We have a nice new house, so it's tough to complain about things, but let me try. If there is one thing I'm good at it's complaining. It's an art, really, being a good complainer. Because it's not enough to just complain, there has to be substance to the complaint. You have to make people say, "he's kinda got a point," even if they wish you would shut up and stop complaining.
In this case, my complaint is a relatively easy one, because it's about money -- not wealth or assets or anything like that -- but actual money: straight cast homie. We're low on it. Everything with our move is costing more than we anticipated and that’s after factoring in that it would cost more than we anticipated. We covered our down payment (paid back S’s parents in-full) and closing costs, which are the main things, but the ancillary expenses are piling up. We are managing, but it’s paycheck-to-paycheck, and it’s going to be a while before we get back to normal. Some of it is stuff we didn’t budget for, but should have. Take pest control, for example. Our yard is overrun with bugs (mainly ants and stink bugs), and it's only a matter of time before they get inside. Some of the ants are carpenter ants, and they need to be quashed ASAP, because they can damage wood. We also want to get preemptive termite service and get our crawlspace attic cleaned and insulated for bugs. If we are going to do it, we want to do it right, but in order to do it right, we have to pay the price -- and in this case, the price is a couple grand. Again, we probably should've thought of this, but didn't. (In our defense it's super hard and stressful to think of everything when buying/selling a house.)
Then we also had some bad luck. A tire blew on one or our cars, and of course we had to get four new tires, because you always have to get four new tires, and so that was another grand gone. Then we had to get our lawn serviced, and we had to buy a bunch of shit at Home Depot for little (but vital) maintenance jobs, and I already mentioned how we had to pay for plumbing in our old house. Like I said, it’s piling up. I mean, as long as S and I stay employed, which seems like a safe bet, things will be fine in the long-run, but it’s not the long-run yet, so currently things are kinda tight.
In this case, my complaint is a relatively easy one, because it's about money -- not wealth or assets or anything like that -- but actual money: straight cast homie. We're low on it. Everything with our move is costing more than we anticipated and that’s after factoring in that it would cost more than we anticipated. We covered our down payment (paid back S’s parents in-full) and closing costs, which are the main things, but the ancillary expenses are piling up. We are managing, but it’s paycheck-to-paycheck, and it’s going to be a while before we get back to normal. Some of it is stuff we didn’t budget for, but should have. Take pest control, for example. Our yard is overrun with bugs (mainly ants and stink bugs), and it's only a matter of time before they get inside. Some of the ants are carpenter ants, and they need to be quashed ASAP, because they can damage wood. We also want to get preemptive termite service and get our crawlspace attic cleaned and insulated for bugs. If we are going to do it, we want to do it right, but in order to do it right, we have to pay the price -- and in this case, the price is a couple grand. Again, we probably should've thought of this, but didn't. (In our defense it's super hard and stressful to think of everything when buying/selling a house.)
Then we also had some bad luck. A tire blew on one or our cars, and of course we had to get four new tires, because you always have to get four new tires, and so that was another grand gone. Then we had to get our lawn serviced, and we had to buy a bunch of shit at Home Depot for little (but vital) maintenance jobs, and I already mentioned how we had to pay for plumbing in our old house. Like I said, it’s piling up. I mean, as long as S and I stay employed, which seems like a safe bet, things will be fine in the long-run, but it’s not the long-run yet, so currently things are kinda tight.
We have been cutting back in some areas, namely entertainment. We haven't been going out much at all, and we've been relying on free services (or ones we already pay for) for our entertainment. I did my part by watching both seasons of Cobra Kai in a few weeks, so we wouldn't have to pay for YouTube Premium past the free one-month trial period. I enjoyed it -- the first season much more than the second season. I didn't like the way the second season ended. But for the most part the series is entertaining. It does a great job of mixing nostalgia for the original movie with a modern story line (lots of Easter eggs for the Gen-Xers.). It's also got a fun and cheesy veneer, while getting at some deeper issues at its core. One of these is the notion of "toxic masculinity." This has actually been a recurring theme in a lot of the content I've been consuming recently for some reason. I've started listening to a new podcast called Man Up, which is all about masculinity, and then I came across this article in the New York Times, and I also recently listened to an episode of The Weeds podcast about "incels" (if you don't know, do yourself a favor and don't ask).
Personally, I've spent chunks of my life being toxic-masculinity-adjacent, but I've always rejected it for as along as I can remember. Even as an insecure teenager I knew it was bullshit. I've always wanted to embody stereotypically "manly" attributes -- I've always wanted to be physically strong, I've always wanted to be able to kick-ass if need be (need has never been), I've always wanted to hook-up with hot babes (less so now than before I was married with kids). I've always wanted all that stuff, but I never wanted the noxious mindset and behavior that often comes with it -- the fronting, the bullying, the misogyny. In fact, I think that was kinda my lane growing up. More than one person I've reconnected with after high school described me as some variant of a "good jock" or a "nerdy jock." I never thought of myself as a jock at all, because "the jocks" were a different group of kids on the football team (I only briefly played football), but I was district champ in wrestling my senior year* and one of the top scorers on the lacrosse team, so I guess that's sufficiently jock-ish.
*By the way, they started offering wrestling classes at my Krav Maga gym, and I went for the first time the other night, and I was straight-up dominating fools. I didn't get taken down once the entire class, and a lot the dudes in it are 15 to 20 years younger than me. Still got it!
One thing I've never been very good at, however, is calling out other guys on their bullshit behavior. It's just not in my personality. I'm more the type who would stay silent and then make fun of that guy later with my non-troglodyte friends. I've had some people tell me some fucked-up shit too. I think because I've always had a kinda outwardly bro-y appearance, people assume I'm more bro-y than I actually am. Anyway, I'm trying to get better about calling out fellow dudes -- I know it's important -- but it's not easy for me. On the whole, I figure as long as I can lead my boys down the right path with all this stuff, I'll consider my "work" on this issue a net positive to society. It's something I worry about sometimes. My new joke is that if a omnipotent being told me I had two choices -- A) My sons would one day become prominent leaders in the MRA movement; B) The universe as we know it would be destroyed at the end of the year -- I'd tell everybody I know to start working their way down their bucket lists.
Speaking of gender issues, I came across this article, titled "What 'Good' Dads Get Away With" in the New York Times, and I'd be lying if I said parts of it didn't ring true. For example,
But I don't think I'm getting away with anything, because I do a bunch of other stuff. I do some of the traditionally female tasks (laundry, dishes, driving kids to school), and I do almost all of the traditionally male tasks. That's a major shortcoming of the article, in my opinion -- it doesn't get into who's doing things like changing light bulbs, servicing the cars, mowing the lawn, unclogging drains, etc. Just as I made a list of things I've seldom done, I could make one equally as long of things S has seldom done.
Overall, I think we have a pretty good division of labor. In general, our days are shifted so that I do morning and she does night. She's usually out of the house before we wake up, and I'll get the kids fed, dressed, and to school in the morning. Then she picks them up and gets them dinner and does most of bedtime (although that almost always ends up a two-person job). This used to be a very even division, because the kids would wake up hours before school/daycare started and go to bed early, but now that they stay up a little later and sleep a little later, night is definitely more work. The scale slides toward S. But then she also will leave for days at a time for work, and then I have to do everything, and that, I think, slides the scale back to close to even. And even if it doesn't -- even if it's off in one direction or another -- it doesn't really matter, so long as we are both happy with the arrangement. There is no such thing as a perfectly equitable relationship, and that shouldn't be the goal, in my opinion, outside of facilitating contentment and satisfaction. The way I see it, as long as my wife doesn't resent me and I don't resent her -- and that was the case last time we talked about such things -- then it's all good.
With that... until next time...
Personally, I've spent chunks of my life being toxic-masculinity-adjacent, but I've always rejected it for as along as I can remember. Even as an insecure teenager I knew it was bullshit. I've always wanted to embody stereotypically "manly" attributes -- I've always wanted to be physically strong, I've always wanted to be able to kick-ass if need be (need has never been), I've always wanted to hook-up with hot babes (less so now than before I was married with kids). I've always wanted all that stuff, but I never wanted the noxious mindset and behavior that often comes with it -- the fronting, the bullying, the misogyny. In fact, I think that was kinda my lane growing up. More than one person I've reconnected with after high school described me as some variant of a "good jock" or a "nerdy jock." I never thought of myself as a jock at all, because "the jocks" were a different group of kids on the football team (I only briefly played football), but I was district champ in wrestling my senior year* and one of the top scorers on the lacrosse team, so I guess that's sufficiently jock-ish.
*By the way, they started offering wrestling classes at my Krav Maga gym, and I went for the first time the other night, and I was straight-up dominating fools. I didn't get taken down once the entire class, and a lot the dudes in it are 15 to 20 years younger than me. Still got it!
One thing I've never been very good at, however, is calling out other guys on their bullshit behavior. It's just not in my personality. I'm more the type who would stay silent and then make fun of that guy later with my non-troglodyte friends. I've had some people tell me some fucked-up shit too. I think because I've always had a kinda outwardly bro-y appearance, people assume I'm more bro-y than I actually am. Anyway, I'm trying to get better about calling out fellow dudes -- I know it's important -- but it's not easy for me. On the whole, I figure as long as I can lead my boys down the right path with all this stuff, I'll consider my "work" on this issue a net positive to society. It's something I worry about sometimes. My new joke is that if a omnipotent being told me I had two choices -- A) My sons would one day become prominent leaders in the MRA movement; B) The universe as we know it would be destroyed at the end of the year -- I'd tell everybody I know to start working their way down their bucket lists.
Speaking of gender issues, I came across this article, titled "What 'Good' Dads Get Away With" in the New York Times, and I'd be lying if I said parts of it didn't ring true. For example,
Like him, I worked outside the home. And yet I was the one who found myself in charge of managing the details of our children’s lives.I read this to S, and we both cracked up because this could have been taken from a screenplay of our lives word-for-word. S manages the details of our children's schedule almost completely by herself and then fills me in on it later. In fact, I would say she does most of the traditionally female work around our house -- she does most the cooking, most the cleaning, and pretty much everything dealing with child and household management. I don't think I've ever done any of the following: signed our kids up for daycare or camp, bought an article of clothing for the kids, bought an article of future for the house.
Too often I’d spend frantic days looking for spring break child care only to hear him ask, “Oh, there’s no school tomorrow?”
But I don't think I'm getting away with anything, because I do a bunch of other stuff. I do some of the traditionally female tasks (laundry, dishes, driving kids to school), and I do almost all of the traditionally male tasks. That's a major shortcoming of the article, in my opinion -- it doesn't get into who's doing things like changing light bulbs, servicing the cars, mowing the lawn, unclogging drains, etc. Just as I made a list of things I've seldom done, I could make one equally as long of things S has seldom done.
Overall, I think we have a pretty good division of labor. In general, our days are shifted so that I do morning and she does night. She's usually out of the house before we wake up, and I'll get the kids fed, dressed, and to school in the morning. Then she picks them up and gets them dinner and does most of bedtime (although that almost always ends up a two-person job). This used to be a very even division, because the kids would wake up hours before school/daycare started and go to bed early, but now that they stay up a little later and sleep a little later, night is definitely more work. The scale slides toward S. But then she also will leave for days at a time for work, and then I have to do everything, and that, I think, slides the scale back to close to even. And even if it doesn't -- even if it's off in one direction or another -- it doesn't really matter, so long as we are both happy with the arrangement. There is no such thing as a perfectly equitable relationship, and that shouldn't be the goal, in my opinion, outside of facilitating contentment and satisfaction. The way I see it, as long as my wife doesn't resent me and I don't resent her -- and that was the case last time we talked about such things -- then it's all good.
With that... until next time...
Toxic masculinity has been on my radar lately too. I'm realizing it scares me more than anything else because it's at the root of almost all violence and oppression in our culture. This is why feminism is so important. To greatly simplify something complex--it goes against human nature to have gender inequality so defined and celebrated. The world needs and seeks out balance and everyone benefits from letting go of gender roles and stereotypes. When men have more outlets for and understanding of their emotions and those emotions are accepted by society than it follows men will be less insecure, angry, and isolated and no longer feel inclined to violently lash out and exercise superiority. Women and those who are gender non-conforming will be less victimized with more opportunities and society will benefit from the skills and perspectives they bring to the table. We all win with feminism.
ReplyDeleteWell said.
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