Running Man

I'm not one of those people who wax poetic about the joys of running. The early mornings with just your footsteps and your thoughts, the epic races where you squeak out a win, the runners high. I have one single great joy when I run. Finishing. I love being done with a run.
I'm an intermittent runner. I ran one year of cross country in high school. I didn't run again until my last year of college. I ran a bit when we moved to the south. I didn't start again until after my second was born. I've been much more on than off since then. I've run a number of 5k's, a 10K and one half marathon. I've won one legitimate award during that time. I'd love to tell you that it was for the Super Manly Death Race 5k, but it wasn't. It was for the City of Tomball's 1st annual Bunny Run 5K. I was third in my age group. I'm still pretty proud of it.
Around that time running became hard. It was sore a lot. My knees and my hips mostly. It was hard to just hop off the couch and play soccer with the kids. Running, which was supposed to be good for me, was making it hard for me to be active. It just didn't seem right. So I did some research and came across a group of people that were claiming that, perhaps, running without shoes was the answer. After reading hundreds of articles about which shoes to buy to cure specific running faults, it seemed counter intuitive that the real answer was no shoes at all. For me it was. Certainly the reduction in mileage that is necessary when you start running barefoot helped. I worked my way up to consistently running 4-6 miles at a stretch with no problems. No pains. It was beautiful. About a year after starting, the book Born To Run was published and a lot of other people were exposed to the idea of running barefoot, or at least with minimal shoes like Vibram Five Fingers. People still look at me like I'm a little nuts when I run, but at least a some of them know what's going on. I've seen a few people running and racing in five fingers since I started barefoot and I've had really nice talks with some of them, including a nice mile long chat with two gentlemen while running a night time trail 10K. They were cool guys.I've yet to see a pair of truly bare feet other than mine at a race. I'm still hoping.

Since my 3 year old started preschool a month ago I've been able to run more. I'm now averaging once a week stopping to answer questions about my lack of shoes. I always tell them it's not for everyone, but I think it's a good solution for some of us. My advice to anyone who is thinking about running barefoot is to read Born To Run, and start slow. Work up very very slowly to any distance over 100 yards. It's like learning to run all over again, and I admit, that's been my second joy in running. Being able to run smoothly, freely and without pain.


Books I finished this week -
The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker
Adventures Among Ants, Mark W. Moffett

The Blank slate is one hell of a book. It deals with our understanding of our minds. The parts that are innate, such as language and empathy and the drive to reproduce and it contrasts them with those that have been constructed such as racism. The main point is that there are some aspects to being human that are innate, we are born who we are to an extent. There are also things that our culture thrusts upon us. These have been and continue to be pretty complex to untangle. It's an excellent book and will make you look at humanity in a different light.
Adventures with ants is really cool. Moffett has been all over the world studying and photographing all sorts of wildlife, but it started with and continues to include ants.  The fact that one can still make a living as a naturalist adventurer is pretty incredible. When I smash ants that are trying to bite me I'm wishing for a magnifying glass and an identification guide. I want to know who they are and what's driving them to hurt me. Fun book, incredible pictures.

Picasso Upside Down Cake

Baking is just fun sometimes.
I like to buy fresh whole pineapples instead of canned ones. I use them for pizza topping for my wife, and usually we just eat the leftovers. Today I decided to make a pineapple upside down cake with them. When reading the recipe it occurred to me that, although I did have to put the pineapple on the bottom, I didn't just have to lay down rings. I could do any shapes that I wanted. I considered this a great opportunity. I though of trying some sort of tessellating mosaic but was daunted by the prospect of getting all the pieces the same. I considered writing a message of love to my wife, but I would have had to write it backwards to have it come out right. I finally decided on a portrait in pineapple. In my head I could see a fruity rendition of the renaissance masters. A pineapple Van Goh. A pineapple Renoir. What I ended up with was more of a pineapple Picasso. Perhaps if Picasso would have had a tropical fruit period instead of a blue period, this is what he would have created.

Pineapple Upside Down Cake - From Betty Crocker's New Cook Book
1/4 cup butter
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
sliced pineapple, either fresh or canned - drained
maraschino cherries as desired
1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup shortening or softened butter
3/4 cup milk
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg


The recipe is supposed to be baked in a 10 inch round skillet, I'm not sure why this is traditional but it's what I saw in several recipes. That's about 78.5 square inches. An 8x8 pan will work too, but at 64 inches will be a bit thicker. A 9x13 pan is 117 square inches, so it will be thinner. They will all work but your cooking time may vary.
Melt 1/4 cup butter and pour in pan, sprinkle brown sugar over the butter and arrange pineapple/cherries to your hearts content. Mix all of the other ingredients and pour them over the pineapple gently so as not to mess up your beautiful work.
Bake for 40-50 minutes at 350 until a toothpick comes out clean.
Pull out of the oven and immediately invert over...... something. A big plate, a cutting board, something. This takes a little finesse as the pan is 350 degrees and the cake is a bit sloppy and you don't want to screw up a fine piece of tropical fruit art.
The cake is best eaten warm but you can cover it after it cools and eat it any time. It's yummy.

Under Pressure

A good distracting man job is checking tire pressure.
Pressure affects mileage and safety in your car. It changes due to slow leaks, seasonal changes in temperature, and seemingly just because. With the change from summer to fall, your pressures will be falling. Keeping proper pressures will save you gas and prevent uneven tire wear. 
Any pressure gauge will work. Modern digital ones are cheap and reliable. You should always check your tires cold if you can, in my truck pressure varies by as much as 5 psi between cold and hot. You have two sources for recommended tire pressure. The first is the maximum pressure listed on your tire. The second is the sticker on the door jamb, or the owners manual. The best pressure is somewhere between the two. The tires on my truck have a maximum pressure of 51 psi. With them that hard the ride is really rough. The sticker on the door jamb says 35 psi cold. Splitting the difference gives me 43. That's a good starting point. I've found that if I go just a bit lower, 41, I don't lose any fuel economy and I think the ride is a bit better. Experiment within safe ranges.
You don't need an air compressor to add air. An upright bike pump will work. It will take quite a while to add much air. It's a workout, but it's cheaper and less likely to break. You can also drive to the gas station to air up. Takes a few minutes. That's nice sometimes.
So when you need a few minutes away from the chaos, tell your wife that you need to go check the tire pressure. It's probably the least made up excuse you have to get a few moments of peace.

The Case for Simplicity

I love it when I have all afternoon to cook dinner. I love it more when I know in advance that I'll have all afternoon to cook dinner so I can actually plan and shop and relax about the whole thing.
Usually, I either know I don't have a lot of time, or I think I'll have a lot of time but I end up not having that time. My usual Monday through Friday has me returning from picking up the kids from school at 3:30. Technically I have two hours to prepare dinner. In reality I have about 20 minutes spread over two hours to cook. I try to keep a quiver of meals that I can get ready with a minimum of effort. Not that they don't take a while to cook, but I'm only needed for a few minutes here and there to make it happen.
An easy one is grilled salmon and broccoli.

For the Salmon:
1 - 2 lbs salmon
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup soy sauce
Thaw the salmon early in the day or use fresh. An hour before cooking throw everything in a ziploc bag and put in the fridge.
Grill for 5 minutes a side on medium heat.
Total time invested is less than 15 minutes.

Steamed broccoli:
Cut broccoli into florets. Place in steamer basket in a pot with a bit of water. Cook on high for 5-10 minutes. Serve with butter if desired. Total time invested, maybe 5 minutes.

There is nothing fancy about this meal. It's simple and quick. You do need to be home to start the marinade on the fish, but if you're running around helping with homework or folding clothes or any of the other things that need to be done, you can squeeze that in. You can cut the broccoli and put in in the pot on the stove any time in the hour before dinner, just don't start the heat until you put the fish on. All you really need is those 10 minutes to get the fish cooked and everything on the plates. And really, it's grilled salmon and broccoli, it's good. It's better than most of the salmon that I've eaten at restaurants. My kids love it. My wife loves it. For the time invested, you can cook macaroni and cheese, or salmon and broccoli. If most of your life is busy, then most of the food you cook needs to be able to be cooked during a busy day. Once you build a list of 15-20 simple and quick dinners, you can have variety and quality on every very busy day.

Huge Turn Off

Everyone knows that you should have, and should be able to easily reach, a fire extinguisher.
You should also know how, and be able to easily reach, the water shut off in your house. After fire, too much water is the second biggest sudden catastrophe that can happen. Neither are likely, but both are horrible and being able to stop either quickly is the key to reducing damage.
Once upon a time I took a civil engineering class that required us to calculate flow through pipes and head loss per foot and then design fire sprinkler systems to code. That was a long time ago and I don't want to do that again. So instead I just did a quick search and came up with a typical 1/2 inch pipe at a typical 50psi will flow somewhere around 15 gallons per minute. That's 3 five gallon buckets of water on your bathroom floor before your son even starts to explain why he sat on the sink and ripped it, and the valves, off the wall.
If you have well water, you have a breaker to throw to shut off the pump. Clearly label this. You probably also have a pressure accumulator tank and should have a valve at the exit that you need to turn off so it doesn't spray it's pressure reserve inside the house. If you have municipal water you have a master valve somewhere. Something that shuts off water to the whole house. Mine is in a box by my porch. Others may be inside the house. If you can't find it now, stop and think about how much water could be spraying around your house while you consider where it might be. The fire department will rush to help you if you have a fire. It's harder to get a plumber to rush for water. Just the way the world works. If you live in an apartment or a condo, I'm not sure if you'll have access to the valve yourself. If you don't, you should know who to call before you and the guy who lives below you have a very very bad day.
Being able to shut off the water is also the most elemental start to any plumbing job. You might not need to turn off the whole house to replace the faucet, but it's a good idea.
While searching around, I found this pdf - Principles of Supply Plumbing
It's the best simple book I've ever read on household plumbing theory. I would have done a few things differently when re-doing my house if I had read it before hand. I'm going to talk a bit about basic household pluming in the next few months. I'll start with the toilet. The throne. After all, you are the king.

First Things First

I'm not sure why we're so fascinated with experiencing and recording out babies firsts. First words, first crawl, first step, first solution to a quadratic equation. Parents love watching firsts. The switch from laying there as a helpless blob having to beg the world for things out of your reach, to mobility, is huge. The switch from a passive observer of the world to an active participant. Maybe that's why we're fascinated with it, because we realize that seldom, if ever, do we undergo such a dramatic shift in the way we interact with the world. They can't grasp that huge change, so we watch it, and remember it, and record it, so that we can them tell the stories when they get older. Maybe we can transfer some of our great joy at their great change back to them.
My oldest daughter was right at that point. Right where babies are just starting to become mobile. They can sort of scootch along on their bellies to get a toy, but they can't crawl yet. If they make it a foot over the course of 20 minutes, they've gone on an expedition. These are that last days of peace. You can still turn around and reasonably expect your baby to be in the same spot when you turn back.
I was checking email and eating from a box of powdered doughnuts at the desk in the living room. My daughter was being awesome and playing by herself with a couple of toys in the middle of the living room. She was happy. I was happy. I was thirsty. I went to get a drink from the fridge. The desk was a mess so I set the doughnuts on the floor next to my chair. I walked to the kitchen, pulled out a drink, and walked back. I couldn't have been gone for 60 seconds. Probably more like 30. The sight that greeted me upon my return will haunt me the rest of my days.
My daughter had somehow moved over 8 feet (I measured) in the time I had been gone. She had never eaten anything that hadn't come out of a blender, all natural homemade baby food. Somehow she knew, animal instinct maybe? She knew that those doughnuts were worth it. I found her with a doughnut in each hand and her cheeks packed as full as any chipmunk ever has. Her eyes as big as saucers. She was radiating joy and triumph. I was experiencing failure. This was a first for me, the very first time I had underestimated my children. It was not the last.
It took a lot of work to pry those doughnuts out of her hands. She was not happy that I was taking away her hard won prize. My wife is disappointed at me to this very day. Not about the doughnuts, but that I didn't take a picture of it first.

Wait a Minuet

I think everyone should do something that's hard. Sometimes just living is hard enough, I get that, but working on something that you can only do poorly is good for you. You're on the steep part of the learning curve, the part where you gain the most from your effort. It also puts other parts of your life in perspective. I may not be a great cook, but I'm not bad at it. I'm bad at the violin. Perspective.
Six months ago my violin came from Sharon Dee Strings. I was very excited. I tuned it, and could play for about 5 minutes before my hands were sore. Well, play is a pretty generous word. It made noise. Last night I made a video of myself playing. Poorly. I'd love to say that it was the pressure of the video that made me suck, but that's not really true. It's probably a pretty good representation of a run through of Bach's Minute No. 1. That's really the song I played. Sorry Bach. The sound is a little more off than usual though because I'm playing with a mute on. The kids were in bed and violins are pretty loud.
I bought a violin because I'd wanted one for a very long time. I didn't play an instrument as a kid. Well, I did dink around on the guitar for a few months as an early teen but I just couldn't get it. Not practicing didn't help much. Resources back in the 80's were pretty scarce. I had my mom's old guitar, a song book, and a one hour group lesson a week where I was too shy to say anything. The internet has really changed self teaching of an instrument. Go do a youtube search for guitar lesson. It's amazing what's out there. You can learn just about anything from the safety of your own living room, including the violin.
I decided that I couldn't go back in time to relearn anything as a kid, so I might as well hop to it and try as an adult. I ordered a violin, a tuner, a few books, found a bunch of you tube videos, and set to work. I've played every single day since that first day. Some days have been as long at two hours, but lately it's been about half an hour a day. I should really take lessons, I'm sure that would help me get better, but why? I'm not sure exactly what I'm trying to accomplish. I love playing, even though I'm bad. I love making music. I really love taking a new page of music and sorting out the dots and turning paper into music. It's like audible soduku for me. Every song is a puzzle, a challenge that I get to sort out. I've learned so much about reading music and the structure of music and I've tried to read quite a lot about music theory. I play classical, Irish fiddle, American fiddle and gypsy music. I've also messed around with guitar, ukulele, a couple of fifes and the xaphoon, but I always play my violin. 
When I was a teen I picked up a guitar and though of being famous. When it didn't come easy, I figured out I wasn't going to be famous, and I put it down. Now that I'm old, and not so worried about fame, I can just have fun. That's what I'm doing, having a lot of fun.

Books I've finished this week. Nothing. I'm so close to finishing a great book about genes and psychology and the human traits that are wired into us. It's fascinating, but I'll wait until I've actually finished it.
In the mean time, if you want to read a book that will make you think about your parenting, try The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris. It should go on your shelf next to any parenting books you have.

Hero Brownies

Brownies are awesome. They're basically chocolate good that has just enough egg and flour to hold it together. They are a baked chocolate delivery device.
The only problem with brownies is that recipes make too many. That's right, too many brownies. They generally make a 8x8 pan which is at least 9 brownies. I have a family of six, so that leaves three. What to do with three brownies? Usually, I decide that they're daddy nap time food. Now I've eaten 1/3 of a pan of brownies for a snack and decide that I better not make brownies for a while. So everyone suffers for my weakness. What is needed is a smaller recipe so there aren't any leftovers and no brownie guilt.


3 Tbs butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
1/8 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
1/4 cup flour.

Melt the butter in a large measuring cup. Mix in the sugar. Add the cocoa, baking soda, salt and vanilla and mix thoroughly. Taste it, it's fantastic. Add egg and mix. Add flour and mix. Pour into a small pan and bake at 325 for 30-35 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. When I say small pan, I'm looking at something between 5 and 7 inches in diameter for a round pan and about the same size as a bread pan for a rectangle pan. In fact, a glass bread pan works great. This last batch I made in a 1.75 qt pyrex storage bowl and it was perfect. It makes somewhere between 1 and 6 servings depending on how you cut.

Now, you might be wondering why these are hero brownies. Let me tell you a secret about being a stay at home dad. At some point, your wife is going to have a bad day at work. It will suck, she'll come home crying, or nearly so. Everyone has days like this, but since you're home, she has a hero. You can whip these up in 45 minutes from start to finish. They are the perfect size to sit on the couch and split with her. Listen, nod a lot, and share the brownies. It's just enough chocolate to make it all better and not so much that she will wake up the next day accusing you of conspiring to make her fat.
At some point, these brownies will make you a hero.

Earned Time

I do not like going to the dentist. I really don't like people putting their hands in my mouth. It makes me very physically and emotionally uncomfortable. How can anybody look at a job description that says -Put hands in others mouths, muck about with sharp tools, cause physical pain and emotional trauma- and say "sure, sign me up!" How does that thought process work? The only dentist I've ever liked was the one that pulled my wisdom teeth. He gave me drugs that were so good I didn't even know that I had seen him until the next day. I could party with that guy. The rest of them, even though they seem really nice, I'm very suspicious of their motivations.
But I go. My wife makes me. She wants me to be able to chew when I'm an old man. I also need to be a good example to my kids. It doesn't seem right to make them go every six months if I never do. I can honestly relate to them when they tell me that they don't like it. I don't either kid, but mommy says we have to.
Nine and a half years ago I gave up the idea of having time belong to me. When my wife was at work, I was the primary care giver. When my wife was off work I was part of the team. Not that I didn't do things by myself, I did, but that time was given to me. Time to take classes, time to run, time to weld, time to work on cars, time to just go for a drive. I maybe be ok at my job, but I need time to collect my thoughts now and again. That time away lets me be a better dad when I get back, and I'm always aware of getting back. Time away from my kids means time away from my wife, time away from participating as a family. My wife gave me that time to help me be happy and sane and a good dad and a good husband. I always came back as quickly as I could, it's where I wanted and needed to be.
A month ago my last baby started preschool. It's just three hours at a time two days a week. I like hanging out with him way too much to send him away for longer than that at three years old. In those three hours I can go for a run, take a walk, sit and read, or just watch the birds fly by. I can go to the dentist without needing to have my wife take off work to watch the babies while some weirdo puts their hands in my mouth.
Nobody has to give me that time now, it's mine. I raised four babies to the point where they are ready to participate in the world as their own people. In two years my youngest starts all day school. In nine years my oldest heads to college. In fifteen years I'll have an empty nest. At some point I'll have to figure out how to fill all of that time productively, but for now, I'm just sort of basking in the glow of these first few hours that I've earned.

Set Sail

Everyone that has ever grown a garden has had to deal with monster zucchini. Early in the season you get these nice petite zucchini that you can slice and saute. You can put them on kabobs. Slice them on a mandolin and put them on pizza. Lots of great zucchini eating early in the year.
You can't keep up.
You turn you back on them for 3 days to take a break or visit friends and suddenly you have zucchini everywhere, and they get big. When we were kids we used to pick the big ones and use them like bats. Zucchini ball. Great fun. This is the stage when you start shredding and freezing with the idea that you'll be making zucchini bread every third day all winter. Still, there is more zucchini. You can try to give it away, but everyone you know already has more zucchini than they know what to do with. People start leaving it on doorsteps as 'gifts'. Thanks, it will go well with all of the zucchini that I have. If you try to slice and saute now, it's like trying to cook a pile of hockey pucks. Too big, too unevenly cooked, it's enough to make a strong man weep. Now is the time for zucchini boats.
Slice them in half lengthwise and scoop out the middle with a spoon. Fill them with chopped ham and put them in the oven for 40 minutes at 350. Pull them out, add a bit of cheese and throw them under the broiler for 3-5 minutes. Add a mast and a sail and you're done. Very easy to make, zucchini tastes like ham, and the kids love them. They're basically a whole meal by themselves.

This is the part where I shamefully admit that I bought the zucchini that I used for boats, I did not grow them. I don't garden, I just don't have it in me to battle the heat and the rabbits and the terrible soil in southeast Texas. Normally my neighbor would be throwing zucchini over the fence at me every time he caught me outside, but the worst drought in 100 years has the zucchini suffering.  I know that in the midwest right now there are 10 zucchini for every man woman and child. Many other places are doubtless awash in them as well. Have a go at it, zucchini boats are fun.

Drywall

About 5 years ago a pipe in the ceiling of my bathroom started leaking. A small leak. The easiest solution was to cut a hole in the ceiling so water dripped through instead of soaking the drywall and putting a cup to catch it. It was a slow enough leak that the cup filled up only about every two days. This was a pretty acceptable solution to me mostly because actually fixing the leak wasn't trivial. Because of how the pipe ran, I needed to tear open the wall and the ceiling to replace the 90 degree angle where the leak originated. If I was going to rip up that much wall I might as well rip all of it out as the finish had been ruined by wallpaper. If I was going to rip all of it out I probably should replace the 20 year old bathtub that was on it's last legs.   I had small children and wasn't ready for the bathroom downtime that would be necessary to get all of this done. It's our only bathroom. People need to poop.
That was the logic that left us with a leaky ceiling for two years. The cup worked well, but when we went on vacation I had to rig up an elaborate slide made of packing tape so the water would drain into the sink. Two years. How I'm still married is a mystery. Finally the enamel wore so thin on the bathtub that bare steel was showing through. You just couldn't clean it and even I knew things had progressed too far. So about two years ago I replaced the bathtub and all of the drywall around it. In a burst of energy I finished and painted the drywall in that little alcove and replaced the tub surround. We could bathe. I was exhausted.
It took me about 6 months to recover enough to replace the rest of the drywall in the bathroom. I managed to put the first coat of mud on before I again needed months of recuperation. I would occasionally do just a little sanding, but it was just so dusty and drywall dust makes everyone have to poop. Did I mention that this is our only bathroom? My wife spent one summer with the washer and dryer moved into the center of the bathroom at the very edge of their cords so she could finish the seams behind them. She is a saint. Other than that, for the last 18 months, nothing, until the last 4 days. She was gone for business and I had evenings free. Nobody to wake up and poop when I made dust. One last push of energy. Four years after the leak started, I'm ready to paint. Not too shabby.
Finishing drywall is one of those things. I hate it and I love it. There's nothing fun about putting the mud on or sanding it off. It's hot, it's dusty, you have to wear a dust mask and you still end up with white boogers for a day. I know that professionals can do it in 2-3 coats, so when it takes me 6 to get the same results, I'm very aware of how much I suck at it.
But man, there's nothing quite like putting on that first coat of primer and seeing the walls look flawless. Just smooth from floor to ceiling with no indication of where the seams or the screws are. It looks like the wall has just organically grown there, flat and perfect from corner to corner. It has a sense of accomplishment. I did that. I made it perfect. Or I screwed it up. Either way, there is an objective standard. Did I make it smooth or didn't I? Can you see the seams or can't you. Did I do this job well?
Even though I hate doing it, I love that it gives me a real measure of myself as a man and my abilities. I am a very very slow, and capable man.

The line of Fire

At some point most couples who are having a baby realize that birth is getting closer and their knowledge of how to care for a real live baby feels very very inadequate. We need a four year degree for nearly any job these days. You have to take a class when you're 16 to become licensed to drive. If you want to hunt you need to take a class before they'll sell you a license. Heaven forbid you want to sell someone food, you need a class and a certificate for that. If you want to take a live 3 day old baby home, just prove that you can strap it in a car seat and you're on your way. Somehow, the fact that you grew and birthed that baby is recognized as proof that you'll be able to get in through the next 18 years as well. No other qualifications needed.
What you end up with is a very steep learning curve. Thank god that babies only eat poop and sleep for the first few weeks. Those things you can handle without any training. The rest of their functions come on slowly and you learn as you go along. Their development is never so fast that it overwhelms you. Parenting is the ultimate on the job training.
We brought our first daughter home when she was three days old. We were on our own until our first doctors appointment at two weeks. My mother in law was there for the first few days and having both of us home was awesome. When my wife had to get up for something I was right there to hold the baby. When the baby needed to eat I handed her right back. While my wife was still sore I changed a lot of diapers and got the things that need to be got when you're still trying to learn the ropes. We were lulled into a sense that we really hand a handle on this whole baby thing.
On the morning of our first doctors appointment we were only a little nervous. Nobody wants to bring in a baby and have the doctor say that you're doing it wrong. This was our first one, how well could we self evaluate? She seemed healthy, ate well, was getting bigger, pooped like it was her job. Everything seemed like it was going to go perfectly. This would be our first validation that we really could do this. The doctor would check out the baby, declare her fine, declare us adequate parents and send us back to our land of ignorance. No more knowledgeable, but more secure in our ability to figure it out as we went along. My wife fed her one last time as I got ready, then I took her to change her diaper as my wife got ready. Even though the diaper seemed clean, better safe than sorry when heading to the doctor. Besides, I was a well oiled diaper changing machine after two whole weeks, no problemo.  Baby on the changing table. Pull up the gown. Diaper off. Reach for the new diaper.......
AH CHOO!

Oh my god.....
Did that just..... 
"Honey?"
"Everything ok?"
"Problem.....need help"
I need a new shirt.
And new pants.
And I need to clean up the floor.
And the wall.
Quickly.
We have to leave for the doctors appointment.
At least the baby is clean. 
This is what I learned: I had been changing her for two weeks and hadn't really thought too much about baby positioning. Her head was away, her butt was right there for diapering. It was all very convenient. I hadn't experienced a post feeding sneeze without a diaper yet. It had simply never occurred to me until I was actually wearing the effects of a diaperless sneeze. You change babies at an angle. You've got to keep things pointed in a safe direction. Never leave yourself in the line of fire.

Birds in the Bathroom

The list of livestock that you can successfully raise in your bathroom is shockingly small. In fact, it consists almost completely of poultry. Learning about and raising poultry has been great fun. It kept me occupied for over year, and with two guinea hens still alive it still entertains and drives me nuts on a daily basis.
We had chickens when I was a kid. We also had geese, pheasants and turkeys and various times. I remember collecting eggs when I was about 7 or 8. It was a great time. Chickens are a great livestock. They're useful, small and legal to keep in most places. A few chickens around laying eggs would make our little acre and a half sort of like a farm. Chickens make sense. That's one reason I wanted guineas. Guineas are pretty weird birds. They are originally from Africa and seem sort of like a cross between a chicken and a turkey and a small dinosaur. They eat bugs with an appetite that can't be matched. They'll even eat fire ants. They also hate snakes and will actively chase them out of the yard. With kids and rattlesnakes both being around that is a huge plus. Everything I read said that they were loud, but not so loud as peacocks. How loud could they really be? So I decided that having chickens was way too normal, I'd get guineas.
I ordered them in February and I knew that it would be too cold to keep them outside at first I'd have to start them in the bathroom. I can't explain how incredible my wife is when I come up with ideas like this. "Baby guineas in the bathroom? Sure, just don't make a mess." Sweet!
So I built a brood pen with a heat lamp and got water and food dishes and waited for the chicks to come in the mail. That's right, you order chicks, and they deliver them in the mail. It's some sort of archaic postal law that was supposed to help small farmers years ago and somehow the rules are still there. Chicks do fine without food or water for 24-36 hours after they're hatched. So if you ship them the day they hatch you can get them pretty much anywhere as long as you pick them up right away when the post office calls you. And as cute and chicks are, the ladies at the post office want you to come get them RIGHT NOW! Who knew?
The guinea chicks finally came and when I opened the box I was surprised to find not just the 10 chicks I had ordered, but another 12 chicks that they included for 'free' to help keep the guineas warm on their postal journey. They were male Rhode Island red chicks. Roosters of an egg breed. Useless. They don't put on meat like a meat breed of chicken and being roosters, well, no eggs. If they didn't send them to me they would have to be killed. So now I was supposed to kill them? I can't do that. Not until they're big enough to eat anyway. Now I had 22 chicks in my bathroom.  One of the roosters died in the first few days, these things happen. But I successfully raised 21 birds for just over four weeks in my bathroom until they were big enough, and it was warm enough for them to go in the coop outside. Another 4 weeks outside and they were big enough to roam around during the day as long as I got them inside the coop at night so nothing would eat them.
Eventually the roosters started to crow and I had to butcher them. I knew it was coming, and they were delicious. I left one alive to help the guineas figure out how to get back into the pen at night. They're pretty stupid. In fact, chickens, which are known to be shockingly stupid, are really really smart compared to guineas. Tragically a pair of dogs got into the yard three days later and killed the last chicken. The guineas may be stupid, but they're also much much faster than chickens and they escaped. I lost one guinea early to a bird of prey. Our dog has killed a few, which is still an issue between her and I. They have laid eggs and tried to nest, which always ends in tragedy when something comes to eat them in the night. I ran one over with the truck. A couple have just vanished. About 18 months after this whole thing started I have two guineas left. They occasionally climb on my truck and scratch it and I threaten to kill them. They seem to be unfazed by my clearly empty words.
Someday I'll loose the last two and I'll be sad. I really like having them in the yard.
Maybe I'll get ducks next. I should do some research on building ponds.

Books read this week:
Strides, Running Through History With an Unlikely Athlete -  Benjamin Cheever
Locust, The devastating rise and mysterious disappearance of the insect that shaped the American frontier - Jeffrey A. Lockwood
Book that I have abandoned:
Basic Writings - Martin Heidegger

Strides was good, it was a pretty light history of running and a look at current running peppered with the authors experience. It seems that one can't write a running book without believing that the audience is deeply interested in your own running. Maybe we aren't, maybe you have to prove through anecdote that you have suffered the trials of a runner to be worthy of writing a book about it.
Locust was pretty interesting. I learned about the largest extinction in North America in recorded history. Not only was it accidental, but for 30 years or so nobody even knew it happened, nor were they sad that it did. The middle of the book has way too much information about the history and major players in early American entomology, but once you make it through that, it's a really good story.
I abandoned basic writings. I'm enjoying reading Cicero and Marcus Aurelius right now and I thought I'd try a modern philosopher. The problem is that it's like picking up a book hoping to find out about how a light bulb works and how it affects society and instead getting a book that talks about quarks and the essence of electrons and really really pouring over what we might really mean when we say the word light. I'm sure there is some really neat stuff in there but I'll be damned if I can tease it out of the writing.

Roasting

Betty Crocker defines roasting as -
Cook meat uncovered on a rack in a shallow pan in oven without adding liquid.

Wikipedia says-
Roasting is a cooking method that uses dry heat, whether an open flame, oven, or other heat source.  Roasting uses more indirect, diffused heat (as in an oven), and is suitable for slower cooking of meat in a larger, whole piece. Meats and most root and bulb vegetables can be roasted. Any piece of meat, especially red meat, that has been cooked in this fashion is called a roast. In addition, large uncooked cuts of meat are referred to as roasts. A roast joint of meat can take one, two, even three hours to cook - the resulting meat is tender. Also, meats and vegetables prepared in this way are described as "roasted", e.g., roasted chicken or roasted squash.

My even simpler definition:
Put meat in pan, put pan in oven, make hot, eat.
That's all roasting is.
With such a simple definition it's amazing that there seem to be so many ways to make a roast. There really aren't, there are just a lot of ways to make a roast better. Brining, seasoning, stuffing, browing, basting and when and whether or not to cover. Then you go into added vegetables making gravy from the drippings and resting before serving and it's all enough to drive you a bit batty.
I'm going to give you the very basics for roasting beef, chicken and pork. In the future I'll expand with ways to take all of them from a very simple edible meal, to ones that are wonderful.
First off, you can roast everything at 325. Sometimes a slightly different temperature will work better, but 325 will always work. You're working low and slow here.
Second, salt and pepper is all the seasoning that you need. Other flavors can be good, but salt and pepper will always get  you something yummy.
Third, a meat thermometer. You can cook by the time tables given in a cook book, but a $5 meat thermometer will always give you a better answer. It's best not to guess, one undercooked roast should convince you of that. So here we go:
Chicken: I recommend leg quarters, these are the leg and thigh attached with the skin on and the bones still in. They're about the cheapest tastiest meat you can buy. I can feed my whole family of 6 for two nights on $5 in chicken leg quarters.
Preheat oven to 325
Place chicken in a pan
Throw in a couple of tablespoons of butter
Salt and pepper
Place in oven uncovered for about an hour and a half, chicken should be 165 degrees.

Pork: the simplest is a pork loin roast somewhere between 2 and 4 pounds.
Preheat oven to 325
Place pork in pan
Salt and pepper
You can cover or not cover. I like to cover pork for the first hour of cooking either with a lid or tinfoil then uncover for the rest of the time.
Cook until pork reaches 170 degrees.

Beef: basically anything labeled roast in the meat department works. They all have different qualities, the cooking is largely the same.
Preheat oven to 325
Place beef in pan
Salt and pepper
Roast uncovered for 1.5-2 hours, until 160 degrees.

Ok, that's out of the way. Roasting is simple. You can roast chicken pork or beef with less than 5 minutes prep time. Get the kids home, throw the roast in the oven, help them with homework, fold some laundry. Quickly steam up some broccoli, pull the meat out of the oven as your wife walks in the door. You are a domestic god. 
Later I'll throw some recipes out there that will do more than just keep everyone fed. They will be awesome enough to impress your mother in law. Promise.

Don't cut the cord!

I've never understood the desire that men feel to cut the umbilical cord. I didn't feel the need with any of my kids but I've had some conversations with dads who seemed pretty proud of themselves. Sure you helped make the baby, but you cutting the cord doesn't mean that you helped with the birth. By the time you get to that point the birth is done. It's like the ribbon cutting in front of new buildings. A 3 foot pair of scissors and a hard hat don't make you part of the construction crew. Your wife just shot a human being out her lady parts while you held her hand. Cutting a couple of blood vessels does not put you on equal ground.
But this isn't about umbilical cords, this is about tools.
I understand the appeal of cordless tools. They really do have a huge convenience factor for professionals who otherwise have to find a place to plug things in, and then have to worry about dragging a cord all over the inside of someone's house. They also use them daily and plug them in to charge at night. No matter what tools they use, they have a limited life span. For a professional they make sense.

I don't think they do for the occasional around the house tool user. The main point is that once you go cordless you move from one failure point to three failure points. A corded drill can certainly fail, but you only have one point of failure, the drill. With a cordless drill you have the drill, the battery and the charger that can all fail. Over the years I've had one battery failure and one charger failure. By the time they failed replacements were impossible to find. So I still had a working drill, I just didn't have to parts to make it work. They were both 5-7 years old and throwing them away sucked. The only corded drill I've managed to kill was a 40+ year old drill that I killed while wire brushing undercoating off a car. I used that drill for over 5 years after I bought it and I'm pretty sure that if I hadn't beat on it then it would still be alive. My current drill I've had now for 5 years and there is no reason it shouldn't be around in another 40 years at it's current rate of use. Go look around a store at all of the cordless drills you see. Every one of them will be in a landfill in 40 years. The batteries and chargers will all fail. Technology will move on and they will be obsolete. They will have to be replaced repeatedly. It used to be that you could expect to inherit your father's tools and then pass them down to your kids. Lots of things used to be like that. You bought them expecting them to last as long as you've ever need them. Until recently tools were one of the last segments of consumer goods still made with that thinking in mind. Now even there they build in obsolescence in the name of convenience. Not with everything, a good hammer should still outlast you. Just a few years ago I would have said the same thing about screwdrivers too but now we've gone from regular or phillips to one of 1000 different security screws. That drives me nuts too. I urge you to not head down the road of knowingly buying something that will fail and become unrepairable when you buy tools. Not as long as you don't have to. Don't cut the cord yet, you've got 18 years before you need to do that.

Quesadillas and Asparagus

I'm pretty sure that quesadillas and asparagus don't show up on the menu together in very many places.
Here they do. What they have in common is that they are such simple foods to cook that they don't even deserve their own post. They are also both tasty.
We'll start with asparagus because I've actually had people stop me at the store when they saw me buying it to ask how to cook it. Three times. They all seem to know that it's good for you, but they don't know how to make it. Cooking it is really the easy part, its the prep that unknowingly throws people off. Asparagus is woody. Almost always, the bottom part is more like a log than a food. The top part is the yummy part. This is true whether it is skinnier than a pencil or bigger around than your thumb.  The tricky thing is that there is no visual way to tell where the line between people food and livestock food is. The asparagus knows though. All you have to do is grab one end in one hand, and one end in the other and bend. It will snap at the perfect spot every time. It's one of those little miracles of food. Just pitch the stumps and eat the tops. No more woody asparagus.
The easiest way to cook it is in the microwave. Place it in a shallow pan, put in just enough water to cover the bottom and cover. Microwave for 3-4 minutes and then mix it all up and check to see how it's doing. It will probably need 2-4 more minutes, you have to feel your way through this, You don't want it soft. Mushy asparagus is bad. Crunch is your friend, but just a bit, you have to do it a few times to get the feel of it.  Take it out and drain it and put some butter on it while it's still hot enough to melt. It's yummy, my daughter says it's not as bad as broccoli. I'm pretty sure that's praise.
Note that I did say that this is the easiest way to cook it. You can probably make better asparagus by laying it out on a baking sheet, brushing it with olive oil, putting a bit of garlic salt on it and roasting it in the oven at 350 until it's done. Maybe 15 minutes? It's been a while, roasting might be better, but it's not easier.
Quesadillas are almost too easy to write about. They're just a grilled cheese sandwich with tortillas instead of bread.  Heat your pan to medium low, 4 on my stove, put down a tortilla, put some cheese on it, put another tortilla on top. Flip after a few minutes. Done. It's even easier than grilled cheese because you cook them dry, you don't have to butter them like you do bread. In fact, if you're careful you can end up with a clean pan. No washing!
Throw some meat on there with the cheese, some avacado, some blanched spinach, some garlic, whatever is in your fridge and goes with cheese. Hot dog slices for the kids.  There is no end to their possibility and yet they are so simple. Most people probably think I'm wasting time even writing about them. Let me explain.
I grew up in the mid west in the 80's and 90's. It was not, and continues to not be, a bastion for creative cooking. Spices were not used. It was quite likely that your mom had the same container of pepper that she got when she got married 20 years ago. Most of my friends houses, as well as my own, were like this. Consequently I didn't find out about quesadillas until I went to Mexico to study volcanoes in college. It it wasn't for that trip, I might be raising my kids without the knowledge of such an incredible food. I fear that right now, some stay at home dad somewhere doesn't know about these, and soon he'll stumble on this site and it will change his life. If I can do that for just one man, then my good work here will all be worth it.
Really though, I don't suck as a cook so much that all I feed my kids is pancakes and quesadillas. The quesadilla in the picture had slow roasted pulled pork on it that I made over the weekend and I have a loaf of orange rye bead rising in the kitchen right now. I will write about better food as things progress. I just want to get some simple things out there so that if my readership ever grows to include any actual stay at home dads then maybe I can help make their lives easier. 
I can cook like Julia Child, just not every night.

Errand Boy

I've been thinking about when this gig is over, when I've finished raising my kids. Maybe I'll see if I can find a job as an errand boy. I know they call them personal assistants these days, but Errand Boy would be cooler on a business card.
I'd love to say that I perform all the tasks of an errand boy for my wife. She asks, I do it. No worries, no problems, it's done and done right. I'm not quite that awesome, but I try.
This morning I had to run the kids to school, do the grocery shopping, head back to school to get some soccer fliers approved to send home with all of the kids and then drive over to my wife's work to drop off bread. Tomorrow I have to do my usual elementary and preschool drop-offs and I also have to pick up a book from the library for my wife so she has something good to read on the plane and I probably have to drop off a package at the post office as well.
I've said before, and I'm sure I'll say again, that a big part of my job is releasing my wife from worry. Or at least trying to. She never has to worry about having to pick up sick kids from school. When she has to go in to work early she can. If a meeting that is supposed to end at 4:00 really ends at 6:00 it's fine, we miss her at dinner but the kids are still taken care of and dinner is still served. When she has to travel for work she always can. The bills are paid on time. There is someone here to get packages. There's food in the fridge and dinner on the table. If she needs something from the store, just put it on the list, if I'm not a flake I'll get it. Sometimes I'm a flake. If she hears about a good book from someone at work or on the radio, just let me know, I'll get it reserved and picked up from the library. I even keep looking for any extra things that I can do.
My wife goes to work every day. She releases me from the worry of having to earn a living. That's a huge worry and a huge burden to bear when you are a one income household. I try my damnedest to shoulder all of the other day to day worries and tasks that I can.  
Sometimes it's hard to feel like an equal member of the team, no matter how hard you try. I can't make the money my wife does, I can't step into her shoes, I can't carry the weight she does. This is the socially hard part of being a stay at home dad, and maybe it is for moms too. I don't know. I know I don't need to justify myself to anyone, but I do sometimes wish that there was some sort of accreditation for stay at home dads. I wish I could pull out a card that proves to anyone that dammit, I'm worth what I get paid.
A Man card.  That might actually be cooler than Errand Boy

How Did I Get Here?

How did I get here?
It's a funny question. Generally it's  a rhetorical question asked by a middle aged man when he finds himself fat and working 50 hours a week at a job he hates and not driving a Corvette. Things are not going to plan.
I've also asked the question in a very literal sense upon driving into Menominee, Michigan when heading from Houghton, Michigan to Alaska. Menominee is South, and East, of Houghton. Alaska is neither of those directions. I'm still not sure how that happened. We did get is sorted out though.
I do sometimes sit back and wonder how in a period of a year and a half I went from being a dashing college student graduating with two Bachelors degrees, one in a hard science, one an engineering degree, a rock climbing instructor, a dirty hippie and an all around laid back guy, to warming up breast milk to feed my newborn while my wife was off at work. Not only was I there, but I was really, really happy to be there. So happy in fact that I thought it was a great idea to do it three more times!
How did that happen?
Maybe I'm just wired for it. I did ask for, and receive, a Cabbage Patch doll when I was 8. I forget his name but he was awesome. He had a camouflage shirt. We went for trips to the woods. I didn't stay attached to him for quite as long as my sisters did to their dolls but it's probably pretty telling that my young mind wanted a doll and a BB gun at the same time in it's development and I didn't see any contradiction with that. Thanks Mom and Dad for being pretty liberal with that sort of thing. I had a great childhood although I sucked at team sports due to some physical defect that made it difficult not only to catch or throw a ball, but also to run. I was horribly uncoordinated on all limbs. I could sit still though, and with enough practice I could shoot a gun or a bow with some measure of skill so I managed to kill and eat quite a lot of really adorable tasty things that live in the woods. I wasn't manly like the typical jock, I was manly like a caveman.
I found my groove in college. Academics were hard but fantastic. I found rock climbing and a group of people that climbed and skied and were really easy to get along with. I discovered the joys of undergraduate research and how learning outside of class with a supportive professor can really change what college is. I also discovered love. A couple of times. The last time was in Electromagnetic Geophysics, considered the most romantic of all the geophysics classes by many. It helped my odds that of the four people in the class I wasn't married, socially inept and exceptionally hairy, or a girl. I was the normal guy and that made it easy to strike up a conversation with the girl and eventually have to make a decision. If I head to Houston with this wonderful woman will I be able to get into graduate school later if things go pear shaped? Or, if I head off to graduate school, will I ever be able to replace someone so wonderful? I decided that there were probably more graduate schools available to me than women quite like the one I was in love with, so I decided to head to Houston and work.
Heading to Houston was an ok idea. Working wasn't. It was a combination of my choice of job, the unique managers and co-workers that I found myself trying to work with, and my concept of repetitive paid mental labor. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind work. I've been working for pay in one form or another since I was a 12 year-old picking peppers to buy a football helmet for my not very successful year of playing football. Some kinds of work I really like. For a while anyway. Most work becomes a chore after about 3 months and I don't want to do it anymore. This doesn't really make me special, lots of people feel like this. It's just that the work that I was qualified for I really really didn't want to do.
A little issue with an ovarian cyst got us talking about the possibility of reduced fertility and brought out into the open that we both really did want to have kids right now. We sort of both knew that but hadn't had a good reason say it explicitly. We both also decided that one of us should stay at home. It was easy and natural for me to volunteer and for her to very thankfully accept. She loves work. Loves loves loves it. I love naps. Love love love them. The decision to have babies with each other led to a marriage proposal which is sort of backwards, but again, we both just sort of knew it was right. Romantically enough, we were married at a drive through wedding chapel while traveling back from California. We figured that since we were there, it made sense. Two engineers marrying is pretty convenient. The day after our wedding we got a plus on the pregnancy test. Yes, even though we got married in a drive through chapel in Las Vegas, I swear we found out we were going to have a baby the next day. That really makes the whole thing very proper. Almost Victorian age proper. Really.  
I think I waited until the 4th month to put in my 5 month notice at work. I was very excited to quit. My last day of work was a Friday. My daughter was born on Tuesday. The company had some sort of HR guilt thing going and continued to pay me for 6 weeks of paternity leave. I think they were trying to show how awesome they were. I really appreciated it, but there was no way I was coming back. I loved my daughter. I loved holding her and feeding her and napping with her. Even with the challenges of staying at home with kids I've never felt like quitting and getting another job.
That's how I got here, and I think I'm in the right place.

Intellectual Engagement

One of the most difficult parts of being a stay at home dad, for me, was keeping my brain from melting out of my ear. My first two children are 17 months apart and all 4 are within 6 years. For a while I had a LOT of small children around the house. The work isn't hard in the way that most jobs are hard, but it's really really hard to keep your mind engaged. Heating bottles and changing diapers and reading "Little Black a Pony" 200 times per day all while sleeping 4-5 hours a night

My wife is wonderful. She has always understood that taking care of our kids isn't the hard part of my job. Staying sane is. With our younger children she made it easy for my to take night classes at the local community college. I took every class I could in the welding and non-destructive testing curriculum. I can MIG, TIG, and stick weld. I can interpret x-rays of those welds. I can use a variety of methods to check for cracks in whatever metal you have around. I can read AWS code books like I wrote them. I have no need for any of these skills. Learning them and interacting with the students and teachers kept me sane and happy and that was really the point.
I've run a half marathon, become adept at hunting squirrels in East Texas, ridden a 150 mile charity bike ride, twice, assembled a Group 5 rally car from an empty shell and boxes of parts, built a second story two bedroom addition on our house, bought a Vespa and became licensed to ride it,  and experimented with gardening. There are many other things too, and the things I've listed are so much more in depth than even makes sense. For instance, the 150 mile bike rides. You might think that it's just getting a bike and training. That would be too simple.
I started biking on my old mountain bike. It was time to myself and was fun. So I started reading about bikes online. I bought bike magazines. I learned about single speed bikes. Then I learned about fixed gear bikes. I joined online forums on fixed gear bikes so that I could vicariously immerse myself in the culture of messengers and fixed gear bikes. I bought a bare frame from a very small speciality bike importer and boxes of parts from various places. I learned how to put a bike together properly. I learned about training, speed and cadence and varying effort for distance. I incorporated my heart rate monitor from my half marathon training. I rode the 150 mile ride. It was anticlimactic. For the next year I decided that a fixed gear bike was too simple, so I became familiar with vintage BMX bikes. I bought a bike that was as old as I was and nearly as cool. I learned to rebuild coaster brake hubs. I rode again. It was even more anticlimactic. I moved on.......
In the past year I've learned to juggle and have taken up the violin. I finally finished crocheting a HUGE afghan. I'm dabbling with drawing. I'm always reading something, fiction, history, science, and recently philosophy.
My wife has always supported my mental wanderings, though it's not completely altruistic.When I'm happy and sane she can head off to work without a worry, knowing that I am good and home is good and the kids are good and everything will be that way at the end of the day. She loves her job and loves the fact that when she's there she can concentrate fully on it and be the kind of employee that really is exceptional. She loves being exceptional and she's great at it.
We really are a team, and that makes a lot of things easier. 
Friday posts are going to be about keeping my mind going. About keeping your mind going. Whether you are working toward what you're going to do after staying at home, or just keeping sane while staying at home, you've got to do something to keep your brain from melting out of your ear.

Books finished this week:
-Shop Class and Soulcraft - an inquiry into the value of work
   Matthew B. Crawford
-Great Scientific Experiments - Twenty Experiments That Changed Our View of the World
   Rom Harre

Shop Class is a pretty good book. If you shift his focus from fixing motorcycles to fixing your house and feeding babies I really think the same satisfaction for your work can be found as a stay at home dad.
Great Scientific Experiments is a pretty cool book, though if you don't fancy yourself a scientist already then a lot of the experiments will likely blow right over you. I have an engineering degree and the physics involved in several of them was really too much. It was neat to read about some pivotal points in science in the proper context though.

Pancakes

You should know how to make pancakes from scratch. You can always make them from a box, from bisquick, something like that. But if you start with just flour, you can make a whole pile of other things with the flour besides pancakes as well. Pancakes are great for breakfast, either on purpose or because your kids inform you that the cereal is gone. They make a great bread substitute at lunch time when the bread is gone. Peanut butter and jelly pancakes sandwiches are wonderful. They also make a fine dinner when you discover that you don't have either the time or the proper ingredients for a proper dinner. Who doesn't love it when dad says that we're having breakfast for dinner? Pancakes can make many of the situations where you've completely messed up as a food provider and make the day wonderful.

Basic pancake recipe from the Betty Crocker cookbook:
1 cup flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
3/4 cup milk
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Put the 4 dry ingredients in a bowl. Mix them up.
Put the wets in the bowl. Mix them up.
Pour and cook. 

There is nothing in the world easier. Also nothing with more variations. I don't actually make the above recipe as it stands. I don't put in the oil. Vegetable oil is yucky. I usually add an extra egg for more fat and since I'm cooking on a non stick griddle (which I recommend) nothing sticks. It works with only one egg and no oil too. I also usually add one teaspoon of vanilla. Vanilla is yummy. So is a bit of cinnamon for that matter. And don't think you have to use 3/4 cup of milk. Adjust that up or down to get the pancake consistency you like. Sometimes I'll melt two tablespoons of butter and whisk that into the batter. The cold batter makes the butter form little globules that then re-melt when you cook the pancakes. They literally ooze butter when it's done right. So wonderful.
Serve them with syrup, with jelly, with whipped cream, with mini chocolate chips in the batter, with blueberries in the batter, or with a dollop of canned pumpkin mixed in the batter. Go wild, experiment. Tell your family that you're on a quest to perfect the pancake and make them pancakes 3 times a week for 6 months. Consult the internet for people much more knowledgable than me about recipe variation. Find old ladies that look like they have pancake secrets in their recipe boxes and badger them until they tell you.
With all of that said, you probably don't want pancakes to be the staple food of your kids childhood. They're nothing more than big balls of sugar with some egg holding it together after all. As delicious and versatile as they are, they're not exactly health food. But you need them. You need their ingredients. With the above ingredients and some butter you can make biscuits or dumplings. In fact, with just butter and more sugar and things messed about you are now making sugar cookies. Muffins and quick breads are all there. Add some cocoa and now you're into brownie land. I could retire to brownie land.
You need the knowledge and the confidence that all you need are ingredients and you can make food. You don't buy food, you buy ingredients. You make food.
So learn to make pancakes from scratch. They are the gateway drug to the carbohydrate wonderland that you and your kitchen can provide.

Maintenance Man

Have you ever noticed that good maintenance men are all really laid back?
They smile, they get things done, they never ever seem to hurry.
I think that might be what I want to be when I grow up.
I love maintenance man day.
It has to start with at least one project that requires a trip to the hardware store. Could be as simple as needing a furnace filter (like today) or as complex as needing wood to build roof trusses. The hardware store is a magical place when you're not in a hurry. Even if you know what you need it's good to start at one end and work your way to the other. Never let people help you find something on the first pass. Explore. I bet you didn't know they had replacement screw on wooden table legs in a variety of lengths, did you? Sure, they might not match the three good ones still on there but it'll get your through your next family get together. Chain is so cool and there are so many types. I've legitimately had to buy some to hang swings with before but there are about 18 different types I haven't needed. I need to come up with a project that needs chain. All of the PVC fittings and valves and pipes. I just need one valve and one elbow. Don't want too many spares around the garage or I won't need to come back. Electrical stuff, junction boxes, switches, wire ties. Furnace filter, need that. Just get one. I'll need another one in 90 days the label says. That's probably overkill but...... who am I to argue, I'll have to come back in 3 months at the latest. That was a fun hour.
All homeowners have to deal with the little maintenance tasks. Replacing furnace filters for example. It's too small a job to ever contemplate paying anyone to do it. When you have a job you have to stop at the hardware store outside work time, you have to hurry because there is always something you should be doing other than scoping out all of the different kinds of chain. (people think you're weird if you spend too much time contemplating chain) Head back home, put the filter in and you're done. On to the next thing. That's not fun. It's a chore. That's like a job after your job.
When you don't have a job and can drop into full maintenance man mode, the flow of the task is so much better. You start with the hour at the hardware store. You get home, have a drink. Unwrap the filter, inspect it for a bit, wonder why this paper filter is worth $16 when another paper filter that looked about the same was $4. It's rated much better. Check the label, MPI of 1500. Go to the computer and look up Microparticle Performance Rating. Decide that a MPI of 1500 is pretty good and that maybe $16 was an ok deal. Take the old filter out. Examine it. Compare it to the new one. Maybe take a picture of them side by side to post on the internet. Put the new filter in. Contemplate brushing the dust off the grate, it's pretty dusty. Decide that the dust will fall on a pile of things you don't want to clean up first. Decide to brush the dust off in 90 days. 
That didn't really take very long. Well, aside from the hour in the hardware store. But it's the mindset, the vibe of the job that changes it from being a chore to being joy.
You wear a lot of hats as a stay at home dad. All of those separate tasks require a little something different from your soul. You need to be a slightly different person when you're feeding warmed breast milk to an eight week old baby than when you're mucking around the yard in rubber boots, in the rain, trying to figure out why poop is coming out of the septic tank instead of staying in. Part of the trick is to not wish away your task dreaming of doing something else. Find the joy in each little job.

Bread

My sister is a baker. A real life baking bread for a living baker. She bakes the kind of artisan bread that will change your life. It's dense and full of flavor and so pretty it's really a tough decision whether you should eat it or just stare at it. She's mere days away from opening a cafe and bakery is Blue Mounds Wisconsin, The Naked Elm. Anyone within about 200 miles of there should make a trip over and get some bread.
The point is that my sister is a baker. I know what a baker is. I am a hack.
Yesterday we ran out of bread so this morning I mixed up a batch of dough that is rising. It's five cups of flour, 1 3/4 cups of water, 2ish teaspoons of salt, 2ish tablespoons of olive oil, some honey, and a bit of yeast. I'm not being purposely vague, that's the recipe I used this morning. Usually I use 3 cups of white flour and 2 cups of whole wheat but I only had about 2 2/3 cups of white so I had to use a bit more wheat. I slapped it together, kneaded it for 5 minutes and it's rising. I've made enough bread to be able to tell that my dough was a little dry buy it will still make an ok loaf.
If I'm such a hack and don't bother to use a recipe or even to measure most of my ingredients properly then why bother? Two reasons:
1. Homemade bread is better.
2. It's hard core.
Homemade bread really is better. Even my kids think so. In fact just yesterday they asked if I could make my orange rye bread this time. When do a bunch of kids ask for rye bread? What sort of alternate universe is this? Unfortunately I don't have any orange juice right now so they're getting regular bread. Sometimes daddy doesn't deliver.
Making bread really is a hard core domestic practice though. Bread has a sort of other world mysticism about it. Turning flour, salt, water and yeast into bread. Magic ratios. Secret techniques. Incredible smells. Everyone knows about it but almost nobody does it. It's a shame really, it's so easy.
Preparing food is going to be a central theme of my blog. I think it's the essential domestic art. Whether you have kids at home or not, nothing says that you are taking care of the person out working like having a hot meal ready for them when they get home.  Doing it well just takes practice and you get to practice every day. Your family will have better food at a cost that is a fraction of going out.
Twice a week I plan on putting up a recipe that I use. Sometimes it will be dinner, sometimes baked goods, sometimes weird things like homemade yogurt and sauerkraut.  
Preparation of food is the central domestic art, I practice it every day and I hope to never stop getting better at it.
I do have a secret for baking my bread that I'll share soon. Some bread pans have a non-stick coating. My bread pan is coated in.........magic!

Door Guts and Apple Pie

Two posts ago I mentioned taking down a tree in the yard. The tree really wanted to fall on the house. I really wanted it to fall about ninety degrees from that. To persuade the tree to lean more my way I used rope and my truck. Worked like a charm. The only problem in the whole operation came from the geometry of my yard. In order to get far enough away from the tree so it wouldn't land on the truck I had to drive under the swing set. After the tree was down I backed the truck through the swing set and one of the swings hooked on the passenger's side mirror.
And ripped it of.
Damn.

Well, nothing ever seems to go absolutely perfectly. Off came the door panel, unplugged the mirror from the door wiring (power mirror, very nice) and figured out that with some epoxy I could easily get the studs stuck back in the mirror and get it bolted back on. Yesterday was the epoxy, cure overnight and today was bolting back on. If this all seems pretty casual, it's because 3 years ago Hurricane Ike blew through and dropped a branch on the truck and knocked off the driver's side mirror. I'm now an old hand at disassembling the door and putting mirrors back on. I wonder how many people have managed to have both mirrors ripped off a vehicle while they owned it?
Pretty straight forward morning putting the mirror back on. Door panel off, bolt the mirror on, plug in the wiring, door panel back on. 20 minutes. Sweet. Better make sure it works. Dammit.
Door panel back off.
Mirror back off.
Multimeter out.
I have my wife come out wiggle the mirror adjusting switch while I make sure I have power in the door. It's really hard to hold two probes on two wires while reaching allllllll the way across the truck and wiggle the switch. Especially when I'm too lazy to look up the wiring diagram for the truck to see which of the 9 pins are actually the ones used to move the glass. I have power in the door.

So now I have to figure out what I broke in the mirror. I check things over and can tell that I stretched the wires pretty good. Probably broke one. Yup, I can see that one is broken. Probably 3 of the 5 actually. So I cut them and splice them and check. Nothing. Dammit.
Now I have to use a pair of butter knives to pry apart the mirror to figure out if I broke something inside the mirror. Inside the mirror is another broken wire. Fix that. Motion! Yay!
Tape all of the wiring back up. Put the mirror back on. Check that it still works. Yay! Put the door panel back on. Check for extra parts. See a foam gasket that is supposed to go between the mirror and the truck. Dammit. Take the door panel back off. Take the mirror off, put the mirror back on, put the door panel back on. Check the mirror. Yay! Success.
That was my morning.
This afternoon I made an apple pie. I don't brag much but I do brag about my apple pie. It's awesome. Full, made from scratch double crust. It's awesome. Part of that I attribute to my life changing pie plate. I'll write a lot about that later. It's really awesome.Part I attribute to my mad skills at making pie.

There is a contrast to my morning and my afternoon that is common to my life. I fully engage in the manly arts of fixing and building things. I also fully engage in the domestic arts of cooking, cleaning and child rearing. Well, I partially engage in cleaning, but I fully engage in the rest of it. I have a feeling that any person who can fully engage in both the domestic arts as well as the manly arts is more valuable as a stay at home spouse. Don't get me wrong, I don't think there is anything outside of birth and breastfeeding that is the sole realm of one sex. Anyone can do anything. I will argue in the future though that I think that men are more likely, and maybe more capable of engaging in the whole spectrum of things that need to be done around a house, and that maybe we should be the ones at home.

Outside

I firmly believe that outside is a really important place for kids to be. There's more outside than inside. More space, more things to look at, more perspective about the world.
As a parent I have three choices.

1. Let them outside.
2. Throw them outside.
3. Take them outside.

There are times in south east Texas where I actually keep them in. Hurricanes, tropical storms, generally rainy days when I'm not in the mood to have them go out for 5 minutes and play in the mud and then spend an hour cleaning up the aftermath. There are times when the world is messy and I'm lazy. It's been so hot these first weeks of school that they haven't even been allowed outside for recess. That sucks and is a whole other topic.
I throw them out a lot. South east Texas has a lot of wonderful playing weather. If it's not raining it's probably a good time to go outside. We have an acre and a half. We have bikes. We have trees. There has to be something that they can do other than sit in the living room and fight over Littlest Pet Shops. Out you go.
Today I took them out. We went north 45 minutes to the Big Creek Scenic Area in the Sam Houston National Forest. It's probably my favorite place to go in all of East Texas. It's very quiet and the trees are huge and you can let the kids just run down the trails screaming and not worry about anything. When we head up there as a family we head down to the creek and throw sticks and pine cones in for a while and hike one of the loops. A couple of miles hiking and a really good time. When I go there by myself I take the Lone Star Trail to the Double Lake camp ground and get a drink at the drinking fountain and then head back. That's a 10 mile out and back trip that is almost certainly the best 10 mile run within an hour of Houston.
There are quite a few big trees down across the trails now. I think the ongoing drought has left us with an unusually high number of dead trees and some of them have toppled. The Forest Service is really quite good about keeping the trails cleared considering how few people use them. The trees are probably a bother for some but for us they're all good fun.

It Begins

Last week I decided that instead of sanding drywall in the bathroom I'd see about taking down the huge dead pine tree in the yard. Nothing really strange about that. Doing drywall, cutting down trees. Standard man work. I just need to fit this into my day of bringing the big kids to school, doing the shopping, getting some laundry done, getting lunch for my 3 year old, getting him down for a nap, picking the big kids back up from school and making dinner. Lots of time for drywall and cutting down trees.
I'm a stay at home dad.
Nothing I do is revolutionary or even a bit difficult. Millions of moms do most of the same stuff every day. The core of my job is taking care of my kids, my wife, my family. Stay at home parent stuff. The cool thing about my job is I'm not a mom, I'm a dad.
Everybody probably knows a stay at home mom. Lots of you had one. Lots of you are one. We all know what stay at home moms do. But what about stat at home dads? Do they cook? Do they clean? Do they pee standing up? What's different about being a stay at home dad?
Sometimes nothing. Sometimes everything.
This is going to be an online accounting of what's going on in my life. As I write this down I'll let you know what I'm doing. I'll also step back in time and share some of what I've gone through during first nine and a half years of stay at home parenting leading up to this. It's been an incredible journey so far and I'm betting it will continue.