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The post Episode 2: COVID & Barbecue first appeared on Rob Ainbinder.

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The post Episode 1: About Me, My Last Name and GameStop first appeared on Rob Ainbinder.

There is no clear cut rule book for any of this. When you both have “kids” aka a mix of teenagers and emerging adults, there can be many twists and turns as you bring all of them together (plus two dogs) under one roof for the first time. 

Jen was absolutely wonderful and welcoming to my daughter and me. And all the “kids” seemed to get along.  

Unlike Clark Griswold in a Christmas Vacation, I am happy to say that at no time did I get locked in the attic or, staple my shirt to a gutter.

However, a holiday wouldn’t be complete without a last-minute rush to replace something broken (a Christmas tree) or, an emergency home repair. Would it? Probably not.

Sure, these things can fluster or frustrate anyone. And I am sure there are many families this year that experienced something like this or perhaps worse. 

I think for me, one of the good things about this holiday season was being able to spend time together. And it was a preview of sorts of how things might work in the future. I am thankful for all of this and the health of everyone. 

It’s been an amazing, wonderful season. Sure, we’re tired. In the end, it was worth it when one of the kids mentioned to me that it had been, “a relaxing holiday”.

The post A New Holiday Experience first appeared on Rob Ainbinder.

Well, when I announced on Facebook that I was “in a Relationship” (after 6 months of dating), I found out the real truth. My grief process didn’t mesh with everyone’s internal expectations or, timeline.  And a (now) former friend decided to let me know right there on Facebook in the middle of all the “happy for you” comments about my new relationship with a really terrific woman. 

Now in the fallout of this comment, I deleted it and unfriended her. You might ask why? Or, think I might have reacted hastily.

Well, one of the features of these life events on Facebook is they recur in your “Memories” and honestly as happy as 999% of people were for us, I didn’t want anyone raining on our moment. And I certainly didn’t want it to show up in the future in my Facebook Memories.

This entire event triggered me to lean into a long-held belief, grief is as unique as the individual.

Grief is as Unique as the Individual

In the above example, this selfish former friend thought the world, or more correctly, I.. should conform to their ideal of grieving an “appropriate” amount of time. This is ludicrous and self-centered. No one should attempt to tell someone else how long they should grieve. In fact, in my case, I was grieving from the day of my late wife’s diagnosis! Some friendly advice from a widower, before you publicly criticize their grieving that they “moved forward too fast/move on too fast”. Try talking to them. Make an attempt to understand them from their perspective.  

Moving Forward, Not On

Another important distinction that I have made since my late wife passed away is one of moving forward as opposed to moving on. Moving on indicates to me that we are leaving behind the place we were in. When we move forward in grief we have space to carry the memory of the deceased person with us. They are not left behind or forgotten. We can honor their memory and begin to move forward into life. It’s not an either/or situation. It’s an ampersand. 

When I hear or read someone is “moving on in grief” as opposed to moving forward, I cringe a bit. I don’t think they are intentionally leaving someone behind unless the circumstances dictated it. I really appreciate the idea that we are moving forward instead.  

Have you been criticized for moving forward in your grief “too fast”? Let me know in the comments below.

The post Ampersand: Grieving From A Widower’s Perspective – When Should a Widower Move Forward & How? first appeared on Rob Ainbinder.

As a second-time attendee of the Dad 2 Conference, it was great to revisit. Reconnecting with friends, being present, vulnerable at times and lots of opportunity for learning and working to challenge the norm on fatherhood. There are also impromptu happenings that make this an even richer experience for men (and their advocates) willing to be at the forefront of fatherhood.  

My flight landed and I Ubered from DCA to the hotel and checked in. In a word, the Mandarin Oriental in Washington DC is magnificent.

I spent part of the morning at the Holocaust Museum and then joined up with the gathering attendees and friends we decided to walk 6 miles around DC. It was a beautiful day.

A Walking Tour of DC, Compass Coffee, White House & more

The Second Day, My Blogger Spotlight

My late wife Angela agreed early on to my sharing the “story” of our journey with her brain cancer. That led to many wonderful things happening (and continuing to happen). I was selected to read from that experience in a Dad Blogger Spotlight. It was my honor to share a moment from my experience with many others who took the stage on the second day. They included:

• Johnathon Briggs | Fatherhood @ Forty
• Joseph Fowler | Chasing Everyday Adventures
• Ben Killoy | Military Veteran Dad
• Flor Mercado | Dad Style 99

I am deeply honored to join these men and the others who previously joined the fraternity of Dad Blogger Spotlight readers. The Dad Blogger Spotlight is a tradition of the conference to highlight many of the dads and documenting various struggles and slices of life.

An Unexpected (and Fulfilling) Show of Faith

Among all the learning and connecting, a group of us took a moment on Friday night to welcome Shabbat and say the Mourner’s Kaddish for the founder of our dad blogger movement, Oren Miller. It was a great group of both non-Jews and Jews. This really filled my soul in an unexpectedly moving way.

Evolving the Fatherhood Platform

A big focus of this conference is connecting dads with information (and brands) that move the conversation of fatherhood in a new and ever-evolving way. We seek to inform, influence and move away from stereotypes and limiting beliefs of fatherhood in the past. And instead, move the conversation on to new models and modes of inclusive fatherhood. This includes advocating for enhanced paternity paid leave, creating awareness around protecting your teens with vaccines for meningitis and protecting your kids from online predators and grooming, to recognizing and embracing the many ways fathers father in all types of relationships.

Dad 2 is About Connection

In addition to the information sessions, sponsors, sights, tastes and sounds… it’s an opportunity to connect in person with people we know from our time online. And as a second-time attendee who experienced a loss with many of these men, it was important to me to return to thank, appreciate and honor those connections and make some new ones.

Brandon Billinger – The Rookie Dad, ever since we first connected at Dad 2 in 2016, I’ve been grateful to count him among my friends. He was especially supportive of me at one of the most pivotal times in my life.

Spike Zelenka – Families of Multiples – Another friend from back in 2016. You can count on Spike to be ready to create a great time with distilled spirits and cigars. Some of the finer things in life. As life should be enjoyed, right?

And how can you not convene a group of men and not indulge in the most primordial of foods… Meat cooked with smoke and fire! Our gathering at Hill Country Barbecue of D.C. was filling, soul-satisfying and dare I say, downright delicious! If you are accustomed to Texas-style barbecue, there is one exception at this restaurant, your usual pickles and onions are NOT free.

As well as some old & new friends, too!
Ariel Isenberg, Bud Ward, Sean Hill, Eric Boyette, Chelsea Chapman, Aaron Yavelberg

The post Dad 2 Summit 2020 Washington, DC in the Rearview: A Second Timer’s View first appeared on Rob Ainbinder.

Parenting alone as a widower didn’t come naturally to me, it was like learning to parent all over again in many ways. You become even more self-reliant reaching out to friends and family where you once had someone by your side to walk through all of this. Luckily, through my work supporting Angela and my work as a marketer, I helped establish several Dad Only groups for Life of Dad. These groups and more specifically the volunteers that run them are a fantastic source of support, ideas, and encouragement. From time to time, I see that encouragement in these groups is one of the best things we can do to support each other.

Parenting alone as a widower isn’t like single parenting. In single parenting the other parent, no matter how good or, awful the circumstances of separation or divorce are, they are still somewhere out there. And may share custody, help with kids and expenses. When parenting alone, the other parent is completely gone. Not available to talk about even the most mundane things, share custody, make alimony payments, or anything. They are just gone. And that has been one of the biggest changes.

The other things that have changed for me as a widower? There’s no adult to share budgeting, cooking, laundry, or housekeeping. Even a simple thing like dealing with a dropping a car off for service becomes an ordeal involving people who don’t mind but, you really don’t want to impose upon. It’s just the fact of dealing without the built-in support I used to have. I adjusted to many of these things as Angela’s cancer progressed and didn’t allow her to walk around the house and help like she did for the 22 years we were together. Now that she’s gone, I have to admit that her declining health was a sort of forced boot camp for anything I wasn’t handling. In so much of life we used to share so much, I am now flying mostly solo.

In this process of learning to parent alone as a widower, I got a real appreciation for what my Mom went through raising my brother and me as a single parent. And to single parents in general, I have a deeper appreciation for what you do to keep the new to you single parent family unit running.

I have learned that we really only have now. That yesterday is done and tomorrow is not guaranteed or worth worrying about. So, I focus very intently on the now. It takes effort and energy but the reward is a clarity that I didn’t understand before.

Note: A version of this was published on Triad Moms on Main

The post Learning to Parent Alone : How I Started Parenting as a Widower first appeared on Rob Ainbinder.

That I will remain in this club for the rest of my life, is my challenge… one I will meet head-on. Continuing to work on my grief. And being careful to take care of myself. Taking the time I obviously need. I do expect my grief to decline in intensity over time and to some extent, it already has.

This club is fairly exclusive, what was most alarming in my research was that “…widowers were more likely to die than people whose spouses were still living, on average. The effect was strongest during the first three months after a spouse’s death, when they had a 66-percent increased chance of dying.^[1]” Good thing I am now four months since Ang’s death. I apparently dodged a bullet.

But, this isn’t a regular fight club, one where what happens in Widower’s Fight Club stays in the Widower’s Fight Club. In this club, you have to share your grief with someone you trust and that is capable of helping you. It’s a process. And there is no set timeline.

If you don’t deal with grief in the first round it’s worse the second round and can show up in all kinds of unexpected ways.

Have a question about being a widower? Contact me here.

My Top 5 Tips for the Grieving Widower + A Bonus Tip

1. Connect with a professional grief counselor. This could be one through an agency like a non-profit hospice or, a licensed professional therapist in your area. Do not skip this.
2. Connect with a community or communities. This could be faith-based, interest-based, community based or all of them. The idea is to connect with people. I recommend a mix of in-person and online (e.g Facebook) groups. 
3. Take all the time you need to grieve and then give yourself some more time. Nobody but you know when you have done enough to being to move forward.
4. Don’t let anyone tell you anything about how long (or short) you should grieve. If someone does, it’s time to seriously minimize them in your life. You will know when you’ve grieved enough for yourself. Luckily for me, I got none of that kind of feedback. 
5. Keep the wedding band on as long as you want. I “tested” removing my wedding band a few times in the shower. The first time, I became a heap of emotional blubber. So, I kept it on. A few months later, I moved it to my other hand. I finally took it off after a guy I was talking to a party asked me if I was married. By then, I had decided if he was confused, I would take it off. It was right for me. Your Mileage May Vary. 

Bonus Tip: What to Do with Late Wife’s Photos & Momentoes

When the time is right, consider consolidating photos of your late wife to a specific space in the home. A wall of honor, if you will. This can be anywhere in the home you feel is right. I felt it was best to do this somewhere I walk by but, it isn’t too public a spot in my home. Some widowers, like Rob Elrod from an episode of Queer Eye, created a place with a large wooden chest in their living room and pictures throughout the house. “Coping doesn’t mean erasing the memory of a loved one. The Fab Five hung pictures of Allison throughout the house. And, they gave the Elrod family a beautiful wooden chest where they can store mementos. The chest includes an inscription in Allison’s handwriting that reads: “P.S. Be nice to your brother.” When she was sick, she wrote future birthday cards to her sons and ended every one with that.”

Have a tip to share? Add it in the comments below.

Have a question about being a widower? Contact me here.

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

Fight Font Image: Font Me

The post Joining the Widower’s Fight Club of Lifelong Grieving + 5 Tips first appeared on Rob Ainbinder.

My fondest memory with this new to me offset smoker was when my step-father-in-law and I were cooking my first brisket. The date, May 25, 2002. My late wife came down from upstairs and proclaimed, “We are pregnant!”.  Without missing a beat we proclaimed, “a baby brisket!”. I cooked on this OK Joe offset pit until October 20, 2013. Before this Oklahoma Joe’s pit, I “cut my teeth” on a charcoal grill. 

Fast forward to 2019 and the team at Oklahoma Joe’s reached out to me to put their new pellet grill the Rider DLX through its paces. Who wouldn’t? So, here it is…

My Review of the Oklahoma Joe’s Rider DLX Pellet Grill

The Stats
Weight: 242 lbs (you’ll certainly want some help loading & unloading.)
Size of Box: 46.5″ length, 29.5″ height, 22 7/8″ width (just slim enough to fit through the front door of my house on a furniture dolly)
Assembled Size: 54.2″ H x 55.5″ W
Temperature range:175°-650+°F 
Cooking area: 1,200+ square inches
Dual Mode baffle (smoking, grilling)
Cook to a specific time or internal temperature with the dual-mode controller and included probe.

My Bottom Line:
I have to say coming from another pellet grill (PitBoss Austin XL) to this Oklahoma Joe’s Rider DLX was a big upgrade! The Rider is big and heavy and can generate a good amount of smoke. Its ability to sear and easily change from smoking to searing from the outside of the cooking chamber are a major plus. It heats up and startup is a breeze. Two smokestacks keep the smoke flowing and temps very consistent across the cooking grates.

The quick-change pellet hopper is a game-changer, too. Instead of trying to catch the pellets pouring out a chute, they conveniently dump into a bucket. This eliminates lost pellets.

Also, a BIG control knob on the generous control panel makes it very easy to see and change the temperature. The separate power button makes it very easy to confirm that the unit is off or, that you have turned it on. Turning the Rider DLX off puts the unit into automatic shut down mode. Something many competing pellet grills don’t have. Also, not having to mess with small buttons cramped in with temperature readout of competing products is great. 

Flex Racks and the Grill Pan are great extra features and make cooking breakfast a breeze. Buy the optional Griddle pan and you have a massive surface to cooking without the expense of adding on a single-purpose flat-top griddle.

Frequent Questions About Oklahoma Joe’s Rider Pellet Grill

The Oklahoma Joe’s Rider DLX Pellet Grill is it Easy to Assemble?

This 11-minute video breaks down the main steps in assembling the Rider pellet grill. 
All in all, about an hour or so to assemble. If you have a friend to help, it will go faster.
I did this solo.

You’ll find the following tools very helpful:

• Phillips screwdriver
• adjustable wrench
• Utility knife
• Scissors

Burn Rate of Pellets on the Oklahoma Joe Rider Pellet Grill 

• Smoking settings: 6-8 hours for 20lbs of pellets.
• Grilling settings: a minimum of 2+ hours for 20lbs of pellets.

Weight of the Oklahoma Joe Rider Pellet Grill

The Oklahoma Joe Rider pellet grill weighs in at a hefty 242 lbs.

Type of Controller in the Oklahoma Joe’s Rider DLX Pellet Grill

The OK Joe Rider Pellet Grill pit controller is not a PID controller but, does run a proprietary algorithm that Oklahoma Joe’s developed in-house. Their engineers designed the system to maintain consistent temps and that mitigate the frequent temp swings that affect pellet grills with more basic controllers.

Searing a Steak on the Oklahoma Joe’s Rider DLX Pellet Grill

This pellet grill sears. No problem.

Smoke Leakage on the Rider DLX Pellet Grill

Smoke leakage is pretty common (especially on startup) and won’t affect the performance of the grill.

Smoking /Barbecuing on the Rider Pellet Grill

Looking for a smoke ring? You can get one on the Oklahoma Joe Rider DLX pellet grill.

Are Temps Even on the Rider Pellet Grill?

The dual smokestack exhaust system is designed to help promote even temps and smoke flow across the entire cook chamber by encouraging airflow to the left and the right of the firepot to match the center temps and smoke flow right over the heat source. This results in a stable and consistent temp throughout the chamber, over the entire cook session.

Total Racks of Ribs That Can Fit on the Oklahoma Joe’s Rider DLX Pellet Grill

Oklahoma Joe’s website shows 8 racks of baby backs on the Rider DLX pellet grill. I cooked 6 and there is certainly room for more! If you opt for the optional rib racks you could probably even double that number!

Size of the Cooking Grates on the Oklahoma Joe’s Rider DLX Pellet Grill

The main cooking grate is 29.6″ long and 19.5″ deep. 
Two additional warming racks are 29.6″ long and roughly half the depth.

Cooking in Extreme Cold on Oklahoma Joe’s Pellet Grill

Until the insulated cover is ready later in 2020, Oklahoma Joe’s Smokers recommends setting the controller to a higher temperature to encourage a faster pellet feed rate.

What’s the Warranty for the Rider Pellet Grill

2 years, all parts.

Note: Although I was compensated for this post. The opinions in this post are my own.

The post Oklahoma Joe Rider DLX Pellet Grill Review & Hands On Test first appeared on Rob Ainbinder.