The Daddy Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Modern American Dad

By Paul Kemp

The Daddy Diaries is taken from a series of online journal entries as the author details his adventures with his two sons, one of whom is autistic. With an eye toward the humorous, Paul takes us through a typical day of caring for his boys from getting up in the morning all the way through bedtime. Through the course of the book, he also deals with the death of his grandmother who was instrumental in raising him, pressures from a dead end job he wants out of and the steady disintegration of his marriage. He also talks about the challenges of being a daytime dad during the week while working the graveyard shift on the weekends. When his wife does finally walk out on him, taking the children with her, he is plunged into an abyss of emotions that eventually leads to a reconciliation with his sons as he attempts to rebuild the connections he had with them when his marriage was still intact.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Kemp
• Release date: Feb 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310998454

Paul Kemp

Paul grew up in Kansas where he figured out early on that he was different from the other children. Realizing that his opposable thumbs were good for more than just opening beer cans and playing video games, Paul moved to Colorado and started a life as a nomad. After 10 years of traveling around the country, he settled in Phoenix in 1988, where he lives to this day. Paul has a wife and 1 dog nicknamed 4 1/2 Pounds of Fury and 2 teenage sons and chronicles his adventures as a divorced dad. A football fanatic, he lives on the couch and by the computer for six months out of the year and spends the rest of his time by the computer and on the couch. He's a firm believer in children doing chores while he relaxes in the shade with an ice cold glass of lemonade.

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The Daddy Diaries

A Year in the Life of a Modern American Dad

by

Paul Kemp

Copyright 2008

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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June 2006

July 2006

August 2006

September 2006

October 2006

November 2006

December 2006

January 2007

March 2007

June 2007

About the Author

Other Books by Paul Kemp

Contact Paul Kemp

Forward

It was suggested by my editor that I write this as an introduction so that people are not misled either by the title or the early chapters into expecting a book that's all sunshine and sugar. The genesis of this book came about from two different directions. A good friend of mine, the Vampiress, who was a member of a social website, encouraged me to join so I could read her journal entries and we could talk online. She encouraged me to write about my children because she enjoyed the countless stories I told while we were supposed to be working. The other inspiration for me to write this was my grandmother's death in 2006.

When she died, it seemed like there was no time at all between the time my older brother Bob called me to tell me the news, to the day we lowered her casket in the ground, and then my return home. It wasn't until a couple of weeks later that I entered grief therapy to get the help I needed in dealing with the emotions surrounding her loss and the aftermath. The counselor who helped me through the grieving process encouraged me to write, telling me that I was a natural storyteller.

The journal entries cover a lot of ground. They start out describing a typical day of childcare as I balance working weekend nights with a daytime schedule during the week, and caring for two small children, one of whom is autistic. The book continues on during the summer where the grind of seven years of this convoluted schedule started taking its toll on me and my marriage. It deals with my depression that summer as I tried to find a new job, the trauma surrounding my grandma's death, and my divorce, which started a month later when my wife walked out on me. The journal entries trace my deepening depression as I'm deprived of any contact with my children for three months, my eventual reunion with my sons, and then the initial months of minimal visitation rights ending with my having joint custody. What started out as a way to chronicle my sons' younger years for their later enjoyment, evolved into a way to vent my frustrations while I tried to overcome the mediocrity in the workplace while my employers shipped our jobs overseas, and then turned into a way for me to deal with my grief and then the emotional aftermath of my marriage.

Is it pretty? No. Is it for the squeamish? Definitely not. Is there a lot of love and humor in here? Absolutely.

This is a slice of my life, with all the ups and downs, twists and turns. It is by turns, funny, bitter, disturbing, traumatic, and sad. Looking back on this time in my life, I can see a lot of sunlight and hope on either end of the story and a very dark night in the middle. Yes, there are a lot of Dave Barry days in here, but there's also a good dose of the bad craziness that Hunter S. Thompson would have reveled in; we're definitely not the Cleaver family from Leave it to Beaver, but neither are we the Bundy's from Married with Children. I'm not perfect and this is not an attempt to portray me as such. I fully admit to being an irritable pain in the neck, a department store snob, and having more than just a passing fondness for beer, football, and lethargy. I was raised in the tradition that you don't mouth off to your parents and if you're that stupid, you're going to suffer the consequences.

I also admit to being crazy about my boys. They are my life and the center of my universe and now that we're back together, even on a part-time basis, I wouldn't trade them for the world. Most days, that is.

And last, as in all stories of this nature, the names have been changed to protect the innocent . . .and in some cases, the not-so-innocent, too.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope you enjoy it.

Monday, May 29, 2006—The Day Begins

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

It's six a.m

Oh! What the . . . ?! The band is building to a climax of the final song of our concert. The crowd is roaring for more as we end the lengthy jam at the end of the song. Their screams of glee turn into an obnoxious, droning beep . . . Oh wait. It's the alarm clock. I roll out of bed, thoroughly pissed at having this glorious dream interrupted, trying to shut off this noisy intruder into my private nirvana when . . .

SMACK! Thud!

I land back on the bed, face up, several constellations spinning around my head. Apparently my lovely wife left the closet door open again when she was getting ready for work because it caught me right between the eyes. Cursing, I kick the door closed, spring up out of bed, and take two steps before my head is whipsawed backwards and I am violently pulled back onto the bed again. This time it's the flexible rubber tubing on my breathing apparatus. I am a borderline sleep apnea case, so I have to wear a breathing mask and have air pumped into me all night long to keep from waking up in the middle of the night. My wife, Carol, feels that waking up at all is unnecessary—but then again, she’s an Olympic-caliber sleeper. Just the fact that I often wake up in the middle of the night is enough to irritate her. She also says that now that I have the mask, it's like sleeping with Darth Vader—but she prefers that to what she describes as my window-rattling snoring.

Anyway, I rip the mask off my face and roll out of bed—gingerly this time, making sure nothing rude is going to slap my ass back in bed—and finally stumble my way to the alarm clock. It's now 6:02 a.m.

I groggily make my way to the computer and fire it up, prepared for a half-hour or so of peace and quiet before I have to wake my boys up and start our day. I spend this time checking email, reading up on my favorite football team, the Kansas City Chiefs, and (legally, of course) downloading music. I would never illegally download anything (anymore). Really. I swear. Honest. See my halo?

Not even five minutes later, I hear the pad of little feet coming down the hall. My five-year-old, Timmy, has evidently attuned himself to the sound of the computer starting up in the morning. He’s starting to appear shortly after it starts up on a regular basis. Fortunately for me, it takes him a while to fully wake up, so usually he sits in the chair next to me and rests his head on the edge of the computer desk. This gives him a chance to bond with me and wake up at his own pace, all at the same time. Even though this is usually time reserved for me, I can't begrudge the little guy any time. I think it's sweet that he wants to spend this time with me, even though neither of us are doing anything other than just sitting there in the glow of the computer screen.

Monday, May 29, 2006—Existential Conversation with a Five-Year-Old

I'm engrossed in a news story online, something about the war, when Timmy asks me why that person's head is red. I look up in shock at the picture on the screen, trying to come up with a good explanation as to why the man in the picture is missing half his head, when my son speaks up again.

Did you know we have a blue ball at school?

Um . . . no, I reply uncertainly, trying to shift gears.

Yeah, we have a blue ball at school, but Jeremy doesn't like to play with it and the bus driver was wearing this yellow shirt with a big red butterfly on it, but I don't like butterflies, so then our teacher read us a story about Clifford and then we went out to play, and that's why we have a blue ball in my school.

I give my son the kind of look he's probably going to get often as he progresses through life, and I seriously consider starting to drink earlier in the day. As the old saying goes, It's happy hour somewhere in the world. Existential conversations with a five-year-old are a surreal way to start the day. And all of his stories end up right back where they started, so we often have these circular conversations whenever he has something he feels is important to impart to me. I quash the urge to have a beer.

Even though it's still early, I send him back to his room to wake up his older brother, Tommy. It gets him out of what's left of my hair and gives me a moment to bring myself back to reality. I continue to stare at the picture of half a head, trying to remember why I was so interested in this news story. Giving up on the war, I move on to the entertainment news, but I can't concentrate on that either. Nothing seems to fit in with reality after that conversation with my son, so I decide to read up on my sports team. Or I would, except for the yelling and arguing I hear coming from the back of the house. This snaps me back to reality like nothing else on the Internet.

What's going on back there? I yell, hoping I won't have to get up.

Wellll, Tommy won't get up, Timmy whines, I keep on telling him and telling him, and he still won't get up! Stop it Tommmyyyyy!

Tommy! Get up and get ready for school, I yell, still hoping I don't have to get up. No sound comes out of the back, so of course they're getting ready; my boys are so well behaved.

After ten minutes, I start to get suspicious because there’ve been no sounds nor signs of life from their room. Looks like I'm going to have to get up after all. Crap.

I walk down the hall and peer into the bedroom the boys share. They're sitting on the bottom bunk bed in their underwear, quietly playing with cars. I suppress the momentary feeling of envy—yes I wish I was in there with them, playing cars in my underwear, but I have to be the adult here. My younger son looks up and drops his car with a guilty look on his face. His hand immediately whips behind his back so I'll think he didn't really have a car in his hand. My older son just sits there staring at me. I tell them to get dressed and the younger one jumps off his bed as if electrified and heads for the dresser. The older just sits there, staring at me like I'm something he's never seen before.

NOW, I tell him emphatically—and he slides off the bed, the car in his hand.

I go to my room and get dressed, and as I walk past the boys' room I see my older son still standing by the bed playing with his cars. I get on him again to get dressed and make sure he has at least made a move toward the dresser before I head back to my computer. A few minutes later, Timmy wanders out.

Look, Daddy, I'm all dressed, he tells me, raising his hands and turning around.

I notice that his shirt in on backward and tell him. Timmy looks stricken and runs back to his room. He returns five minutes later with his shirt still turned around. I call him over and help him with his shirt. This includes showing him, for the twenty-fifth time in as many days, that the tag goes in back. I then ask how his older brother is doing.

He's playing cars, the younger one replies nonchalantly, then runs back to his room to join his brother playing cars.

I go back, AGAIN, to yell at the boy. Even though it's a short walk, it still gives me time to get good and angry. I open my mouth as I come around the corner, a perfectly good rage all worked up . . . and he's dressed for school. I growl softly to myself in frustration.

Good job! I tell him, swallowing my rage, I'm proud of you for getting dressed.

I go back to the computer and glare at the screen instead. My sports team lost yesterday and I can't yell at my son today. There just ain't no justice.

So now I look at the clock and it's a quarter past seven.

Time to get shoes on! I call out to the boys.

They each come trotting out carrying their shoes and make a beeline for me. As one, they proffer their shoes to me.

Daddy, I have sand in my shoes, says the five-year-old in a small voice.

Me too, chimes in his brother.

As each boy hands me their shoes so I can dump out the sand, I notice a little bit of sand cascading out of each shoe.

Now, here's another bit of the kind of surreality that becomes part of my life on a daily basis. I take both pairs of shoes outside and start emptying them into our ever-so-lovely, desert-theme landscaped, gravel-covered front yard that our homeowner's association insisted we have. I pour sand out of these little tiny shoes . . . And I pour sand . . . And I pour some more sand. I loosen the laces, turn the shoes upside down and beat them together, and more sand comes cascading out. I have emptied enough sand to fill the Gobi Desert, and there is another pair of shoes waiting for me. I look at this pair of size ten children's size shoes, reach in three fingers (because that's all the space there is in there) and feel around. Yep, all the sand is out. I reach for the older boy's shoes and repeat the process. My front yard now looks like we have been visited by the truck from the home improvement store that drops off loads of sand and rock for people who believe in doing their own landscaping. Personally, I believe in paying people to do it for me.

Here's what I don't understand: I can barely squeeze three fingers into the boys' shoes, yet everyday they manage to cart home a desert-full of sand in these little things, WHILE THEIR FEET ARE STILL IN THEM. Not once have they ever complained about how uncomfortable their shoes are or how much they're weighed down by all the extra sand. They still manage to bounce off the walls, run around the house, and swing from the lights like monkeys on crack right up until bedtime. And I know this occurrence isn't isolated to my sons—I've spoken to other parents, and they experience the same phenomena. I'm still waiting for the school to bill me for all the sand the boys bring home. I'm sure on their list of expenses—somewhere between gas for the school buses and liability insurance for the schools and above what they spend on teachers' salaries—is the amount budgeted for sand, and I'm just as sure somewhere there is an accountant scratching his head wondering why the amount spent on playground sand has shot up so dramatically. I'm thinking of opening my own beach to pay for the rise in property taxes I'm sure they'll require to pay for all the sand.

I go back inside, hand the boys their shoes, and sit down. As the five-year-old sits down to put on his shoes, I tell him they don't match. It pains me that it took me this long to realize that fact—but then again, I haven't had my morning coffee yet either. Mortified, he takes the shoes back to his room and then tells me he can't find his shoes. It's taken him exactly one- point-two seconds to conduct this in-depth search, so now I have to get up . . . again.

Now by this point you're probably thinking to yourself, this guy sure does bitch a lot about having to get up. Don't his kids mean anything to him? I just want to say this: I’m a sedentary person. My favorite pastimes are sitting and reading, sitting and watching television, sitting and doing puzzles, sitting and listening to music, sitting and . . . well you get the picture. My idea of exercise is playing air guitar to just about any Who song cranked up to a very loud volume. This may explain all the yelling that goes on in our house—maybe I just can't hear anymore. Hmmmm. No, that would be like saying rock 'n' roll inspires kids to do drugs; it's just plain silly.

So now I have to get up and go help the younger one search for his shoes in the disaster area they call a bedroom. I stick my head into his room, survey the damage left by the two tornadoes that are my sons, and ask the boy if he looked in the closet.

Yes Daddy, and I just can't find them, he says as he stares resolutely at the top shelf of his toy storage unit.

With a brief glance around the carnage, I find one shoe sticking out from under his bed.

Did you look under your bed? I ask, already knowing both the real answer and the answer I'll get out of my younger son.

Oh yes, he assures me, his huge blue eyes all solemn.

What's that? I ask, pointing to the shoe under his bed.

Now getting a child to look where you're pointing is like getting a dog to watch television. Even if you grab his head with both hands, one on each side of his head, and aim it in the direction you want him to look, his eyes automatically slide over to see what your hands are doing. The boy stares blankly two feet to the right of where I'm pointing. I direct him to look THERE three more times as his eyes seem to slide right over the spot where the shoe is and stop everywhere else.

There . . . There . . . THERE! I finally bellow, now standing two feet away, bending over and pointing to the shoe.

My son's face lights up with the joy of discovery. My shoe! he sings.

Where is your other shoe? I ask.

I don't know, he says, sounding like he doesn't care either.

I can feel the circuit breakers in the higher-functioning portion of my brain start to trip. I start to lose my ability to reason and form coherent sentences.

But . . . what . . . you . . . unh! . . . My brain flat lines as I stare around the room, uncomprehendingly. Finally I regain my ability to speak. How can you have lost your other shoe? I demand of him. You JUST brought it back here?

I don't know. he says plaintively. And the sad thing, he really doesn't know, either.

BZZZZZZT

That's the sound of my brain going into massive shutdown. I whirl around, find one of the shoes my son had just brought back, and thrust it at him without a word. I stalk out to the living room where the other boy is staring blankly at the television screen, holding his shoes while watching dancing cats on a commercial.

YOU . . . SHOES . . . NOW!!! I roar at him.

Timmy jumps as though hit by a cattle prod and starts fumbling with his shoes. After a couple of minutes, he brings them over to me.

Daddy, I can't get them untied, he says, looking down at the floor.

I stop myself from snapping at him and look at his shoes. The laces have been pulled tight, turning what had been a couple of bows into a pair of Gordian knots.

Now here is another trip into the realm of the surreal. Tommy wears high tops. Every morning he laces his shoes all the way up and ties them tightly and then we go off to school. When I pick him up at the end of the day, whether it's a normal day or an early-release day, where the kids only go for half a day, both shoes will be untied and one of them will be almost totally unlaced. Every day. Whether he gets out at noon or at three in the afternoon. I've asked Tommy how this happens, and he looks at me as if I've lost the capacity to speak any language he might recognize. I've asked him slowly, I've asked him rapidly, I've asked loudly and quietly, and I get the same look. You might as well try to get a dog to watch television.

I keep an eye on both him and the television news, growling reminders to get his shoes on whenever it looks like he might start enjoying himself by doing nothing. Timmy plops down on the chair next to mine and holds his feet up to have his shoes tied. He watches my movements with great interest, but no comprehension. I take care of him, keeping one eye on Tommy and FINALLY both boys are dressed and ready for school. I look at the clock—it’s now 7:25 and we're still right on schedule. We have a few minutes before we have to leave for school, so I tell the boys to go play. They run back to their room to finish the destruction they’d started earlier that morning.

Tuesday, May 30. 2006—Walking Ten Miles to School with No Shoes in a Raging Blizzard

So now it's 7:35 and time to leave for school. I make the announcement and remind Tommy to put on his backpack and grab his water bottle. Even though I know we live in a desert and the heat can suck the moisture out of body faster than a twenty-dollar hooker, I still can't get used to sending a child to school equipped to ward off dehydration. When I was a boy, we used old fashioned water fountains in the hallways and the classroom, and we liked it. Humph. Great, now I sound like my dad. As we leave the house, the boys run to the car and wait hopefully by the door.

Are we walking or driving? the younger one asks hopefully.

They already know the answer, but they keep hoping against hope that I'll say something along the lines of Of course we're driving! Shucks, gas only costs a twenty-five cents a tank, so what do I care!

But of course those days are long gone, so I restrict the driving days to Mondays and sick days. Now you're probably asking yourself why I drive on Mondays when we only live six blocks from the school, and the answer is really simple. I work weekend nights, so when Monday morning finally rolls around and I'm free of the evil workplace for another four days, I've been up for about fifteen hours—almost seventeen by the time we leave for school. And even though the school is only six blocks away, I'm tired and tend to cater to my innate laziness. Not even five-dollar-a-gallon gas is going to change that. After all, it's only six blocks once a week! So I tell the boys that we're walking.

Tommy hides his crushing disappointment by yelling, Race ya! and running down the street and around the corner so he can hide at the mailbox and scare me as I walk by. You'd think I'd learn by now. Timmy isn't as successful in hiding his sadness.

He looks at me now with big, blue, sad, puppy-dog eyes and says in a voice that matches, Daddy I don't want to walk. It's too cold.

I look at him, dressed in a tee-shirt and shorts, and reply, We live in Phoenix. It's 85 degrees out here, you can't be cold. Come on, we're walking.

And so we set off, me walking at a normal pace,