The Joy and Pain of a Work at Home Dad

As a full-time work at home dad, I will admit that sometimes I miss the camaraderie that comes from working in a communal space, where coffee pots drip all day and phones ring endlessly. Though I enjoy the flexibility of my current position, which allows me to drive my boys to school every morning and be there when they arrive home every afternoon, sometimes I do long to be able to discuss last night’s Parks and Recreation with a real human being in the flesh instead of the randomTwitterverse.

One of the biggest career challenges I’ve faced was when I began working for a company with a completely remote workforce just before my younger son turned 1-year-old, which coincided with when Mrs. Dude began teaching full-time. She and I made the bittersweet, yet necessary, decision to hire someone to watch our son at home while I was working just a few feet away. Though I keep a separate workspace from our living area, it was frustrating every time I left my office to refuel or relieve and saw him frolicking with the nanny. I desperately wanted to drop what I was doing every time and roll around with my Littler Dude.

This adorable face was staring at me every time I'd grab a drink or snack. It was refreshing and upsetting at the same time.

Sometimes I could do just that, but for only a fraction of the amount of time I would have preferred. Other times he’d run into my office just to see me or sit on my lap for a moment and when the nanny kindly took him so I could resume working, I felt like a part of my soul was being forcibly yanked out every single time.  The irony of my great new job permitting me to be home with my son, while not really being with him, was a struggle that took some time to come to terms with. It was almost a relief when he started pre-school this past fall so that I was no longer faced with the temptation to build block towers instead of PowerPoint presentations on a daily basis.

Working from home is the kind of gift which not everyone wants or appreciates, and that’s OK. The Catch-22 I’ve frequently considered is being able to trade my zero-mile commute for a higher paying job requiring an hour or more each way in L.A. traffic. Now, if my kids need me while I’m working at home just a few minutes away, I can be there if they are sick or to attend their holiday shows at school, no questions asked. What would I do if I worked 25 miles away, which in L.A. terms can be anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours in traffic?

The view from my desk chair.
My boys are never really out of sight.

The traditional familial roles which my generation, and countless more before us, grew up with have been thrown out the window and just as women’s lib was such a big issue almost 50 years ago, maybe it’s time to consider this an era of men’s liberation. Men can be engaged parents who stay at home to raise their families or work in or out of the home and still take an active role in parenting. The days of the incompetent “Mr. Mom” father are long gone, so it’s time to finally quash that lame stereotype, just as we have so many other archaic cliches. It was nice to see that the tide is turning during several recent Super Bowl ads featuring actively involved fathers. 

Still, when friends mention going out for happy hour after work and I tell them I’m already deep into making Mac & Cheese for my boys at 5:30pm, the dormant phantom limb known as my office-working days starts to tingle. Then I go eat some of Kraft’s finest while looking at some adoring adorable faces and it all feels OK because I know I’ve made the right decision for my family for now.

This is my happy hour.

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Come hang with me on Instagram for more great pics like those in this post. 

Why I Hate the Winter Olympics

When the Seattle Seahawks annihilated the Denver Broncos earlier this month in the Super Bowl, among other things it meant that self-proclaimed “Football Widows” received their spouses back until training camps begin over the summer. What I personally didn’t anticipate was becoming a Sports Widower myself less than a week later.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that I’m a big sports fan. I’m also a long-suffering one as I grew up a Cleveland sports fan. If you’re not a sports fan, I can best explain being a Cleveland sports fan like being the punchline in a nightmare. Anything that could go wrong inevitably does in the most publically embarrassing way. But I’ve grown to live with that. And now that I live on the West Coast with two young sons I seldom make time to sit through many games these days that aren’t Go Fish.  

So how did I come to find myself in the position of asking my non-sports fan wife approximately every 15 minutes every night for the last 2 weeks “is this almost over?” Two words: Winter Olympics.

Don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t be any more pro-American if I had a pet Bald Eagle named Uncle Sam. I just can’t get into the Winter Olympics, no matter how half-heartedly I try. As I mentioned, I grew up in the Midwest, about 20 minutes from a place where I could have gone skiing every winter for 20+ years and opted to never do so. Intentionally. Unlike Elsa from Frozen, the cold always bothered me anyway.

Over the decade-plus my wife and I have been together, I’ve tried watching some of the Winter Olympic Games with her. However, beyond that I have a hard time recognizing it as a sport, spending time watching sequined couples “Ice Dancing” just doesn’t do it for me.

From what I’ve seen the primary objective of at least half of the Winter Olympic events could be listed as “not dying”. Hell, there’s a sport where the “athlete” lies face down on a tiny metal sled going 80+mph down a curvy icy chute, which is actually called “Skeleton”. Foreshadowing much?

This Skeletoner is laying still like a corpse.
How is this a sport?

Then there’s the Biathlon which combines that natural duo of skiing and shooting a rifle which so many people seemingly do every day. I’d call that Polar Military Training before I’d call it a sport. What about Cross Country, which most people who live in cold weather places refer to as “walking on snow”.

And don’t even get me started on Curling, a “sport” which my housekeeper could likely medal in based on her expert-level proficiency at removing piles of Cheerios from the floor with a broom.

As if their "sport" didn't make them look silly enough...

I was sitting with my wife the other night while she watched the 1^st of something like 86 rounds of some skiing event and kept hearing the announcers mention Rosa Khoutour, which I assumed was some sort of Russian fashion brand. Turns out it’s a mountain. Who would have known?

The centerpiece of the Winter Olympics is always the Figure Skating events, and those have eaten up a big chunk of my TiVo for the last 10 nights. No interest. I didn’t even like Blades of Glory and that starred Ron Burgundy and Napoleon Dynamite, two of the funniest dudes from the last decade.

Part of my ancestry actually stems from Russia and I still couldn’t be less interested in a “Homeland vs. Birthland” story line if NBC created one specifically about me, like the packages they show about athletes suffering from hangnails, misplaced iPhones and other tragedies.

The truth is that the most interesting part of the Olympic coverage to me so far has been Bob Costas’ Pink Eye, which would be a great name for a punk-rock band. Bob’s Oozing Oculars (another good band name) has kept me wondering what kind of medical attention he’s getting that he couldn’t work at an event he’d probably be preparing 6 months to a year in advance for. Who is his MD, Dr. Frankenstein?

The good news is that the games will be over in a few more days and I’ll get 4 glorious sequin-less years until they resume. How long until baseball season begins?