Years ago, when Thing 1 was in first grade, she wrote about a time when she went with her grandparents on a road trip to Seattle. She detailed things like the “hot, white sandy beaches” and the big comfy bed she had in the fancy hotel room they stayed in. Seattle doesn’t have white sandy beaches and they didn’t stay in a fancy hotel and she leapt on a hide-a-bed. Her story was mostly true but peppered with some embellishments that made the parents laugh.

A week or so ago it was Thing 2′s turn for Author’s Night. We had an idea of what to expect, from going through this with Thing 1, but we were not ready for what Thing 2 wrote about:

Camping On My Birthday

By Thing 2

 

My favorite birthday was when I turned seven. It was a lot of fun. It was last month. I went camping in the forest for my birthday. I went with my mom, dad, sisters, and cat. We drove there in our car. I canoed in the river with my dad and mom. My dad and I went hunting for meat. We saw a deer and some bear cubs. We went back to the tent and cooked chicken. At night-time we made s’mores over a big fire. We told stories at sun down. I felt really good about camping.

It sounds like a good ‘ol American camping trip, right? The only thing is, none of it happened, with the exception of his 7th birthday. We didn’t go camping, make s’mores or see wildlife. Anybody who knows me, knows I’m certainly not a hunter.

Hell, I shot a squirrel once as a kid at my grandfather’s property and felt terrible about it. The bullet pinned the squirrel to a tree and my Korean War veteran grandfather, sitting on his desk drinking Johnny Walked on the rocks, chuckled and said, “Looks like you need to shoot him again. Aim for the head this time!” I shot the squirrel again and it fell to the ground, twitching. My grandpa got up, walked to his wood shed and came back with a shovel and said, “Now you gotta bury him or the bears will come out tonight and eat him. I don’t want bears on my property.”

Yeah. That is the extent of my hunting experience.

So when Thing 2 read his story everyone laughed and clapped and afterwards his teacher pulled me aside and asked if the hunting actually happened. When I told her that none of it happened, her jaw dropped and said that she’s been a teacher for a while, but she’s never had a kid like my boy tell a story so convincing about something entirely made up.

On his birthday, instead of doing manly things like camping, canoeing and hunting, we stayed at home, he opened presents, played Skylanders and ate Angry Bird and Pokemon-themed cupcakes.

I’m serious.

Before I was laid off, I was constantly stressing about providing for the family and trying to shoehorn my life into what I wanted and expected it to me. I expected for me to be working and my wife to not work. I expected and wanted to bring in a large income. I stressed and agonized constantly about making the right choices to make sure nothing unexpected – nothing unplanned – happened. Clearly, all of that stress was for not.

“…it’s hard to stay mad, when there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst… And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life…”

In the movie “American Beauty,” Kevin Spacey plays a man named Lester Burnham who is out of work and then begins to undergo a more laid back, happier transformation. While his transformation involved some marijuana, buying his dream car and extreme things of that nature, the crux of his growth was a sudden feeling of being content. I’m sure that was aided by blackmailing his boss for almost $50,000 dollars, but I digress.

I’ve had to learn to chill out and not over analyze life – the Lester Burnham philosophy. Things will work themselves out as long as I’m present and can contribute in any way possible, then it’ll all be ok. I’ve had to force myself outside of my comfort zone and admit that me stressing about avoiding the What If scenarios will not benefit things in any way.

I still have a way to go, but I think I’m happier in a twisted way, knowing I can’t control everything. I’m trying to stop sweating the small stuff and to do just as my wife has tried to get me to do for years: be happy in the moment and not stress.

See, when James Wallace, general manager of the Jet Strip Club, made a donation of $1,200, the league refused the money.

Apparently having a patron in “The Best Gentleman’s Club near LAX” was a bit too much for a Los Angeles-based Little League, which decided to decline a $1,200 donation from the Jet Strip Club.

Initially Lennox Little League President Roberto Aguirre told ABC News affiliate KABC-TV he expected the league to keep the surprise donation after running into financial problems when the local school district doubled rental fees and forbid selling hot food during games.

Source: Little League Turns Down Strip Club Donation

The thing that gets me about a story like this, is it’s not like the club’s name had to be on the back of all the kids’ shirts. They didn’t have to receive a plaque or anything like that. Like it or not, that strip club is a legal business and they should be able to make a donation to help kids have a better experience.

The common justification is that the money was from immoral activity. So what’s next? Is the league going to turn down donations from all sources which might offend someone? Blacks? Homosexuals? What about churches? Surely religion has caused as much, if not more, societal destruction throughout the world as a pair of unclad breasts and bare bottoms.

This isn’t even a religious issue, but what infuriates me is the kids are the ones that suffer when adults get involved and bring their own baggage to the table. Children are blissfully ignorant of most of the evils of life until we adults get involved and “protect them” by making tremendous issues about something that would have slipped right past their collective awareness.

The donation was from a legal enterprise, on legal tender, for a good cause, and I think it should have been accepted.

I bet you now some kids will be aware of what strip clubs are and will hit the intertubes to find out what’s so bad about them. Some may even end up on 4chan. Good job, adults, you’ve turned the children into /b/tards!

Photo by quinn.anya

Several times I’ve been tempted to move my sites over to them because they really seemed like they had a solid product and were going to stick around. Now that they’ve sold themselves (which I can’t entirely blame them for) I have very little confidence that the quality of the Posterous product and service will remain as good as it has been.

I certainly hope I’m wrong and blowing this all out of proportion, however, the first item on their “Acquisition FAQ” sends up a red flag:

What happens to my Space? Will Posterous eventually shut down?
You can use your Space(s) exactly as you have in the past. We’ll give you ample notice before any changes or disruptions to the service and we’ll provide specific instructions for exporting your content to another service.

Notice the lack of any effort to address the “WIll Posterous eventually shut down?” part of that question? As for now, I’m just happy that I only host insignificant things like my mobile photo blog and a Group for my weekly game night buddies.

Logtar tipped me off to a fun little writing contest over at the Think Tank. They asked for submissions for a down-and-dirty contest with the following guildines:

I’ve never tried this sort of word limit before in my writing so it was a fun challenge. There are some takeaway notes after my entry, which follows:

Roman Alexander woke to the subtle vibrations the ship made constantly. It was reassuring, since he had been pulled out of sleep while dreaming about something horrible. He couldn’t remember what it was, but the knot in his throat and the foreboding emptiness in his gut told him he was better off awake.

He swung his legs over the edge of his bunk and hopped down. Even after all these years in space, he never got used to the frigid cold that shot up through his bare feet when they hit the metal deck. The other bunks in his cabin were empty.

Roman dressed in standard issue flight coveralls and left the empty cabin behind. Everything in space was manufactured to keep the crew at their peaks. The issued clothing all contained a thin inner layer which acted on its own depending on what the wearer’s body required. If they got too hot, the clothing would wick away sweat. Too cold, it would expand slightly to provide extra warmth. Their boots would increase padding to areas of the foot under considerable stress. Their food was modified with additives which managed the rate of absorption into the body. In this way, those in charge could ensure maximum productivity, since they could control how quickly — or not — their crew would get hungry.

Roman made his way through the labyrinth of corridors, decks, stairwells and hatches by memory. He spent the entire stroll to the mess hall yawning, stretching and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He was too busy adjusting the lay of his coveralls to notice the red smear on the mess hall hatch as he pulled it open and stepped through.

A thick, greasy smell of copper lingering in the air slapped him out of his groggy state and sent a jolt of panic through his body. Before him was a scene of absolute carnage. He saw the bodies of his four other cabin mates slumped at their usual table, their faces and heads misshapen and unrecognizable. The legs of two crew members stuck out from behind a counter. He stepped carefully around the mess hall, trying to make sense of what happened. He wasn’t close to the dead, so there was no emotional pain. Instead, his thoughts went immediately to self preservation. He knew that this must have happened recently, otherwise the maintenance servos would have taken the bodies to the incinerator and scrubbed the surfaces clean. To do so, they would lock down the mess hall for an unknown amount of time.

Roman went to the food preparation area, behind the serving counter, knowing he needed to grab as much food as possible before they locked down the room. Once a room was in lock down, there was no telling when it would open again. He picked up a cafeteria tray just as the warning lights filled the room, with spinning orange light. This announced that the maintenance servos were due to arrive. He had one minute. Maybe two.

He loaded up the tray with a bowl and filled it with Slop, their tasteless meal staple. It was beige in color, smelled like adhesive paste with a slimy consistency. Everybody hated Slop, but calories were calories. He stuffed fistfuls of experimental nutrient biscuits — little hard, round condensed meals — into his coverall pockets. The biscuits always were his favorite. Nobody else would touch them, though. The hatch opening behind him and the mechanical buzz of the servos entering the room, Roman hefted up a box of water rations under his arm and hurried out of the room. Just as he exited into the corridor outside the mess hall, the hatch slammed shut .

Roman took his scraps back to his cabin and locked the door. He sat down at the one small table and shoved a spoonful of Slop into his mouth. He immediately regretted the decision. As he struggled to swallow, he felt himself choking. The Slop seemed to stick to the inside of his throat and it felt as though an unseen force was squeezing it with all of its might. He began to claw at his own neck in desperation.

In the entombing emptiness of space, in a metal frigate floating through nothingness, Roman Alexander lunged upright in his bunk, gasping for air. He grabbed at his throat and, after what felt like an eternity, his lungs began to fill with air. He had been dreaming. He was alright.

Roman pushed aside the privacy curtain of his bunk and said, “Lights,” to nobody in particular. After a moment, the bright overhead lights of his cabin flickered to life. It was when he brought his hands up to his face to rub his eyes that he knew something was wrong — his hands were covered in dried blood. Sitting on the edge of his bunk, alone in the cabin, he inspected his hands. The blood had clearly been there for some time. Under one of his fingernails he found a hair. The color of sun-baked straw. Roman had black hair.

He would have sat there for a long time, if it hadn’t been for the pounding on the other side of his cabin hatch. Four heavy knocks then a thin line of flame and sparks began to shoot into his cabin, tracing a line around the locked hatch. Roman hopped down from his bunk and picked up a heavy mechanic’s wrench from the small table. There was blood in the crevices of the wrench, along with hair and bits of tissue matter.

“Lights,” he said, quietly.

After the lights went out, he could feel the warmth of the sparks as they fell to the metal floor and faded into darkness. There, in the icy blackness of his cabin, he grinned a menacing grin and waited for his guests to finish cutting their way into his territory. He took another bite of a biscuit.

“Damn,” he thought, “I love these things.“

When I found out about this contest, I only had two days left before the submission deadline. The concept came to mind almost immediately but I really, really struggled with reducing my original word count (coming in at around 1,600 words) to within the 1,000 limit. It was a good exercise in being very choosy with words and evaluating a the value of some words over others, to convey a specific idea.

Overall, I’m happy with my short, short story. I may expand on the plot at some point down the road and, being my first attempt at science-fiction, I don’t think I did half bad. I’m excited to read some of the other submissions to see what others came up with.

Disclaimer: Trailer contains dub step wub wub. You’ve been warned!

Many months ago, my wife landed a much-needed full-time job. Her previous job had drastically cut back her hours and it was tough going, with my being entirely out of work. That job was a salvation but came with a price: Her happiness.

Having spent many years working for bosses who drag your down, instead of help build you up, I saw the warning signs right off the bat. I jokingly told her, “Wow, that’s exactly like my old boss ______.” But in reality, I was worried about her. See, Keli’s not like me because she’s an eternal optimist.

She always looks at the good and hopes the bad just moves out-of-the-way. I knew that after not too much time, working for such a person would start to drain her of that vivacious personality that makes her so amazing. Things started to get kind of bleak and she wasn’t her usual self.

Until yesterday when she got a call-back about a job offer that she really wanted. This was an opportunity for a better company, better pay, and a better work environment that just came out of nowhere and fell into her lap.

I couldn’t be happier for her and this new opportunity!

On the flip side, it’s odd being on this side of things. Keli’s stood by me as new career opportunities came my way with complete support. It’s sort of disorienting for me to be on the sidelines, cheering her on instead of being the one being cheered on.

I guess what it all comes down to is this: We’re a team and when one of us is a happier person with a job they don’t loathe, that makes the entire team happier.

Then I was laid off. At first, I have to admit, it was pretty cool. Got to sleep in, spend extra time with my wife and kids and as a bonus (though I think you could hardly call it a “bonus”), I got a check from the state every two weeks. It barely paid anything, but still, money is money. Then the novelty quickly wore off after a couple of weeks, when it became clear that this was not a short-term situation.

That crappy job market everybody was talking about? Yeah. It really does suck. The job hunt has been like the Bataan death march these many months. Resume and application after resume and application have been sent out. Out of almost a year’s worth of applying to jobs and I’ve only received one response. It was in a line of work other than what I want to do but have the skills for. The reason I didn’t get it was because someone had more on-the-job experience in IT than my decade of the same work experience. Okay, fair enough.

There’s something nobody ever tells you about in the Stay At Home Parent Crash Course: The loneliness.

The loneliness and solitude is almost crippling some days.

Sure, there are things to do – I get up, take Things 1 & 2 to school, then take the wife to work and then Thing 3 and I come home. Due to her toddler ways, her nap time is a necessity and is smack in the mid-to-late morning, so it really limits the things we can go do, to get out of the house and break up the monotony. Normally doing so will result in a slap-in-the-face reminder of why it’s a bad idea to try to mess with a toddler’s nap sleep schedule.

For a long time, I’ve felt trapped in my own life. Unemployment has contributed greatly to this. I make just enough on unemployment that it would be harmful to my finances (keep in mind we have very, very little debt, so we’re talking the basics here) to accept most of the jobs out there due to low pay, especially when you factor in the then-necessary day care expenses.

On the flip side, the jobs I have found are in other parts of the country, where I would not want to move my family. So the job hunt goes on.

And on.

And on.

I’ve tried going back to school in the Unemployment-approved hours of the day (read: Not during business hours), but I did not qualify for financial aid because I made too much money in 2010. It doesn’t seem to matter that the gravy train stopped in March of 2011. The fact that I made good money in the past kept me from being able to go back to school. Ironic, huh?

Don’t get me wrong, I have a blast hanging out and bonding with Thing 3. She’s such a fun little person that her smile will literally make my afternoon. I know when she’s older I’ll look back on this time with her without regrets. This point in our lives is but a fleeting moment. The unemployment, the small income, all of this is temporary. I know that. But knowing that only goes so far at times when you feel like all you do is go from home, to the kids’ school, to the wife’s office, to home again.

Even my weekly guy’s night is in my living room. My “night out” is sitting on my couch with friends, pretending not to hear the kids being snotty and rude to their mother in the next room. It’s always fun but after a while I really do start to feel trapped in my own life.

Your sense of time also tends to get hazy and you forget that other people have to get up early to work the next day. So months of random attempts to get some friends together to go get a beer have always fallen on their face. You can’t blame them, of course. That’s life.

But the loneliness persists. It’s borderline debilitating some days. Thank god for the internet, though. Without it, I’m sure I would have almost no link to the outside world.

This isn’t a cry for help, but I figured someone should address the elephant in the room that most of us stay at home parents know is there, but feel slightly embarrassed to talk about. After all, we don’t have a 9-to-5, so how hard could our life possibly be, right?

When people talk about your childhood, the two main words used to describe you are “nomadic” and “hacker.” You first got into trouble when you were 17 for hacking into Pentagon networks, as well as several Australian sites. It seems in some ways that you’ve been engaged in a lifelong campaign against authority.

 

 

I haven’t had a lifelong campaign against authority. Legitimate authority is important. All human systems require authority, but authority must be granted as a result of the informed consent of the governed. Presently, the consent, if there is any, is not informed, and therefore it’s not legitimate. To communicate knowledge, we must protect people’s privacy – and so I have been, for 20 years, developing systems and policy and ideals to protect people’s rights to communicate privately without government interference, without government surveillance. The right to communicate without government surveillance is important, because surveillance is another form of censorship. When people are frightened that what they are saying may be overheard by a power that has the ability to lock people up, then they adjust what they’re saying. They start to self-censor.

Click here to read the full interview.