We Are Live From Kansas City Folks!

Yep.

I promise I'll post pictures soon...

In Four Days...

I'll be here:

http://www.athomedadconvention.com

and so will these folks:

http://moderndaydad.com

http://kchomedad.blogspot.com

http://kev.homelinux.net

http://www.hail2pitt.org

as well as about 40 some other proud stay-at-home dads.

and we'll talk about things like this:

http://www.athomedadconvention.com/2006_Convention_Web_Program.pdf

Howlin'...

at the moon.

Full Moon, Dead Moon

just because

The Band That Played With Black Elk

  

Black Elk

 


Wow. 

Portland's Black Elk bringin' the goods.

Ghosts

  

Picasa O Sweet Picasa

Why do you cause me so much grief?

Halloween (Slight Return)

 


Hockey Man meets Red Power Ranger

Current Temperature

Raleigh, North Carolina
Currently: 38°F


Conclusion: It is cold as shit.

Houston... We Have Poop

So September proved to be a landmark month in the household: my 3-and-a-half year old son is now officially potty trained.

That means no more diapers.
And diapers are expensive.
But I'm sure the cost will quickly be absorbed somewhere else.

During this past month, I had to face one of my greatest fears as a parent.
And I stood and faced it head on.

You see, before I ever even thought about having kids, I always wondered how parents delt will the public bathroom with kids-on-the-cusp of potty training.

I've been in some nasty bathrooms in my day, but I don't think my boys will be seeing the inside of a rock club's bathroom anytime soon.

But then there's always Six Flags, A Durham Bulls game or - gasp! - the fast food restaurant in the middle of nowhere on a long road trip.

So a few weeks back the time finally came for me: I had just arrived at the soccer fields where my 6-year-old has practice. And after about two minutes the little guy told me he had to go pee.

"For real?" I said.
"For real," he said.
"But you just went before we left the house," I said.
"Dad," he said with a huff.
Then he stomped his foot on the ground and said, "I have to go potty!"

And that's when we saw the Port-A-John.

So we both went in and I instructed him not to touch anything. He peed in the urinal but couldn't keep his eyes of the exposed toliet seat.

We left I and took a deep breath of fresh air.
And then he stopped.

"I have to go potty dad," he said.
"But you just went," I said.
"I have to poo," he said.

So we went back in - and like the trooper father that I am - I held my son over the toilet seat and watched him take a dump into the cesspool below. He was sort of tottering on the edge of the toilet seat and began putting his hands where no human should ever have to put them unless in the middle of some sort of tortutous interogation.

I tried to get his hands in control while removing him off the seat and then he slid forward... leaving a streak of poo on the seat and across his butt check. So now do I not only have to wipe his ass (have you ever seen toilet paper in a Port-A-John?) but clean the seat off as well.

At one point I thought one of his shoes - from the movie Cars - was going to fall in and that I would find myself trying to explain to a crying toddler why I wasn't going to retrieve his favorite shoe from the mucky muck of poo.

So I faced the public bathroom fear - in a Port-A-John no less - and lived to tell about it.

And yes, they had hand sanitizer in there.
This is Chapel Hill afterall.

Flotsam & Jetsam - I Heart Grilling

My new gourmet charcoal grill (left) made by Hasty Bake and my old, trusty Weber charcoal grill (right).

My wife scored this gem off of this online classified web site she trolls from time to time called www.freecycle.org

Yes, someome gave away a grill estimated at a couple of thousands of dollars for free because they didn't want the hassle of dealing with selling it online.

And yes, out of thirty something responses we were the lucky ones chosen to receive it.

Flotsam & Jetsam - Bathroom Renovations

So we're are currently in the process of renovating our bathroom. Our house was built in 1972 and had this heinous wall paper on it. We suffered through eight years of it before finally deciding to rip in down a few weeks ago.

Then the wife went hog wild and started demolishing walls and removing doors and stuff.

Of course, we have yet to decide on a floor (tile vs. vinyl) or the color of paint (see below).

Flotsam & Jetsam - Pick A Color

Any color? 

I, Caterer - Say What?

My catering peers and I, we have this thing about overheard conversations.

Because in my business, people say the damnest things. And we get to hear it all.

Here are a few choice comments recently heard:

- "My office is full of academiologists"
[Duke University staff are allowed to make up words]

- "The kids these days have bloggeritis"
[It's a terrible disease. Incurable they say.]

- "The best way to get rid of geese, if you have a geese problem, is to soak crackers in anti-freeze." [Um, yeah.]

- "Dumpstering for furniture is much better in New York City,"
[That's why grad school is better in the Northeast.]

- "This drink is not for me." [Do I care?]

- "Let's all raise your wine, your beer, your Coke... and make a toast"
[The Lt. Governor of North Carolina during a speech at the Pepsi Sail America tall ships event]

Flotsam & Jetsam - Reading

One thing I have become as a stay-at-home-dad is an avid reader.

My appetite to feed my brain - stained with images of Barney and Spongebob - is insatiable.

So I have turned to books.

At first it was periodicals; magazines, newspapers - anything you could read at a quick clip when the moment struck you. You know, like Reader's Digest on the shitter.

As an audiophile, I was well aware - and well equipped - to handle the scouring of used bookstore land. And I did my best at that: I have a fairly decent home library.

But one thing I stumbled upon is the library book sale.

And I haven't missed the local Chapel Hill and Durham library sales but maybe once
a quarter (they are held four times a year).

Which all brings me to a long winded way of telling anyone out there what I have recently read:

1. King Silverman by George Pelecanos
2. Killing Yourself To Live by Chuck Klosterman
3. Waylon: An Autobiography by Waylon Jennings with Lenny Kaye

I'm a huge fan of Pelecanos' crime noir especially because he peppers his tomes with a ton of music references and even more so because they all take place in my old stomping grounds - the metropolitan DC area. King Silverman is set right around the time of the big Bicentennial celebration in 1976, so while the plot was textbook crime fiction at best, it brought back lots of memories.

Klosterman's novel was suppose to be about visiting "historic" places where famous rock stars died but essentially is a road trip book about a guy waxing nostalgic about past girlfriends. Yeah, a music critic for Spin talking about women. Not much more to say about this other than it was as disposable as the pop culture he references throughout. But I guess that may have been the point: You can remember an old girlfriend - or girl you wanted to be your girlfriend and only had imaginary conversations with in your head - like you wistly remember Joe Izuzu, glossing over the obnoxious sheen. A few pages - maybe about ten - appeal to the music critic side of me - and unfortunately making me vividly remember wanting to compare Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger to English composition 101.

I'm glad I never wrote that one.

I took a non-linear approach to reading the Jennings bio, mostly because I found myself only reading it in the bathroom and not really feeling it enough to engage myself in it. Mildly interesting from a historical context but not being a huge Waylon fan, a lot of pages went unread. Where's Nick Tosches when you need him?

Confessions Of A Punk Rock Dad - Bodily Fluids

One insight I often share with new parents or parents-to-be is the fact that after you have a kid, bodily fluids are not as scary as they once were.

As a parent, you will be pooped on, peed on and puked on.

And, after awhile, you will come to accept the fact that at any moment of any day you will most likely come in contact with your child's bodily fluids.

You will find yourself somewhere when all the sudden your child sneezes. A quick glance will tell you there's not a tissue for miles, and without a second thought, you will reach down, grab your shirt and wipe the snot off your child's face. Another technique I have seen is the "pinch the snot" with your fingers and then rub it on a pant leg or sock.

One time my when my 6-yr.-old son was a mere toddler, he came down with the flu. All he wanted was to he held. The problem was, all his body wanted to do was shit and puke. So suddenly I found myself in the middle of the night standing in the bathroom holding my somnombulist child while he preceeded to vomit on my shoulder and down my back.

I can do nothing but stand there, listen to it drip onto the vinyl floor, and feel it slide down between my butt cheeks. After his puking jag, I traded shoulders with my wife while I slipped away to take a nice hot shower to wash off the stench of vomit.

Only to return to shoulder duty and have him repeat the whole process all over again.

There isn't a parent out there who doesn't have at least one story like the one above.

Which brings me to last week: I'm at soccer practice for my 6-yr.-old with my 3-yr.old son in tow. Since practice is from 4:15-5:15pm, I brought along a smattering of snacks for the boys. I had an ice cold bottle of water, some wheat thins, a couple of nutragrain snack bars, some animals crackers and a zip loc sandwich baggie full of raisins.

As practice began, 3-yr.-old Cole uttered those famous words: "I'm hungry."

Fortunately, I was prerared. He ate a bunch of animal crackers before deciding to dig into the raisins. He smiled and showed me the raisins in his mouth. Then began to cough or choke.

Or something.

I couldn't tell if he was faking it or not. I asked him afew times if he was alright but got no answer. Seconds start to feel like hours and as I processed the information that he was indeed choking, he stuck his finger down his throat and dislodged the raisin - and half the contents of his stomach - out of his mouth and onto his legs and feet. And yes, my legs and feet as well.

I ran back to the car and got a bag of diaper wipes and preceeded to use those to clean ourselves.

Of course now the little puker didn't feel so hot so he wanted to sit on my lap for the rest of the duration of soccer practice, the perfume of puke wafting through the air. And I just sat there wit him and endured it.

I had both boys immediately jump into the tub once we got back home from soccer practice.

And then I took my shower.

I, Caterer - Image Is Everything

I have been working for various local catering companies on-and-off, part-time for almost a decade.

One of the things I love about catering, especially as a stay-at-home-dad, is that it pays very well and the hours are flexible.

Another thing I love about it is that it is never the same twice. Each shift is always almost entirely different than the shift you worked before it. Sure you can find yourself working at the same venues over and over again but rarely
does one shift ever duplicate another.

Last weekend I worked a pool party at a house in a gated community called The Governor's Club (http://www.governorsclub.com/). They were an older couple, recently married, with no kids. It turned out ot be a work party get-together set up by the hostess to entertain her new co-workers. Nice people.

But a lot of times when you find yourself in these kinds of situations you find you notice the oddest things. In this case, it was the fact the the couple had a Porche and a Hummer in their driveway yet a 12-year-old dishwasher that barely worked.

And I think, "You've got hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of car - and car insurance - outside, a huge house with a pool, flat screen tv and marble counters in the kitchen, yet you have a dishwasher that is a piece of shit?"

It's best not to think these things over for too long, but sometimes, when you are stuck in the lull between serving food and bussing it, you've got nothing better to do than to question that which surrounds you.

Tonight I work at party at this old mansion in downtown Durham (http://www.greystone.info/history.htm) and - due to the sheer volume of steps - it is not the most pleasant place to work. Not to mention it is rumored to be haunted by a little girl. Oh and did I forget to add Tropical Storm Ernesto has just passed through?

The Mighty Conch

Spencer proudly displaying the conch shell he found in the shallows at low tide during our stay at North Topsail Beach.

I told him to act like King Neptune and blow it like a horn because it would attract mermaids.

"Now why would I want to do that that?" he said.

Hopefully I'll get around to posting some pictures of the many sharks teeth we found that week.

The Thrill Of Victory

Spencer celebrates his victory over Cole in a raucous game of sand skee ball. Notice the evil eye the defeated Cole is giving his big brother...