on Tuesday July 29, 2008

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Recently returning home from Cape May, NJ our family had an abnormally hellish ride home. We have three daughters and during our stay in Cape May they all managed to find dozens of amazing sea shells. Now, let me start by saying I am not the kind of guy that gets excited about sea shells but the sea shells they found were actually kind of impressive. My girls found many different kinds of shells over the course of the weekend but the really special ones were the conch shells. They found conch shells ranging from about a half an inch in height to several inches. One of the most large and brilliant shells actually had a resident still inside and this resident, of course, did not want to come out. The only way to get the creature out of the shell was to cook him out. After a boiling the shell with the mollusk in side for nearly ten minutes, the mollusk finally relinquished his control on the shell. The removal of this mollusk from the conch shell was the last thing we did before we packed our car left for home and we noticed that the process had left the kitchen smelling offensive to say the least. We thought nothing of stench in the kitchen since the creator of the smell was now gone and out of our lives…so we thought.

At about the twenty mile mark on our way home our minivan began to smell like the oceans rear-end. The smell that envelops a family during long road trips is often unpleasant; however this smell different and like a thick blanket of fog it invaded the interior of our car much to the displeasure of all inside. As the driver of the stink-mobile, I was beginning to get irritated—no check that, extremely upset with each passing stink filled moment. To make matters worse, my kids (who desperately required the conch in the first place) were complaining. “Ew! What is that smell?!”

The sound of a child whining is probably the best form of birth control. When a mom and dad have had a tough day with the kids usually the last thing on their minds is, “You know what? Let’s have another.” I think a few well placed whiny kids could change the teenage pregnancy statistics in the U.S. overnight. My particular children were covering their noses and asking for the smell to go away. I know my kids think highly of me, but besides lighting the vehicle on fire (which I was thinking of doing) there was little I could do to mask the offensive scent that surrounded us. I was starting to wonder if the smell would ever come out of the car. I mean, how many pine-scented-car-fresheners would it take to diffuse the smell of rotting mollusk?

My kids continued to whine even though they were told to calm down—the smell was that bad. Like all parents I have a breaking point. Apparently my breaking point requires the following ingredients: horrific odor, whiny kids, long car ride, and sand in my shorts. I think ten minutes of these specific environmental conditions could frazzle the most seasoned secret service agent. Up to this point my wife, bless her soul, had been trying to stifle the whining coming from the back seats of our minivan, it was now my turn. As I turned to tell my progeny to remain silent for the rest of their natural born lives, the car did a small swerve. Like when Reese married peanut butter and chocolate, I discovered something ground breaking with that swerve. It turns out that the “swerve” was a more effective measure than my verbal tongue lashing at calming—check that, frightening my kids into submission. The “swerve” wasn’t dangerous or damaging in any way, just merely a swerve coupled with a dad turning around with eyes glaring in disapproval. The combination proved a useful measure to disquiet my rambunctious crew and although the remainder car ride home was painfully smelly it was at least whine free.

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on Monday July 28, 2008

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The number one distributor of toys in the world is McDonalds and nearly all of these toys I would classify as being annoying. They are either poorly constructed or they serve little to no purpose or most notably they make annoying sounds. Recently, our family has collected a few McDonald’s toys both to our shame and our children’s delight. Most of these toys are simply thrown away when the kids aren’t looking, because let’s face it—they’re trash to begin with. However, some toys remain hidden in the depths of our minivan and only announce their presence during bumps we hit it the road. Enter Kung Fu Panda. Kung Fu Panda was a pretty cool movie, humor, Jack Black, kung fu…what’s not to like? The McDonald’s toys apparently. The panda made a karate chop sound effect noise and a Jack Black sounding “Hi-Yah!” We had a pair of these creatures somewhere imbedded in our minivan.  The only way to identify that they actually existed at all was the presence of the occassional sound effect. 

This past weekend we made a trip to Cape May and on our way home the duo of toys sounded off around 200,000 times much to my dismay.  Around karate chop sound ninety-five-thousand, I realized that I now hated Jack Black and I also hated karate chop sound effects (which I proudly make on my own from time to time)—oh, and I was most likely driven clinically insane (albeit temporarily) from the assault of cheaply manufactured McDonalds toys noises. The insanity that had claimed a section of my brain could only be exercised if I faced my foes and vanquished them in a field of battle. If you don't know this, there is a cleansing ritual that any parent can utilize to release themself from the hold of McDonald's toy induced insanity--you need to obliterate the toy in question.  Feel free to watch the following instructional video:

 Do you hate McDonald's toys as much as I do?  The American Idol toys were also maddening for us.  Any toys throw you over the edge?

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on Saturday July 26, 2008

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Let me begin by saying that I apologize for my absence.  I have been dealing with computer issues on top of some incredibly difficult family decisions.  First, the computer—my new Dell that has a phat daddy quad processor, tons of RAM and all the trimmings decided to stop working on Monday.  I wouldn’t say it completely stopped working—just all the applications.  Things had been running more and more slowly for weeks, which should have been a warning sign, until finally the computer decided to stop working all together.  What was the proverbial straw that broke my computers back?  Will Ferrell.Yep, Will Ferrell ruined my PC.  Let me explain, my wife and I were watching the ESPYs on Sunday July 20^th when we watched Will Ferrell do the acceptance speech for the Best Male Athlete in place of Tiger Woods and I thought to myself, “I need to upload this clip to the net and add post it on my site.”   

So, I went about my normal routine of burning the video clip to a DVD and transferring it to my computer to convert it and upload it to YouTube and that’s when all hell broke loose.  My application to convert the file wouldn’t load correctly, it wouldn’t close and task manager also refused to open.  My computer locked.  I had to reboot.  I tried to troubleshoot my program, reinstall it and try the process all over again…same result.  The next time I rebooted I tried to go to the device manager to see if everything was working properly—it wouldn’t open.  Apparently, Will Ferrell’s comedy (of course) was too much for my poor little Dell to handle.  Anyways, after a week of dealing with customer support I and reverting back to the “factory image” a couple times with no success in solving the problem we started to test the hardware. 

As I am currently in Cape May on a weekend hiatus using my laptop (as I may be doing for the foreseeable future) I am able to say in total confidence that the hardware should be done testing when I return home Sunday night.  I hope I can find a resolution to all my problems with the new Dell by early next week…I hope.  Hope is great thing and I have always been a “glass half-full” type of guy so I know Dell, Will Ferrell and all the other computer problems I have had will pass like fast food through a healthy digestive system.   So, what was so special about the Will Ferrell clip that had me running to the computer to upload it and post it on my site?  It was easily one of the funniest comedic moments I have seen in a long time—what do you think?

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on Wednesday July 23, 2008

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Good afternoon Joeprah fans! Just a quick note to let you know that Joe is currently in a heated battle with Windows Vista, which has been causing some major problems for him.

Fortunately, he has not lost any of the 200GB of data. Unfortunately, he has been crashing every 32 seconds, which can become frustrating pretty quick. As a result, the process of re-formatitng and re-installing is underway, with an ETA of who knows when. But I assure you, Joe is not being held under duress by Internet trolls or an army of vigilante children.

He's just got issues.

Computer issues.

Trust me, you will know when he returns. :) 

-pete

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on Friday July 18, 2008

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Continued from:

Confessions of a Stay-at-Home Dad: Part I

Confessions of a Stay-at-Home Dad: Part II 

Confessions of a Stay-at-Home Dad: Part III 

Confessions of a Stay-at-Home Dad: Part IV

Confessions of a Stay-at-Home Dad: Part V

Confessions of a Stay-at-Home Dad: Part VI

Confessions of a Stay-at-Home Dad: Part VII

Relations became strained at that time with my parents as well.  My mother was beginning to lose her patience at almost every turn and became an unstable element in our lives.  For Jodi and me, it seemed that there was little choice besides simply continuing the course that we were on.  We have always trusted the signs that God put before us and we felt we were getting some pretty clear signs at this point in our lives.  I would stay at home with both the girls and she would continue with her career. 

I did continue working at the wine store after a brief respite, but I still had a desire to offer something more to our family in both financial terms and long term stability.  Over that summer I started investigating the possibility of teaching at the local community college.  I had an English degree and spoke pretty decent Spanish, so I thought the likely extension of this would be ESOL (English as a Second Language).  It seemed to be both challenging and at the same time a rewarding community based service, and for both those reasons it appealed to me.  After attending some interviews and orientations with the college I was hired to teach advanced ESOL in the fall.  I was excited.  I continued working at the wine store on weekends and in September I began my teaching career.  I loved teaching from the first night.  The students in ESOL classes are amazingly receptive and eager to learn.  My class had twenty students and all of them were from different countries.  The pay was ‘ok’ but the experience was invigorating.

I wanted to teach my students to appreciate the English language so that they would become inspired to learn more about it.  We had lessons where my students had to write poetry, listen to music, watch movies and bring in foods representing their ethnicity.  I had a huge project that we worked on throughout the semester which was designed to increase participation and attendance.  I wrote a play in which all of those in the class had parts.  We designed flyers advertising the play, which the students all took part in creating.  The site administrator got word of the play and told the coordinator of ESOL, who in turn told the director of continuing education, all unbeknownst to me.  We had scheduled the play to be on the night of my final class.  When I arrived in the building with all my props I got word that I was to expect a crowd of visitors to watch the class’ play from the college, this was in addition to the other ESOL students in the building.  The play was a hit.  I was congratulated by the college administrators and students alike.  The class was a godsend.  It was such a great diversion for me as a full-time dad to be able to teach and be active outside of all the diapers and bibs. 

As that fall semester ended winter began and a new year.  I was prepared to teach a second semester of ESOL until the college contacted me and offered me something better.  They offered me an adjunct position running a new continuing education (or non-academic) based Spanish program.  It required 25 hours a week and was more or less a desk job with some marketing and sales work.  The program focused on teaching occupational based Spanish to people in various jobs from police officers, construction workers to nurses and doctors; the program covered all the bases.  I really wanted to jump on the opportunity; however it meant that we would need some daycare help 2-3 days a week.  After much deliberation on the topic, my wife and I decided that it was a good offer and overall a good thing for the family as it included daycare for Bella as soon as she turned three (in a few short months).  My father agreed to watch Mady 2-3 days a week so it was set that I would go back to work.

It’s strange, but being away from work for two years made the thought of returning to the workforce exciting. As difficult as that may be to understand, I was excited to go back to work. The program sounded interesting and rewarding, the people I would be working with were all women that were both community oriented and driven, and the money would be a help. I was glad to be able to contribute again.

Stay Tuned for the Next Installment

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