You know, every time I take my kid to the playground, or to the lake to watch the ducks, I find myself thinking, aren’t you ashamed that this is what you do for a living…?
Then, after a mental pause (during which time I remember weekends spent grading student papers), I laugh and laugh and laugh!
****
update: And laugh!
heh, yeah, there’s nothing like having a spouse to support you! and i don’t mean strictly financially. (thanks rto!)
Yeah, sure, you confuse well-established mid 20th Century gender stereotypes and laugh, but out here, people are losing entire blogs!
Man.
tw: Boys(!)
Run away, kid.Your dad’s going nuts.
Jeff
Did you take the camera? Been a while since the last pic of young Master Goldstein.
yeah yeah, I’m a grandmother, I live for munchkin pics. Sue me.
Well, I guess I did it the other way ‘round. I’m now (well, not literally now) grading papers on weekends (and on other days), but I like it quite a lot. Depends on the comparison one is making, I suspect.
I make less money than I could, but I quite like interacting with upperlevel undergrads and grad students. The first two years they have to sort themselves quite a lot. (I teach at a second-tier state university). We get a lot of freshmen who don’t have a good reason for attending, so they can be a bit trying.
The ones that stay, and the non-traditional students who return, I find mostly quite enjoyable. While most of them are interested only in the practical matter of learning enough to get a good job, almost all of them eventually get hooked by some course or some professor and begin to think. It’s nice to see it happen and to be a part of it sometimes.
I still get letters and phone calls and emails from former students who want to share their triumphs and memories.
Anyway, I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself. I have to admit that I essentially took my retirement by returning to grad school pretty late in life. To each his own.
I got my masters degree in August of 1997. Last night I had another of my repeated nightmares where I find myself at school, I haven’t been to class in weeks, and I can’t remember which classroom to go to. When I woke up and realized I never have to go to class again I was soooo relieved!
Which is too bad because I enjoyed most everything about going to school except the anxiety. I bet it wouldn’t have been so bad to go to Broome Community College at that. All I would have to know is “Thank you Professor Haggerty, may I have another?”
Is this your idea of “letting it go?”
I don’t understand.
I think PKB wants you to take your blog down so that no one can say bad things about your kid on it. Especially you.
Or something.
Enjoy every second now. They growup way too fast and then you have to wait for the grandchildren. Time spent with your kids is time spent working on the future. That’s important work that is fun too.
Maybe pkb was talking to me. Now that would be true leftist irony!
tw:remember
Thanks for clarifying something for me Jeff.
For years, I’ve heard friends and spouses of friends say things like “Taking care of the kids and the house is just as stressful as holding a full time job. You’d never be able to handle switching places with X.” (where X is a person who does that).
No disrepect to those folk, but such statements always struck me as a load of crap.
I think you just admitted a dirty little secret without realizing it.
Your kid just watches the damn ducks. Hell my kid chases them (when he’s not throwing stale chunks of bread at their little faces).
I’ll bet when Ozzy Osbourne was a kid he chased the ducks too. Then he’d catch them and bite their heads off.
BTW, my stay-at-home wife works harder than I do.
Don’t take any shit from insecure failed duckwatcherwatchers.
marshall
Jeff is talking about his leisure time with the young Master, not the day-to-day stuff…which CAN be stressful, just in a different kind of way. And structure to one’s day as a SAHP is quite often the responsibility of the SAHP rather than a “boss.” Jeff thus has the ability to make sure there is park time with son rather than wishing for park time while engaged in required outside-work activities.
whoops…
last should be directed to Jason, not marshall who posted directly below Jason’s post.
One semester of teaching an upper division (real–as opposed to Broome closet) university writing course was enough to compel me to throw in the thesis.
I’m not sure I’m laughing, but for me, teaching/grading papers all week-end was a serious case of glowitus interruptus that I cured by thesis interruptus.
In retrospect, I think I could’ve given the Onion a run for their parodic money with the title I was considering. Oh well.
TW: either, as in:
thesis or sanity
– Don’t be bashful Darleen, its not just “stressfull” its damn hard work and long hours, and you can’t lay back when you’re feeling lousy and blow it off, it has to get done. All the many chores. I started back 11 years ago as a working single parent raising my son, and switched too retired single parent rtaising a son about 3 years ago. Not as much difference as some might think. Now I get to do even the few tasks I could farm out when I was making the big bucks. More work, less (different stress).
– When I hear anyone say “…the idea that x can’t ect., is full of crap…”, I know who is full of crap and it isn’t the SAHP. I’ve done every combination of work/parenting, so I should know. Hell, just let one of these smartass “Machers” who have so much to say about it, try facing just the public school system on their own for a bunch of years, nevermind all the chores every day, and then they’ll sing a whole ‘nother tune.
– I used to have some of the same smug ideas about it till I did it myself, and then I stopped being smug, and got deeep respect for homemakers. The first thing you learn is you’re not allowed to be sick – ever. Try that out for stress.
Perhaps Jason doesn’t understand that a stressful job that not everyone can handle can still be immensely rewarding. Little things like watching your child laughing at a duck pond can make hours of stress just peel away. Or not, if you aren’t the type that can handle the challenges of the other 23 hours in the day.
The papers that need grading are never going to find wonder in the way a duck dives under the water, but they also are never going to throw a fit at the grocery story or wipe their snot in your hair.
Or grab a strange man from behind, squealing, “Daddy, daddy.” That’s when you try to hide in the canned goods aisle.
Thanity Sesis
Welcome to The Sahdness.
You know, I think I’ve posted that comment here before…
Yeh…. and while we’re on the subject when do I start getting my $143,000 dollars a year that the recent government study said my job of house-Dad was worth?
“Funny days in the park
Every days the fourth of July
Can you dig it (yes, I can)…
A bronze man still can tell stories his own way
Listen children all is not lost
All is not lost” (1972)
Thanks Mr G, for the picture and the memories this one brought to mind.
Keep telling your story, stirring the pot, whistling with the kettle, and laughing as you work.
Methinks PKB is having trouble letting go of the question of whether Jeff is letting go.
With all due respect PKB, MIND YOUR OWN DAMN BUSINESS.
…I think it was the 4th of July…
Yes. Some of those times with the kids go in the memory bank forever. For instance, my son desperately pressing his face against the storm door, begging to go out in the snow, then, having been taken out in it, crying, “Cold!! Home! Home!”
Or my daughter, playing ‘train’, managing to fold herself completely under a box just a bit larger than a shoebox.
Stuff like this is worth all the stress and work of being a parent.
However, I have also found out that if you have 95 5-page papers from undergraduates that need grading, nothing for it but to spend the weekend grading. (And stomping, fuming, cursing, etc while the wife shops—she long ago having decided that getting the heck out of Dodge is the only way to handle this particular stress.)
I stay at home with my 15-month-old daughter on Mondays and my wife stays home with her on Fridays, and I can tell you that my Mondays are both my most enjoyable and most challenging day of the week. Trying to keep a 15-month-old educated, entertained (hopefully both at once), fed, watered, and disciplined is much, MUCH more difficult than designing databases and writing web-based software applications, and also much more rewarding.
I can’t count the number of smiles and laughs I get while spending time with my daughter; I can count them on one hand while I’m at my office. The dozen or so times that she comes to me for a hug and a cuddle on a given day are worth fifty times my salary. Jeff, I envy you, and I can promise (you already know this anyway) that the halfwit leftists that come here bleating “get a job” are as jealous of you as I am.
Here’s a reason for you to not be ashamed (albeit a small one): I happened across your blog last night, specifically the post about the Danish cartoons, while killing time at work (the joys of being a shift-worker). After wading through every single comment, I realized that I have allowed my ability for intelligent thought to atrophy in the past few years.
So, while I will never sit in a class with you, you (and your site and your numerous fans and detractors) have inspired me to get off my duff and attempt to learn again. I might even throw out an occasional opinion, question, or comment to be dissected and ripped apart by everyone. Hell, I figure if I had the cojones to enlist after 9/11, I can handle a bit of reaming by the intellectuals…after all, how else can I begin flexing my mental muscle again? Thanks for providing the impetus, and let the good times roll!
ShedMySkin,
You’re pretty inspiring yourself.
All Our Alumni
Bashful I am not. I have never been so busy as I was as a SAHM. And as they get older, it doesn’t get easier, just the task chart changes. One moves from changing diapers to potty training to helping with homework.
If you’re lucky, as Jeff is, one has a spouse who shares in your values and the decision for one of you to be a SAHP (or split your workdays so your child rarely, or never, has to be in day care).
I got to work numerous PTA’s, organize fund raisers, write press releases, be a soccer mom and a swimming mom, and a band mom. I ran concessions stands and organized/booked out-of-state tours for the high school band and cajoled freebies and comps from local businesses for the schools. My house was the hangout for my girls’ friends.
My youngest is home now for two months after finishing her first year in college and those years of shepherding her and her 3 older sisters from infancy through high school graduation now seem to have gone way too fast. TOO FAST.
It’s beautiful, isn’t it? The technology is marvelous, and ultimately evolutionary, I think.
Thanks, Al.
Been a SAHD for going on 9 years now. 3 boys, 9 (almost), 4 and 2 1/2.
Jason sez:
Yes. Moreso. Unless your fulltime job includes making sure that one or more human beings whom you cannot help but love unconditionally is fed, clothed, bathed, entertained, educated, not sitting in their own piss and shit, kept out of things that might harm them, the house is kept somewhat clean, their schools are dealt with, driven to activities, disciplined…
Yes, that part is crap. It takes a hell of a lot to do all that, and even more to do it well. But it’s not impossible. Just hard.
No. He’s reacting to people asking him if he’s ashamed of raising his kid instead of being a professor. And howls of laughter are exactly the appropriate response.
Me, I gladly walked away from worthless unionized AC Delco reps, idiot emotionally-fragile secretaries, and truck drivers.
– Those moments of precious joy, one thing you can’t buy at WalMarts for any amount of money… priceless
OT – Jeff you gotta do a treatment of the “Great Encyclopedia Wars” of 2006…. Hilarious watching it go back and forth between Wiki and Britanica.