Hey All–
Some exciting (at least for me) news. I’ve moved Dad the Single Guy (this blog) over to my own domain–hoping to really make this much bigger.
Thank you all for reading and commenting, I hope you make the trip with me.
Check out http://www.dadthesingleguy.com. Some subtle changes already in place.
While I don’t think this is unique to me, or to only single parents for that matter, sometimes the sheer magnitude of plan and contingencies is overwhelming, and while in the middle of it-sometimes that nuance is under appreciated until you say it out loud.
Case in point came this week, when for the second time in 4 weeks the girls had a delayed start to school. When our district does this, they push the start back 2 hours and the out time stays the same, so the school day goes from 6 hours to 4 hours.
Last month when there was a delayed start I was able to do a straight work from home day-I made the one face to face meeting I had a call and off I went.
Yesterday, I was not so lucky. I had a pair of face to face meetings on the schedule and really did not want to just blow them off, so at about 730 I started working on the alternate planning….
Wednesday is a tricky day because on alternating weeks the girls have a 7PM appointment that I take them to, while the sitter can do one of three alternate events depending upon the date and who is home, so it’s already a day filled with precision timing and coordination. Snow, ice and a 2-hour delay for school really don’t help.
Again, I think any parent in any situation has this to juggle. I was telling a friend though how the day went (which included my making a run to the train station and trip into the city for my meetings, and then back out to get 8.0 to her appointment)…and my friend was struck by how much coordination went into it…
And I have to admit, when I thought about it, I realized there really was a lot. I made it into the city by noon. I moved my 930 breakfast to a 130 lunch. Made my 1p coffee a 3:30 early drink and then made a 424 train to make it home. In the mean time, the girls did homework, Hebrew school and 10.5 went to her Girl Scout meeting while I was with 8.0 at her appointment.
All of that while working on a presentation for a new consulting client and taking a couple of calls for new potential business….
Oh yeah, along the way I also hit the gym and managed to make the girls breakfast and dinner.
Juggling is an art form–whether its chain saws or schedules.
Today was boy’s day out for me, and girls day out for 8.0 and 10.5–it was an interesting and fun day.
The background–my neighbor is a single mom to an 8-year-old boy. He and my 8 are very close and collectively we all have become good friends. So a few weeks ago my neighbor asked me if I thought the girls would enjoy a girls day out with her, while I took her son for a boys day out. It seemed like a good idea, and something the girls (and my neighbor’s son) would all like, so we planned for it.
I found that a monster truck show was at the Coliseum today–so the plans were made, and I would for the first time ever for me see the world of Grave Digger and Sampson:
I can tell you that one 8-year-old boy is much different that two girls 8 and 10.5 in the energy expended. However, in a lot of ways, it was very familiar footing for me–cotton candy, a hot dog, too much soda and a good time.
And the girls had a good time getting manis and pedis and doing some shopping with someone who has the patience to not just throw things into the dressing room….
I think it was a win all the way around…
OK, I’ll admit right now in this post, what will follow will be very oblique and may not make a lot of sense, because frankly it touches on a topic I am not really ready to share. That said, the context is interesting, so I’ll give it my best shot and thanks ahead for trying to stay with it.
Today’s is Friday, and as has become usual for me just about every Friday, after dropping the girls at school I make my weekly trip to my therapist. I’ve referenced the “nontraditional” type of therapy I go to a couple of times. The most recent is here, and there are links to others within that post.
Over the course of the year or so I have been seeing my current therapist (it took me four tries with therapists before I could find one I could talk to) I have reached a point where I accept that the path my life has taken is not normal, and simply saying everyone carries something sells myself short.
(This is where this will get tricky)
Over the last few weeks-after getting things back to a sense of normal in the house I have begun what will no doubt be the very long process of redefining myself and by extension helping the girls establish their identities.
As things twist and turn along there have been some good and some surprising occurrences already…
Today my therapist called them, “Gifts from Risa.” And that struck me. I am not one to believe in a lot of the spiritual stuff, but I do believe in karma–and maybe I’ve been getting a done of karma payback over the last few weeks. I’m not sure honestly.
I do know that while not everything is perfect, there is a lot on the right path and there certainly is plenty to feel good about, and even be thankful for.
So whether it’s a “gift from the great beyond,” or karma, or just time to catch a few breaks, I am OK with it…and onward we go.
So this is going to be tricky. Even more than I thought it would be.
With every good intention I made tentative plans for tonight (and they did not include updating my blog). The way it was supposed to work was I would have the girls sleep at friends house’s (they like that) and I would score a free night to go out.
8.0 partially out of spite (her sister had dinner at a friend’s house last night) worked out her plans Friday night. 10.5 not so much. In fact not only did I end up not being able to go out, I ended up with three 10.5′s in the house most of the night (complete with a pizza/pasta dinner).
So there was no down time or quiet time. There was no sipping a bottle of wine or some honey bourbon (quickly becoming a favorite vice). Instead there was cleaning up gum wrappers, trying not to lament where I was not and trying to “ignore” the ruckus of 3 pre-teen girls having fun.
A few weeks ago one of the only other widowed people my age that I know told me something interesting about the difference of being widowed and divorced/separated. The people in the latter class get a weekend off (most of the time) at least once in a while. Widowers have a full-time job, and as I learned tonight-planning for down time is a full-time job as well.
I know I am not unlike other parents who feel the dread of the snow day-which if we are willing to be honest with our selves is that polar opposite of when we were kids. I get that.
And honestly, the school’s closed for snow is not a huge issue-its a day I try to work from home (WFH) and make the best of it.
Today though is a much tougher one to handle-the two-hour delayed start.
As I type this on a normal day I would be getting breakfast ready and making sure the girls are up. Instead, I went in and shut off their alarms and I am trying to rework my entire day-starting with my 8AM appointment. Oh yeah, its two-hour delayed start and home at the normal time, so now I have to compact my day so I can be here when the bus arrives.
Clearly there will be trade offs. Along with the appointment, out is my planned lunch, on the endangered list is hitting the gym, out is making a run to Whole Foods for some specialty items.
It’s probably a matter of having a plan and being able to make a change on the fly as needed.
On the spur of the moment today I decided to implement some tough love on the 10+ year old today–because I think she can use a dose.
The background: she has developed and nurtured a penchant for telling little white lies, usually about some of the strangest things (she told a friend’s mother she made $100 shoveling snow after the last storm. Would be great if she even touched a shovel). Knowing her well–she has some tells, and 95% of the time I know when I am getting a line of BS.
At school, she has her first research report assigned to her–she has to research the great states of Kansas and Iowa and write a report by the middle of February. In all, she has about six weeks to put it together.
We talked about strategies, she has a couple of books on the states, and we talked about websites she can research on, and people she can talk to and/or interview to find out more about the states. I asked her if she needed help–she said no. OK.
Then came the small lies–her teacher says she should only work on the report on school days, she was told not to use note cards etc…
So today I had it with the stories. I told her that I would not say another word to her about her report. My expectation is she will hand me a draft of the report the Wednesday before its due.
I am expecting that she will have nothing for me–except another story/excuse. So I’ll ask her what she is going to do about turning in a final paper two days later…
Now its two tests–one for me and my will power to stay the course, and second for her, how will she handle it?
So, last night 10.5 and I got onto the subject of colleges. To her credit, she has a whole plan worked out–going from Molloy to Hofstra and onto Brandeis.
Now the context is, my mom works at Molloy, I went Hofstra and my wife went to Brandeis.
When I told her that’s generally not how people went to college, usually its one or two schools and rarely three she decided Harvard would be the right fit….
But it will be expensive.
So I made a promise if she gets in, I will pay.
In what has become an interesting topic of introspection lately, I am trying to figure out the best way to define in our newly re-defined family the “we,” “they” and “me.” As I do this exercise, I am pretty confident my girls are also doing a similar exercise. It will be interesting to see where we all end up.
For clarity’s sake, in this context, “we” refers to our core family unit. This is myself and the two girls (10.5 and 8.0). When there are family events or family meetings or family decisions to be made, this is the we who will get it done. ”They” refers to the two girls as a single group. This is not to say there is no singular identity for 10.5 and 8.0, I handle those direct. In this context like going to summer camp, its something “they” will do. And then there is “me.” In this context these are the times I have to deal with something, get out and be not dad, widower or anyone other than myself.
The “we” stuff while filled with its own set of issues is pretty straight forward. The most important aspect of this is to make sure we remain a cohesive family unit and are able to actually want to be with one another.
The “they’s” get a little trickier as the maturity gap between 10.5 and 8.0 grows. As noted throughout this blog, 10.5 is well on her way into pre-teen/puberty and has a lot of the pre-pubescent trimmings going for her. 8.0 just is not there yet, so it’s a struggle. Still, there are times when they are a single unit.
Then there is “me.” And it’s not an easy one. Over the weekend for the first time since my wife passed away I made plans and went out without the girls. There have been a couple of times I’ve been able to sneak in some social stuff after work–but this was the first time on a Saturday night I just went out. I could tell it was something different because 10.5 asked me, “where are we going?”
I know how important it is for me to find “me” time in this mix–and if I need to create it (and my 4AM gym run does not really count). For better or worse, for the last 14 years, even when my wife was relatively healthy there was never a time when I was not a caregiver-it was always there. I think it’s a difference between what I went through and what for instance my mother went through–with the sudden death of a spouse. Add to that the 9+ months she was in hospice–where it was kind of like living a suspended life, waiting for the call.
While that time helped create the foundation for a three person house, it’s not the same–there was not a permanence to it. While I went through stages of grieving during the ordeal, the kids I think remained hopeful at some level. Our realities changed.
So while we’ll go skiing (again) this weekend and they’ll likely have a snow day from school this week, me? I’ll let you know once I figure it out.
UPDATE:
Mostly success in the first time out on shaving. We’ll have to have another session with help next week, but off to a good start. Thanks all fo the advice and tips that went beyond what I was able to pull together from other sources.
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Although it’s a cold, wintry, snowy day here in NYC today-I am putting this post out there now for anyone who will see me in a pair of shorts over the next couple of weeks-I can’t delay it any longer, its time for me to work with 10.0 on shaving her legs.
I went back in this blog to the underarm shaving conquest and that was 8 months ago. At the time her legs were borderline. I saw them last night and its time.
So somewhere over the weekend much like we did when it was time to work on the underarms we’ll both put on a pair of shorts and I’ll demo and she’ll do it. The net result will be smooth legs for her and some bald spots on mine.
As noted in May, and it stands up to the test of time today-these are the things I have to do and will not palm off out of vanity.
So, all you gym buds enjoy the view. Who knows, maybe I’ll keep them shaved?
