My wife and I have a happy and healthy relationship. I know this because if I was wrong she’d let me know. She would let me know quickly and often, if I was wrong. Knowing that our relationship is a healthy one, I have been doing some slight manipulation and adding guilt now. What I have been doing to guilt her into staying with me, is as we walk around box stores, and go shopping for groceries. I point things out. I find the saddest most pathetic thing and say, “If you leave me that will be my new ___”.
This is a real dialogue my wife and I had the other night.
“You leave me, that folding table right there. Will be my new dining room table, that will be the table your child will eat off of while visiting”- Joe
“I thought you already had a folding table”- Loving wife
“I would get a second one, to put next to my current one. That way when people stopped by they’d go, ‘that Joe doesn't have it so bad, he has two folding tables. Sure they’re not the same height, color or odor. But at least he can put out twice the amount of dip for his pity party’”.-Joe
She wasn't overly amused. I think she got the message that my life is better with her, than it could ever be without her.
Over this weekend, she helped prove to me that I need her more than ever before. She went to go be a presenter at a conference. So it was me, with new born (who is fighting a baby cold and rounding the bend of an ear infection) for two and half days.
That being said! I do not by any means want this to sounds like I’m complaining. By all means I am trying to make this sound more like an example of what life is like on the other side of the coin. It is Monday night around 7:30 and I feel like I just got done drinking cough syrup after running a marathon while being punch by angry monkeys. Why do I feel like this? It’s because I got to play solo parent this weekend while my wife was at a conference. Let me give you single parents an electronic standing O.
Being a parent not easy, being the stay at home parent less easy, being a single parent is an endurance test like making it rain sulfur or playing soccer. So I would like to thank you parents out there that can hold it together. I was raised by a single parent. My father raised three boys while working full time. While it was going on, it was life as normal. Reflecting on it as an adult I was like, wow that’s a tough dude. After being left with one child a child we still try to get to sleep 12 – 16 hours a day. I look back and go no wonder, at 58; he has more energy than me. He had to be a head of three kids and now he doesn't know how to turn it off.
I know a few women out there who are single moms. Don’t know why they’re single. They are pleasant women that create pleasant thought and have not stabbed anyone who didn't deserve it. If we were in the same city, I’d try to help out. If you have a friend or family member who is going it solo. Give them a red lobster coupon or a groupon for cheese and watch their kid for a night. Trust me they’d put a Tuesday night to better use than most single people do with their Saturday nights. I would also say, help them find or start a group or support system. You can create one to help you and reach out to single parents. Or vice versa.
Sincerely
Mr. Stay At Home Sanity, Joe Nickels
No comments:
Post a Comment