Mr. Momday/Venting

Parenting Venting from the Male Perspective
Okay, so this post is a few days late. So sue me! Here it is: I love my kids, but I need to go back to work! Right now, the highlight of my week is being able to run to the store by myself when the wife gets home from work. That's right. Me time equals grocery shopping. Or when everyone else is asleep, and I hop on the computer to write. That's when I'm not too tired and pass out on the couch watching TV.

My week has its structure: Monday, Wednesday and Friday I clean the house from top to bottom. I start early, feed the kids, send Kid A off to the bus, drink my breakfast (coffee and a smoothie) all while cleaning, dusting, vacuuming, disinfecting, etc. I'm usually done by noon. By then it's craft time for Kid B, and then lunch time. Nap time for Kid C comes next and after that Kid A gets off the bus and it's homework, snack, cleanup time and then I make dinner most weeknights. Tuesday and Thursday  are laundry days. Not having a working vehicle restricts me to the house-especially on laundry day! Once that changes I will be sooo much happier. I may sound like I'm bitching. Well, I am... It's bittersweet. If I could stay home with the kids and make money from home, I would be in heaven!

The strange thing about it all is this: I do have a job offer looming over my head. It's a matter of getting the second car fixed (happening next week) and finding daycare or a nanny. Kid B and C need a caregiver during the day, and I also need someone to get Kid A on the bus watch all of them when Kid A gets home from school. The offer seems to be real, but I also feel like I'm getting strung along. The fact that it hasn't started yet is a blessing in disguise, with the transportation and daycare issues.

Ironically, I know someone who is willing to be our nanny, or rather manny. At the same time, I am wondering if I just haven't been resourceful enough to figure this all out without me going back to work outside of the home. I know that there is something I can do... some way for me to work for myself and take care of the kids... Well, there's always tutoring. And of course, because I am not a certified teacher, I am a little fish in a sea of big fish. So basically, I'm fucked.

So, what do I do? Embrace my role as a stay-at-home-dad, and make my living on the internet doing some kind of niche blogging, monetize, etc., and continue my creative writing while I play house and raise the kids? Or do I go back to the seafood industry and switch from retail to wholesale and sell my soul to another devil? Hmmmm.