March | 2010 | Notes of a Sexist Stay-at-home Father

Kaya! What makes you think you can steal Ava’s chef hat? Just because it’s your birthday doesn’t mean that you’re getting special priveleges. Be careful, kiddo!

SHOPPING: The Sexist Stay-at-Home Father (or me) is profoundly concerned about societal problems, or, simply put…good and evil. Thus a fascination with the Disney-pink-princess alliance. Complexities and ramifications abound. This “axis-of-evil” is rooted in a phenomenom most heinous…shopping. That’s right. Shopping. And where the hell is hell on earth? None other than that icon of US imperialism: Disneyland.

Newborn Kaya with her big sisters

Move over bin Laden, Disneyland has cornered the market on vile. If you think this statement hyperbole, let me throw out a horrifying truth. Disneyland opens their gates at ten a.m. without access to the theme park but rather Disney Village…yes…Disney Village…?!?!?!?! Exactly. The theme park opens at eleven a.m., and so when my wife and children and I entered there was nothing to do but shop. Aaaaaaaaaaghhhhh! And shop for what? Princess paraphernalia, much of it…er, er…ugh…yes…pink.

Enhanced interrogation at Guantanamo: ‘Barney’s I LOVE YOU 24/7 at 120 decibels’ (Playlist here: Guantanamo Songs), and ‘caterpillar treatment’ (capturees are naked in a room with bugs), and even the notorious ‘waterboarding’ do not compare to an hour at Disney Village. Christopher Hitchens knows torture my ass! (See his Vanity Fair article) Mr. Hitchens, do Disneyland and then we’ll talk. And Disneyland is just the beginning, every mall in America replicates the horror: force the most hardened scum to wander for an hour through Disneyland or Pottery Barn, Macy’s, Bed Bath & Beyond, Gymboree, and then make them Build-a-Bear…they would be coughing up plots and co-conspirators right and left, world peace would be on the horizon…are you with me on this? You better damn well be!

MATH LESSON: Five out of three children are bad at fractions.

CONGRATS TO TRACY: She passed the hair bar and is now a certified cosmetologist ready to make the world beautiful! (Check out Tracy and the Girls)

Hiya Kaya!

ST. PATRICK’s DISASTER: Dad thought he’d whip up a St. Pat’s Day dinner of corned beef and cabbage, and on said day started boiling corned beef at noon. Unfortunately, he simultaneously prepared soup for lunch, and turned off both pots when the soup was boiling. When the time came to plop the corned beef in the oven, at around five p.m., dinner was an undercooked chunk. Thus…Leftovers! Not the smoothest move, dad. (One time I served a stir fry seasoned with vanilla instead of soy sauce. My defense: the bottles looked similar…)

DO THESE CLOTHES MAKE ME LOOK FAT? How many times does a man hear this mega-ridiculous question? The connundrum was posed during Kaya’s birthday party, my wife’s sister and mom in attendance, and one of the lovely ladies said, and I repeat, “Do you think this shirt makes me look fat?” How often has a helpless man had to sit back and placate the woman? Thus I posited, “Why not just ask: ‘Do these clothes hide my fatness?'” Unfortunately, my enlightening comment was not met with graciousness. I quickly discovered ‘women have babies blah blah blah’, they ‘work real hard to look nice for us men blah blah blah’, and ‘I’m an ass blah blah blah’. The ‘clothes-are-not-responsible-for-how-you-look’ argument may be right, but it doesn’t lead to happiness.