"Mean Dad"

I am now known as the “mean Dad” since I showed no mercy to my daughter as she was attempting to complete a project for school. I saw her struggling with the project and asked a few poignant questions such as “when was this assigned?” The response was “Last Friday,” and once I heard that I didn’t exhibit any mercy. My daughter is a wonderful student but she has this habit of putting things off to the last minute in spite of being asked earlier if she had any homework assigned. This was the case last weekend and we were assured there wasn’t any homework. I wanted to teach my daughter a lesson so I told her she had a certain amount of time to complete the project and if she didn’t then she would have to hand it in as incomplete. My wife felt bad for our daughter and did help her with the project so my daughter did get the project done so now I am the “mean Dad”.

My wife couldn’t sit idly by as my daughter struggled so she said that this is the last time she would be helping. I am sure that won’t be the case but it sounded good. I stood by my principles and didn’t help. My daughter may have called me the “mean Dad” but she did say it with a smile on her face. It wasn’t my intention to be mean I just wanted to exhibit to her that there are consequences for all of our actions (as I know firsthand!) and one of those consequences would have been handing in the project incomplete but with my wife’s assistance the project did get finished and all was well.

This morning my daughter wasn’t feeling well once again and was complaining of a sore throat. She did have a fever and her glands seemed normal so it was my suggestion to have her go in and hand in the project and if she didn’t feel well then come home. It was communicated to the parents early in the school year that the school gets paid based on attendance and if at all possible to have the children make it to school for attendance and if there were any doctor’s appointments or other appointments to have them scheduled after roll was taken. I wasn’t sure if my wife was going to make a doctor’s appointment for our daughter so I thought it would be best if she went in this morning. She did make it in but didn’t last long as my wife received a telephone call from the school’s nurse informing us our daughter did not feel well.

She still didn’t have a fever and I suspect she has been fighting something over the past few days and has been exhausted both mentally and physically. She needed another “mental” health day where she could do basically nothing all day long. My daughter does illustrate many similar characteristics to me such as not being able to sleep during the day. I thought she may want to sleep during the day but said she just couldn’t. I do remember during my sentence not wanting and not being able to sleep during the day when most of the other inmates were sleeping. I can’t exactly put my finger on it but I suspect it has something to do with trying to be different from everyone else during that time which wasn’t a very good reason and part of my many character defects. Anyhow my daughter didn’t want to sleep so she spent most of the day reading in her bed.

This morning I did make my way to the gym after the much needed day off. I have officially changed the way in which I work out since returning from my sentence. I am concentrating on running and strengthening my core. I spend a good portion of the workout doing core exercises and I have added non-weight bearing exercises such as elevated push-ups on a Swiss Ball and chin-ups. I do believe these give a very good strength workout and one day during the week I do some dumbbell exercises as well. I like this routine and it does help my running. I must say that my strength has decreased in terms of the amount of overall weight I can lift but my endurance has increased which is what my goal is so I guess I am doing something correctly.

The rest of the day I basically hung out with my daughter as my wife had to run a few errands. I have flexibility in my position where I have enough work to do at home and with the project I am working on I can stay home for several days. I did find out that the company that was supposed to hire my wife won’t be hiring my wife due to economic conditions. This was a bit of shock since we were told a few weeks ago that it was basically a “done deal” but I guess things had changed since that time. Another interesting factor about this is I am doing a fair amount of business with this particular company. I am not a spiteful person and wouldn’t pull our business based on this because that is not who I am. I understand market conditions and if the company is providing me with the best terms and prices I won’t revert to revenge to get back at them. I don’t see the purpose and I do believe in treating people how I would want to be treated which does not involve revenge.