I love my kids, I just hate parenting
I never thought I’d say this, but thank god for parenting! Sometimes, it can be a respite.
Regardless of where you stand on the Great Pumpkin President, these are some harrowing times. North Korea, neo-Nazis, Harvey Weinstein, geostorms (and also Geostorm). Things are fairly tumultuous.
We’re often told to not sweat the small stuff, but when the world serves as an enormous sauna, sometimes the small stuff is the only way to cool yourself down.
In a lot of ways, kids make Halloween more fun. But, like everything else, they also make it much, much worse.
For example, last night, as part of our month of scary movies, instead of watching something legit like Let The Right One In (the original FTW!) or The Conjuring, we watched Hocus Pocus. (Which was much scarier, for totally unintentional reasons.)
Because parenting.
I’ve been turning into my father for years now, probably since I was born, actually.
But nothing accelerates the transformation into your parents like becoming a parent yourself.
The best evidence that I’m becoming my dad, besides increasing back pain and deepening bags under my eyes, are the things I yell at my kids about. Like money.
Over the summer, Meredith Ethington of Perfection Pending shared a list of the anxieties that plague her – and moms in general – every day, like having enough food in the house, cleaning messes, making it to appointments on time, etc. I stumbled across “Thoughts Moms Have After A Long Day of Work” again recently, and have some thoughts of my own.
The punch line to her post is that dads aren’t troubled by such things, and only think about naps. It’s all in good fun -in the comments she included a disclaimer that her husband is great and that the list was merely meant to showcase “the mental load” women have that men often don’t – but she’s not alone.
The idea that moms are the only ones who deal with this kind of anxiety is pretty common. I beg to differ.
Disclosure: I have partnered with Life of Dad and Barilla for this promotion. All words, opinions, and praise for how good the recipe is belong to me.
Much more embarrassing disclosure: I can’t cook.
But my kids need to eat, and take-out gets expensive. During back to school season, our days get pretty hectic, and sometimes when Mom and Buried is prepping school lunches or helping with homework, I get dinner duty. As I said, I’m no chef, so I need something simple and quick that I can’t screw up.
Unfortunately, my wife informed me long ago that two packets of Ramen noodles is not an acceptable meal option for children. But pasta is!