Dadchester

Disclaimer: I am a dad living in Westchester, New York. The names of all people, but not all places, have been changed to protect the innocent and me from the glares of my neighbors who are definitely not reading this blog. Avocados are water in our household. When the faucets aren't working because I forget to press the button that closes the garage door and the pipes freeze (this happened this winter when it was 6 degrees), we can just subsist on avocado. At least that's true if you talk to the newest member of our family. She's starting solids, which means she's throwing food at her face like a painter working through all her personal trauma on a canvas. She's Jackson Pollack with a size 2 diaper. You can't speak to her because she doesn't speak, barely babbles, which worries my wife from a development standpoint. "Ga. Ga," she says, which seems like enough to me. Apparently, there's all these milestones that we're supposed to be watchin...

Disclaimer: I am a dad living in Westchester, New York. The names of all people, but not all places, have  been changed to protect the innocent and me from the glares of my neighbors who are definitely not reading this blog.  The cardboard box sits on the stone path that leads to our house. It is large, upright, and mocking me with its bizarre commonness. From my view through the bay window, I see the box has a picture on it. Unfortunately, I can't quite make out what the picture is without my glasses, so I grab my spectacles off my copy of John Cheever's short stories on the bookshelf. Then I turn on the light dangling above the steps leading to our door. Am I seeing that right? Is the picture on the box a car seat? Yup. There's definitely a child, no older than four, sitting in an uncomfortable strap laden seat.  There were no car seats when I was growing up. Mom and Dad just put us in the van and hoped for the best. That's a lie, but I don't have the bandwidth to...

Disclaimer: I am a dad living in Westchester, New York. The names of all people, but not all places, have been changed to protect the innocent and me from the glares of my neighbors who are definitely not reading this blog. Greg Miller smokes cigars in a lawn chair on Saturday mornings. I don't know what his job is, something in the city, something that allows him to slow dance to music in the living room with his wife like he's character in a period piece about the 1950s. If I had to guess, and I don't, but I will, I think he probably works somewhere down on Wall Street. Takes the Metro North in the morning from Greenwich, even though he could take the Port Chester train, reads the New York Times on his way there, works, and then returns just as the sun falls in the sky.  Greg and Anne Miller have been together for 30 years. They have a child who went to Cornell because he couldn't get into Dartmouth, and they drive a Tesla and have one of those stickers that says that...

Disclaimer: I am a dad living in Westchester, New York. The names of all people, but not all places, have been changed to protect the innocent and me from the glares of my neighbors who are definitely not reading this blog. The space beneath my porch is a graveyard for Christmas trees. Every year since I moved back to Westchester from New York City, no matter how diligent I am about putting the corpse of Christmas past at the end of my driveway, somehow it never gets taken. The wind blows it away, or the snow buries it, and then one March day, when the garbage men are no longer collecting trees, or they are, and I'm just too self conscious to put the evergreen out where my neighbors can see it, I drag it under the porch.  I don't remember this being a problem for my parents. In my youth, our family's trees were purchased at Westchester Greenhouses and Farm, put up the week after Thanksgiving, and brought down the day after New Years. Of course, if this were an issue for my ...

Disclaimer: I am a dad living in Westchester, New York. The names of all people, but not all places, have  been changed to protect the innocent and me from the glares of my neighbors who are definitely not reading this blog.  It's May, and our neighbors hate the dandelions claiming squatter's right next to the fire hydrant on the edge of our lawn. Our being the operative word here. Our meaning the lawn belongs to my wife, my three children, and me. Ours and not the Millers' whose lawn is three doors down,  across the street, and has a "hate has no place here" sign. I know this fact because Greg and Anne tell me on Sundays when they're up eight in the morning to walk Molly, their golden doodle, who is suffering from incontinence and continuously uses our lawn as his open air toilet. I just came out to get the New York Times. Yes, I still order a paper copy.  The thing about Anne and Greg is that they don't say it out loud. That would not be nice. That would...