I’m Not a Slacker

Back in November when I went to the At Home Dad Convention in Kansas City, there was a writer from England who is a SAHD. His article was recently published in the Telegraph. It’s a really nice piece and you can read it here.

I hope everyone is having a nice holiday with their family no matter what or how you celebrate.

Gavin was reading our Christmas cards and was asking what a word was. I told him to sound out the letters and he says, ” NO-ELLL. Daddy, there is TOO an L!”

I can’t wait until I have to explain homonyms.

Gavin and I were leaving the place where we were playing today and walk past a fire extinguisher door in the wall. This was an enclosed door where you couldn’t see what was inside, there were just the words “Fire Extinguisher” in an arrow and the word “FIRE” on the handle. Gavin stops and asks what’s in there? Usually I just tell him whatever he is wondering and move on but this time I told him that it says it on the door, you just have to read it. He looks at the letters and says, “Fa eye arr ee, faeyearreee FIRE! Daddy! That says Fire!” Then I ask him what the handle says since it is written top to bottom. He takes one glance and says, “FIRE!” I thought that was pretty good for a 2 1/2 year old so I told him Extinguisher without having him guess.

The wife was complaining about work today and it got me thinking how I really don’t have that option.

Before I get started let me set a few things straight. I really enjoy being a stay at home dad, I’m good at it and I’m happy knowing that I am making a difference in a person’s life, it’s just like anything else, after doing it a while you tend to get tired of some things. The problem is who do you complain to?

When a person goes to work in the morning, whether you have kids or not, you might have a horrible day but 8 hours later you get to leave and go home to do something else. In my situation the job never leaves! I get up and I start working, which is entertaining Gavin, grocery shopping, doing the laundry and dishes and so on. 8 hours later when the wife comes home she is tried and maybe cranky from a bad day at the office but my office is still here and I need to cook dinner (or find something to have delivered, hehe) and finish up a bunch of other things.

Everyone at work has someone they can’t stand and you tend to focus your anger towards that person, blaming them for this or that thing that you feel wronged by or just a person to complain about. I don’t get that release, am I supposed to complain about my family? That’s who my co-workers are. I don’t think my wife would appreciate it much if started saying, “You would not believe this person I have to live with! She comes home from scrapbooking and leaves all her stuff right at the front door and now I have to avoid tripping over it all the time! I guess I could put it away but that should be her job, we’re all adults here and know where things go. The nerve of some people!” (Sorry Honey, I Love You! )

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I miss that “second place”. Most people have 3 places; First Place is the home and family, Second Place is work and co-workers and Third Place is some other meeting place with friends, for a lot of people it is the local bar or maybe bingo. I don’t feel like I get the chance for the release I need compared to when I used to have a regular job.

Update on the computer situation. I tried a Knoppix live cd instead of ubuntu and I was able to mount the windows drive and access the contents so not all is lost. I also tried booting with an XP disc and going into the recovery console to fixmbr. I was able to then get as far as the XP splash screen and the computer would reboot. It looks like it is reinstall time, I’ll burn a bunch of her data to CD and then wipe the drive and start over. I think thats my best bet right now, plus it was time for a good housecleaning anyway.

I wake up this morning with Aubrey saying, “My computer doesn’t work, you need to fix it” I ask her what it is doing and she says that it won’t boot it just says 99 99 99 99. My first thought is that Lilo is acting up. She uses XP but tried Linux for a short time in the past and I’ve been too lazy to fdisk the MBR.

After she leaves I grab a boot floppy and discover that I get the error with that too. I unplug all the drives and finally get something I expected, BOOT DEVICE NOT FOUND. Knowing that at least something is working correctly I plug it all back it and was able to boot into a live linux CD. Still thinking that the bootloader is corrupt, I go to open the mounted HD and it isn’t there! I shut it down and as it is rebooting Gavin comes walking in and says, what was that noise?” It was then I discovered what I think I was purposely ignoring the entire time, the HD had died. When you power a computer up you normally hear the whining of the drive spinning, but now all I hear is BZZRT and silence, not too promising. Luckily, we have a file server here that we back up most of the important stuff to, so if I can’t recover any data she will probably just lose her email and email addresses.

We must have had a brownout that caused this issue since all the computers in the house rebooted but none of the clocks were flashing. One of these days I’m going to have to break down and buy some UPS’s!

I guess I’m going to be busy today while Gavin is napping!

Tonight, as I’m cooking dinner, Gavin comes up to me and says, “Daddy, you need to build me a computer.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m a little boy and I want a computer.”
“What will you do with one?”
“I will color and type letters and numbers and move the mouse and play music.”
“What kind of music?”
“WE WILL, WE WILL, ROCK YOU!!!”

I guess I can’t argue with that.

Gavin was acting up so I threw him out of the house. He seems to be doing alright living on the streets.

Actually we went hiking today at Laumeier Sculpture Park and that bathroom wall looking thing is a piece of art!