Long Hair and Childcare

Well it’s been over two weeks since I’ve last updated this thing, which I guess is about a billion years in the world of the Internets. And holy shit, I think my timescale has shifted to a similar time dilation as I constantly chase little ones around.

As I covered last time, our childcare arrangements went to shit and we went from part time daycare for both our young kids to me watching them full time. Looking at the posting schedule, it’s been almost three weeks. It feels more like three months. Adding to the insanity, my wife is finally getting the chance to focus on the career. This is actually pretty cool, and it’s awesome she’s getting to do satisfying, meaningful work after sacrificing for years while I did crazy cop shit, but this means she’s working long hours, and sometimes leaving town for days. This means much of the time, it’s just me and the kiddos.

On a sort of unrelated note, one of my main goals of the first year or so of my early retirement(am I still considered retired if I’m a full time stay at home dad? I says fuck no.) was to grow my hair out long. Like at least shoulder length; I haven’t cut the length down since before thanksgiving, it’s now the longest it’s ever been. Between the police and the military, I’ve been restricted from having long hair. For a few years in my cop days I got to grow a pretty sweet beard and my hair was a tad longer when I was doing the occasional undercover work, but I still kept it relatively short since I was frequently wearing a ballistic helmet and gas mask whilst doing tactical shit. I figure I’ve got a decade at best before balding kicks in or my hair goes completely gray. I’ve always wanted to look like a hippy; now I finally have my chance!

To sum up, I am now taking care of two kids full time, and I have really long hair. My observations are as such:

Fuck.

To expound on the above: Taking care of two kids full time is a kick in the balls, especially when my wife is out of town. Standard disclaimer that preludes every parent’s bitching ever: Look, I love my kids. But…..they drive me batshit crazy sometime. I won’t sprinkle unicorn farts all over it. I hit some near-record lows for depression over these past two weeks. Depression almost as bad as last summer when I was in the midst of PTSD related struggles. Hey, almost as bad means better than the worst, right? So that’s something! There’s also been periods where I’ve been content, happy, and I even cried tears of joy once as I read a story to my son. So it’s not all bad. I try to remember all the good stuff when it gets nuts; you know, the standard spiel-blah blah frown upside down, silver linings, yada yada…

I truly wish I was some transcendent parent who just loved staying home every minute with the kids, but that ain’t me. Oh well. I’d hoped to ratchet down our future childcare if this went well, but given how it’s gone thus far I think we’ll stick with keeping our youngest in childcare 3 days a week once we get off the wait list for a new daycare this September, and our oldest will start kindergarten in the fall. This chaos isn’t forever, which helps me keep it in perspective, and even occasionally enjoy it.

And the hair! As usual, once I make a goal I stick to it despite any sort of rational reason to depart from a previously hasty made decision. It’s hot, and I have some sort of curly ginger-fro thing going on that makes me look like a cross between medusa and the results of throwing a plate full of spaghetti with marinara at a wall. It looks marginal for about five minutes after exiting the shower, but once it gets a little dry and the humidity hits it we’re in full on crazy person friz mode. This means I wear a hat more often that not. I will continue to grow this stuff out for at least a year, but I’m looking forward to chopping it down and not having to deal with hair maintenance just to keep the crazy out of my eyes.

What does this all mean? I’ll tell you one thing(in addition to the many things above, betwixt, and afterwards), full on childcare and long hair have made me really appreciate all the bullshit that women put up with.

Yeah, I know; I don’t have to deal with pregnancy, all the hormones related crap, and the litany of misogynist shit that actual women have to put up with. But just adding these two factors to my life that have traditionally been required of the opposite sex for centuries has made me realize they’ve definitely been dealt the short straw when it comes to traditional gender norms. Makes me want to hug my wife, mom, sister, Susan B Anthony, and every other women I see.

Look, you won’t catch me burning my bras anytime soon(which is easy because I don’t have any bras, and I think my wife would not be too happy if I burnt hers), but holy shit dude; if you are a woman and you’re reading this-Thank you. If you’re not a woman, thank the ones you know. If you’re a dude that shares domestic and child rearing responsibilities, I hope to hell you have an even split of the duties unless one of you has explicitly decided to do more of it because you actually enjoy it.

Excuse me while I find a ladder to climb off of my high horse….

Yeah. There we have it. It’s been a trip these last few weeks. Speaking of trips, I failed to trip balls while conducting the 60 days of 60 minutes of Meditation(Naval Ravikant’s Art of Doing Nothing) but that’s another post for another day.

Hope you’re doing well out there dear reader; I’ll try to come up for air again and write something about something soon.