The Art of the Stay at Home Wife

I read an article today about a growing number of revolutionary women that have decided to stay at home. These women do not have children, their decision is based solely on the fact that they don't have a life outside their work. In other words, the past forty years of social engineering have revealed to these women that the old order of things was the way it was for a reason.

I wonder how social scientist might view this development. Might they look at their old paradigms of the enslaved housewife, who has been shackled in this demeaning lifestyle by her brute of husband as incorrect? Might they look at the way they have labeled so much of traditional society as quaint and outdated and say, "wait, perhaps they had something here"? More likely these women who have chosen this more traditional view will be labeled as traitors or scorned by the militant social change agents in our society as unwitting dupes of an archaic system.

I find it interesting that many things that we thought we have outgrown suddenly seem so, relevant.

The Article

Fast versus good, a parent's struggle.

A new article from Associated Press reports that nearly every fast food option is extraordinarily high in calories. The article (click the link at the bottom to read), further reveals that despite an ever burgeoning kid's menu, "parents have to navigate a minefield of calories, fat and salt to find them." In other words, a degree in nutrition won't hurt if I want to keep my children from fighting same battle of the bulge that is rampaging across this country.

The real problem is that I am not winning the battle myself. I recently spoke to a registered nurse, who gave me the simplest diet plan I have heard to date. "If it tastes good, spit it out."
I really don't like that advice, mainly because I know it will work and I know I like eating food that tastes good. However, just like all other things in life, if I do something right a million times and my son and daughter MIGHT get it. If I do the wrong thing even once they WILL GET IT EVERY TIME.

I am really going to miss french fries.

AP Article

The Other Species Known As Women

The title of this post might be a little misleading. Let me say right from the start, I am decidedly pro woman. Not in the liberal sort of way, but in the I think woman are great, even though they are a mystery to me sort of way. Really I promise, I love them, my mother was a woman and my grandma too.

I have always known that I didn't "get" women, what I didn't understand in high school, college, and even in my first five years of marriage is this: women and men are different. That is not to say that you won't encounter a tomboy or a guy that is skilled at traditional girl things. I am speaking in generalities.

The reason for this epiphany is my daughter.

Upon her birth two plus years ago, the other side of the human condition was revealed to me. The side of life that loves tea parties and dressing up. The part of humanity that just loves to try on new clothes that her grandparents bought. The part that instead of wrestling with daddy prefers to sit while Daddy holds her. The part that finds a two dollar Hannah Montana necklace in the store, puts it on before we can pay for it, and has yet to take it off her neck.

Now I realize that the difference between men and women is much like the difference between night and day. One starts where the other ends and the change is gradual but needed to differentiate the two. The world would be an awful place if it were all one or the other.

The world is better with fishing and tea parties!

I have the strangest cell phone

My phone is absolutely weird. I should start by explaining that someone slipped into my home and put my old phone back into my pants and then it went through the washing machine. (It was probably a dark plot by the federal government.) My wife says I left it there, but that would make the phone's destruction my fault, so it was the definitely the government.

I went to see if I could get an early upgrade and found out that was not in the cards. So they set me up with a cheap "fill in" until my contract is up for renewal later this year. I got the phone, and noticed my children playing office in the AT&T store, I whipped out my phone to take a quick picture and found that the camera didn't work. I asked the representative that helped me what the problem was and he informed me my new phone did not have a camera!

Later, as we were on the way home, I found that our sing a long with Hannah Montana kept being interrupted. There was this strange sound ringing and I was sure something terrible had happened to my car. I drove straight to the mechanic to let him listen, at first nothing, and then there it was! The man had a strange look on his face and said, "Sir, I believe someone is trying to reach you on your cell phone." I looked at the phone and sure enough my wife was calling. I believe my mechanic is psychic, because the phone didn't play a tune from a movie or anything but he still knew.

My wife wanted me to pick some stuff up in a part of town I wasn't familiar with so I decided to use the GPS in my phone to find the address. I couldn't find that option as I was driving and, you guessed it the beep was back!

So after I ran my wife's errand, I went back to the cell phone place and they revealed the root of my most strange day. My new phone is unusual, it doesn't have a camera. It doesn't have a million and two rings. It can't cook dinner or do my taxes. ALL IT DOES IS SEND AND RECEIVE CALLS!

What will they think of next?

I need a spider costume with 6 legs by 8AM tommorrow

Believe it or not, that is what my wife said once to my mother in law. The reason for this most bizarre request, was that Mom and Dad had failed my son. It was our responsibility to get a costume made and in the day to day rush of our life we let the kindergarten school play slip through the cracks.

If you haven't guessed by now "mamaw" came through for her youngest grandson. We were all present at my son's third stage triumph of his maiden school year. He knocked their socks of with his one line. That was the unanimous conclusion of our family.

One of the things that is sorely missing in our society today is a support structure for children when they need a spider costume made on less than twelve hours notice. (You fill in any minor emergency you like in that last sentence, but I think you get my point!) Our kids need for us, all of us to be able to deliver for them in these small but significant moments. We are so separated by doors and locks, technology and distance. Senator Clinton, wrong about so many things, was right about it taking a village. We seem to be slipping as a society in how we treat, educate, protect and rear our children.


Two days ago I found out that I am going to be the new den leader for my son's Tiger Den in Cub Scouts. My wife and I, and all the rest of the parents, will be attempting to nurture and lead these little guys through scouting. I really believe that there is much societal value to the process all of us, me included, will be going through. Each of these young men will learn from and with each other and hopefully gain life long friends that will form at least a part of the social structure that will support them in the future. My wife and I will be part of that for our son and his new friends in at least some small way.

I just hope none of them ever call me needing me to make a spider costume overnight.

Things you learn on a fourteen hour road trip. . .

My family and I recently made a fourteen hour sojourn from Bardstown, Kentucky to Logansport, Louisiana. The mere thought of this sent chills down my spine. Fourteen hours of driving, using public restrooms and fastfood. Fourteen hours of Disney songs by Hannah Montana for my two year old daughter and five year old son (although my son will not admit to his affection for Miley Cyrus's alter ego.)

I learned that it is a bad idea to stop at Opry Mills in Nashville, Tennessee. You can blow most of your travel budget in a mall that size, no matter how cool the Bass Pro Shop is, or great deals at the Disney outlet.

I learned that all of Kentucky and Tennessee is basically a duplication of the same small town.

I learned that when a five year old boy sees the three enormous crosses erected by the Bellvue Baptist Church in Memphis his immeadiate reaction is that "if Jesus had been up there he would have been huge!"

I learned that West Memphis, Arkansas at night is a very scary place where a great many illegal and illicit activities take place.

I learned that a night clerk in West Memphis can be very kind to a man in need of a restroom.

I learned that outside of the Clinton Liabrary in Little Rock, there doesn't seem to be a lot in Arkansas.

I learned that there is a place called Nick's BBQ and Catfish in Carlise, Arkansas that is well worth the trip.

I learned that there are plenty of natural gas wells in Louisanna.

I learned that you cannot buy a Texas mug in Joaquin, Texas.

I also learned that a trip with my family while difficult, was also quite enjoyable.

The Land of Logan

The title of this entry is a blatant plagiarism from my good friend and fellow Logan Countian, Jim Turner. Jim is the editor of the News Democrat and Logan Leader based in Logan County, Kentucky. I am still a faithful reader of this paper despite the fact that I have lived as an expatriate for the last decade. Jim's articles, the entire paper in fact, help me to feel a little more connected to home.

What is that is within us that makes us yearn for home? Wars are fought to defend our home from those that would take our home from us. Politicians make great hay about their common roots. Presidents at one point ballyhooed that they were born in a log cabin starting with William Henry Harrison, continuing with Abe Lincoln and ending with Jimmy Carter(the first president to be born in a hospital. (Feel free to check on the Carter birth I found it from two different sources and still find it hard to believe.)

My natural cynicism says that time and distance may have rewritten enough of the past that what was once appalling is now appealing. The currents of time have dulled the heartaches and dampened the disappointments.

Or perhaps, I view that life as simpler because it really was simpler. In life we make choices as we grow, more as we age, and only as we look back do we realize how wonderful it was back in our glory days. I, and I believe most, would not go back to younger days without that which we have acquired. For example I would not trade my wife and children for the chance to return to those simpler times, but being married and raising a son and daughter are difficult tasks that the sixteen year old version of me did not face. Back then it was the scrounging enough money to take a girl on a date and then finding a girl that would actually say yes. That was an excruciating experience but now as I look to the future I know that some little girl will bat her eyes at my son and then my life will take on a whole new version of complicated.

As for my daughter, she will never date and stay with her father forever.

So I pose the question were the good old days that good or has, as the song goes, "time rewritten every line"?