I Had It So Much Easier

I didn't get around to blogging days three and four. But I guess that's part of the experience of single fatherhood. I could take the time to do it, but I figured I'd jot down my thoughts on the week as a whole and get to packing for my trip. Enjoy!

This is the second time I've done the week on my own, and it's been a good experience. These four day forays are (hopefully) the closest I'll ever get to experiencing single parenthood, and the best chance for me to understand what the single parent's life is like.

Let's be honest, though. What I went through in these four days is nothing like what a single parent experiences. Here's a very short list of why:

• Four days is hardly enough to have the full experience.
• Janelle planned the meals and did the grocery shopping before she left. I just had to cook them. That means 60% of the effort of the meals was taken care of for me.
• I would be surprised if the majority of single parents didn't make less money than me. I could be wrong about that. But I work at the Cleveland Clinic, have flexible hours, good pay, great health benefits--I don't worry about a lot of things I would worry about if I was still fighting to get more than 36 hours a week a Pizza Hut just so I could qualify for a health plan that doesn't even compare.
• Also work related, sitting in front of a computer all day is a lot less stressful than standing next to a 400 degree oven and pushing pizzas through as fast I can, or inhaling steam from opening and closing the dishwasher.
• I had cheap daycare.
• Most significantly, Joules doesn't consider herself a child of a single parent. She knows Janelle is coming back, and she's looking forward to it. My single parenthood is, to her, the anomaly, not the rule.

But a few things have happened that I think have given me a little bit of insight into what single parents face. Some of the things that never really occurred to me until I had to try it:

1. Stay-at-home-moms have it easy compared to single moms. Yes, I understand that's probably a loaded and potentially offensive statement, but I really believe it.
2. Everything crisis is amplified as a single parent. When you realize at 8:15 at night that you're out of milk, the stay-at-home parent can either go to the store or send the spouse. There's still someone to put the kid to bed. The single parent either loads the kid in the car and goes to the store in the middle of bedtime, or goes without milk until the next day.
3. Striking the balance of financial prudence and convenience gets harder. Using the milk example again, I could have picked up milk at the CVS next to the hardware store and paid more money for it, or I could have made an additional stop at the grocery store. Sure, all parents face this kind of dilemma, but the single parent rarely has the option of procrastinating until a trip can be made without the kid.
4. I'm very lucky to be married to a woman who will let me nap or decompress after work if I feel I need to. In turn, if she's had a rough day at home with Joules, I'm more than happy to take over and let her decompress. The single parent doesn't get to decompress. Ever.

So, to modify the sage words of the time traveling great ones, "Be excellent to single parents." They don't need pity, or constant charity, but a chance to decompress every now and again.

A little milk wouldn't hurt either.