So……is it weird to find a video on my own phone of me sleeping? Based on the height at which the video as taken, I can only assume GARRETT grabbed my phone in the middle of the night and took a video. Honestly, I’m a little unsettled by this.
Honestly, I have no idea. I’m still trying to figure out what to expect tomorrow! But I do have a few ideas for GenXDaddy that I’m currently working on! In 2014 you can look forward to reading about:
1) Observations from a dad in a public park full of moms (and nannies)
2) A “To The Death” game of Battleship
3) A homework assignment that still gives me nightmares
4) The difference between a Torbjorn and a Borgsjo…and how one of them sent my youngest son to the doctor’s office
And, after a year and a half…
5) I will finally reveal what happened to Garrett during the weekend of my sister’s wedding!
Two weeks ago, GenXDaddy went down and I had a panic attack. I honestly thought I had lost all of the postings from the past three years…and I had not backed up anything. (Yea…that’s a fun lesson to learn!) With the help of an I.T. guy in Portland, the site was back up and running perfectly in less than 24 hours.
After backing up each post and running Google Analytics (which I need to do more often), here is what I learned about this site:
1) There are 304 posts on the website, which began in 2009.
2) If the first 300 posts were made into a single spaced book (no table of content, no pictures, no acknowledgements, nothing but content), it would be 184 pages and contain 80,240 words.
3) This site receives thousands of views each month. (Um…wow!)
4) Most of the readers are either in the United States, England, Brazil, or the United Arab Emirates. (So, you’re not alone in reading this!)
5) And, most interestingly….an average of 62% of the viewers each month are NEW!
Once again, I want to thank you for reading this site and I look forward to sharing more of our adventures with you in 2014!!
I am in complete shock, but somehow we have managed to arrive at the 300th post! Much like watching the miles tick away on an odometer, I took notice on posting 290 and paid attention as we got closer and closer to 300. Today, we have reached that number! Not bad for a “Dad Blog” about two funny kids (who aren’t YOUR kids!)
I began this blog in October of 2009 when a client asked me if I knew how to build a website. I told him I had no idea, but I would look into it. The next thing I knew – I had a domain name, a WordPress account, and I was GenXDaddy.
My first posting was…horrible. Embarrassingly, laughably, horrible. Here is what I wrote: As a new dad, I decided that I wanted to have an active role in my son’s life. This site is here to serve other parents who are looking for advice on toys, clothes, and the latest in “toddler trends”! Just to be clear, I don’t think I’m the dad you get advice from. I’m the dad you observe from a distance as you say to yourself, “Remind me not to do what that guy’s doing.” Additionally, I know nothing about “Toddler Trends.” (Although, I have seen my fair share of “Toddler Diaper Treads,” but that’s a different story.)
The other funny thing about starting this blog was – I had no idea it would be on the internet. Take a moment to think about that. I signed up for a website on the internet and then was shocked to find out that my website was on the internet. Right???? I’m THAT guy! I didn’t think this blog would be read by anyone other than me! I thought it was private. Imagine my surprise when I got a comment from someone I’d never met before!
In all seriousness, this site has become something more than I could have ever imagined. GenXDaddy started as an “experiment,” but has morphed over the years into a confessional, a political soapbox, a diary, a source for Dad Advocacy, and a time capsule for my sons. Right or wrong, I’ve done my best to share my daily experiences of being a dad from Generation X.
Thank you for taking this journey with me over the past 300 posts. I hope I’ve made you laugh, think, cringe, cry, and then maybe laugh again. Hopefully, the next 300 posts will be just as exciting (and not used as evidence against me.)
Remember, we’re all doing this dad thing wrong…I’m just doing it publicly!
If you’ve been a reader of this blog and recently said to yourself, “Hey – that GenXDaddy guy has been slacking off! Where are all the new stories?!?!” I have two things to point out: 1) You should seek help if you find yourself asking rhetorical questions out loud, and 2) Yes, I have been delinquent in adding stories for one very good reason – We’re moving!
That’s right – after 8 years in our house, we’re moving on!
This wasn’t the easiest decision. Yes, we had run out of space…yes, the plumbing sucked…yes, the floor tiles kept coming apart…yes, the hot and cold water faucets were switched…yes, the locks had been broken…yes, the yard had completely died (even with gardeners tending to it) and, yes…we lived across the street from a crack house (excuse me, “Unofficial Halfway House.”) But, it was our home.
I will always love that home for sentimental reasons. It’s where GWE and I started our family – we created our boys there, brought them home from the hospital, and I even buried their freshly circumcised schmeckles under the lemon tree in the front yard. (Sorry if you read this while drinking your morning coffee.) It’s where we celebrated birthdays and holidays. It’s where Justin and I locked ourselves in the bathroom for an entire weekend of potty training and where Garrett drove his first car…into the water main. It’s where the Man Cave was constructed…and still remains.
And, yes – it is the house that was broken into by four thieves in the middle of the afternoon while we were at work. But, they were arrested INSIDE the house and we did end up making an extra $25 dollars in prison restitution money – so, that’s a plus!
In an attempt to bring closure to this chapter in our lives, my mother suggested something that she had done whenever she was moving around as a child. She told me that she and her sisters used to write messages to the house on the walls as a “goodbye.” I thought it was a brilliant idea, so we wrote messages to our house as well:
This is what we wrote in Justin’s room.
These notes to the house are self-explanatory!
We are moving on and we’re just now getting settled into our new home. I’m excited about the new memories we will make here and I’m looking forward having enough square footage so that I don’t have to step on Legos in the middle of the night!
I am happy to announce that I’ve been trademarked and have the official copyright on all things “GenXDaddy!” Whoo hoo!!
Last night, I came home from a very, very long day at work. I quickly grabbed dinner, plopped down on the sofa to watch a few moments of a client’s show, and then planned to pass out from exhaustion. During a commercial break, I grabbed my iPad and looked at some Facebook updates. All of a sudden, I saw this on my mother’s page:
I looked at it for a few moments and tried to process what I was looking at. I turned to GWE and said, “I think grandma died….4 hours ago…and no one told me.” She responded with, “What?!?!” as I showed her what I was looking at.
I grabbed my phone and texted my mother with “You awake?” (I didn’t call. It was midnight where she was and I thought she might be in mourning!) This was the following text conversation:
Mom: “Yep. Unfortunately, I can’t sleep.”
Me: “Is grandma ok?”
Mom: “Yep. Why?”
Me: “Saw a weird message on your Facebook page.”
Mom: “About her?”
Me: “Yes. Asking about your ‘late’ mother.”
Mom: “Geez. Looking.”
Me: “It was posted 4 hours ago. Is this like the time my rabbit died you and didn’t tell me for a month?”
Mom: “Oh, brother. Headed to the kitchen to get on my computer.” Pause “OH CRAP! I just answered her.”
Me: “Delete it from your page before people start asking questions!” Pause “Glad I saw that before flowers started showing up at the house!”
Mom: “OMG! I feel like punching daddy until he wakes up to tell him.”
Needless to say, my mother called my grandmother the next morning to tell her what had happened. It turns out that the woman who posted on my mother’s Facebook page had left a phone message for my grandmother last Thanksgiving. Since my grandmother never got around to returning the call, the other person assumed the worst – that she had passed away. (I’ve had people not return my phone calls before. And, maybe I wished that they were dead at the time….but, I never assumed they were dead and then sent their relatives a condolence message on a social media site!!)
My grandmother called me yesterday afternoon laughing hysterically. I told her that for a dead woman who was calling from “the great beyond,” her cell reception was fantastic! She told me that it was cold where she was, but the harp music was nice and the angels seemed friendly. I told her that I’m glad we caught it in time, otherwise my parents would have come home one evening and found a Minyon (10 Jewish people needed for certain prayers) standing in their driveway. We laughed and laughed. (Yes – this is sick.)
It actually did make me wonder – what happens to our “virtual lives” when we pass away? I found two answers. The first is an APP called “If I Die.” According to the site -“Simply install the app on your page, choose three “trustees” (i.e. people who can be relied upon to confirm your sad demise) and record — by text, image, or video — a message that will be published to your feed, upon your death. “ Very creepy!
The other solution is to have a friend post something on your behalf. I like this better! I recently saw an article about two friends who had a plan. When one died (cancer), the other waited a few days and then used the deceased friend’s password to log onto his Facebook page. He then began posting new status updates “from beyond the grave” as the person who just passed away. He did it for a week with per-arranged updates that they had worked out together before his passing. Here is another one: 
In the future, you better made damn sure someone is really, really, really deceased before posting something like that!! Nothing could be stranger than posting a virtual condolence note only to have it responded to with “I AM NOT DEAD YET, ASSHOLE!!”