Skip the Tater Tots and Be a #HealthyDad

Though it usually appears glamorous in movies, most real-life business travel is generally anything but that. My day job takes me on periodic short trips, often back and forth in one day, and to say they are exhausting is like saying the ocean is wet. They’re even more exhausting than parenting. Coincidentally while en route home from my most recent daytrip last week, I had an epiphany: part of the reason I go on these trips is to help take care of my family (financially), but sitting at the gate  I realized that the choices I made on that trip prevented me from taking care of myself.

As the opening notes to “Here Comes the Sun” poured through my iPhone at 4:30am one day last week I knew that I had a flight to catch in 2 ½ hours and had to get moving. I’d slept less than 5 hours the night before and was drained from the get go. I was mostly ready to go from the night before so I quickly got dressed and while making a cup of green tea to take with me, I saw a box of Apple Jacks and grabbed a little baggyful for the road. Sustenance to get me to LAX, I told myself. Plus, it was kinda fruit, right?

One of the few benefits of pre-dawn flights is seeing things like this. 

While waiting for my flight I grabbed some oatmeal from a restaurant to take on the plane. It was loaded with blueberries, almonds and brown sugar. This seemed at least partly healthy or at least healthier than the frosted cinnamon roll that I really wanted at the same shop. After a short flight I had a brief layover before my connection. While traversing terminals at SFO I saw this headline and hoped they’d wait until after I’d gone to begin the testing:

No thanks, SFO. 

After arriving at my destination I met with some coworkers for lunch, AKA a greasy burger with tater tots before our big client meeting. How often does one see tots in a restaurant I asked myself as I wolfed the salty potato nuggets down? Answer: Not often enough to pass them up.

After our meeting we stopped at a gas station and everyone grabbed some candy and a Diet drink to balance it out and power through the long day’s final third. Once back at the airport an order of wings came my way as a sports bar was the only feasible fast place to eat and I needed to grab something to take with. I crushed that meal on my 3^rd flight of the day, along with some Twizzlers I’d discovered while waiting to pay for another Diet soda at the airport.  

It was while traversing SFO for the second time that day, as my stomach begged for mercy, that I realized that while my professional day had gone quite well, my personal day had been a disaster because I hadn’t even remotely taken care of myself. While waiting for my plane to board I grabbed a fruit cup for my 4^th and final flight of the day. I wasn’t even really hungry but felt I should have at least one quasi healthy food item during my marathon day.

It dawned on me, as I struggled to stay awake on my late night jaunt back to LAX that after a night of almost no sleep I’d made it through the day completely artificially via a combination of caffeine, grease and sugar. I’d started off relatively well with green tea and oatmeal but everything after that point was a disaster, which is not OK.

For someone my age, almost pushing 40, with young kids I need to do whatever it takes to ensure that I’m going to be around when they need me, whether it’s 5 years from now or hopefully 50. And a big part of that starts with taking care of myself. I’ve realized that being a Healthy Dad is important to me not only for my own longevity, but also because I’m a role model to my two Junior Dudes. What they see me do will resonate as they grow and that includes what I eat and drink. My pants have felt snug lately and I have not liked what I’ve seen in the mirror or pictures, so as I get ready to mark another notch around the sun in a few weeks I know that I need to be more proactive about my health. 

 For myself and my family.

I’m diligent about my kids getting their regular checkups but have been lax about my own. The truth is that I found a great doctor a few years back but when my company switched insurers he wasn’t on the new plan. I’m sure plenty of other great doctors are, however, and I’m doing myself a disservice by not taking advantage of the free annual physicals most plans include. My boys aren’t getting any younger and neither am I. It’s time for change. I want to be a Healthy Dad and that starts now. It’s time to get a good night’s sleep, skip the tater tots in lieu of a salad and carry healthy snacks so I have no excuses on these grueling 20-hour workdays. I need to do it. I can do it. I will do it.

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So why am I telling you all this? Because I was invited to participate in the #HealthyDad campaign to raise awareness for leading long healthy lifestyles and taking care of ourselves. I made this video, which you should totally check out on my Instagram, to show you a bit more of my inspiration and perspiration.

Make your own video and upload it to the Healthy Dad FB page for your chance to win one of five $100 Amazon gift cards. Totally worth it, for more reasons than one.

Legal Bizness: Thanks to Anthem Blue Cross, who sponsored the campaign, for including dads in this important discussion about family health care. My views are based solely on my experience as a parent, and not as a medical professional. All opinions contained within this post are mine, for better or worse. 

Hit the Spot

One thing I’ve struggled with for a long time (i.e. my whole life) is getting places on time. It’s not a disrespect thing, as people often say about others who are often late, but rather it’s an “I always forget two things in the house when it’s time to leave” thing and have to go back in to retrieve them. It's the perfect combination of ADD and OCD, if there is such a thing.

So when we received the invitation in the mail for my niece’s Bat Mitzvah across the country, two things came to mind:

1)      I was excited for the Little & Littler Dudes to play with their cousins

2)      I didn’t know how we’d make it to LAX with enough time to catch our flight

For most people, it probably wouldn’t be a problem. But this was our first trip with two kids and all of the accoutrement they require. Mrs. Dude is an expert trip preparer, but there was still the variable logistics of actually executing the gameplan.  

Having lived in LA for 13+ years, I’ve flown back to Ohio countless times over that period and almost always taken a nonstop morning flight around 11:00am. For some reason the airline (whose name rhymes with Shmunited) discontinued that flight for the two-week period which just so happened to coincide with our trip. Not sure why, but presumably they wanted to ensure this trip was even more fun for us by forcing us to stop and change planes en route.

Our flight was scheduled to depart at 9:57am and we live almost 30 minutes from LAX. In most cities, that would be a 30-40 minute trip. In LA it can take anywhere between 30 minutes and 2 hours, and no, I’m not exaggerating. Knowing we had to drop our bags at least 45 minutes before departure, we had to be at the ticket counter by 9:12am. I figured leaving the house at 7:00am would give us plenty of time to do the following:

1)      Drive the 30 miles

2)      Park the car

3)      Unpack the car, carseats and kids and transfer them all to the shuttle

4)      Get on shuttle to airport and hope they drive fast

5)      Unload bags from shuttle

6)      Get the bags inside and drop them at the counter

7)      Get through security

8)      Make it to gate before they close the plane’s door

Naturally we forgot a couple things and didn’t end up leaving until 7:30am. The race was on. Though I’ve performed this jig many times, it never gets any less stressful and this time the stakes were higher than ever. If we missed our flight, we were really screwed. The diapers were packed.

After some careful maneuvering, we pulled into The Parking Spot at 8:42am. I'd seen their big spotted shuttles for many years, but had never tried them and now I was putting their service to the test. We had exactly half an hour to get inside the terminal with all our stuff. I knew that the only option in such a time crunch was to valet the car. We pulled into the valet area and an attendant jumped to help us get everything out of the car. When I opened the rear hatch of my SUV, her eyes popped and she quickly grabbed a hotel-style luggage cart and started pulling everything out. Within a minute or so our suitcases, car seats and carry-ons were all stacked Jenga-style on the cart. Thirty seconds later she and the driver had loaded them onto the shuttle.

This is when the trip got exciting for the Little Dude and nerve wracking for me. He was enamored by the shuttle bus. He went and took a seat in the very back of the crowded shuttle and excitedly looked around and out the windows before shouting “let’s go!” as though he was ready to kickstart a horse. Mrs. Dude held the Littler Dude and I watched as his 3-year-old brother made friends with the businessmen who were leisurely headed to their flights, both literally and figuratively baggage-free. 

As the shuttle rolled into LAX, the Little Dude repeatedly exclaimed “this is fun!”. Watching him glow made it fun for me, bringing my stress level down quite a bit. As Prince’s Darling Nikki played on the shuttle’s stereo, we made our trip around the oval LAX upper concourse to our terminal. 

We pulled up, the last stop, naturally, and the driver helped us disembark faster than a psychic on the Titanic. As we juggled our suitcases, kids and carry-ons, we made it to the ticket counter with 9 minutes to spare and dropped our bags with a deep exhale.  Mission accomplished. 

NOTE: I was given free parking at The Parking Spot and wrote this post because they saved me from having to walk 2,000 miles. All opinions expressed within are entirely mine, for better or worse. 

Up in the Air

One of my favorite bloggers and also a good friend, You Know It Happens At Your House, Too, kindly asked me to write a guest post for her short series featuring Dad Bloggers this month & here it is. Thanks, Tara!  

You should follow her on Facebook and Twitter, too. Especially if you like pictures of Johnny Depp. 

Before I was married, I used to travel a lot for business. Connecting flights to random airports were the norm for me. If I was lucky I got upgraded to First Class. If not, I usually tried to sit in the quiet part of the plane, i.e. away from the parents traveling with little kids.

It’s not that I didn’t like kids, it’s just that I was invariably seated next to a mother traveling with screaming triplets and no other adults to help. I really think it must have been a similar experience that inspired the invention of noise-cancelling headphones.

Yes, I had no sympathy. I just wanted quiet so I could read in peace watch my DVDs of Anchorman or Old School for the 64^th time.  Do you know anyone who likes being kicked in the back for 3 straight hours?  I walked off of many flights feeling like a soccer ball after the World Cup.

That all changed when I became a parent and started flying with the Little Dude. He was 7 months old and it was our first trip as a family of 3. We’d pre-boarded our aisle and middle seats in the bulkhead of the plane. A few minutes later, a woman approached and noticed us. The look of disgust on her face resembled Morgan Spurlock’s after he ate at McDonalds every day for a month.  I watched her complain to the flight attendant before ultimately taking her seat. Let’s just say that my kid is so charming that within 30 minutes of departure she wanted to hold him.  It wasn’t lost on me that the way I’d long felt about kids on planes was being forced to evolve now that I was on the other side of the equation.

Traveling solo, I was thrilled to board a recent flight before most of the cabin. I staked out my carryon space in the overhead compartment and watched the huddled masses squeeze down the aisle, silently guessing who I would get stuck with. As I was getting settled in my aisle seat, I saw a woman with a screaming newborn baby headed in my direction.  I cringed and empathized concurrently.

They slowed down and sat across the aisle from me. I thought to myself that it was going to be a long 90 minutes. But then my parental instinct kicked in and told me to chill. I watched as they got settled and the baby calmed down a little.  It’s not a stretch to say I’ve mellowed over the last 2 ½ years.  But I felt much more at ease than I anticipated given the situation was compounded by my lack of sleep and change of time zones. As I was trying to get comfortable, a man claimed the window seat to my right and I stood up to let him pass.

I sat back down and was checking email on my iPhone when I heard someone say “excuse me, sir”. I looked up to see a woman with a boy who was probably 7 or 8 years old. “That’s his seat.”

Caught off guard, I stood up and let the boy pass. He had an Elmo backpack slung over his shoulders and was clutching a teddy bear tightly. He sat nervously between me and the window-seat man.

I looked around, expecting his mother to be headed off the plane after having dropped him off. Maybe to see his grandparents or his father, I wondered to myself.  Instead, she was headed 4 rows behind me to her own middle seat.

It was my turn in a heated game of Words with Friends, but I was suddenly distracted despite an available Triple Word space.  I started to feel badly for the young boy stuck alone between two strangers.  It wasn’t that long of a flight and he had things to occupy him, but I wondered how he was feeling. Was he scared? Should I say something to put him at ease? And it made me wonder how I would feel if my own young son was in his position.

I looked to my left and suddenly that baby didn’t seem to be crying so loud anymore.

I stood up and turned around. I spotted the boy’s mother and asked her if she wanted to switch seats.  With a look of joy and a tear in her eye, she happily said yes.

So I grabbed my things, headed down the aisle and crammed into a middle seat for 90 minutes. It was totally worth it.