A typical day

I thought about starting this diary with a systematic cataloging of my character flaws. Day 1: Self-hating. Day 2: Anti-social. Day 3: Immature. Day 4: Perfectionist. Yadda-yadda, blah, blah. That's a perfectly reasonable, yet perfectly boring way to start things out. I doubt that I'd make it to the third day before getting distracted and dropping this whole project. Instead, I'll offer a fairly detailed peek into a typical day of my life.

Let's start with the standard phone call to my wife when I left work yesterday. It followed the standard script:

Wife: Hello?
Me: Hey, it's me
Wife: What's happening?
Me: Oh, I'm just on the way home.
Wife: Yeah, did you have a good day?
Me: Pretty good.
Wife: That's good. Are you going to have to work late tonight?
Me: No, I don't think so. I got a decent amount done today.
Wife: Okay, well, are burgers okay for dinner
Me: Sure, sounds good....
etc.

As usual, I try to sound happy and friendly when I call my wife at the end of the day but I always end up sounding downbeat. It's hard to be cheerful when the voice on the other end almost never is.

When I arrive home, I find my wife reading to our 9-month old son. She's obviously trying to put him to bed. While he seems happy enough at the moment, my wife immediately lets me know that he's been extremely fussy. I smile at him and he smiles back. I want to pick him up and hold him and cuddle him but I know he needs to stick with the bedtime routine. Seeing my son always cheers me up. My thoughts drift to changing clothes so I can go outside and start grilling the burgers. Our 11-year old daughter is in her room with the door closed. "Hi, Dad!" she yells. "Hi Steph!" I call back, trying to sound happy. Shit, I think to myself. I forgot to say hi to her when I got home. It irritates me because slips like that give my wife ammunition against me. She makes mental notes and then reminds me of them when it comes time to criticize me about my behavior with Steph.

I go into the master bedroom and begin changing out of my work clothes and into something cooler and more comfortable. Shorts and an old T-shirt. Perfect for grilling. I hear my wife put our son, Derrick, in the crib and close the door to his room. He immediately begins wailing. I don't pay much attention to it because he's had a difficult time going to sleep the past few nights. We're trying to give him time to cry it out, ala the Ferber method. Suddenly I hear a large thunk coming from my daughter's room. My anger immediately swells. She's throwing her toys, I think. Like a predator on the hunt, I immediately head out of the bedroom and creep toward her door across the hall, opening it a crack so I can see what she is doing.

Steph is sitting among a large pile of toys in her room, mostly stuffed animals. A real mess. I see her pick up and throw a large, hard plastic baby doll directly at the lamp sitting on her nightstand. Thunk.

I throw open the door and pounce. Then I start my rapid fire yelling. "No throwing! Do you understand! No throwing! Are you supposed to throw toys?! Clean up your toys right now! No kitten and no froggy until you clean up!" I grab "kitten" and "froggy"--Steph's favorite toys at the moment--off the floor and hurl them out of sight into the master bedroom. She immediately begins wailing at the top of her lungs, sounding eerily familiar to the baby in the room next door. Oh great, I think. Now Derrick will never go to sleep. At the same time, I'm feeling smug for successfully catching our daughter misbehaving, and making her feel bad about it.