Lazy Dad's Guide to Everything

When it comes to protected maternity leave, the United States has the dubious distinction of ranking 20th out of the 21 highest-income countries. In fact, the U.S. is only one of three countries, including Oman and Papua New Guinea, that does not offer paid maternity leave. And let’s not get started on paid leave for fathers, non-birth mothers, and adoptive parents.

While the Family Medical Leave Act provides protections for employees to keep their jobs and take unpaid leave to care for family, and some states have supplemented FMLA with additional, partial paid leave plans, the United States continues to lag behind virtually all other nations.

The current administration’s tepid, maternity leave plan is weak at best and cynically ineffective and anti-family at worst.

We can and should do better to support families of all kinds.

E-Z Philly Cheesesteak Pizza Roll

Since it was snow day yesterday, my kids wanted to cook up something yummy and fun to eat. So we decided to try out a recipe that I saw on one of those random food videos on the Book of Faces. Turns out this recipe for a Philly Cheesesteak Pizza Star is pretty easy to make. Plus, it’s #deloycious and kid-approved.

Check out how my 10-year-old made it (almost) completely by himself, after the jump ...

On most days when I drop off my baby girl at play school, she likes to have a morning snack before all of her classmates get there. Oftentimes, she sits by herself and eats her snack alone. I dunno why, but seeing my baby girl eat by herself always makes me feel a little bit sad. It’s a very particular kind of sadness, like when I was a kid and I’d catch a glimpse of my mother eating by herself after she fed her entire family.

One of the occupational hazards of business travel is eating a lot of meals by yourself. It never crossed my mind that others might look at me eating alone while I’m traveling for business and think it was sad because I actually quite enjoy eating alone. Turns out my baby girl doesn’t seem to mind eating alone either. Like father, like daughter, I guess.

To say that I am furious barely scratches the surface of the white-hot rage and disappointment that I’m feeling today. While a lot of parents will tell their children that everything will be OK and that they need to walk through the world with love in their hearts, I also will tell my kids that whenever someone tells them that this country isn’t over-run with racists and misogynists, it’s a lie.

America is filled with thin-skinned, irrational people, led by fragile white men who are more concerned with the size of their hands and their dicks than wanting to actually help make the world a better place.

And now these idiots have their leader.

This morning on the way to work, I asked my 10-year-old son what he thought I should do. And he was all, "I would vote for the most-qualified candidate, regardless of her gender or party affiliation, instead of voting for a racist, woman-hating, tax-cheating, Islamophobic, xenophobic, limited-vocabulary-having, Putin-loving, p***y-grabbing, delusional business fraud." And I was all, I was just wondering whether or not I should wear a coat today because it's pretty warm outside.

We’re spending the weekend in Utah for my brother’s wedding!

Let's do this!

Two faces of Labor Day lunch.

While the grownups shopped for beautiful hand-crafted pottery and stuff, the kids killed time outside at Heath Ceramics in Sausalito.

I usually say that my baby girl has two volume settings: sleeping and screaming. She also has two temperament settings: delightful diva and terrifying tyrant. Have I mentioned that she's a Scorpio?

A quartet of pics from yesterday's Sunday #pho day.

I know it'll probably come as a huge surprise, but we don't actually have a lotta heels and stuff laying around the house. Yesterday, while we were at Target picking up weekly provisions, my baby girl spied a pair of ruby red kitten heels that she had to have. She pretty much wears them all of the time now. Turns out kitten heels go with everything, including pajamas, amirite? Do you think Christian Louboutins come in a kid's size 6?

The most productive thing I’ve done today is my baby girl’s hurr did. She was only mildly impressed.

Someone is a little too excited about our weekly Target run. Hint: it's this little girl who got some more bracelets for her ever-growing collection.

After play school, my baby girl took a moment before going inside to ponder quantum mechanics and non-relativistic expressions of kinetic energy, but when I told her we should go inside to watch Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, she decided that she could tackle her mental calculations of the Schrödinger equation after bath time.

The boy was running a fever this morning, so instead of sending him to day camp, we took him into the city. He spent the morning quietly in my office while I attended a coupla meetings, then before heading back home, he and I took the subway to run a quik-e errand downtown.

Before our stop, in the packed subway, a belligerent old lady forcefully pushed my nine-year-old son out of the way—despite having numerous other paths to take—so that she could get off of the train ahead of everyone else ahead of her. The belligerent old lady screamed at my nine-year-old son and told him, "Move the f*ck out of the way!!!" My son replied, "Move where, crazy old lady!?!" To which the belligerent old lady replied by sticking her middle finger at my nine-year-old son as the subway doors closed.

On the train home, my son told me that it's entitled old people like that belligerent old lady on the subway who think they deserve more than everyone else, who are convinced that America was great when young people and people of color didn’t have a voice, those are the crazy old people who would vote for an orange-faced blowhard for president. 

My son said, "I don't know anyone who isn’t super-old or isn’t basically insane who’s voting for [he-who-must-not-be-named]." And I said, "Pretty much."

It's no secret that I've been over the city for a long time. I'm just grateful that I work at a great company with great co-workers that happen to be in the city. But the rest of the city can eat it, as far as I'm concerned. Seeing the cesspool of jerks through the eyes of my nine-year-old son reminds me of how little I care for this rotten apple.

Backyard kiddie pool party in the 'burbs.