It is late. Everyone went to bed a long time ago, and I am two hours into one beer. The house is dark, save a scattering of candles and the glow of outdoor holiday lighting spread upon windowpanes that will never frost. I am wide awake, thoughts and sugar dancing in my head. My uncertainty even more so. It is December, and I am stuck between a Netflix and a hard place, each episode blending into the next like so many years, skipping intros and pausing just to pee. Each new chapter the last before bed, another deadline declined beneath the comfort of just sitting still. Everything is … [Read more...]
Stopping for Beers on a Tuesday Evening
“Tuesday,” I repeated, my voice rising quickly on the last syllable, a vocal jump toward the edge of inquiry. “Did you say Tuesday?” I asked, now fully committed to the line of questioning. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll pick you at 7.” I put it on my calendar. I checked again to make sure the day was right. Then I started wondering what Wednesday would be like. Would I find the strength to carry on? Honestly, I don’t know why the idea of grabbing a beer with a friend on a Tuesday night registered the way it did. I’ve done social things on plenty of Tuesdays. And there’s a fairly good chance … [Read more...]
Moving from Only Home Your Kids Have Known Tough on All
We’re standing in a house somewhere in Minnesota. It has two more bedrooms than our condo in the Chicago area. It has an extra bathroom (and a half), a yard with a built-in barbecue, basketball hoop, two-car garage and property taxes so laughably low that it’s hard to believe this all comes for about the same price as where we live now. My third- and first-graders are running around claiming bedrooms for themselves and, for a brief second, it’s hard to think of any of the reasons keeping us where we are in suburban Illinois. A casual curiosity to see what we could get on budget during a … [Read more...]
‘Incredibles 2’ Features Super Shift of Family Dynamics: A Stay-at-Home Dad
Between the mid-century architecture and space-age technology of Pixar’s Incredibles 2, the long-awaited sequel to the 2004 blockbuster The Incredibles, we find the timeless tale of a family struggling in its quest to find work-life balance. Yes, when it comes to household budgets and raising babies, even superheroes get the blues. The tale is indeed timeless for several reasons, most notably, there is not a gap in the Incredibles/Parr family’s storyline as it picks up exactly where we left them in the previous film. Additionally, subtle shades of Stepford in Metroville, where conforming … [Read more...]
Parental Burnout: Strategies to Help Every Mom and Dad Avoid It
Parental burnout is real. A Belgium study of more than 2,000 moms and dads, published in 2017 in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, found that 12.9% of mothers and 11.6% of fathers in the group had what the authors labeled as "high burnout." At least once a week, these parents experienced feelings of exhaustion, were less productive and competent, and emotionally withdrawn -- symptoms the researchers equated to what professionals feel when they hit the wall at their jobs. While her book may be titled Mommy Burnout: How to Reclaim Your Life and Raise Healthier Children in the … [Read more...]
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