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. 

Traveling for Turkey

With a long way to go and a lot to see and do, we departed L.A. a few days early for Thanksgiving this year.  Though BC has been to Ohio several times before, his most recent journey was almost a year ago and before he could walk and talk. So we had no idea what was in store for this 4+ hour flight with the Little Dude, but hoped for the best.

A lot of people suggested we use Benadryl or some other sedative to help make it through the flight. But the thing I didn’t understand was if we tried one of those and it worked, who would watch BC for the duration of the flight? We decided to just hope for the best. And bring a lot of candy.

We left the house early and arrived at LAX 90 minutes before our flight.  We checked our bags and headed to security.  With a slew of lines, we were quickly pointed in one direction by the lead TSA agent. After not moving for a few minutes, I looked ahead to see what the problem was. It was then that I noticed that we’d been profiled by security. As parents. We’d been directed into some sort of “family line”, which I guess is intended for people who’ve never been to an airport before and don’t understand how metal detectors work.  After we made it through the line, one of our bags was flagged by the x-ray machine and had to be searched.  The Little Dude’s Elmo sippy cup appeared threatening to the TSA agents.  Fortunately the water inside was non-lethal, which isn’t always guaranteed in Los Angeles.  

For several months, the Little Dude has been obsessed with airplanes.  Any time we see one, whether in the sky, on TV, or even in a book he feels compelled to point it out.  So taking him to the airport was like leaving Kirstie Alley unattended at The Cheesecake Factory. He went nuts.  Roughly every 7 seconds we heard exclamations of “Airplane! Airplane!”.  I tried to explain to him that we were actually going on to be on an airplane shortly, but the excitement continued even after we boarded.  Good thing the flight was only supposed to be 4 hours.

Once we found our row it was a thrill to notice that there was a 3-month old sitting right behind us and a 6-month old 2 rows in front of us.  For a change we could be the dirty look givers, not receivers.   

BC had a good time once he was reunited with an old friend: Elmo on the portable DVD player. Like a lot of parents, I don’t think using TV as a babysitter is a great idea.  More like fantastic! We got to watch several episodes of Elmo’s World and afterward I figured we were almost to our destination. I checked my watch and it had only been 2 hours, with 2 more to go.  Where’s that Benadryl… 

We played games, colored, ate and it was only another half an hour. What to do next? I volunteered for every traveler’s favorite activity: walking the kid up and down the aisle.  Either people are much larger than they used to be or those aisles are more narrow, for even the Little Dude had a hard time wedging through some of the herd who opted to clog up the passageway.

We finally arrived in sunny (I mean grey and cloudy) Cleveland. Since BC had been cooped up for quite a while, we wanted him to get some exercise.  Fortunately, the fine folks at Continental Airlines helped us out by taking 40 minutes to spit our bags onto the conveyor belt.  After a shuttle bus ride that would have reminded me of Space Mountain if it had been a little more smooth, we arrived at the car rental station. Again, we had great cooperation from the Budget agent who unsuccessfully tried all kinds of shenanigans to get me to “upgrade” and overpay for an unimpressive Dodge SUV, so BC got another 45 minutes to run around the rental area.  He got so much exercise that if he ran any more, people might have confused him with Forrest Gump.  

All in all, it was quite a day.  BC behaved very well and we all survived the journey. Even better was right after leaving the car rental place, I had the foresight to order my favorite hometown food to be delivered to our destination and the driver arrived about 5 minutes after we did. Check out this pic of the world’s best fried chicken from Rizzi’s in Copley, Ohio. If you’ve never had it, you are missing out.  And probably much thinner than me.  I’m not a big turkey fan, so now I can honestly say that I ate a terrific bird while on this trip.  Let’s just hope the next few days go as smoothly as getting here.  

Happy Thanksgiving! What are you Thankful for this year?

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--JJ aka The Dude of the House