I brought our daughter to the local playground yesterday, and with beautiful weather it was the perfect antidote to the end of a very hectic summer.

As we walked in the gate, three other couples with younger children were entering as well, and then I noticed that the three men were veering off into the abutting field, one of them with a football tucked under his arm.

And then, almost metaphorically, one of the three took off sprinting into the field… Read the rest of this entry »

Awwww yeah. Here comes the weekend. And likely another Saturday (and possibly Sunday) filled with our daughter’s friend’s birthday parties. And for a sugar-holic like me, I cannot wait for the cake and ice cream. (My mouth is watering just thinking about it.)

Of course, my sweet tooth gets me into serious trouble, especially when the day after the party I have to put on my swimsuit and hit the local lake, shirtless. Yikes. (No pic of that, sorry.)

So what is one to do, exercise self-restraint? Not a chance. Read the rest of this entry »

Ambition is tricky. Especially for men.

We are expected to be the uber-ambitious gender, who will scale mountaintops to get what we want, where we want it.
But often, you need to scale back your ambition to make room for the rest of life.

And that is the place I find myself now.

I used to be the up-and-comer, well-regarded manager in my small startup company, which meant that I could largely work in a flexible manner, plan my business trips when they were most convenient for me, and generally choose which projects I wanted. And now that’s all about to change… Read the rest of this entry »

I just had an IM “conversation” with a colleague of mine who also has a toddler, trying to juggle it all.

I will paste the full back-and-forth after the click, but the crux of it is how often we - as parents - actually get to take a real vacation (and I don’t mean a long weekend in some motel with the kids, or Disneyland - in my mind, those don’t really count).

The above pic is where I’d like to be right now with a Pina Colada - and it got me to thinking about this summer and vacations… Read the rest of this entry »

And here I was thinking I was all “helpful” and all that.

Silly me.

Okay, show of hands: how many of you out there know that 2 cups of *cooked* pasta differs from the volume created by 2 cups of *dry* pasta? All of you?

Well, then say hello to your favorite blogging DOLT. For any of my readers who thought I was actually “helpful” - you can stop nagging your hubbies to do more. I may have tooted my own horn a little too much. Here’s what transpired earlier this week… Read the rest of this entry »

As I ruminated on the comments posted on my last post, I began to wonder how most marriages keep their wheels spinning gleefully, particularly on the domestic front.

Starting with the broad assumption that us men are relatively useless and lazy, don’t listen well, and can’t seem to get it right on the homefront, is it now accepted that we merely serve as the support staff to our commander-in-chief wives because they really run the house? Read the rest of this entry »

My day job involves all kinds of fun customer interactions, including the occassional flare-up where I get slapped (usually virtually - by email or phone) because of late delivery or some other misstep along the way. I wouldn’t say I love my job, but for the most part it works out okay and most of my colleagues are very nice people - and I say “most” for a reason.

So of course we had a situation yesterday where the customer flipped out and called one of our senior guys who later came to talk to me, after the fire had been extinguished. He came to my desk and said, of our customer contact: “She’s a chick, so she’ll flip out once in awhile, and then she calms down.” And then he left. Read the rest of this entry »

As you likely know - or have experienced first-hand - Boston was suh-lammed with snow and nasty-ass weather over the past few days. The bad news: lots of shoveling and dangerously slippery ice. The good news: a chance to bring our daughter sledding for her very first time.

The verdict: sliding down a hill in a 58-inch inflatable tube while grasping my shrieking 3-year-old was worth every penny (until she wanted me to carry all 36 pounds of her back UP the hill).

It turns out that snow still makes me feel young and in those few moments that we flew down the hill with reckless abandon, I forgot all about the clients from my day job that I was neglecting (I hope they don’t google me and find out). Read the rest of this entry »

Well, not really. But it’s so damn STRESSful.

You see, in our family, the child is not allowed to watch too much television, but the two working adults (one of whom works A LOT) typically use television as a de-stresser. I mean, who doesn’t?

I know you’ve likely heard of Netflix (the largest online DVD rental service), but here’s a little ditty about why life with Netflix just ain’t so easy. Read the rest of this entry »

You see, I am approaching a milestone birthday.

And as we tend to do, I am evaluating my life up until this point, and this is the question that seems to get asked, over and over. On TV shows, in movies, and at the dinner table, with friends: Is your job WHO you ARE or just what you do?

We’ve recently been binge-watching the CBS show Criminal Minds, and the leader of the FBI team separates from his wife. The pivotal scene comes when he has technically retired from his crazy, fly-around-the-country-onamomentsnotice job for a regular, 9-5 desk job - and his stay-at-home wife is very happy about this transition. But he’s obviously not. So when the next case comes up, he leaves anyway, saying: “This is who I am.”

But she says: “No, it’s what you do.” Read the rest of this entry »