Doing Time
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My first son was born at 3:46 am on a Saturday. Mrs. Pops had gone into labor at around 2 am Friday morning. I've been home with him (and the other little sprogs as they arrived) ever since, which means my last day working outside the house was that Thursday very nearly six years ago now.

Putting aside the fact that the job I was working was a temp position at a scuzz-ball Amway-style multi-level marketing pyramid scheme after I had finished my MA--waiting for my degree to come back from the framers so I could hang it on my wall after my long days of... filing and data entry--I wasn't particularly disappointed to leave the active work force.

People have some strange ideas about what it's like to stay home raising kids. They generally think a) you sit around doing nothing all day (the "Oh God, I could never do that... I would get so bored" response) or b) you are chased around the house from sun-up to sundown by screaming children armed with flaming, blunt and/or bladed weapons when not wading through pools of shit, vomit and laundry (the gasp-and-horrified-stare response).

Like everything else with two optional answers, the truth is really somewhere in the middle. I will say that I put a stop to the flaming weapons right away. Some things I just won't tolerate.

More often than not you get people who react with awe and wonder, most of it fake and condescending. If you say you stay at home, they say stuff like "Wow, that's really great. Really. It's great. It's really really great. You know, it's the hardest job there is." And then I have to punch them in the throat. I don't want to, I have to. It's the best part about being a stay at home dad. A certain level of social violence is expected from us whereas a mom would be forced to resort to dirty looks and starting rumors about eating disorders.

Not bringing in an income is probably the hardest part. You want to contribute, especially when the plasma big-screen TVs are creeping under $10,000 and you're still crowding around your 25" Magnavox concave screen with the little green blobby thing in the upper left hand corner of the screen. The desire to contribute is the reason why there are all those flyers on light poles and stoplights advertising WORK FROM HOME! FOUR HOURS A WEEK! EARN UP TO $9,000/WEEK! MINIMAL INVESTMENT! I won't say I've never been tempted.

OK, I've never been tempted (come on, people, seriously), but I can at least understand how others might be.

Not bringing in income is one thing, but I sure as hell don't miss work. Work involves interaction with other people, the gene for which I am sadly lacking (see: punching people in the throat, above). My kids I can relate to because I can build their entire reality up to a certain age. My kids, for instance, are convinced that my TV only picks up ESPN.

For workers, I think most wouldn't mind giving staying at home a shot. Usually this is right around the time their alarm clock goes off. The feeling generally goes away when one of the kids spills their cereal on the dog, but it exists.

For some, the desire to avoid work is more powerful than in others. There are people who devote their entire lives to the exercise of laziness until they perfect it. Perfect laziness involves career income--regular promotion even--with little or no effort.

A prime, high profile example of that is "journalist" Deborah Norville. Her chosen neglected-career is in television, so it's easy to chart. Remember when she was on the Today show? They did like 15 shows of her crying about replacing Jane Pauley. 15 shows where Deborah had to do zero work! And all she had to do was weather a little reputation-ding about her being a ambitious back-stabbing barracuda, which is something considering barracuda have no arms with which to stab.

Then Jane left, Deborah had nothing to do or say, so she got fired. Then she found a home at Inside Edition which, let's face it, involves no journalism work whatsoever. It's news for people who don't like news. Paris Hilton, Lacy Peterson, Michael Jackson, etc.

But I can see now she's pushing it way too far. Her laziness is about to get the better of her once more. Ostensibly to recreate the experiences of Martha Stewart under house arrest, Deborah Norville has convinced her producers to bring the cameras to her house so she can simulate what it will be like to live as Martha Stewart will, hemmed in by her own walls.

That kind of moxie deserves recognition and applause, but she's playing a dangerous game. Martha at least gets to leave the house for 48 hours per week to go to work. Deborah has conveniently forgotten that part of the story and instead decided to focus on the part that lets her sleep in and broadcast from her own couch watching Jerry Springer.

If I'm on to her, it's only a matter of time until everyone else is. She may not be long for this job, bit I wouldn't rule out Deborah Norville yet. If she wants a job in TV journalism where no effort is required at all, there's always Fox News. It's just like staying at home with the kids, only more shouting.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.5


Pops

PS- Rude Pundit is especially good today. Go read it and learn something. Mostly just new swear words and disturbing visual images, but there are some current events in there too.
- posted by Pops @ 11:20 AM