

I have a Top Ten of Geekdom for you inspired by

Maryam's geek blogs: Ten reasons why Geeks make good fathers. http://imhelendt.spaces.live.com/

Check this out!  Then come back and read this posting.  I wonder what the average amount of time a full time working mother spends with her kids in a family where we dads stay at home being a Stay at Home Dad.  I’ll just bet it’s a whole bunch more.

There are 24 hours in a day, granted, and assuming 8 of them are sleeping, 7 hours a week is an hour a day, puleeze!  Unless these dads are100+ hours a week which I doubt is even a real possibility, these polled working dads are slackers, that’s right SLACKERS.  Woo hoo an hour a day, that’s serious bonding happening.  I wish for seven hours a week of dad only time while I’m awake.  Sorry not fare here, my son is in preschool now but still, 7 hours a week?  I wonder how many hours are spent at a happy hour.   Sorry for the rant, but just 7 hours?  Please…

On this Stay at Home Dad Blog and Blog I, spent the better part of the day and evening in a deep Internet forum discussion at a dad web site with an individual who always had to have the last word and posted his remarks in a joking fashion, only I had no idea he was joking, a real comedian.  It got ugly and in the process I was called a nitwit and he insulted my mom, lovely.  So I will be back on my Blog comparison now that this issue has hopefully been put to rest.

Not Updated Score:

My Space 2 Pros: custom backgrounds and sounds, copy and paste from Word needs no cleaning up Cons: offline quite a bit on a Saturday

Windows Live Space 1 Pros:  Real time updated globe map and links, pretty cool Cons: Copy and paste from Word needs cleaning up, no customization

-MileHiDad

Being a weekend I had to focus on family, so all I'll say is Windows Live Rocks more on stats seeing how it gives you the referring URL and daily plus weekly reads where My Space just gives read counts.

My Space 2 Pros: custom backgrounds and sounds, copy and paste from Word needs no cleaning up Cons: offline quite a bit on a Saturday, Stats

Windows Live Space 2 Pros:  Real time updated globe map and links, pretty cool, Stats Cons: Copy and paste from Word needs cleaning up, no customization, adds a ..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> on a paste.

On this Blog I continued my theme creation and it’s now to my liking, for right now anyway.  I had significant problems when accessing my Blog at My Space but it seems to be resolving slowly so good luck if you visit.  At this point I’ve changed my Blog URL in my mail signatures to point to My Space as well as my web site links.  I really dig the sound and graphics I got on my Blog as they really seem to compliment each other.

Updated Score:

My Space 2 Pros: custom backgrounds and sounds, copy and paste from Word needs no cleaning up Cons: offline quite a bit on a Saturday, adds a ..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> on a paste.

Windows Live Space 1 Pros:  Real time updated globe map and links, pretty cool Cons: Copy and paste from Word needs cleaning up, no customization.

-MileHiDad