Home Life - Funny Parenting Stories for Fathers (and Mothers)

Sharing My Finds

Like you, I do what I can to stay healthy. I ride a bike. I take walks. I went to a gym before Coronapalooza. I have been trying to lose or maintain my weight for a while. Some weeks are better than others.

I recently took a walk one night and someone was smiling down upon me on this particular constitutional. I passed a house with a table of boxes. These boxes contained books, CD’s and movies. I still read hard-copy books and collect and listen to CD’s. I read digital books and listen to digital music but I still like books and CD’s.

I was excited to return home with my new finds, one of which was a Genesis CD. I love Genesis. I was listening to it on a CD player (an earlier birthday present) as I was dealing with the mountain of dirty dishes and making dinner. Dinner just happened to be a recipe from a cookbook; another find. I was preparing a delightful batch of Pork and Red Chili and listening to my new find when one of The Gaggle come into the kitchen. Said Gaggle asked me what it was I was listening to. How old was it? What? Oh my God! This turned into another lecture about my questionable taste in music, which led to my questionable taste in movies. I told her I can’t help her if she can’t appreciate or recognize good music. She says, “Whatever,” she says. I’m old. She can’t help me.

Time for dinner. The Pork and Red Chili was enjoyed by everyone except for The Oppressed, who is a vegetarian. Even The Boy seemed to like it. He tends to skip meals that contain spices or more than two ingredients, or don’t involve takeout

A similar incident occurred when I was driving with The Oppressed. I had a CD in the car. She was not impressed with my selection and proceeded to take my phone for more acceptable music. Fortunately, The Oppressed likes the Veruca Salt album I downloaded on my phone and she proceeded to play “Benjamin.” It’s one of the very few selections I have, CD or digital, that The Oppressed will tolerate.

Dish Duty

The Oppressed got moved to laundry. We ran out of clean clothes. Another of the Gaggle took over dish duty. Aaaannnd…

Like every other house, things have been pretty busy here during Coronapalooza. We decided everyone here should have some extra chores to do since me, The Wife, The Oppressed, The Boy, and The Gaggle are all pretty much inside the house 24/7. Speaking of blessings, I’m not sure if I mentioned this but an additional child from the neighborhood comes and stays with us during the day while Mom is at work.

The first round of chores went rather well. I was on dish duty. One of The Gaggle did laundry and she was very efficient with it. After a while things got changed up to break up the monotony. The Oppressed got moved to laundry. We ran out of clean clothes. Another of the Gaggle took over at dish duty. Aaaannnd….

She needed a little bit of a learning curve. That’s where I come in. I am an expert when it comes to easing children into work and responsibilities, so you can imagine the train wreck you’re about to read about.

We started easy. I gave her the things to put in the dishwasher. I washed. She dried. We both put things away. She had to put a plastic cup in the cabinet. She said she couldn’t reach. I reminded her it was closer than the candy she can get at the top shelf of the cabinet. I saw the lip stick out. I saw the look of hope disappear from her eyes. Her bottom lip was quivering. Her hands went up in the air.

“Oh my God!” she exclaimed. “No one else has to do this. Just me!”

The gaggle enduring her daily torture.
The never-ending pile is behind her.

No one else was doing laundry, I explained to her. At this point, no one was doing laundry. No one else was cooking, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, the children I did love were assembled in front of the TV playing with the Nintendo Switch. My Nintendo Switch, which I haven’t laid my hands on in about two months… But I digress.

There are other things to go into the dishwasher, but they are under things that need to be washed by hand. I wash. She dries and puts them away. She’s about to put away something that still has water on it. It’s running down the side. I tell her to go over it one more time. More crying. More lamentations. Tears of my children. The ones I love are enjoying themselves. She is a slave. No one else is doing this.

She throws herself around the kitchen. She falls to the floor in the direction of the open dishwasher. Her face misses the corner of the door by millimeters. She yells. I pushed her. I punished her for not working. She wipes her face on the towel. I have washed five dishes during this episode. There are more things to dry but she needs a new towel. “You wiped your face on that towel,” I tell her. “You need a new one.” She throws the towel in the air. She has to get a new towel. Where are the towels? I tell her they are in the same place they’ve been for the past six month. She goes to the drawer for another towel, muttering to herself about her lot in life. Her mistreatment. The shame of it all. The humanity.

Removing a Dying Tree, and Explaining it to a Child

All this is fruitless against a nine-year-old expert on trees and ecology. We don’t care about the environment. There is a mark on the cruel, heartless men who have killed Larry. Wife and I, who are paying these men, are just as culpable.

Larry’s memorial. The sign reads, “Here lies Larry the Tree X(“

We had a tree growing in our front yard right next to our driveway. Yes: had. The tree was dying for a long time, and we had been getting rainstorms and windstorms. We didn’t want to take the chance of the tree falling on our house, or worse, falling down on a child.

We called a tree company to take care of the tree, who was suddenly “Larry” and a beloved member of our family according to The Oppressed. She vehemently protested the decision to, “murder Larry”. The execution was carried out on Earth Day of all days.

The oppressed protested. She was furious. Trees give us oxygen to breathe. We’re killing the Earth and its inhabitants if we take this tree down. I explain to her a tree is not giving oxygen if there are no leaves (needles) on it. The tree is already dead. All this is fruitless against a nine-year-old expert on trees and ecology. We don’t care about the environment. There is a mark on the cruel, heartless men who have killed Larry. Wife and I, who are paying these men, are just as culpable.

The deed was done. Larry was cut down, ground up, and taken away. The stump was all that was left of Larry. The tree workers were coming back to grind the stump. The Oppressed wasted no time in constructing a memorial for Larry to remind the neighborhood and the murderous tree workers of what had once occupied the spot on our front yard.

There is a positive to this story. The Boy asked the tree workers if they could put another tree in Larry’s place. When the workers returned to grind the stump. They left a Japanese Maple tree. The Miracles of Christ were overjoyed to see it.

Kitty

My family owns a cat. She was a birthday present for The Boy, who loves cats and always wanted one. We’ve had Kitty for over a year.

Kitty leaves no stone unturned when she is searching the house for mice and other pests.

Kitty and I came to bond over time. It happens when you’re a stay-at-home parent and you stay at home. Kitty learned her way around the house. At feeding time, Kitty gets excited when she hears the silverware drawer open. If she doesn’t hear the silverware drawer open, I walk into whatever room she’s in and show her the fork. Kitty gets excited and follows me with a purr to her bowl.

Kitty is sometimes too friendly for the other people in the house. Kitty will fall asleep on Wife. If Wife tries to get out of bed, Kitty sometimes doesn’t want to get off her and sometimes will get in her way.

She can also be found with The Boy sometimes. The Boy will wake up and see Kitty at the foot of his bed. He will get up, grab Kitty and lay back down, handling her like a little teddy bear. Kitty’s eyes get big and her paws reach for something-anything- as she feels herself fall backwards onto the bed and The Boy.

Kitty likes to explore. Sometimes it’s hard to find her. Shake a jar of treats. You’ve never seen anything move so fast, although there was this one time I was working early in the morning. Kitty was trying to negotiate her way across my table. I was trying to write and drink coffee and keep a pile of books from toppling over. Kitty was doing well until she hit something and started to fall over. I stuck my hand out to catch her. I didn’t get her but, well… She peed. I ran to the bathroom and washed my hands three or four times. After some warm water, a little soap, a Brillo pad, some turpentine, and a blowtorch, I think I was alright.

Where are my clothes?!

I have an unspoken understanding with the little Miracles of Christ (The Oppressed, The Boy, and The Gaggle. I call them “Miracles of Christ” because it’s a miracle they’re alive with all they’ve endured). I take their dirty clothes out of their room. I wash the clothes, dry them, fold them and take the clothes to their respective room and leave them on their bed. They take their clothes and put them away.

To you and me, this would seem like a fair deal or better than fair. they leave their clothes in their room and, when they come back, there are clean clothes waiting for them. All they have to do is find the drawer the clothes belong in and put them in that drawer. The Oppressed is furious to find her clothes on her bed as opposed to properly put away and refuses to do so. The clothes will either pile up on her bed or be crammed into a drawer. I don’t mean clothes separated and put into a drawer. I mean shirts, pants, underwear, everything folded and stacked will be put into the same drawer. the Oppressed is busy; too busy to be bothered with the tedious chore of separating clothes and putting them into the proper drawer. That is my job. The stress of her life doesn’t allow for such minutiae.

Sometimes I will find folded clothes at the bottom of hampers and baskets. The children swear they have no idea how this happens and proceed to blame the cat. Incidentally, the cat is the same one who turns on the lights after a child dutifully turns the lights off upon exiting a bedroom or bathroom.

The servitude forced upon the children is compounded by the atrocities committed upon them in the morning. When time to get dressed for school, The Oppressed will announce to the entire house that she has nothing to wear. She has looked everywhere, including the mountain of clean clothes on her bed and the random stash of clothes in any drawer. This interferes with her morning, with her entire day and my dereliction of duty will only make her day that much more difficult. If I would just put her clothes in the proper place, she would be able to go about her day.

“Where are your clothes supposed to go?” I ask.

Still waiting for an answer.

The Boy can’t be bothered to put his clothes where they need to go, either. He has a loft bed (translation: a bed fort) and his clothes will end up on the loft, that is, if Kitty hasn’t taken his clothes and stashed them in his laundry bucket. It will be time to get ready for school and he doesn’t have a thing to wear. He needs clean clothes.

I need to be kidnapped by Joe Perry.