Entries in Mr. Mom (2)

Saturday
05Dec2009

How Not to Ingratiate Yourself With a Female Service Member

...or any other professional married woman whose husband stays home with the kids.

We just bought a new car. It's really a second car, because we're getting ready to move and the one-car lifestyle we've been enjoying will not work when Danielle goes back to sea.

Anyway. It was a fine experience. We went back to Mazda and I tortured them for a couple weeks, but in the end it was a pretty easy negotiation, and we got exactly what we wanted for the price we wanted at the rate we wanted it.

Nice.

Then Danielle had to sit down with the business manager and hear her pitch. And, finally, when everything was signed, when I was off playing with Sean, the manager (a great beast of a woman with terrifying hair) told Danielle she also lived in Newport.

"Is your son in pre-school?"

Danielle told her, no, but that I stayed home with him. Whereupon the woman said, "Oh, he's doing the Mr. Mom thing."

Danielle just looked at her. "No," she said, annoyed almost beyond reason at the utterance of that inane monicker.

"Oh," said the beast-woman, "Not a lot of cooking and cleaning getting done?"

She's lucky all the papers had been signed already, because Danielle would have walked out of there right then if they hadn't been.

Thursday
18Jun2009

Mr. Mom (Really? Again?)

"Mr. Military Mom"

Does this bother anyone else as much as it bothers me? Can't we just leave this behind? It's not that it somehow offends me as a man. It offends me because it's trite and lazy.

Which is too bad, because it's a good article. It's relevant to Fathers' Day Weekend, and it's accurate in its portrayal of the complexities in the lives of dual-military families.

 

A typical day for Darrell starts with a 6 a.m. wake-up, daycare by 7 a.m., work from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., daycare immediately following, home for dinner, play time with the boys, read a book with the boys then put them to bed by 8 p.m.

After Ty and Max are tucked in, then Darrell has a chance to do housework, pay the bills and plan the upcoming weekend. By the time everything is done, Darrell heads to bed by 1 a.m., leaving him with about five hours of sleep before it starts all over in the morning.

Along with the everyday routine, Darrell said he and the boys are involved in various activities such as school events, boy scouts, city council meetings, the American Legion and the VFW to keep them extra busy.

"There is too much going on," he said.

 

I don't think we've heard from any husbands from dual-military marriages here at the site. I have a tremendous respect for those families.