Confessions of a Desperate Househusband

I wondered how long it would take me to use the "Desperate . . ." crack. It's not nearly as funny as the "Sesame Street" parody, "Desperate Houseplants."

The fact that I'm now making a "Sesame Street" reference might give you some idea of why I'm in a very frustrated place right at the moment. Most of it comes from the sheer chaos of kids and housework. If you have kids, you know the drill. Not only are the little buggers mess-making machines, tiny whirlwinds of destruction, they also make it nearly impossible to concentrate on any housekeeping task for more than five minutes without offering some sort of distraction or mini-crisis. It's easier to get stuff done when Lea's at home to wrangle the rug-rats, but when she's home I like to savor the rare pleasure of my wife's company, and don't like to waste this precious time on housework. Catch-22.

This morning, I knuckled down and finally burrowed through Dirty Dish Mountain (took me 3 hours) and Lea helped tremendously by cleaning the bathroom (gets dirty in unspeakable ways when you're potty-training a toddler, especially a boy still perfecting his "aim.") So I can breathe a little easier. But, of course, there are other stress agents at work:

1) The washing machine broke down. It fills up with water just fine, but that's all it does now. This leaves me to face the equally unpleasant prospects of trips to the laundromat or paying a repairman. I tried to fix it myself, but those of you who know me can imagine the slapstick comedy which ensued.

2) The kids won't take a damn nap!!! You can not imagine how I've come to rely on the couple hours of afternoon peace and quiet which nap-time offers.

3) Dylan's potty training is going agonizingly slow. Pee and poop are not among my favorite substances, and I deal with them way more than I like to. Plus, he likes to challenge me to saber duels ever since he got a toy light-saber as a party favor last week. This wouldn't be so bad, except he insists on playing Darth Vader to my Luke Skywalker. It is a little disturbing to hear a 2-year old say, "You don't know the power of the dark side."

4) Lily has learned to crawl and to pull herself into a standing position. These developmental milestones are accompanied by insatiable hunger for exploration and an intolerance of being restrained. No more putting her in the swing or the highchair to keep her out of trouble. Now I have to keep constant tabs on a highly mobile baby who gets quite irate when you try to steer her away from staircases or choking hazards.

5) Bullshit financial woes. Turns out a single-income household isn't quite the goldmine it's cracked up to be. It still seems more viable for me to stay at home than to go to work, but this section of the biography might be subtitled "The Lean Years."

6) Minor point, but due to me waiting up for Lea to come home from her "girl's night out" last night, I hardly got any writing done this morning. The "Blood World" screenplay has a strong beginning, but damn it's going slow.

7) While cleaning the kid's room, I found a small glass crack pipe inside the floorboard radiator. It's a relic of a previous tenant, but the superstitious part of me can't help but see this as a bad omen. Or maybe it's fate telling me I should take up smoking crack as a way of dealing with the stress.

Well, actually I feel better now. Venting my spleen onto the World Wide Web is actually quite therapeutic.