INDEPENDENCE DAD

Finding independence as a dad can be difficult but there are some small bastions of temporary freedom dad's can explore.  Andrew talks about those places and then some on the latest episode of The NJ Dad Podcast. New episodes every Thursday.  

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To be honest with you, first of all, if you have uh an attractive wife as I do, don't bring her to Home Depot. It's like it's like the the people in a in a foreign land in the in the Amazon. It's like a tribe seeing a human for the first time. These guys are in there, these contractors, they've never they've never seen a woman like this. I don't know when. It seems like they never have. So you bring her in there and it's like they're they're salivating, they're on speakerphone the whole goddamn time. It's either, you know, I don't know why they think it's okay to do FaceTime speaker time when they're buying their their resources for their deals, and then they're distracted because I'm walking in with her. So welcome to the New Jersey Dad Podcast. I am your host, Andrew. I am a dad in New Jersey. I'm not the dad New Jersey. I'm a dad, I'm a guy in a shed, and as you'll get to know me, I am not an expert. I'm just figuring this goddamn thing out as you are, as so many people are, as so many dads are. And I want to just address this very quickly in the intro. If you're joining us thinking this is the fatherless cheat sheet, it is no longer the fatherless cheat sheet. We have switched things up a little bit, and I'll get into that a little bit in the beginning of the show. But what I want you to do is I want you to, I want you to trust me. I want you to hang out, I want you to have a good time. We're gonna laugh a little bit, we're gonna have some fun because it's independence day, baby. So, New Jersey Dad Podcast. Check it out. Welcome back to the NJ Dad Podcast. New Jersey Dad, NJ Dad. I don't know. I don't know what the hell we're gonna call it just yet. We're just figuring stuff out. But what I want to talk to, real quick, I want to speak to, I want to talk to my fatherless cheat cheat listeners. If you're out there and you did listen and you stuck with me and you took it this far, please stick with me more. The show's not changing all that much, but I think our focus is gonna be a little more on the levity of life. Uh you know, some of the some of the same topics, some of the same struggles, and basically we're gonna just navigate suburban fatherhood with a wink and a whiskey. But if if you've been listening and you've been on for the ride, we ended at 40 episodes, which I think is pretty damn great. But I just thought it was time to change things up because life is pretty short, as we talked about in the fatherless cheat sheet a lot. So this New Jersey Dad podcast is gonna be a little more fun, a little more light on its feet, a little more levity, a little more revelry, even though we had a blast with the last podcast. But I want you to stick it out with me. And anyone new joining, think of it as a dad hang. We're just hanging out. Like I said, this is me, this is my shed. You're gonna get to know me pretty well, and I hope you hang out for all that stuff. And uh I'm recording this, I'm recording this on June 16th, which is a very significant day for me. I'm not gonna mention why, but I thought it was important to record today and honor today and make this the first episode on June 16th. Now, the episode itself will come out on July 2nd, which is a Thursday. July 4th is on a Saturday, and as you know, it is America's 250th birthday. Well, goddamn, you're getting old, lady. But I'll tell you what, this is not a political show. I do not talk politics, I do not particularly talk religion, I don't know enough about either to expound upon them in a way that would make any kind of sense or point. Um, so let's just leave it at that. But what I would say is, I know this country does have some problems every once in a while. Everything's a work in progress, but but goddamn, if you can't appreciate what this country has given you and what's given me and my family, my grandpa came over here when he was 14 years old in 1914 from Calabria, Italy, and he made a life for himself and from his family, my mom, and then she was able to build a life and and you know be a a woman in in the 80s in publishing and do well and support a family as a single mother. And this country's given me a lot of great things as well. I did went to college, I played baseball, I'm able to do this and communicate freely and to live in a in a safe a safe place with my family and raise my children as I see fit. And I want, I hope you can do the same as well. And I hope you're in a place and position to do that because, like I said, yeah, yeah, we have some issues. Everybody does, every country does, but goddamn, I do love this country. I love what it's given me and I appreciate it. And what's better than a celebration, than a summer celebration? And what's better than independence, for God's sakes? I know taxes, and it's not exactly clear cut, and some people could do more than others because of benefits and so you know, so socioeconomics. I totally understand all that stuff. We're not we're not dealing with that shit in this show. We're just gonna have fun. I'm sitting in here drinking a whiskey, and we're just gonna have a good time, okay? So we're gonna let some of that heavier stuff go. We're gonna let whoever the fuck deal with those conversations because we're not really gonna delve too deeply into those type of conversations, although we will have some bigger conversations. But for today, we're talking about dad independence. We're talking, we're gonna skew towards the dads in this show. I hope moms don't feel isolated. I want you all to listen. I want you all to hang out, I want you all to see me as a resource of some kind, as a friend, as uh someone who can just shed some light on the the father and male experience. But I'm gonna talk about dad independence today and the lack thereof and how you get it, how you how you can lose it, and all that stuff in all the crevices of all that. I want to tell a very quick story as I get started here. A quick drink. And if you've not listened to the show before, I have two young girls. I don't really talk um I talk about them a lot, but I don't really give too much detail. But two young girls, and when my my youngest, soon after she was born, I went to go visit my sister for her birthday. It was a big milestone birthday, and I went to go visit her in Florida where she lives. And I remember very clearly feeling so conflicted because goddamn, I was so excited to get out of the house, to go. I knew there was a lot of fun, a lot of revelry waiting for me down in Florida. Just just a runway of a good time. Get to the airport, love the airport. I'm having a beer at 7 a.m. at the airport, it's fantastic. There's nothing better than an airport beer. Well, we'll talk about that because there are plenty of really great beers, but that's a one of them. That's a classic beer. Get to the airport, load up, get in a flight, I get myself a great seat. I'm in first class, I'm not bragging, it's not it's it's you know, it's Florida. I'm not flying on a Concord to London or France. And I sit down, I'm happy, I'm excited, and then the door locks. The door of the plane locks, and I go into full-blown panic mode. Quite literally, every shred of excitement I had, enthusiasm for this trip that I had went right away, and panic set in. And I said, I have to get off of this plane. I'm I can't I have to go back to my family. I can't do this. I just can't do this shit. I don't want to. I gotta get out of here. Somehow I calmed myself down, I took a couple deep breaths, and then the flight attendant gave me one of those nods, and I said, All right, give me a double T Dose and OJ. And I from that point I I kind of settled in and calmed down. But there is a a duality to to independence as a father. There is a duality to to what you want, and now the trip turned out great. I wasn't even gone that long. I mean, I think I was gone two days, three days, something like that. But the point is, is that you can feel different ways. You could feel a whole lot of different ways, and I feel a whole lot of different ways all the time. Every day you have conflicting feelings and this and that. And, you know, we're not gonna dwell on those things, on feelings per se. But I was actually quite shocked and taken aback by how I felt uh on that plane uh until the flight attendant brought me that drink. And then I kind of settled in and calmed down because then I'm like, all right, throw a movie on, you're fine, everything's gonna be okay. You know, my my wife is a phenomenal mom. She everything was in good hands. I'm a work, I'm a little bit of a worry wart anyway. But it all worked out just fine. And goddamn, I had a blast down there, and I was happy to get home. I was thrilled to get home. And then when you get home and you go, ah crap, boy, that was fun. I wish I was doing that again. So it's sort of this, this, this table tennis volley of these conflicting feelings constantly. And if you understand what I'm talking about, I hope you're saying it to yourself because I think it's a real, a real true blue thing. I really do. But and half the time I'm home. Sometimes when I'm home, I'll be sort of walking the perimeter of my home, and I I'll feel like I'm on under house arrest and I have an ankle bracelet on my foot, and I'm like, I gotta get the hell out of here. I've just been here too many days in a row. And so, but where do you find that independence? Where do you find that that freedom? And I we can talk about that a little bit right now. I have sort of a a quick top five where dads may find their freedom, may find some independence, and we're gonna start with the with the undisputed goat, the bathroom, the bathroom. Now, I have a hard time with this because for me, in my home, not a large home, two two bathrooms, um, one shower, and it's like trench warfare trying to have some alone time in that space because you know you ever see the the Japanese commuters when they're just like with the broom getting people on the they're running the train system and they're pushing people onto the train, packing people in. You ever see that portrait? Sometimes it feels it feels like that in the house in my home. And the bathroom, I mean, hot commodity. Bathroom is just a hot commodity. You gotta get in there while you can, and you gotta lock that door, and you gotta put like as if there was smoke coming into the bathroom. You gotta put a towel under any crack of light coming in, and you have to try to enjoy your time in there and make it as long as it as you can. Now, I know of some some folks, some people, some men specifically, who are in the bathroom sort of a cartoonish amount of time. I don't do that. I don't sort of, I don't even want to do that. At a certain point, you do what you got to do and then you get the hell out of there. But it is nice to have a little time in there without interruption. Let's go to a different one, a new one. Number two on the top five places to get your independence as a dad, as a man. A parking lot. And this I this could go for anybody. Have we looked in parking lots recently? I walk in a parking lot. Every third car, there's somebody in the damn car on their phone looking down. I don't know if this is a something that started like with COVID because we couldn't go near each other and a car was serviceable for those things. I have no idea, but it's just you, it's a thing. And it's honestly, I do it. I love it. When you can just have you lock the doors, you put the whatever, cold, you know, uh heat or air, whatever season it is, you get on your phone, whatever. Sometimes you go get yourself a snack, pick up a snack or something. What do you like? Who do you like to have fast food-wise? I'm a big chicken nugget guy from McDonald's. Everybody loves the Chick-fil-A. I like it, it's fine. But old, I go old school chicken. If I had my drrothers, a big Mac and a chicken nugget meal. I haven't had that stuff in a long, in a very long time. But it's really good when you do. So you sit there with your with your 10-piece nugget, your giant Diet Coke, and you just take a little time for yourself, and it's really great because you can take a breath. And again, I love my children and I talk about them and that all the time. However, once in a blue, to just really even get yourself 15 minutes of quiet in that car is wonderful. We're gonna move on. Home Depot or Lowe's or whatever, what whatever. I'll go there sometimes, and I've talked about this. I go there sometimes and I just walk the aisles, even if I don't need anything. Usually I do, because you can always use something from those stores. You can absolutely always use some product, something from those stores, and you can go in and figure that out. And to be honest with you, first of all, if you have uh an attractive wife as I do, don't bring her to Home Depot. It's like it's like the the people in a in a foreign land in the in the Amazon. It's like a tribe seeing a human for the first time. These guys are in there, these contractors, they've never seen a woman like this. I don't know when. It seems like they never have. So you bring her in there and it's like they're they're salivating their own speakerphone the whole goddamn time. There, it's either, you know, I don't know why they think it's okay to do FaceTime speaker time when they're buying their their resources for their deals, and then they're distracted because I'm walking in with her. So I gotta like keep her out of there. I gotta wrap her up, put her in a blanket or something, just whatever. So, Home Depot. Okay, this is an obvious one, the bar. You know, you go to you go to a dive bar or your town bar, I would say, which I have a town bar, I have a great town bar. It's not it's not divey, it's a nice place, you know. And I go there and it's there's just a there's 15 dudes who all look tired, who all look like we need to get hosed down, and they're just sitting at the bar, you know, looking at their phones. But that's another place. You just get a little a little quiet, a little independence, a little time to yourself. Because honestly, a lot of this stuff that I'm talking about with the independence or whatever, it's not it's not about running from your family. Well, sometimes it is, but it's more about just making sure you put that you put that life jacket on first. You got to square yourself away so you don't lose your absolute shit, you know, when two little choochas come to the door knocking on the door at six o'clock during dinner time, and then one of your dogs who's already hyperactive is losing her shit, losing her shit, and then finally, five minutes later, these kids knock again, the dog loses their shit, and I have to go to the door and go, guys, what do you fucking want? So you turn into you turn into an animal, and what do they want? And they look, they look at you, mouth agape, and go, oh, if it's a bad time, what do you what do you think? Yeah, it's a bad fucking time. Say what you have to say. I you got me to open the door. If you had the stones to come up here and stand there for 10 minutes, tell me what you want. If we want to wash the windows, meanwhile, I gotta hose the porch off because he pissed himself, I think, through his sweatpants. No, I don't need your window washing. I hired these two kids last year to do a car detail. They charged me, I don't even want to tell, it's embarrassing how much these guys charged me. They did there was crumbs everywhere. I said, This is not a detail. You guys barely cleaned the damn car. I said, shame on me. Get out of here. So, and then I felt bad. Not for those kids last year, but these kids who were all that the this just happened, to be honest with you. My point is that you gotta get yourself right because you'll lose your shit on two 13-year-olds who you probably know their parents, and I'm gonna have to answer for that at a barbecue down the road. But anyway, I digress. Okay. Uh though, last one, last place to remain independent. Now, this is an interesting one. This is a little outside of the box, to be honest with you. Maybe you don't do this. I don't know. Cook, I cook. The kitchen, I know. Things have changed. I wish we were mad men times. It's not. The kitchen. I close the dog gate or the kid gate, whatever you want to call it. Close it, I put my music on, I pour a drink, and I make a meal. And everybody could stay away from me. I love them. I look at them, whatever, because the kitchen's right there. I do that, and that's my space. That's my little, it's a small, it's a small kitchen. It'll be bigger someday, maybe. I don't know. I get miracles worked in that kitchen. So that's that's a bastion of independence for me, even though it's yay big, and it's still troffed off. I'm still in the house. But you have a little bit of your time. So we're talking about these places where we're always, I mean, we're gonna go over it. The car, you're boxed in, the Home Depot, big box, you're boxed in. They literally call it a big box, the kitchen, you're boxed in, the bathroom, forget it. That's locked. So it's it's sort of independence within a certain thing. But you know what? The independence that I used to have, yeah, it was great. My God, I had some good times. Absolutely. And once it blew, I'll go out with my best friend and we'll have a time. We'll tie one on. It's good, and it's it's you feel a little bit like your old self. But at the end of the day, your family is number one. And that's what I sort of that's sort of my North Star. And you just got to carve out a little time for yourself, sort of. Uh, honorable mentions of you know, the gym. Love the gym, love going there. Uh, I feel a little old sometimes to the gym. Work, maybe, I don't know. It depends on what you do. Um, but you can have a little independence at work, certainly in the commute, take your time getting home. Sometimes get that little bit later train and things like that. But what I would say is however you can carve out that time for yourself, so you just sort of have that a little bit better outlook on things. You have that little bit of that little little side grin. You just feel a little bit better because it it all it all funnels out to everybody. What I would say is this when you can protect those pockets of freedom for yourself, if possible. Me, I have this great shed studio, and uh you'll see you'll see it in my solo episodes, you'll see it when I have guests back here, when someone's brave enough to come back to my shed. And this is a great space for me. I've got to put AC in here or mini split or whatever. If anybody knows anybody, let me know. But protect those pockets of space for yourself if you can. Everything feeds into everything else, as you know. But what I would say is this New Jersey Dad Podcast. Like, subscribe, come and see me again. The solos are gonna be shorter, they're gonna be leaner, lighter on their feet. We're gonna have a lot of fun. We're gonna have guests. We're gonna talk about stuff that we're gonna talk about those pebbles in your shoe, we're gonna talk about the funny things, the awkward things. I know there are a million different places out there that you can go for your entertainment, but I hope you can find a way to connect with me and enjoy what I'm saying, what I'm doing, because I want to start something fun here, a continuation of the last podcast of the fatherless cheat sheet, which I love dearly, but it was time to move on. So I hope you stick around. I hope you enjoyed it. This has been the New Jersey Dad Podcast. I'm Andrew, and I hope to see you soon. All right.