Ask Your Dad Blog

How I Spent $10.99 on Mother's Day

2013-05-14T10:13:00.000-06:00

My first thought was minivan. Stevie and I made the mistake of going in to test-drive a Honda Odyssey "for fun" a few weeks ago, and ever since, every time we see one driving down the road, she gives me this adorable "I want a Slurpee" flirty-faux-frown. The problem is, she doesn't want a Slurpee. She wants a twenty-thousand dollar minivan. So for about ten minutes on Friday, when it dawned on me that I had yet to get my wife a Mother's Day present, I tried to do mental math gymnastics until the numbers added up to "minivan". Unfortunately, the numbers kept coming up foreclosure. So I moved on.

Digital SLR Camera!! Stevie has been coveting this camera ever since we couldn't afford it at Christmas. I would get her the camera! Camera payments would be much less, and for a much shorter period of time than minivan payments. Surely I could devise a way to surprise my wife on Sunday morning with her dream camera. I closed my eyes, air typed some numbers with my fingers waggling in front of me as if I were counting invisible floating numbers, and… nope. Nothing. Not if we wanted to be able to afford daycare next month. No big spending. No payments.

I guess I should explain something. Stevie does not need, want, or expect big gifts. For her birthday she asked for a pedicure. So I knew that no matter what I did, she was going to be happy. Also, I should explain, we make financial decisions together. I'm not the boss. I'm the co-boss. Both of us have veto power.

But here's the thing. She is a fan-f*cking-tastic mom. And I don't come to that word lightly. She is the bees-f*cking-knees. She is every complimentary adjective you can possibly hyphenate with the f word in the middle, and more. She deserves all the minivans. She deserves a minivan filled with digital SLR cameras. Hell, she deserves a minivan built out of disassembled digital SLR cameras with digital SLR cameras installed inside the dashboard, trunk, door handles, and inside other digital SLR cameras. Where's Xhibit when you need him! Pimp my wife's ride!

So no mini-van, no digital SLR, no mini-van-digital-SLR hybrid that talks and fights crime (I just added that last part.) But I still wanted a huge gesture to show her how much I loved her, and how much I love how much she loves our kids. I knew she loved crafts, so I decided to go to the craft store and buy a whole bunch of craft stuff. I would buy 4-5 different projects and we could spend the whole day cutting out paper and gluing it on other things, and there would be paint and markers and taffeta and gingham and hodgepodge and cross-stitching and it took me about 45 minutes of pathetically wandering around Hobby Lobby to realize that I don't know what any of those words mean, let alone what aisle they're on. And then I looked down and saw this.

Not even the kid on the box can hide his disdain for this gift.
He may be smiling, but his eyes say "WTF did you buy me this rock for?"

Fine. Whatever. I didn't even look at the price. I just grabbed it, walked defeated to the front of the store, and let the check out girl with the neck tattoo and what appeared to be an infected lip piercing ring it up.

"Mother's day?" she said.

"Yep," I replied.

"She'll love this." She said in a voice that may or may not have been intentionally sarcastic. I'm pretty sure that when you have a lip piercing, everything comes out sarcastic.

"Yeah, I was going to get her a lip piercing, but I was afraid it would get infected." I wish I would have said as I grabbed my bag and walked for the door.

That night I felt bummed. I kept thinking that I should have gotten the damn minivan! Now all I had to give her was what turned out to be a $10.99 bag of concrete in a colorful box. At least I could make her bacon and eggs for breakfast in bed. I went and opened the refrigerator door. Shit. Out of bacon. Out of eggs. My wife was getting a ten dollar bag of concrete and fruit loops for Mother's Day. My wife is not a bag of concrete and fruit loops mom. SHE IS A CRIME FIGHTING CAMERA MINIVAN HYBRID MOM!!!!

But here's the thing. Not having a grand monetary gesture to show my love and appreciation for Stevie's ninja mom skills led to this: I woke up early with Duchess, made breakfast, cleaned the kitchen, living room, basement, toy room, kids' room, vacuumed, dusted, and packed a picnic lunch. When Stevie and Captain woke up I got the kids dressed, loaded the car and took everyone to the park. Stevie and I spent the whole afternoon walking and talking and chasing Duchess around the playground. And we did it all for free. When I gave Stevie her ten dollar bag of concrete she smiled ear to ear and told me she loved it.

That night, after the kids were in bed, Stevie was laying with her head in my lap and looked up and told me that she had had the her best Mother's Day since becoming a mom, and I had to agree. So had I.

I guess the lesson I take from this is a pretty common, if not cliché, one. It's not about the money. But that's the strange part; it has never been about the money with Stevie and I, and yet I have to constantly relearn this lesson. It's not so much the needing to buy and have nice things that makes me want to buy a minivan we can't afford. It is that I want the size and grandeur of my gift to reflect the magnificence of what she has given me. And that is silly. Instead of emptying our bank account to show my love, we spent the entire day awash in the life Stevie's love has built for us. I don't know why I didn't think of that first, but I'm glad things worked out the way they did – because now, hopefully, I won't forget.

Anyway, thanks, Stevie, for being such a great mother to our children, and an equally wonderful wife to me. We make a damn good team. With you I know that all things are possible. We move mountains - with or without a minivan.

Love, Dad (John)

How to Put Your Kid to Bed Without Any Fighting

2013-05-10T17:33:00.000-06:00

…is the name of the blog post I've been looking for forever. It doesn't exist. Don't bother Googling it. If you try now, all you'll find is this post, and you'll probably be mad when you start reading the post and realize that I have no idea how to do what the title suggests. I do know the method we use, and it tends to work more than it doesn't. All you need is eternal patience, the willingness to let go of all control, 30-90 minutes, and these 7 steps.

Step 1: Plant the Seed

Around fifteen minutes before it is time to put our daughter to bed, Stevie and I start yawning a lot and mentioning how tired we are. We speak in incredibly obvious terms about how much we've done during the day and how all the things we've done are the reason we must be so tired. Then we ask Duchess what she did that day, and react with astonishment at how she could possibly STILL be awake! "I can't beeeelieve you're still awake! You've done sooooo much today! You must be sooooo tired!"

We have to be careful to turn off our exaggerated toddler communication voices when we leave the house, or we sound either really condescending or really drunk.

Step 2: Watch Pajanimals

Pajanimals is a show that is on Netflix. It's produced by the Jim Henson company and is about a Duck, Cow, Dog, and Horse and how they get ready for bed. They're only ten minutes long, and each episode has four songs: the intro, two other songs, and the lullaby song. They are tolerable tunes with cute themes and harmonies, and the repetitiveness made it easy for Duchess to memorize all the words. Within a week she was singing them all. Within a couple days I was wondering how a human mom had four talking animal children, each one a different species. I'm an open minded guy, but that mom must have done some crazy shit in the 90's. Maybe they're adopted.

I've linked the image to the Netflix Instant Stream for you.

Step 3: Say Goodnight

Depending on who's turn it is, one of us stays downstairs with the sleeping meat blanket that is our Captain, and the other ventures off into either epic cuteness or unknown peril of the bed time process. But first, Duchess needs to say goodnight. To everything. Goodnight mommy, goodnight captain, goodnight Cowbella, goodnight Squacky, good night Apollo, good night Sweet Pea Sue. Those last four are the names of the Pajanimals, and yes, I typed them all from memory. It took me a year to learn all of my in-laws names; it took me three weeks to learn the Pajanimals'.

Step 4: Nope. No next step yet. We're still saying goodnight.

Goodnight light. Goodnight toy room. Goodnight toy room light. Goodnight stairs. Goodnight door. Goodnight other stairs (We live in a split level). Goodnight living room. Goodnight Riley (our dog). Goodnight whatever random object I see that will allow me to delay moving on in this process.

Step 4 (for real this time): Brushing Our Teeth

Duchess gets to pick out her toothbrush. She only has one, but she gets to be the one to take it out of the cup. If you dare remove Duchess's toothbrush from the cup for her, then not only are you Satan, you have also may as well of pulled a fire alarm with no off switch. As my wife said to me once, "Just let her pick her her damn toothbrush." And let her go first at brushing. And let her run her toothbrush under the water as many times as she wants and suck the water out of it. Do not interrupt this process. She will tire of it eventually. I promise. There are times where I have gone into the living room and read a magazine while waiting for her to finish. She will finish. When she does she yells "I'm done Daddy." Then I go back in and put toothpaste on the brush and actually brush her teeth. When I remind her to spit, she refuses to look into the sink and spit, so it usually just spits down the front of her chin. Remember that post when I thought my kid might be a genius? Ha!

Once Duchess is done brushing her teeth, we move into the bedroom. Put her pajamas on and move on to books. Yes, I know I glossed over the putting on pajamas, but it's not really a problem with my kid, so you'll have to invent your own Step 4.5 for pajamas. Sorry. If you wanted actual advice you'd probably be reading someone else's blog.

Step 5: Books! Books! Books!

Duchess would pick the bottom one

It's never one book. Sometimes it's two books. When it is less than five books I'm a freaking Storyteller with a capital S. They should invite me to the library. I have voices and accents and I point to the words to have Duchess help me spell them. We examine the pictures and talk about what's going on in them. On the long nights, when we read around books 5-7, and I know this is horrible of me to do, I burn out and just make shit up.

"Once upon a time there was this guy… and he looks like ran down a hill, and oh look! He had a friend." Then I start turning more than one page at a time. "The friends walked down another hill. Then there was another guy. He had a green hat. And the bird said 'Hi green hat guy,' and then they turned the page, and THE END."

I know I shouldn't skimp. I know I should give 100% effort on every book. But I'm tired. And while I love this time with my daughter, the longer I spend putting her to bed, the less alone time I have with my wife – which is already about 45 minutes a night before we both fall asleep. So if I want to change the story of Winnie the Pooh to a six page flash fiction piece about animals who repetitively say hi to each other, I'm going to do it damn it! Because you know what? This isn't even the last step! We still have…

Step 6: Singing

I may skimp on book time if it goes long, but I love me some lullabies! I don't go for too many of the traditional "Hush Little Baby" style lullabies. My lullaby jukebox is stacked with classics. My bedtime radio show would be called DJ Daddy's Soothing Sounds of the Sixties and Seventies.

I'll usually start off with a little Leonard Cohen "Hallelujah" and then move into something a little more upbeat. Maybe a little Freddy Mercury or Elton John. Show tunes will work their way into the playlist once in awhile. I do a killer rendition of "Somewhere over the Rainbow", and you should hear Duchess sing along with "Summer Time" from Porgy and Bess. I'll usually end with "Black Bird" by The Beatles' Paul McCartney. It's my favorite.

I'll be honest. I love the singing part. She looks at me like I am the greatest singer in the whole world, and I eat it up. If Duchess is the one that makes book time go long, I'm equally guilty for taking Johnapalooza into a fourth and fifth encore. I'm the Eddie Vedder of bedtime.

Step 7: Goodnight

This is the scariest part, because it is either going to fail miserably and spiral into screams and tears and hurt feelings and all the things I've worked the last 30-90 minutes to avoid, or it is going to be the cutest and most wonderful sixty seconds of my day. I will spare describing the consequences of a poor exit to you in detail. Just know that it is ugly.

When I get a feeling that Duchess is tired enough, her eyes are a little droopy, and she isn't singing along as much as she was a few songs before, I'll cautiously say something like "OK honey…" and then let it trail off. If she doesn't flip out at that, I'll add a few more words. "OK honey…daddy is going to go n'night." And, when it works, the rest is one of the the best parts of being a dad. I'm going to tip toe out of this post now and just leave you with the dialogue.

"Can I have a hug daddy?"

"Of course."

"Can I have a kiss daddy?"

"Yes you can."

"I love you daddy."

"I love you too honey. You're my best friend."

"You’re my best friend too."

"Habagooday"

"Habagooday"

Love, Dad (John)

P.S. We have a huge reader compiled list of contemporary bedtime songs over on the Ask Your Dad Facebook Page. Click here to read them.

na na na NA NA NA NA NA IRON MAN!

2013-05-02T23:25:00.002-06:00

All night Duchess has been running around yelling "NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA IRON MAN!!!" It's the Batman theme song from the sixties. I taught it to her awhile ago, and now she thinks that any superhero's name that ends with "man" belongs in the song.

Hasbro contacted me a little while ago to see if I wanted to try out their new line of Iron Man toys that are coming out at the same time as Iron Man 3 this weekend. I'm not going to lie. I wanted the toys for myself more than I wanted them for Duchess. I love Iron Man. So I said sure! Send me some toys for my "daughter". Then, for the next couple weeks, I hurried home from work every day to see if the UPS guy had delivered my "daughter's" Iron man toys. Guess what came yesterday!!!

na na na NA NA NA NA NA IRON MAN!

Duchess got the Arc Strike Iron Man Figure and has been flying him around the living room all evening. She even makes adorable flying noises. He's actually really cool. His head is weighted so it changes directions depending on whether he is flying or standing. When he lands he makes a metal clanking sound. It is a little delayed, but Duchess didn't seem to notice. Oh and he talks. Sometimes it is hard to hear what he is saying, but sometimes it is hard to tell what Duchess is saying too - so they get along swimmingly. After pealing Iron Man out of the box Duchess insisted on giving him a check up with her doctors kit. Once Tony Stark was cleared for flight Duchess began a run around the living room and singing the Batman theme song over and over and over and over and over. Thanks Hasbro. She tired eventually and now she, Iron Man, and Muno from Yo Gabba Gabba are sleeping soundly.

We also received the Iron Man Helmet (Marvel Iron Man 3 ARC FX Mission Mask). Like the action figure, the mask's eyes glow blue and it talks. It also shoots little plastic darts out the sides at an unexpectedly high speed. Stevie was not entertained when one bounced off of her forehead. She was also not entertained when I wore the mask and jumped out of a closet and yelling IRON MAN!!! On a side note, the mask does not actually provide any protection from wife punches. In fact, it makes them hurt more.

So anyway. Good times were had by all, and you can't beat free toys. Well, I agreed to write a blog post about them, so I guess I am paying them with my words. Honestly, I would have paid them with dollars too. Seeing Duchess sleep cuddle with Iron Man, and getting my wife to agree to a picture of her with the helmet while nursing Captain would of been worth the cost alone, but being able to wear an Iron Man mask to work on Monday? Priceless.

Love, Dad (John)

P.S. This is part one of a two part product review. I also got some Angry Birds Star Wars toys. They were a little out of Duchess's age range, so I am taking them to my nephew's house to play with them and will be posting soon. If you don't remember my nephew, he's the one with the sweet dance moves.

Dear Sad Daughter in the Future

2013-04-29T22:23:00.000-06:00

I was going to title this one A Letter to My Daughter Within a Letter to my Daughter Apologizing for My Not Understanding Her in the Future, but that was way too long and reminded me of the movie Inception, which, as good of a movie as that was, wasn't how I wanted to start this post off. So instead, I'm wasting time with a paragraph about it, because I have a hard time throwing things away. I'm a word hoarder. I have a problem. Anyway, on with the show...

Dear Duchess,

I had a ridiculous moment in the car on the way home from work on Friday. The Freshmen by The Verve Pipe was on the radio.

If you're not familiar with the song The Freshmen, and since you weren't a teenager in the 90's there's a good chance you're not, it is an overwrought ballady barf of a song about some teenagers who didn't take some advice and then one of them dies, or something, and at some point in a made up future the singer is wailing about how innocent they were, and how it wasn't their fault because they were MERELY FRESHMEN!!! HEYEEEEEAAAHEEEAAEEEAAAEAAEAAEAOOOOOHHHEEEAAEAAEAHH!!!

We all had this haircut in the 90's, and none of us smiled.

Anyway, I love that song. I love it because it takes me back to a very specific point in my life, where I too was innocent and nothing was my fault and things happened that seemed much more important than anyone besides myself thought they were, and I couldn't control them, and that really upset me because we WERE MERELY FRESHMEN!!! HEEEYYAHEAAEAEAAEAAEAOOHHEEAAEAEAAEAAEAAAH!!!

So there I am, singing along to this wonderfully awful song, and the strangest thing happened. I thought of you and started tearing up a little in the car. Not two-year-old you, fifteen year old you.

Why? Well, I started crying because I realized at some point during the second chorus that I had completely forgotten how incredibly hard it was to be a teenager.

The stress and anxiety of those years hadn't even touched my thoughts years. I am forgetting. And while some magical combination of perspective and senility has probably afforded me this wonderful gift, which I can only describe as content happiness, it is tinged with sadness by the fact that by the time you reach your teenage years, I will have probably completely forgotten what those teenage years felt like.

So before this part of me fades away completely, I join the Republican party and spend the rest of my days talking about how good, kind, and respectful everyone was when I was younger, please allow me a few minutes to let you know that I, too, was once where you are, and I ,too, was lonely. Then I'll tuck this letter away in the blog and someday you can pull it up on your iPillow and read it just before you cry yourself to sleep because you're sad about some incredibly important thing that future me will not think is important in the slightest. So here you go – a letter from your dad while he still barely remembered what it was like to be a teenager.

-

Dear Duchess, (I call you Duchess on the blog because in 2013 we have this illusion we call privacy),

You know that thing that is going on that you think is the most important thing to happen in the history of you… or even of the world? You know, the one that has your stomach all balled up and tears leaking out from your eyes every time you tilt your head the wrong way? It's that problem that has everyone telling you that they know how you feel because they've experienced some bastardized form of said problem, and if you just give it some time everything will feel better and you'll look back on it and laugh. I need you to know something. It is the most important thing in the world, and knowing that someday you may or may not care about it isn't going to make you feel any better. Perspective is only valuable once you have it, and right about now your perspective is telling you "f*ck perspective". I'm on board with that. Because whether something is the end of the world, or it just feels like the end of the world, it still FEELS LIKE THE END OF THE WORLD!

Here's the hard part for me, not only can I not fix that thing that is eating you up inside – I'm probably too old and detached from what you're going through to even understand it. Old me is going to look at you, and tell you I love you, and you're going to scream at me that your life is over and that I will never understand, and you're right about at least half of that. I probably won't ever understand you. But I did once. I promise.

I parked my car in an alley once and screamed at the top of my lungs while repeatedly slamming my fists into the steering wheel. I sat, balled up, on the floor of my shower one time and cried until the water was ice cold. I wrote poems for girls. I dreamt of being liked and being popular and getting the part in the musical or the position on the football team. I longed for those I couldn't have and lost those who I did. I went through long patches of my life where I felt immensely lonely. And every time, I didn't know if it was the end of the world or if it just felt like it – and I didn't care. And it was only made worse by the fact that my awesome and loving parents just didn't get it. And now I'm the parent who doesn't get it. So I'm sorry.

I'm sorry that future me doesn't understand. 2013 me does. Maybe in the future you'll be able to upload a hologram of 2013 me and tell me about how much of a douche bag I've become. I'll compliment you on your laser hair and you'll complain about how future me hates that it cost $4,500 dollars. Then I'll go to give you a hug, and you'll go to hug me back and you'll fall on the floor because I'm a hologram. We'll laugh a little and that will make hologram-me happy, or at least appear happy since I most likely won't have emotions - because I'm a hologram. Then you'll say good night, turn hologram me off, and switch your iPillow to the classic rock station where, I hope to god, The Freshman by The Verve Pipe is playing. Because, while future me may not understand what you're going through, The Verve Pipe always will.

I love you honey,

Still Kind-of Cool Dad from 2013

P.S. HEYEEEEAAAHEEEAAEEEAAAEAAEAAEAOOOOOHHHEEAAEAAEAAEAAA!!!

10 Steps for Getting What You Want From Customer Service

2013-04-24T11:40:00.002-06:00

This is completely unrelated to parenting, but I wrote it this weekend and thought it might be helpful to share. Then, I was going to make this one of those list articles where you have to click "next" at the bottom of every number, but I remembered that I hate those things and I'm not an a-hole. So instead, you get a super long scrolling article full of tips and tricks for getting what you want from customer service agents. And... uhm... less time on the phone arguing with customer service means more quality time you can spend with the kiddos. So there, it is about parenting. Huzzah!

I spent the better part of my twenties taking calls and teaching all levels of inbound customer service calls for United Parcel Service. I started as a grunt, tracking packages and scheduling pickups. I promoted up through training and supervisory rolls until I finally landed in a small group of people that handled calls that came into the president's office. If your call got to me, we'd either really screwed up or you're just incredibly resourceful with Google.

Anyway, what all of this experience helped me to do was become very proficient at being on both sides of a customer service call. Now, if there is a need to call an 800 number, my wife hands me the phone. In fact, if our friends or neighbors need help with an 800 number, sometimes they'll have me call in as their surrogate to navigate the emotional maze that is inbound customer service.

See, when I was a phone rep, I solved problems by trying to think like the customer. As a customer, the best way to get your problem fixed is to think like the phone rep. Problem solving, appointment scheduling, bill fixing, credit getting, free stuff sending, I can do it all. It's really easy.

But here's the thing. So can you! Here's my ten step plan to get whatever you want (within reason) from Megacorp Customer Service.

1. Make sure you have an actual problem that customer service should be able to address.

You don't like the color of the company's logo? Deal with it. You are mad that you have to pay money to watch HBO when you're already paying for 95 channels that you don't watch. Me too, but Comcast Customer Service can't change that. Suck it up pay ten bucks a month. Or just wait for the Blu-Ray.

Now, did your service go out for three days? Did they miss an appointment? Did you order a product from a company and it showed up in a box that looked like it became sentient mid-transit, fought off a galactic invasion of space monkeys only to be delivered to your front door a tattered hero? Those are good times to call. Once you've established why you're calling, before you pick up the phone decide…

2. What do you want? Is it reasonable?

A year of free shipping is not a reasonable request for a delayed package. A refund for the package is. What if you missed a million dollar proposal meeting because it was late? Are you entitled to a million dollars? Maybe that would be fair and set the universe right, but no, you're not. You're probably better off asking for something in-between a service refund and a million dollars. Realistically you'd want to keep it towards the service refund part of the scale.

Here are some of the reasonable things I have gotten with this strategy:

A few months of free cable. (Comcast)
A $200 antenna thingy that makes my cell phone not drop 90% of the calls in my house. (AT&T)
NFL Sunday Ticket (Direct TV)
Free web-hosting for three months (Go-Daddy)
Free shipping on my next order with a company (Multiple companies)
A waived expired liability waiver on some damaged headphones (Skull Candy)
Small credits to various accounts $10-100 (My bank, and various credit cards)

All if these things were obtained through a little prodding and stellar customer service. The most important steps are next.

3. Ask for what you want.

At some point between now and step 10 you need to ask for what you want. If you don't, you're probably not going to get it. Don't wait for the customer service rep to offer you your hand-picked solution because most of the time they won't. They will go with the most common and inexpensive way to fix your problem – an apology. Don't be offended. It's just how it is. Accept the apology and move into your strategy of getting what you want, the most important component of which is...

4. BE NICE!

I can't reiterate this enough. If you want a punching bag, buy a literal punching bag. If you want your problem fixed, treat the customer service agent like a human being. I know this should go without saying, but inbound customer service is not the most pleasant of jobs. People don't call customer service when things go right. So all the rep hears ALL day long is how horrible their company is. The company could make and sell live unicorns that poop rainbows and the customer service agent for that company will hear nothing all day but complaints about how unicorn rainbow poop smells like cotton candy and it SHOULD smell like freshly baked cupcakes.

Also, a lot of people who call customer service with problems are not especially kind to the people they are speaking to. While that may suck for the phone rep, it is good news for you! If you show some courtesy and even a little kindness to the phone rep, you are ray of sunshine in their crappy day. If there are rules they can bend for you, they will bend them.

Think of it this way. You want to form a team with the person on the other side of the phone. You want it to be the phone rep and you vs. the problem. You don't want it to be you vs. the phone rep. If you step into the call with an adversarial tone and that phone rep is already in a pissy mood, you may as well be trying to hammer a nail with a piece of Jello. It's not going to work.

5. Don't just dive into your rant. Involve the rep in the "previously on" portion of the call.

Is this your third call? There's probably a record of your previous two. Ask the agent if they are able to see a record of your previous calls. If they do, ask them to recap what they have in their system. This serves a couple purposes. First and most obvious, it lets you know how far you've gotten and what you need to repeat. Second, it lets the agent walk through your journey and catch up with you emotionally. If you've been given incorrect info, or previous commitments have been broken, they're going to see it. If there aren't any notes, or this is your first call, get ready to have numbers!

6. Present your case.

Have numbers! Numbers help. Reps can tell if you are making them up. If you don't know how long you were holding, don't say a half an hour. CS reps can see the queue. They know how long you've been in it. They can see other things too. People used to tell me that their daily pick up was missed multiple times in a week. What they didn't know was that I could see when they were picked up and how many packages were collected. I never called them liars, but I took whatever else they said on the call with a grain of salt.

If you have a valid concern, you're going to have valid numbers. How many times have you called? Which dates? Who did you speak with? What did they promise? How much time have you invested in the problem? Look, it shouldn't be your job to document your interactions with a company. You should be entitled to a first call resolution. Reality is, sometimes that doesn't happen. Keep a note pad by the phone and keep track of these things. When things go south with a company, you'll be happy you have them.

I've been trying to work a Night Court image into my blog forever!

7. Avoid asking for a supervisor as a punishment.

So you've got a jerk on the phone that cares about you about as much as she cares about her job. She's sarcastic and rude and she laughs a little when you ask her to step off script and do anything outside of the box to fix your problem. You'll show her. You're going to ask for a supervisor and complain. Bad idea.

If you are asking for a supervisor to complain about the agent you were speaking with, you've already lost sight of your goal, and while you're wasting your time tattling on Charlotte, your problem still isn't fixed.

You didn't call customer service to get someone in trouble. You called to get your service issue resolved. If an agent is rude, then they are obstructing your path to your goal, ask for a supervisor. You might think that the agent or their supervisor will oblige any request you have to avoid a complaint about them. I hate to tell you this, but they don't care if they get complaints. They will say they do, but they don't. Most supervisors will cover for their agents. Wouldn't you?

So instead of complaining about the inflection in the front line agent's voice, just let it go. Let the supervisor know that you didn't feel like you were being heard and just preferred to speak with someone else. I usually will make an effort to specify that I'm not complaining about the agent and ask that they not be reprimanded. This gets your conversation with the supervisor off on the right foot. Instead of feeling like a principal who's being tattled to, the supervisor will feel like someone of authority who has been called in to save the day, just like a… well… a supervisor.

NOTE: If your rep was really bad and you still want to complain about them, you should - just not on the call. Write a letter and include details about your call and the agent's behavior. Most phone complaints exist about as long as the phone call in which they are taken. In most cases, letter complaints last forever.

8. Asking for a supervisor shouldn't be a punishment (The sequel)

Sometimes agents say "no" because they are told to say no initially and only give in to those who persist. Sometimes they are told to say "no" without exception. These are cost saving measures. Try not to take them personally. Instead of taking the time to argue with the agent and feel out which are the soft "no's" and which are the hard "no's" just escalate the call. You'll find out which is which a lot quicker at level two.

Here is the key to this one. DON'T BE A DICK! Seriously. Here's a call I've had multiple times over the years.

Customer: I would like a credit for this shipment that was delayed by weather.
Me: I'm sorry sir, we are unable to issue ref…
Customer: "SUPERVISOR!"
Me: Sir, the..
Customer: SUPERVISOR!!!!!!!!!!!
Me: Yes sir. One moment.

Here's the thing that this guy doesn't realize. There is more than one supervisor on the floor, and I get to pick who takes the escalation.

In the blue corner we have Pam the Empathizer! Pam is going to hear you out. Pam is going to sympathize. Pam is probably going to override the service refund.

Fictional Call Center Pam, not to be confused with Pam from The Office on NBC

In the red corner we have Angry Andy. He has been in his position for the last 15 years. He hasn't been promoted and has only received enough incremental raises to barely make it worth not leaving for a job that doesn't make him want to punch a wall every night. He hates his job and he hates that he doesn't have control over whether or not he can leave. But guess what he does have control over. He gets to decide whether or not you get your refund.

Fictional Call Center Andy, not to be confused with Andy from The Office on NBC

Now guess who I am flagging down to come take the call for Mr. I WANNA SUPERVISOR? You guessed it.

Me: Andy, I've got a sup call.

So instead of cutting the agent off and screaming for level two, go with this.

You: Hi, Kyle (you have his name because you wrote it down), I appreciate you explaining the refund policy to me, and I understand that you may not be able to override it. Would you mind grabbing your sup for me? I know that they may not be able to either, but I would feel more comfortable taking my concern to the next level. It's nothing against you. You've been really nice.

4/5 times if the refund is a soft "no" the supervisor is going to hop on the phone and process it immediately – as long as you didn't get transferred to Angry Andy.

9. Social Media can be a customer's best friend.

Look up the company's Facebook and Twitter page. Take your complaint there. You are a lot more visible on social media than you are on a telephone. You don't have to be mean to be seen. Just present the facts. If you have a valid complaint, then they will usually hop right on fixing it. Since social media is a pretty volatile environment, major companies don't just hand the keys to anyone. You will most likely be dealing with a higher level customer service representative than your normal front line phone rep.

The best rule with social media customer service is, if at first you don't succeed, just keep posting. Sometimes the squeaky wheel thing still works. But…

10. If all else fails, write a letter or call the office of the president.

Not this one.

This may take a little research, but Google can make it pretty easy to find access to these folks. Use these templates:

(Insert company name) Corporate Office Phone Number

(Insert company name) Office of the president

(Insert company name) executive board e-mail addresses

Great! Now that you've found out where to call, or where to write, I need you to immediately lower your expectations. You're not going to talk to the actual president of the company, and no, he or she is not going to read your letter. They are really busy people.

At most, you're probably going to talk to their administrative assistant or a team of individuals that handle top level escalations. (That's what I used to do.)

Don't get hung up on getting above these people because one, you probably won't, and two, this level of customer service manager is generally imbued with magical override powers that the rest of the company doesn't have.

Just start over at #2 and follow the steps that I've outlined in this guide. If they still say no at that point, you're probably out of luck. This method isn't fail proof. Sometimes companies are going to say no. If it is that big of a service failure, vote them into the hall of shame the best way any good capitalist can, with your dollars.

We can't always get what we want. The buck stops somewhere. Sorry dude.

Good luck, and happy calling! I'll be back to talking about the joys of fatherhood next week.

Love,

Dad (John)

P.S. Tons of fun is still being had over at the Ask Your Dad Facebook page. All new likes this month will receive one free 2013 XU3200 Cupcake Pooping Unicorn!*

*Allow 6-8 centuries for delivery. Some limitations apply. Offer not valid in Puerto Rico... oh what the heck - Puerto Rico, you can have unicorns too!

By Trying to Get It Half Right, the BSA Gets It All Wrong

2013-04-19T15:25:00.005-06:00

"Well, at least they're trying right?" That's what my wife said to me as I fumed back and forth in the kitchen after reading the BSA's proposal to allow LGBT youth in their organization, but to continue the ban on LGBT people in their leadership.

No. It's not enough. It is a half measure that is cruel and offensive to LGBT adults who would like to be an active part of their kids' lives. It is an open acknowledgement that the BSA thinks there is something inherently dangerous about LGBT adults. And if it isn't their sexual orientation, which would no longer be banned under the proposal–what else could it be but the long disproved and debunked assumption that homosexuals are predispositioned to molest children.

No. The BSA's proposal is not enough. And the worst part is, that is the exact reason some bone head on the council though floating this proposal was a good idea. They know it's not enough and they know that they will get this reaction. They're betting on it. They want the outrage and the hard line stance because columns like this one are going to allow the BSA to throw their hands in the air, shrug their shoulders and say to their remaining sponsors "We tried."

They didn't try. They were pressured by their slimming pocket book to look like they were trying, got backed into a corner and someone thought that this Catch-22 of a proposal could be their way out. It won't be and; it shouldn't be.

I said it before and I will say it again. There is so much that is right about the Boy Scouts of America. The organization helped shape me into the person I am today. It taught me leadership and confidence. It taught me how to be a good friend. And now, it is going to self destruct because it is too entangled with a dying and discredited association between sexual orientation and morality. And that is sad.

Here's my last ditch attempt to save the BSA:

BSA Council, if you agree to allow LGBT Scouts and leadership, I promise to put my boy in Cub Scouts, Webelos, and Boy Scouts. I encourage those of you who feel the same way I do to pledge to do the same. The BSA needs to understand that becoming inclusive isn't a nail in their coffin. It is a hand out of the grave. Please, pledge with me to support the Boy Scouts if they pledge to us to step into the 21st century and accept our LGBT friends and family into their almost-great organization.

When I was a Boy Scout I learned that you can't put out half the fire. If you do the forest still burns down.

Love, Dad (John)

If you would like to contact the BSA and pledge your conditional support, you can do so by clicking here. Tell them I sent you.

Neckerchiefs are awesome.

McDonald's Post Update!

2013-04-14T13:24:00.002-06:00

I felt super bad about running out of McDonald's the other night after "the incident" (see McDonald's blog from earlier). On top of that, a few people wrote to me and rightfully pointed out that leaving the McDonald's was not cool. Not only was it rude to make the McDonald's person clean it up, but it was a health hazard. I agree. I was not my best self. I panicked. I should have gone to the counter, asked for a rag and gone pee hunting.

Here's one of the pieces of feed back I received on Reddit along with my response. (I'm valjean260) Click the picture to enlarge.

And then, this nice person gave me a great suggestion. Click the picture to enlarge.

So I took his advice. I stopped back in to apologize and give them this (below). I asked for a manager, explained what happened, and apologized. They were incredibly nice, and I'm happy to say that we are allowed back in McDonald's! Also, you should have seen the look on the kid's face! I don't think they get many apologies. All in all it was a good end to shitty experience. Get it... shitty!! HA! I make myself laugh.

Love,

Dad (John)

P.S. Sorry about my handwriting in this picture. That is why I type.

Why We Can Never Go Back to McDonald's

2013-04-11T09:29:00.001-06:00

Sometimes I worry about putting embarrassing stories about my kids on the internet. That's part of the reason I use pseudonyms. I don't want Captain's High School buddies to Google his name some day and find out that I surveyed the internet on whether or not to circumcise him. With that reasoning in mind, I am going to come right out and say that the story I am about to tell you definitely, absolutely, did not happen. I am making it all up. This definitely did not happen last night at the McDonald's by our house.

So the wife and I took the kids to go grocery shopping last night. We stopped by McDonald's on the way home because it was too late to cook dinner and we figured we could let Duchess get rid of some energy in the play place before we started the 45-minute process of begging her to please, for the love of God, go to bed. I'm going to transition to present tense now because I feel like it will better relay a sense of urgency as the story progresses.

Anyway, Duchess de-shoes and goes bounding off into the PlayPlace which, if you haven't seen one, looks like a bunch of rainbow snakes twisting themselves together while trying to eat each other's butt-holes. Once your kid goes in there, there is no knowing where she is or if she is the one screaming in pain. It's terrifying - but it lets me eat my cheeseburger in peace so I allow her to participate in whatever Lord of the Flies shit is taking place inside that technicolor tunnel nightmare. She's tough. She'll be fine.

Soon enough, Stevie and I finish up our meal and it's time to go home; Captain is getting fussy and wants to nurse. Yeah, he's there too. He's quiet most of the time (in the daylight) so I don't bring him up as much as I should. After packing up, Stevie and I begin the embarrassing ritual of trying to locate our kid in the PlayPlace. We both begin circling the structure, peering in the different colored windows, and calling our daughter's name.

Suddenly, out of the heart of darkness, my daughter's face appears at a red tinted window in one of the tubes. I run up to it smiling. Quickly my smile fades. Something is different, yet recognizable about her face. She looks like she's thinking really hard about something. She gives me a look, and suddenly I know. And she knows I know. She needs to shit. She needs to shit, and she is lost in this f'ing rainbow cavern, minutes from the door - and she's not going to make it. I know she's not going to make it. She knows she's not going to make it.

She puts her hand up on the red plastic window. I place mine in the same spot. I mouth the words "I'm sorry." She is Spock and I am Kirk in Wrath of Kahn. She is Bruce Willis and I am Liv Tyler in Armageddon. She is shitting her pants, and there is nothing I can do. This is happening.

It's OK Spock. You can poop now.

Not only am I going to have to get her out of there, I have to do it without any of the other parents in the room finding out why. I go back to the table, tell Stevie to get ready to leave quickly, and mentally prepare to go into the shit piss labyrinth and retrieve my shitty pissy daughter. Shit!

Stevie kisses me on the cheek, wishes me luck, and I turn to go. And there she is. Somehow she has waddled her way to the exit! My heart leaps! It is a stinky, piss covered miracle!

There's no time to celebrate. I sprint to the green tube she is emerging from. "Daddy! I poo..." I clasp my hand over her mouth and run for the door. I am that dad. I am a horrible human being. My kid pooped her pants in the McDonald's PlayPlace... and I ran.

On the way home I call the McDonald's and let them know what's happened. As far as I can tell, the poo was contained - but there may be some piss dribbles inside the maze. Stevie and I agree to never discuss the incident again, we get home, and I start writing.

A few notes that Stevie would like me to add before hesitantly allowing me to publishing this:

All poop was contained within the confines of our kid's DC Comic Wonder Woman Panties. No poop was left in the PlayPlace.
When I first compared the window scenario to the scene from Armageddon where Bruce Willis and Liv Tyler are looking at each other on the monitors right before Bruce blows up with the Asteroid, I may have started singing "Don't Want to Miss a Thing" by Aerosmith.
All poop was contained, and probably... most likely... most of the pee too.
Duchess was not reprimanded in the slightest. She was bathed, changed, and got a Popsicle when we got home.
No poop was left in the PlayPlace.

Love Dad (John)

UPDATE!!

More has happened. Click here to find out what happened next!

After 5 Hours At the Zoo

2013-04-08T09:55:00.000-06:00

After five hours at the zoo, Duchess was ready to leave. So I took another picture.

Adventures With Cloth Diapers

2013-04-01T15:59:00.001-06:00

Hi readers! Here's a post from Stevie. We got a present in the mail a few weeks ago from our friends at gDiapers. This is not a paid promotion and the opinions are ours. There was no pressure to even write the review. We could have just kept them. Heck, I probably could have written 1000 words about how much we hated cloth diapers, then posted a video of us burning them while dancing around the gDiaper fire in a circle, chanting something about how much we dislike their diapers- and the marketing people at gDiapers would probably be super nice. Good thing we FREAKING LOVE THEM. Anyway... on with the Stevie!

Dad (John)

Before Duchess was born we decided to save the planet and use cloth diapers. Let’s lessen our carbon footprint! So three years ago I ran out and spent $200 on fancy pants cloth diapers and John was a nice enough to keep his mouth shut and let me bask in my pre-baby optimistic belief that I would be able to do laundry every night once Duchess arrived. I didn't really take into account the amount of work they would be. Also, the amount of bubble-butt that was about to happen. So bulky.

Fast forward to current day Kinnear house. We are lucky to have clean socks around our house. To any of you that interact with John on a daily basis, if he is in an exceptionally good mood one day, it’s probably because I just filled his drawer with clean socks. Seriously, you should see our laundry pile mountain. It like defies gravity at this point. It leans ominously depending on the position of the moon. Yes, our laundry pile has a tide.

So I started refraining from using the cloth diapers because I didn't want to have to wash them afterwards. They eventually took up residence in a little basket in the corner of Duchess's room, only to be used only when we went out and I wanted people to see how awesome we were at maintaining our commitment to cloth diapers. When I would go in the nursery, I would look at them and give myself a pat on the back for investing in our planet’s future. Then I would grab a disposable diaper, throw it on my kid and be on my way.

The thing to know about me is that I’m one part eco and two parts lazy. I recycle – but I don’t recycle glass because I would have to take it to the recycling plant instead of it being picked up by the curb. I think about composting. But don’t because it sounds difficult and smelly. And I love the idea of cloth diapers but not so much the execution.

Enter: gDiapers. Thanks to a good friend of the blog, Kelli M., we were able to try these bad boys out. When we got them in the mail I spread them out on the floor and rolled around in them like Demi Moore in Indecent Proposal, only instead of cash it was diapers – and I didn't have to sleep with Kelli to get them. She is very cute though.

So now I can have my super cute little cloth diaper but I can put in a disposable liner. When my son pisses on it, I can throw it away and it will biodegrade in as little as 50 days. You can also compost them if you’re into that sort of thing. Or you can even flush them. Just make sure you read the directions first. Hey John, remember that time the toilet was clogged and I said I didn't know why? Yeah I lied.

You can check out their website to find out more information about them and see if they are your “thing”. They are definitely my thing. How could they not be on such a cute little squishy ball of awesome?

Yes, I know , I know. I’m not actually doing true cloth because I’m using disposable liners. I would love to but I still need to pick up some cloth ones. Then I’ll be true green! Except that I think the liners are white. And really only one of the diapers covers is green. It’s my favorite. But with my cloth diapers and cloth liners, I shall be the queen of laundry. You shut your mouth, John.

How about you folks, any cloth enthusiasts out there? Any favorite brands?

In Defense of Sharing: Response to "Why I Don't Make My Son Share"

2013-03-26T08:57:00.000-06:00

Look out. I'm on a bit of a tear. So much so that I will be using the following words in this post: thusly, poppycock, and old-hat. That's right, I'm going early twentieth century up in this shiz.

I keep seeing this post about why kids shouldn't be encouraged to share on my Facebook news feed. For some reason, I've read it multiple times. Every time I read it I end up doing one of those two handed palm up "why" gestures at my computer. I don't know if you've read it, but allow me summarize it for you (or go read it and come back).

Very Bloggy Beth starts out by telling us that the day care she brings her kid to is a parent co-op - meaning all the parents chip in and take a turn watching each other's children. It has a set of rules that every parent has to follow to remain consistent. Makes sense.

One of these "we're all on the same page" rules is that any kid who has any toy gets to keep said toy as long as he or she want to. If said kid needs to go to the bathroom, from what I can tell, a designated toy watcher will keep the toy isolated until the child returns. And this ownership applies to EVERYTHING. Monkey bars? Stay the hell off of them until Jimmy is done. Swing? It doesn't have Sally's name on it, but her right of inheritance remains intact while she is off making a poo poo. And the "wonderful" thing is, all the co-op kids have bought in to this strategy; so no one pitches a fit when they can't play with each other's Legos. I'm not even sure anyone even asks after the first couple weeks. Sweet, quiet obedience.

OK, so let's try not to focus on the irony that is a co-op... a cooperative.. an autonomous association of persons who voluntarily cooperate for their mutual, social, economic, and cultural benefit THAT DISCOURAGES SHARING! Let's just continue on.

Very Bloggy Beth then shows us some a couple "real world" examples of why the no-share policy is better.

In the first example, a tiny toddler is playing with a car and an older, bigger toddler comes up and DEMANDS the car. Then they get in what she refers to as a "typical toddler scuffle" which I like to imagine looked something like this:

Eventually, angry bigger toddler's mom comes up, separates the two, and chides tiny toddler's mom for not teaching her kid how to share.

In situation two, another toddler is playing with a toy in a sea of similar toys when a mom who doesn't belong to him comes up and instructs him to give up the toy he is currently playing with so the toddler she does belong to can play with it. Actual mom of toddler 1 is watching from the sidelines as not-his-mom fruitlessly asks over and over for not-her-kid to give up the toy. Eventually not-the-mom gives up and actual-mom chuckles from the sideline at her child's independence.

Bloggy Beth doesn't agree with either approach, and here is where we agree. I don't either. But then we part ways again. She breaks it down thusly. (I've always wanted to say thusly)

" …it's a good lesson for you both to learn that this (giving your child everything they want) isn't always possible, and you shouldn't step all over people to get things. Furthermore, this is not how things work in the real world. In your child's adult life, he's going to think he's owed everything he sees. This is already happening in the next generation. "

"If you doubt my reasoning, think about your own day-to-day adult life. You wouldn't cut in front of someone in the grocery checkout line, just because you didn't feel like waiting. And most grown adults wouldn't take something from someone, like a phone or a pair of sunglasses, just because they wanted to use it."

See! She's doing us a favor. She is going to teach her kids not to share so they can teach other kids the all-important lessons of personal responsibility, property ownership, and life's unfairness. Additionally, the non-sharing toddlers will prevent our share-enabled kids from growing up into a sharer/taker generation. They will feel less entitled and more independent. They won't assume that they are owed. Atlas won't have to shrug. Rich people won't abandon us to move to a compound in Colorado. These selfish toddlers are going to SAVE THE WORLD. IT'S A MIRACLE! I DON'T KNOW WHY I'M YELLING!

OK… deep breath. That was a bit much. I'm just bugged.

Look...you can't just nit-pick random, annoying adult behaviors and then directly attribute them to the unknown, albeit likely, chance that their moms made them share their Light Brights when they were kids. That's illogical, and to be honest, it's far too easy. Look, I can do it too! Can you believe that asshole going fifty in the passing lane for the last 20 miles. He must have had a mom that taught him not to share! And can you believe that Carl uses all three microwaves in the break room to heat up his three course lunch even though there are ten people waiting to use them? He must have gone to a parenting co-op where he had a designated "toy watcher" whilst he went poo poo. Society these days…

Yes, I know my snark is turned up to an 11, but I really think these one to one comparisons of lessons and behaviors we teach our toddlers to practical, real world, adult situations are complete poppycock. (I've also always wanted to say poppycock.)

A no sharing policy is as ridiculous as a mandatory you-must-share-everything policy. Discouraging Jimmy from even asking to play with Alice's toy train is as dumb as telling Alice that she has to give it to him if he asks. We should be encouraging both! Let them interact. Let them learn to negotiate. Let them squabble a bit. Don't make Jimmy sit on the side of the playground and wait for Alice to walk away from her ball. There will be plenty of time to be awkward and antisocial in high school!

And yes, I get that there isn't a specific "no sharing" policy at this daycare co-op. But it seems clear from the article that the "you get to keep it as long as you want policy" has stymied sharing to the point that it is rarely requested. That's a horrible thing in my book.

How about this? Instead of teaching children to absolutely share or to absolutely not share, why not teach children to avoid being complete assholes. Use a different word obviously, but if your mega-toddler is roughing up some kid because he wants his toy – don't attack the mom. Teach your kid not to be an asshole. And tiny-toddler mom, please-please-please don't deny your kid the joy of sharing; encourage it. Yes, don't yank the toy out of her hands and hand it to ogre-toddler out of some strange obligation to communal ownership – but don't start with "You don't have to share if you don't want to honey," either.

Sharing is a gift we teach our kids to give others, and it is a honorable and worthwhile action. It makes our world a better place. It is important. Don't worry; the world will beat the "mine" mentality into Alice and Jimmy without your encouragement.

And yes, I like Very Bloggy Beth's closing idea that we need to teach our toddlers that they can get things through diligence, patience, and hard work. I think that is a wonderful lesson, and a great way to get things. Maybe it is a bit old-hat of me to say so, but on the off chance we want our kids to have friends, and not just things – perhaps we shouldn't cut sharing from the curriculum just yet.

(Yes, I've always wanted to say old-hat too).

Love,

John (Dad)

P.S. This is not meant to be an attack on Very Bloggy Beth. I'm sure she is incredibly nice. I found her mommy blog and read some of her other posts. She is a kind, loving mom with adorable kids. I just disagree with the sharing post. Please go check out her blog and leave comments and compliments on the stuff you like. And feel free to tell me why I'm wrong in the comments below.

Five Dollar Friday - Utah Pride Center

2013-03-22T08:56:00.000-06:00

We haven't done one of these in awhile, but this is such a great cause - I just couldn't resist.

Back in October, in response to my post: Dear Hypothetically Gay Son, I was asked to give a speech at at the National Coming Out Day Brunch hosted by the Utah Pride Center. During that experience I was able to learn more about what the Utah Pride Center does, their mission, and the help they provide to the community. The Utah Pride Center is a life line to so many LGBT families in Utah, especially LGBT youth. I personally know multiple people who have been helped by the awesome work these folks do.

Currently they are holding a fundraiser for different programs that they run in Salt Lake City. I've listed a few of them below. I cannot think of a better way to spend my lunch money today, than by giving it to such a great organization. I'm hoping you might do the same. Please consider hoping over to their fundraising page and chipping in the minimum ten bucks. Yes, I know it's Five Dollar Friday, but I'll take a few weeks off FDF's and we can combine them all into this one!

Here's me putting my lunch money where my mouth is!

Here's some info on the programs the Utah Pride Center provides!

Keeping Kids Safe Campaign – A multi-year project focused on creating policy change to provide greater safety for LGBTQ youth within Utah’s youth serving agencies at creating safe spaces for youth in out-of-home care.

Family Preservation Campaign – a multi-year effort providing resources and support for Utah parents and families who have LGBTQ youth. This work includes but is not limited to close collaboration with multiple Utah chapters of the Parents, Friends and Families of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG).

Zero Bully Campaign – Utah Pride provides a support line for students, faculty, friends and family to report incidences of bullying, harassment and violence. Utah Pride then coordinates with appropriate local resources, the ACLU, and school administration as needed. Elements of this campaign are interwoven with Utah Pride’s ongoing work to support and empower Utah Gay Straight Alliances across the state.

Utah Pride Marriage Equality Campaign – a six-seven month campaign to elevate Utah voices as Proposition 8 and DOMA are brought before the U.S. Supreme Court in early 2013. VFE recognizes that achieving marriage equality is both a step and a tool on the road to reducing homophobia.

Cardboard Tube Sword!

2013-03-21T09:50:00.001-06:00

Our house was full of awesome last night!

Pin it!! You know you want to :)

Things My Wife Told Me Not to Put on the Internet

2013-03-18T10:51:00.000-06:00

The original title of this post was: "The Cutting Room Floor: Things My Wife Told Me Not to Put on the Internet - Possible Divorce Edition." That was too long. So I cut it down, much like I do many of my posts.

Sometimes, at my wife's urging, I cut sentences or paragraphs out of a post. Sometimes I scrap entire posts, or relegate them to the purgatory that is "draft" status. My wife, who is my sun, my moon, and my stars, is also my editor. She is the voice of reason, and she has a certain amount of editorial control over what I do and do not put on the internet. So today, in complete defiance of our arrangement, and in a test of the tolerant and forgiving qualities of her love, I've compiled some of the things she's "suggested" may be a "little too much" into a single post.

Remember, these are completely out of context and taken from multiple posts that may never have been seen. Some of them didn't make them in because I took a little too much poetic license. Some of them caused my wife to punch me in the arm and say "JOHN!!! NO!"

Snippets from the cutting room floor:

"I want to be the Mr. Miyagi of spanking. I don't want to spank my kids, and I want them to know that I don't believe in spanking. But I would like them to know, somewhere deep in their subconscious, not to mess with me because I am a secret spanking master, schooled from birth in the art of the spank - which I'm not, but I'd like them to think it."

"I was asked the other day if I, as a man, feel awkward seeing my daughter naked or changing her diaper. Honestly, it doesn't bother me at all. At some point after becoming a father, vaginae stopped being magical love caves and became just another place I need to clean poop out of."

"I think it is important to know that there is a HUGE difference between throwing your kid out of a window and wanting to throw your kid out a window. A skilled parent can communicate the second one with only their eyes."

"I don't hate my kid today. I just hate having a kid today."

"My wife and I are having a silent war over who's going to clean the bathroom next. Neither one of us has brought it up, but we both know it is going on. Our bathroom is slowly approaching hoarder status. And I'm not talking one of the cute hoarder episodes where the guy has too many bunnies. Oh no, we're talking diapers and tissue and possibly a cat in there somewhere. I will not lose this battle. I don't mind peeing in the back yard."

"My wife farts in her sleep."

"It wasn't like I lost her. I could still hear her. I just didn't know exactly where she was – possibly in the wall."

"Let's talk about vasectomies."

"If you pee in the shower and look down and realize that you've just peed all over your kid's Thomas the Tank Engine bath toy, do you HAVE to throw it away? Or can you just wash it. I mean, I don't throw away everything she pisses on. She can deal with my piss for once dammit!"

"Does anyone else feel incredibly uncomfortable with term "child rearing"?"

"When duchess was born I wouldn't hold her if I had had a sip of beer in the last half hour. With Captain I've found that when positioned correctly he makes an adorable coaster."

"I broke one of Duchess's noisiest and most annoying toys on purpose the other day. I took it out back and sacrificed it to the sanity gods. I placed it on the concrete, looked at Dora the Explorer's smug half smile, and kicked her skull in. SING ABOUT THAT DORA!!! YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO TELL ME HOW TO SAY HELLO IN SPANISH WHEN YOU HAVE NO FACE!! AAAGGGGGGRGHHH!! Then there was some spitting and possibly tears. I don't know. I kind of blacked out. "

I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.

A few disclaimers.

No, I didn't actually consider throwing my kid out a window. I just thought it sounded funny. Then I decided that it wasn't funny. Then I decided it was. Then I decided that if I couldn't decide, it was best left unpublished. Then I published it.
My wife does not fart in her sleep. This is not Stevie writing this. I am in no way being forced to write this. Really.
The Dora thing didn't really happen. It was more of a Tarantino-esque rage fantasy. Dora is safe and sound, in the back of my closet. Duchess can have her back when she is 30.
I had no idea that vaginae was the plural form of vagina. Oh well...

The 10 Toddler Words That I'll Miss Most

2013-03-12T10:18:00.000-06:00

Before our kids learn our language, we get to experience the magic of learning theirs. For an amazing, and amazingly short, period of time kids speak a language that only their parents can understand. Have you ever been around a parent and their kid, and the kid looks at the parent and says, "Samoopeeepoop clababa pano pano it," and the parent, completely un-phased, replies with something like "No dear, you've had enough graham-crackers, and dinner is in an hour"?

I'm going to miss that connection with my kid. I like that for awhile my wife and I were the only ones who could understand her. But now, Duchess is getting much better at talking. Her language skills are really pretty amazing. She's almost mastered subject, object and possessive pronouns. She's getting tenses down, and every once in awhile she'll put together a sentence with multiple clauses and a semi-colon.

"I want to lay in bed with you and mommy, who you call Stevie-pie, but I peed in my pull up and need a new butt; can you change it?"

Yes, it should be lie and not lay, but cut her some slack. She's two. So before Duchess starts quoting Faulkner and writes a fan-fiction sequel to The Sound and the Fury, I decided now would be a good time to write down some of the Duchessisms that are slowly fading away from her mind, like the end of Flowers for Algernon*, only in reverse… which, now that I think about it, would be the beginning of Flowers for Algernon. I digress.

10 Words I'm Going to Miss

Adonamaa: I don't want a, I don't want to - "Adonamaa go night night." or "ADONAMAA WEAR PANTIES!!!"

This one can change and take on additional syllables depending on how badly she doesn't want to do whatever action she is resisting. For instance, if it is putting away her toy train it could be: "ADONAMANAMMANNAMANNNANANANA PUT AWAY MY CHOO CHOO TRAAAAAIIIINN!!!" Yes, it can be frustrating sometimes, but when adonamaa goes away so does all the cuteness from her rebellion. Then it's just plain old rebellion.

Kayeeoo: Carry me

This word is always said at my feet with outstretched arms, and is always said at least twice. "Kayeeoo… Kayeeoo Daddy". It comes from me asking her if she wanted me to carry her when she was slow and I was sick of waiting for her to catch up. I'd say "Want daddy to carry you?" So now she assumes that "Carry you" is one word that means: to carry the Duchess. On instinct, I tried to teach her the correct way to say it the other day and Stevie leapt across the room, screamed NOOOOO, and then tackled me. She's resisting the change even more than I am.

Sawbubby: Strawberry

This one just left her vocabulary a few weeks ago. I'm pretty sure Stevie cried when she heard Duchess say "Can I have a strawberry?" I would give anything to have a recording of her saying "I has a sawbubby?" I would make a million copies. I would keep one in the Smithsonian. But alas, Sawbubby is gone forever - a lost word in a dying language. ::sob::

Fiveteen: Fifteen - "Thirteen…fourteen…fiveteen…"

There was a point at which I would have been completely comfortable with this pronunciation of fifteen carrying on into High School. I don't care how much damage it does. I'd pay for the therapy. I want my daughter to call fifteen "fiveteen" dammit!

F*cking: Something

I'm not going to use it in a sentence, just understand that for the last 6-8 months, every time Duchess has meant to say "Something", she has said something very different. It has made having company over oh so much fun!

Shut Up: Stand up - "Daddy, shut up."

"That's not very nice; don't tell me to shut up."

"Shut up Daddy!"

"Duchess, don't tell me to shut up. That is not nice."

"SHUT UP DADDYYYYYYYY!!!"

It took me awhile to figure out what she was saying. Now, when people see me quietly stand up after Duchess tells me to "shut up" they assume I'm just a broken shell of the man I once was, when really we're just communicating!

Wanididid: I wanted to, and I did - "I wanididid go potty daddy!!"

I love this one because it only happens when she is so proud of herself that she doesn't have time to use multiple words. She just wants to tell me everything in one, awesome Duchess word, and that is perfectly fine with me. "I wanididid count to fiveteen daddy!!!!" Yes you did honey. Yes you did.

Rebudeder: Regular, in-between slow and fast

When we sing songs in the car… actually I should just say when we are in the car, because it is the same thing. If we are in the car, we must be singing. Duchess has declared it so. Anyway, she also declares whether we sing the song fast or slowwwwwww. Once she is tired of making us speed up or slow down "The Wheels on the Bus" fiveteen times she'll say, "Ok edeebody. Now sing rebudeder." And then we sing the song rebudeder.

Habagooday: Have a good day!

I saved this one for last not only because structurally it makes sense, but because it is my favorite. Duchess and I have a bedtime ritual. We brush our teeth. She spits all over her face. I wipe her face. We read a book. We read another book. She then tells me she would like to read four more books. I say no. She pretends to cry. I pretend to acknowledge her pretend cry. Then she gets in bed. We sing 1-30 songs. I give her a kiss and a hug. I say good night. She says good night. I say I love you. She says I love you. And then I get up and leave the room. Every night – and I'm serious here – every single night after I shut the door she yells "Habagooday!" I don't know where she picked it up. I don't care that it is night and not day. It is something that is wholly hers and I want it to stay that way forever. So I open the door back up, poke my head in and say back "Habagooday, I love you." And she loves me too.

Habagooday,

Dad (John)

What toddler words do you love or miss with your kids? Let's make a dictionary in the comments!!

*In case, like my wife, you didn't get the Flowers for Algernon reference, please refer to the episode of the Simpsons when Homer finds out that a crayon he put in his nose as a child is in his brain. He has it removed and becomes a genius... only to slowly fall back into buffoonery once the crayon is put back in. That episode is a parody of Flowers for Algernon – which is a fantastic book.

Special thanks to Ask Your Dad Blog fan Emmaly S. for correcting me on my Simpsons reference. I originally stated that the crayon made Homer a genius, she gently pointed out that it was the other way around!

The crayon is in his brain, and it makes him not smart.

P.S. We're still having a blast over at the Ask Your Dad Facebook Page. I post funny micro content like conversations I have with Duchess that have words I didn't include on this list. If you haven't liked the page, I highly encourage it. It recently won the Latin Grammy for Choreography in a Music Video. I even put a widget in the right column for you to click. It's that easy!

6 Reasons that Sending My Infant to Daycare is Killing Me

2013-03-03T09:47:00.002-07:00

Hey gang. Guest post from my wife Stevie this weekend. The title is pretty self explanatory; so I will let her get to it. I'll have a new post up on Monday or Tuesday. Thanks for reading!

Dad (John)

6 Reasons that Sending My Infant to Daycare is Killing Me

(And 3 Reasons I know I'll Survive)

Captain went to daycare on Friday. I'm having a hard time with it. I took a few weeks off after he was born and started working full-time again around Christmas. I was able to do most of my work from home because he was just a squishy lump that slept all the time. Now that he’s starting to be awake more than asleep, it was hard to be in the room with that cute, smiley face and still stay focused on work. He’s just too kissable.

So we enrolled him in the same daycare that Duchess goes to. She’s pretty excited about it. Whenever I would bring him with me while dropping her off or picking her up, she would yell to anyone that was listening, “look! It’s my bru-dder! LOOK IT'S MY BRU-DERRR!!!”

So needless to say, she’s stoked about it. I, on the other hand, am having a harder time coping, for several reasons. So I will dip into John’s bag of lazy blogger tricks and make a list, outlining why this sucks, and why I'll be OK.

First, the suck.

I want him to know me, not his teacher.

It’s a hard reality to accept, but Captain will be spending nearly twice as much time during the week with his teacher at the daycare than with me. I’m sure this is an irrational fear but how do I not jump to the conclusion that he will form a stronger bond with her than his mother? With Duchess, we were lucky enough that my mom watched her for the first TWO YEARS of her life. She went to daycare one day a week to be socialized and to give my mom a break. But otherwise, she got to hang out with my mom and her cousin all day. I’m ok with her forming a strong bond with my mom. They still have an amazing bond. But I don’t feel quite the same about his teacher.

I want him to be held.

I don’t want him to be just sitting in a corner by himself, being background noise to a classroom of screaming babies. I want someone to cuddle him and rock him and sing to him. Like I do. I want them to be all-up-in-his face with smiles and coos and made up words spoken three octaves too high.

I want to be there when he hits his milestones.

I was lucky enough to be there for his first smile, his first coo and the first time he rolled over from his stomach to his back. From here out, it’s a statistical improbability that I will be able to see the next few milestones. He will be spending more waking time during the day at school than with me. I think I’ll have a mental breakdown if I go pick him up from school and they tell me he took his first steps or said his first word.

I want to know every little thing that happens to him.

If he gets a bruise or a cut, if he spills something on himself, I want to know how/where/when/why. I don’t mean that in the over-bearing way where I am going to corner his poor, tiny teacher and shine a light in her face until she gives me an answer. I just want to know everything there is to know about my son.

I want to be able to nurse him when he’s hungry.

The most traumatic part of a baby’s day is when they are hungry. He knows nothing else at this point except “I’m hungry. Feed me now. I’m distraught”. Being able to give him exactly what he needs and calm him better than anything else in the world is an amazing feeling. And my breast pump just doesn’t seem to have the same appreciation for the boob. Also, it makes an annoying sound. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard a breast pump before but to me it’s liken to listening to daleks yelling at you. #doctorwhoreference #hashtagsdontworkinblogs #ohwell

But most of all, I just want to hold my son.

And now, reasons why I'll be ok...

I am aware that all the reasons above start with the word I

When it really comes down to it, he's who matters in the equation, and I know (I really do know) that he is going to be fine. And that makes me feel a little better. Not much, but a little. He will make friends, and be around people other than mom and dad all the time. He will have structure to his day, which I’m told babies thrive on. He’ll get the attention that he needs and deserves that I can’t really give him while I’m working. He’s going to be fine. He's going to be fine. He's going to be fine. And so am I.

We love our daycare

I may have made it sound like I dropped him off under an overpass and said good luck. That’s not the case at all. We love our daycare. Duchess has been going there for a long time (first part time and then started going full time about a year ago). We love the teachers, we love the location and we love the building. The people there are more than capable of handling my son. There are only two other kids in his class and they are both walking. So he will be held. And actually, his first day of school has been so highly anticipated by the daycare staff that I doubt he’ll be put down all day. Seriously, every time I went to get the duchess, the whole staff wanted to see him and know when he was coming to play. Back off ladies, he’s mine.

Sweet sweet alone time!!

I'd be lying if I said that I'm not just a little bit excited to have some alone time. Here's a text message I sent to John the other day.

Being a mom is awesome, wonderful, tiring and messy. I love all of it. I'm going to miss having my little Captain here with me more than I could ever describe, but I cannot begin to tell you how excited I am to take a shower by myself - even if I'm crying during it.

Almost Spanking the Duchess

2013-02-25T16:39:00.000-07:00

I passed another parental milestone a few days ago. I had the urge to spank my daughter. This isn't a proud moment for me.

I didn't spank her. Instead, I got up, walked into the other room, clenched my jaw and made this guttural angry uurrrrggggggggg sound that started in my knees, crept its way up through my stomach and chest, then exploded out of my mouth in a collection of consonants and vowels that would probably not have been appropriate for network television.

I looked just like this, only I had a shirt on.

What did Duchess do to cause this rage bubble in my chest? The whole lead up to it doesn't really matter. I said yes. She said no. Rinse. Repeat.

She's a kid. She is getting smarter. She is getting more manipulative, and she is getting really repetitive. She is testing boundaries. She's like a velociraptor in Jurassic Park poking the edges of her enclosure, testing for weaknesses. And she remembers.

Clever girl.

That doesn't concern me. Kids are jerky velociraptors sometimes.

What concerns me is that after 60 minutes of trying to find a way to convey my seriousness about something, after following every super nanny/attachment parenting/patient parent technique of explaining "why a behavior is bad", I found these words crawling up and out of my mouth through my clenched teeth: "Do it again and you're going to get spanked."

Then Duchess looked at me, laughed, and threw a book at my face. It hit me square on the bridge of the nose. It made my eyes water. I wanted spank her.

Let's pause at this point in the story – since that is what I did in real life.

My history with spanking (abridged):

When I was four I peed in our neighbor's basement window well. I had recently learned from some of my other friends that the world is a boy's toilet. I took this new found freedom and did what most kids do with any freedom they are given. I pissed it away. (HA! Piss. I make myself laugh sometimes.)

I promised myself I'd never use this picture...

While I was focusing on peeing in our neighbor's window well, my dad was focused on walking up behind me. What he managed to see before I did was that the neighbors, whose window I was currently peeing in, were in their basement looking directly at me with a mix of anger and what I like to imagine must have been admiration for my boldness. My dad was not amused.

He scooped me up, still peeing, pulled my pants on and carried me back to the house under his arm – but not before giving the obligatory "sorry my kid pissed on your window" wave to the neighbors. They never invited us over for dinner after that.

When we got home my dad put me down, crouched down to my level, looked me in the eyes and said in his very best Dirty Harry voice. "Go up to your room and wait for me. I'm coming up to spank you."

I ran up the stairs of our duplex and hid in my room sobbing for the next hour and dreading the worst. I vividly remember sobbing until I eventually started doing the stuttered gasp thing over and over. I remember burying my face under my pillow and peaking out the crack of light at the door every time I heard a sound, waiting for my dad to come through the door.

Here's what is weird. I don't remember if he spanked me or not. I slightly remember him coming up. And I know I ended up in his lap. And he may have lightly patted my bum. But mainly I remember burrowing my face into his neck, the rough feeling of his day old stubble and the smell of Old Spice aftershave.

This Old Spice, not the kind with extra douche bag in it.

OK... and...UNPAUSE!

During my self-imposed time-out after I grrrd and urrggged my rage bubble into the ceiling, I was embarrassed. And I was guilt-ridden. And I was scared that I might have that type of violence in me. That's not who I want to be. I love my kids. I even love them when they're assholes.

I don't want to teach them that violence is a proper reaction to anger or frustration. I don't want to teach them that violence is something they need to fear from their dad. And not only do I not want to hit my kids, I don't want to want to hit my kids. (I use hit, because who are we kidding. Spanking is just a nice word for hitting.)

I didn't hit her though. I walked away. I took a minute… well ten minutes. I gathered myself. And sometime after my barbaric yawp, and after my guilt spiral, I realized that even though I may have wanted to smack her - I didn't. I left her in her room, just like my dad had left me.

I could picture my dad pacing the living room. I saw him clenching his fists, his jaw, his eyes and letting out his own tortured argggg. I was him. He was me. It was a Shyamalanian twist!

Up until this point I thought he'd just left me up there for an hour to torture me. Now I just think he needed that time to calm down. So there it is. I am my dad. Duchess is me. And she's just pissing in metaphoric windows. Mind. Blown.

Bruce Willis is dead the whole movie. SPOILED!

Anyway... when I went back into the room I had the energy needed to continue to be patient (much more energy that it would have taken for me to smack her bum.) We talked about not throwing. We talked about taking care of our things. We talked. And it worked.

I know there are tougher times ahead. My patience will be tested more than it is now. I'll need to be the adult. I can just see those of you with older kids snickering and saying "Oh just you wait..." I know. I know. I am a very young parent. I am work in progress. So are my kids. It's a strange journey, this dad thing. Sometimes it fills me with pride and self worth. Sometimes it scares the shit out of me.

I still feel guilty for having the urge to smack her. I don't know where it came from, and perhaps that is something worth exploring. But I'll make you all the same promise that I made to Stevie that evening when I told her what happened.

I will never hit our children. Ever. Even if they are being complete jerks or throw books at my face.

I will utilize every tool I have at my disposal to make this happen. I will separate myself from the situation. I will ask for help from Stevie if I am overly frustrated. I will be honest about my feelings and try to explore where they come from - because we can't always control our feelings, but we can control how we react to them.

Thanks for reading. Be excellent to each other - and party on dudes!

Love, Dad (John)

Sorry, I felt like I needed one more oddly placed movie reference for my spanking post.

P.S. We're still having a blast over at the Ask Your Dad Facebook Page. I post funny micro content like conversations I have with Duchess that don't involve her throwing things at my face. If you haven't liked the page, I highly encourage it. I give it 9/10 Stars. I even put a widget in the right column for you to click. It's that easy!

P.S.S. We're getting close to our fundraising goal for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. If you have a couple extra dollars, please consider clicking here to donate. Thanks!!!

The Internet Made Me Cry in a Fast Food Restaurant

2013-02-15T16:35:00.000-07:00

I cry a lot. I get it from my Grandpa. He used to cry at Naked Gun movies. I cry when I watch Parenthood on NBC, when Duchess tells me she loves me, when Duchess accidentally knees me in my man bits, and sometimes because of the internet. Today it was the internet.

Someone asked me awhile ago: If the internet had a slogan, what would it be? I immediately replied that the internet's tagline should be "Far better and far worse than you could ever imagine." Thankfully today is far better day.

Reenactment. That's just water,

On my lunch I walked over to a small burger chain near our building called Arctic Circle, ordered a cheese burger and fries and sat down with my smart phone to browse Reddit. That's when I saw this:

Which led to this image:

How awesome is that!! What a kind thing to do. What an amazing way to put something nice into the world. I immediately hopped into the comments to see what other people were saying. And then I saw this:

And that link led to this comment from two years ago.

I'm cutting off the image there and reprinting the comment in full for you to read. Because you need to read it. Because it made me cry in the middle of a fast food restaurant.

**From user name Rhoner on Reddit in response to the question: "Have you ever picked up a hitchhiker":**

Oh and one warning... I didn't change it at all so there are some curse words.

Just about every time I see someone I stop. I kind of got out of the habit in the last couple of years, moved to a big city and all that, my girlfriend wasn't too stoked on the practice. Then some shit happened to me that changed me and I am back to offering rides habitually. If you would indulge me, it is long story and has almost nothing to do with hitch hiking other than happening on a road.

This past year I have had 3 instances of car trouble. A blow out on a freeway, a bunch of blown fuses and an out of gas situation. All of them were while driving other people's cars which, for some reason, makes it worse on an emotional level. It makes it worse on a practical level as well, what with the fact that I carry things like a jack and extra fuses in my car, and know enough not to park, facing downhill, on a steep incline with less than a gallon of fuel.

Anyway, each of these times this shit happened I was DISGUSTED with how people would not bother to help me. I spent hours on the side of the freeway waiting, watching roadside assistance vehicles blow past me, for AAA to show. The 4 gas stations I asked for a gas can at told me that they couldn't loan them out "for my safety" but I could buy a really shitty 1-gallon one with no cap for $15. It was enough, each time, to make you say shit like "this country is going to hell in a handbasket."

But you know who came to my rescue all three times? Immigrants. Mexican immigrants. None of them spoke a lick of the language. But one of those dudes had a profound effect on me.

He was the guy that stopped to help me with a blow out with his whole family of 6 in tow. I was on the side of the road for close to 4 hours. Big jeep, blown rear tire, had a spare but no jack. I had signs in the windows of the car, big signs that said NEED A JACK and offered money. No dice. Right as I am about to give up and just hitch out there a van pulls over and dude bounds out. He sizes the situation up and calls for his youngest daughter who speaks English. He conveys through her that he has a jack but it is too small for the Jeep so we will need to brace it. He produces a saw from the van and cuts a log out of a downed tree on the side of the road. We rolled it over, put his jack on top, and bam, in business. I start taking the wheel off and, if you can believe it, I broke his tire iron. It was one of those collapsible ones and I wasn't careful and I snapped the head I needed clean off. Fuck.

No worries, he runs to the van, gives it to his wife and she is gone in a flash, down the road to buy a tire iron. She is back in 15 minutes, we finish the job with a little sweat and cussing (stupid log was starting to give), and I am a very happy man. We are both filthy and sweaty. The wife produces a large water jug for us to wash our hands in. I tried to put a 20 in the man's hand but he wouldn't take it so I instead gave it to his wife as quietly as I could. I thanked them up one side and down the other. I asked the little girl where they lived, thinking maybe I could send them a gift for being so awesome. She says they live in Mexico. They are here so mommy and daddy can pick peaches for the next few weeks. After that they are going to pick cherries then go back home. She asks if I have had lunch and when I told her no she gave me a tamale from their cooler, the best fucking tamale I have ever had.

So, to clarify, a family that is undoubtedly poorer than you, me, and just about everyone else on that stretch of road, working on a seasonal basis where time is money, took an hour or two out of their day to help some strange dude on the side of the road when people in tow trucks were just passing me by. Wow...
But we aren't done yet. I thank them again and walk back to my car and open the foil on the tamale cause I am starving at this point and what do I find inside? My fucking $20 bill! I whirl around and run up to the van and the guy rolls his window down. He sees the $20 in my hand and just shaking his head no like he won't take it. All I can think to say is "Por Favor, Por Favor, Por Favor" with my hands out. Dude just smiles, shakes his head and, with what looked like great concentration, tried his hardest to speak to me in English:

"Today you.... tomorrow me."

Rolled up his window, drove away, his daughter waving to me in the rear view. I sat in my car eating the best fucking tamale of all time and I just cried. Like a little girl. It has been a rough year and nothing has broke my way. This was so out of left field I just couldn't deal.

In the 5 months since I have changed a couple of tires, given a few rides to gas stations and, once, went 50 miles out of my way to get a girl to an airport. I won't accept money. Every time I tell them the same thing when we are through: "Today you.... tomorrow me."

"Today you.... tomorrow me."

tl;dr: long rambling story about how the kindness of strangers, particularly folks from south of the border, forced me to be more helpful on the road and in life in general. I am sure it won't be as meaningful to anyone else but it was seriously the highlight of my 2010.

----

And then I was wiping the tears away with my napkin. The nice lady who collects the trays asked me if I was ok. I told her yes, handed her the five bucks in my pocket and walked back to work. What a wonderful lunch. Anyway, thanks for indulging my sappy internet story. And thank you internet. You never cease to amaze me.

Hoy por tí, mañana por yo,
John

Relevent Links:

Here is Reddit (Careful, it's not all puppies and rainbows.)

Here is the link about the couple who had their dinner paid for.

Here is the comment I reprinted.

P.S. I am reprinting this without permission since it was originally posted in a public forum. Rhoner, if you see this and would like to contact me about it for some reason, click the contact me page up top. BTW, thank you. You not only made me a better dad today, you made me a better person.

P.S.S. If you're not currently a fan of the Ask Your Dad Facebook Page, but you like the blog, I highly encourage you to consider it. It's not just a place where I post new posts from the blog. I also post smaller humorous content, pictures and interesting articles. We laugh... we cry... we hug. (We don't actually hug.)

I Really Hope My Son Gets to be a Boy Scout

2013-02-06T17:35:00.002-07:00

I grew up in boy scouts from the age of 12-18. I absolutely loved it. I hope that some day it is an experience my son and I can share together. Today the National Executive Board of the Boy Scouts of America delayed a decision on whether or not to allow the LGBT community to be open members of their organization. I'll be dropping this letter in the mail tomorrow morning. I thought I'd share it here too.

Dear Boy Scouts of America,

I need to tell you something that I suspect you already know. There are already plenty of LGBT people in your organization. In my troop alone there were three gay men that I know of. Two remained closeted until later in life and are still my friends. One came out while still in the troop. We ridiculed him, teased him, and bullied him. He was eventually asked to leave the troop by our leadership. He left, broken-hearted.

His mom, Barbara, was a kind and quiet woman. Before her son left the troop, she had already volunteered to be one of the adults who would attend a once in a lifetime Boy Scout trip to the Philmont Scout Ranch. Knowing that if she didn't attend we wouldn't be able to go, she still went with us – even though her son wasn't allowed.

For two weeks we would get to backpack through the wilderness in New Mexico learning outdoor, teambuilding, and leadership skills. And for two weeks she would hike silently among us while we used words like gay, queer and faggot.

About half way through our second week we were all sitting around the camp fire joking and Barbara hit her breaking point. I don't recall what was said that made her tip, but it was probably something insensitive and hateful. She lashed out sobbing and yelling as she pointed at each one of us accusingly.

"It is your fault that my son isn't here! It is your fault he is at home crying! It is your fault he lost all of his friends! It is your fault I worry about him every day! You are all so mean!"

"No," said one of the boys. "It's his fault."

And then she broke down into sobs, stood up and walked away into the darkness to find her tent.

She didn't bring it up again. We spent the rest of the week joking and hiking and singing songs on the trail. And while we went home having learned how to tie knots and build a fire without matches – not a single one of us had learned anything that night at the fire.

A Boy Scout is Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent.

We were none of these things. And while our cruel behavior was not endorsed by the BSA, the seed of it, an institutional policy of discrimination, was.

It took me a lot of years, and a lot of life experience to realize how wrong we all were sitting around the campfire that night, and how right Barbara was to point her finger at us. So now I'm going to do the same thing to you.

It is your fault that these kids have to live in fear. It is your fault that they feel isolated and different. It is your fault that LGBT parents of Boy Scouts have to sit down with their kids and explain why they can't be a leader in their troop. It is your fault, Boy Scouts of America.

It is time to change. I believe you can change – and as scary as it is, I believe you can survive that change.

There is so much right about the Boy Scouts. It makes me sad that all that is talked about these days is your policy on homosexuality in your membership. I learned a myriad of different practical, social and leadership skills in the Boy Scouts that have directly contributed to my success today. Not only that, I made some of the greatest friends of my life – almost all of which I still keep in contact with. Three were groomsman at my wedding. Being a scout was an incredible force for good in my life… but I also sat around a campfire one night and looked into a crying mother's eyes and told her that her son was not good enough to be a Boy Scout, or my friend. And I just can't risk my son ever learning that that is OK.

Most of the mistakes we make in life, we are not conscious of until after they are made. I made mistakes when I was 13 that you are still making today. But it isn't too late. Please make the right decision in May. Please amend your policy of exclusion. I really want my son to be a Boy Scout, but regardless of how he turns out, if the BSA doesn't change, he won't be wearing the uniform. And that makes me incredibly sad.

John Kinnear
Life Scout and father of two

Kid-Free Sections on Planes are OK with Me

2013-02-05T12:23:00.000-07:00

I had a couple online conversations this week about AirAsia's announcement that they would be offering kid-free "Quiet Zones" on some of their long-leg flights. Lots of people I talked to were really angry about it. I'm really just fine with the idea.

Robert Duffer, editor at the The Good Men Project's Dads and Families section caught wind of one of these discussions and asked me to write a few words about the topic. I gave him a thousand. Anyway, hop on over to my article and be sure to leave a comment. Feel free to disagree with me and tell me why you think I'm wrong. I fully admit to being a work in progress!

- Dad (John)

Here is the link:

Child-Free Sections on Airline Take Flight Amidst Controversy

John Kinnear parses the praise and cries of discrimination on Quiet Zones in economy class sections

Comic: Put Your Pants On!!

2013-01-28T17:00:00.000-07:00

Artwork by Adam White, courtesy of Jakob Marketing Partners

Ask Your Dad - Time Machine Edition

2013-01-22T09:37:00.000-07:00

Long before I met Stevie, and even longer before I met Captain and Duchess, I was living in a house with my dad, my sister, and my newborn nephew. My sister got pregnant young. She was 19. Our family rallied together, and for the first year of my nephew's life we all helped raise him. She took over from there and has been doing a fantastic job since.

I was writing back then too, just not as publicly.

This past weekend I was going through some of my writing from that period of my life and came across this. I think it is worth sharing here. It was a moment in my life that helped to shape the dad I try to be now. Hope you enjoy it.

Love, Dad

June 9, 2006

Last night my sister brought Cam into my room and told me that I needed to put him to bed because she had to drive her friend Molly home.

Cameron was fussy, and while I always love being handed a happy baby, I was somewhat annoyed to handed the crying baby. I didn't have time to argue with her. Cam arched his back and started screaming, and before I knew it she had left. I brought him downstairs and laid him in his large play pen (which he has been sleeping in since he tried to go base jumping out of his crib.)

I then went into the living room and sat in the blue glow of the television screen waiting for him to stop screaming. It didn't stop, and in about three minutes what started out as just loud shrieking began to transform into words in my head. "Why are you annoyed with me?" "Why am I alone in here?" "What did I do?" "Please... Please..." These were separated by short stuttered breaths.

I gave in, entered the room, and found him standing at the side of the playpen, glazed puffy eyes trembling accusingly. He reached for me with one arm. I picked him up and brought him into the living room. He is getting so big. He is still so tiny. We sat in my sisters rocking chair and I let him cry.

I tried to remember the last time I cried with such unhinged veracity. I tried to think about what I needed in those moments...what could have made me stop. I realized that I was doing everything I could. I was doing everything that had been done for me. I was letting him cry. I was holding him.

His stuttering sobs continued into squirming back arches of frustration, and anger. He would break to breath, and lay his head against my shirt. His tears soaked through and i could feel the wetness against my chest.

I caressed the back of his head and sang Floyd's "Wish you were here." He would be quiet with eyes wide for a minute and then whimper... cry... whimper. Slowly it all subsided. His eyes fell and his silence thanked me for not letting him cry himself to sleep alone. His tiny hands bunched up my t-shirt and pulled me in close. This tiny person, whom I had looked at with annoyance only an hour before was now holding me. And I realized that, how earlier, when his world was dark and lonely, when the only way he knew how to cope was to scream, all he needed was to be held. I was able to be the one thing he needed in the world for a half and hour.

I didn't carry him to bed right away. I stayed in the rocking chair, in the dark basement, television turned off and let him hold me. Things were simple again. For the next half hour, he was the only thing in this world I needed.

This world can be so horrendously complicated. I cherish times like these - these moments of actual love and clarity. They are the staples that hold hearts together and leave the metallic taste of understanding on our lonelier days.

-John

Cam and me circa 2006

Product Review - The Zen Swaddle

2013-01-19T19:22:00.000-07:00

Hey readers! I don't generally do a lot of product reviews, but the folks at Nested Bean reached out to me through Twitter and offered to send me one of their Zen Swaddles to try out with the captain. As you may remember from my 5 Things I Forgot About Having a Newborn post, at that point we were getting about an hour a sleep every night. So we were willing to try about anything. Since Stevie is the one who has been using it, I asked her to write up a little review. Thanks for reading!

-Dad

P.S. This is an unpaid review. They only sent us the product.

Hi readers! Stevie here. (Mom, wife, sometimes blogger). Remember that time John said something about wishing that hospitals would have given dads a class on making babies into calm burritos? (It is somewhere in Captain's birth story if you'd like to find it.) Well they really should have taught moms, too. Because we both suck at it. We never really needed to learn it with Duchess because she hated it. Like, screamed at the top of her lungs hated it. But Captain is another story. He loves it. But that doesn't change the fact that John and I are absolutely horrible at it. If there were an infomercial for the swaddlers, John and I would be the ones in the beginning of the program who completely and embarrassingly mess it up.

You call this swaddling? Let's stay up a while and talk about it.

Enter: zen baby. Ok, actually it’s Zen Swaddle by Nested Bean but the idea is the same. Zen Swaddlers make zen babies.

We got this bad boy in the mail right about the time that the Captain was moving past his I-sleep-all-the-freaking-time stage. He was starting to wake more at night and wanting to be awake and hang out. He would only sleep if I was holding him. Great for bonding. Bad for sleep.

Aside from handy Velcro that make it into Swaddling for Dummies, the idea behind the Zen Swaddler is that it actually has little pads that act as weights. It puts light pressure where the baby would feel if being held. So basically it’s supposed to mimic the sensation of mama holding the Captain without mama having to stay propped up in bed doing it at all hours of the night. Love you, son. Love you too, sleep.

The first night we used it, this was my Facebook post:

It actually worked. Before that, the Captain had been getting up every hour to two hours to feed or just need to be held because he got out of his pitiful attempt at me swaddling him. The night we started using the Swaddler, he slept three hours straight. After that, started sleeping four hours straight at night. It’s been bliss. (Until he got sick, but that wasn't the swaddles fault.)

I was a little afraid it was going to need some fancy washing because of the weight packs but it’s actually machine washable. Which is good because Captain likes to christen things by throwing up all over them. Not kidding.

The only bummer at this point is that he's already mostly grown out of it. It's supposed to fit up to 4 months but the Captain is a pretty big dude (over 8 lbs at birth and 12 lbs by his one-month check up). So we're a little bummed that we won't be able to use it much longer but it's been fabulous for the time we've had it. Good on you, Nested Bean. Good on you.

To summarize:

Positives:

It worked.
Captain liked it.
I got more sleep.

Negatives:

$40.00 seems a bit steep. I could have used an extra one for extra pukey-poopy nights, but that could get expensive.
It already seems like Captain is growing out of it, but we got it a month after he was born. So if you're going to get one for you or someone else, get it before the baby arrives.

We don't really have a rating system, so I give it three green triangles and a half eaten, fresh banana.

Love,

Mom (Stevie)

If you'd like to learn more about the Zen Swaddle you can go here

Dealing With Infant RSV (Maybe)

2013-01-18T11:52:00.000-07:00

Captain has been sick for almost two weeks. It has been horrible. His tiny little cough is huge. I don't know if that sentence will make any sense unless you've had an infant with a cough. I don't even know if it is really RSV. You'd think after three trips to the doctor in the last week they'd be able to tell us. Instead they say "It sounds like bronchiolitis… which could be RSV, and since the treatments are the same, we're not going to test for it. Just keep jamming this torture device up his nose and make him scream and cough more and as long as he keeps eating then he'll be OK."

But he's not OK He's miserable. I didn't want sadness to be the first emotion I recognized on my son's face, but I can see it. He finishes coughing, and then he finishes gasping and then he the fear goes out of his eyes and it is replaced by this horrible sadness that says to me "I have been coughing for a quarter of my life dad. This sucks." I can take a frown. I can't take a frown that quivers on the edges.

I know. I'm being overly dramatic. There are people out there with really really sick kids. Kids with Leukemia. Kids with brain tumors. Kids with degenerative spinal diseases. Mine has a cough. Trust me, I wish I could reach into myself and rip out this pit in my stomach and hold its physical embodiment in front of my face and scream at it: "HAVE SOME PERSPECTIVE DAMMIT! YOUR KID IS GOING TO BE FINE! HE HAS A COUGH!"

But I can't - because the captain is coughing again and I need to go pick him up and hold him and rock him and kiss his head and wait for it to pass. Because to him, this is the worst thing that has ever happened, and because I know that, it's also one of the worst things that's happened to me. Perspective flies right out the window when my kid is screaming.

Here are some things that have helped:

The Evil Blue Bulb

He hates it. We hate it. But it works… kind of. Captain doesn't know how to blow his nose, so every 30-60 minutes we have to manually suck out his snot with this guy. Basically you push the bulb with your thumb, then put the tip in one of the kid's nostrils, and take your thumb off the bulb. Then your kid screams and looks at you like you just stuck a small vacuum cleaner up his nose.

It sucks, but it works. Be sure to wash it out and sanitize.

The Humidifier

We actually own this exact humidifier. It is a little loud, but it's easy to clean and will run all night without refilling it. We don't use the Vick's with it, but it keeps the room humid, which I'm told is what humidifiers do. It has definitely helped Captain sleep.

The Steam Room

This has been the most effective thing we've found. When Captain's coughing gets really bad we turn the hot shower on full blast, shut the door and Stevie nurses him. Captain breaths the steamy goodness through his nose and everything clears up for a little while. Also, he gets to eat , which I'm sure is important for babies.

The Stevie

My wife is wonderful and strong and caring and the best mom on the planet and I should thank her more often and for every moment I've spent caring for Captain these last couple weeks she's spent ten more and I love her more than macaroni and cheese (which is a lot). Really though - if I'm tired, she's exhausted. If I'm worried, she's terrified. You'd never be able to tell though because 100% of her energy goes into loving that kid 100% of the time. I am in awe of everything she does.

Stevie insists on a caption here explaining that she doesn't always look like this.

The Reader Recommendation!

I haven't tried this, but if you read through the comments it is highly recommended. It's called the Nosefrida The Snotsucker Nasal Aspirator and as far as I can tell it has you literally suck the snot out of your kid's nose through a straw with a filter on it. Yep, gross. But hey - read the comments below the blog. People love it.

Anyway, hope all your kids are healthy and not coughing. Thanks for reading. I'll try and be funny again next week.
Love,

Dad

Update: So I wrote this earlier in the week and didn't really have time to finish it. Things with Captain have improved and he is really only coughing when he gets upset now. We're still doing the blue bulb/steam room treatments and they still are helping.

Earlier this week I took some questions on the Ask Your Dad Facebook Page with the intent of writing a blog post where I do my best to answer them. I am about 40% through writing that post and will be publishing it sometime this weekend or early next week.

P.S.

We're still raising money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. If you'd like to donate any amount, please click on the picture below.

Leukemia Lymphoma Fundraiser - Week 2

2013-01-11T22:17:00.002-07:00

What a great week! We raised $535.00 dollars for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society since last Friday. That brings the total raised to $625.00. That is fan-freaking-tastic! Training has been a pain this week because living in Utah during the winter is basically like living in the tailpipe of a running diesel truck.

So since I would like to help cure blood cancers without actually getting lung cancer I've been confined to the treadmill - which I hate. I get distracted and drift. It's not pretty. Anyway - stop picturing me on a treadmill. Let's celebrate!

Thank you so much to the following people!

Jeremy A.
Mike W.
Ellie L.
Michelle M.
Brenda O.
Judith S.
Angie W.C.
Ashley B.
Gena P.
Melissa D.
Cate K.
Jessika R.
Oren M.

By the way! Oren is also a daddy blogger and writes a wonderful blog called A Blogger and a Father. You should check it out.

Our weekly prize was a personalized video of the Duchess saying thank you. This week our winner is... everyone!!! (Except Jessika R. because I had already made the video when you donated.)

Lastly... I made a foolish promise on the Ask Your Dad Facebook page earlier. We were only $85.00 away from $500 dollars and I promised that if we hit that goal I would... well I'll let you read the post:

Therefore... I leave you with this dear readers...

Love, Dad P.S. If that video has inspired you to give more money. You can click the image below.