Inspirational friendships and the conflicted life of a househusband

First for a bit of housekeeping.  I received a MadLibs email retort to one of my last posts from a friend and fellow writer and it got me thinking.  I have for some time now been threatening to make the wife author one of the posts as she is always fairly outspoken in her criticisms with regard to content.   Many of the comings and goings of our daily life don’t make the blog.  Often times she inquires as to why something that she felt was “blogworthy” didn’t make it to print.  The simple answer is that I write without a blueprint and whatever happens to be in my head at the time is what ends up on paper.  As such, I am sure I miss a pearl or two along the way.  To that end, I am extending an invitation to all those that wish to have a voice and feel limited by the constraints of the comment box.  I am able to open this project up to co-authoring upon request and will do so if anyone out there has a story to tell or anything they simply feel they need to get off of their chest.  While ordinarily I have a veritable treasure chest of topics for conversation floating around my cranium, I am more than happy to turn over the healm on occasion so I can get some much needed shut eye.  We have all heard of “writer’s block”, however I would take that one step further.  Given that the content of this project are the experiences in my life as I see them, what I can sometimes become afflicted with is what I would prefer to refer to as “life block”.  Sometimes the cat catches my tongue (I know, hard to believe) and I don’t have much to say.  I had warned early on that this would eventually be the case.  The hectic life of adaptation eventually yields to normalcy and nobody wants to read about normalcy.  So, if you would like to have a go, post a comment as such or send an email and I will make the necessary arrangements.  The process is not difficult from a purely technical stand point, so being a relative newbie to the computer age won’t be a problem.  The invitation is open to all and I have only one request . . . keep it relatively clean . . . this is a family program . . . sort of.

Now to the meat and potatoes . . . These days, I find my “job” (if you can call it that) somewhat conflicting.  You see, I have two responsibilities in life.  I feel both of these as important as the next in order to prevent the wife from considering a trade.  The last thing a bald guy approaching middle age needs is to be cut loose as a free agent.  The farm leagues are no place to make a living and it would be next to impossible for a geezer like me to compete with the young and upcoming talent.  Eventually I would blow out a knee or shoulder and my career would be over.  That being said, to please my lady, I have to manage the household affairs and still find time to keep myself the trophy she has come to expect.  My days as eye candy are slipping away and the time required to stay something less than loathsome and disgusting seems forever increasing.  I have realized that balancing these two interests is next to impossible.  Amongst the litany of ridiculous “Real Housewives” programming clogging up the air waves, I have come to appreciate that there is nothing “Real” about it.  Being able to spend several hours at the gym in order to stave off old man time means that you don’t pick up your kids at school, you don’t clean your own house and you don’t do your own laundry.  These are not luxuries that I can afford to hire out, and if the essentials aren’t tended to, I will likely find myself in the unemployment line.  As much as I would like to hang my hat on the whole “love is blind” concept, I imagine my bride would be none-to-thrilled with her immaculately kept home if her husband carried with him an extra buck fifty or so of fleshy man jelly.  So where does that leave me?  Dancing through my day like a circus performer trying to keep my spinning plates atop their posts.  Balancing them on my toes, fingers and nose makes short work of the day.  Package that with my desire to shuffle around the house like a semi-mad Picasso type and I find myself with a certain sense of defeat at the end of the day.

The Buddhist appreciation of time is a concept that I too can appreciate if not fully understand.  I once shared a class with a gentlemen that when asked what he would define as his love/passion/desire, he simply said TIME.  I didn’t fully understand at the time what he meant and still don’t have much more of a clue, but I do know that we as mammals are only given a limited amount of it and it slips by in a big damned hurry.  Blink and the day is gone . . . take a nap and your kids are off to college (or prison . . . depends on the kid).  Time is a gift and a curse.  It goes by quickly as an adult, but seems to linger in childhood like the weightlessness of space.  Like the desire for sleep, I haven’t been able to determine at what age the switch is flipped, but at some point the seasons blend from one to the next and the years jumble together like a deck of playing cards thrown carelessly on the table.  One day I will figure it all out, but for now I just wish I had more time.  On that thought I will bid you a farewell as I have to be on to my next project for the day before I have to go and pick up the kids at school.  Au Revoir.  R.