![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/youhavetofuckingeat.jpg\")
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Today, I sent my kids to bed without having eaten anything.\u00a0 I gave them dinner and they flat out refused to even try a single bite of it, despite having tried it the night prior and finding it somewhat satisfactory to where I didn\u2019t feel like a complete failure of a parent.\u00a0 But today, they took one look at the food presented to them, voiced their displeasure, and refused to eat it.<\/span><\/p>\n So I cleaned it up, and they didn\u2019t eat a thing for the remainder of their day.\u00a0 #1 started trolling around in the kitchen phishing for something to eat, and told me she was hungry, but I calmly explained to her that she did not eat dinner when it was presented to her, that this was a tough lesson to not disrespect the food that I do present to her, even with possible incentives of dessert if they eat well enough.<\/span><\/p>\n It kills my soul to deny them food when they\u2019re hungry, but at the same time, I think about the maddening frustration I feel when they turn their noses up at the meals I make for them like defiant little shits.\u00a0 So today I decided to stay strong and stick with my decision, and they went to bed, probably hungry.<\/span><\/p>\n Despite the fact that mythical wife told me to not get so stressed about food refusal, it\u2019s easy for her to say considering I do the vast majority of cooking for the kids, and it\u2019s hard to not take it personally being someone who puts a lot of effort into trying to provide homemade meals for my children, and also abhors the idea of wasting food.\u00a0 It frustrates me tremendously, and I know this is something that many parents go through otherwise there wouldn\u2019t be books like the above, but it still climbs the ranks of shit my kids do to drive me crazy.<\/span><\/p>\n But it\u2019s not just food defiance lately that\u2019s been frustrating daily, it\u2019s just the defiance in general that sometimes gets me upset when it compounds repeatedly throughout a day.\u00a0 I\u2019m already overworked and handle the lion\u2019s share of parenting, and when things get to a point where I could really use a timeout but can\u2019t because I\u2019m on double duty because I don\u2019t have enough help, my days tend to go to ruin and my head goes into some dark places sometimes.<\/span><\/p>\n It goes without saying that I could use a break, but circumstances haven\u2019t necessarily made such a possibility, so I just exist here festering and getting worse when things go poorly.\u00a0 My fuses get shorter, and I lose my cool faster and I just want a break but it feels like everyone else around me seems to get them except for me, and I feel like I\u2019m taken for granted again and feeling shitty about it.<\/span><\/p>\n Like I\u2019m so locked into being in dad mode, that I feel like the me that existed before kids is completely dead, or at least dormant to the point of not knowing how to bring it back.\u00a0 Whenever I do have a little bit of time to not be a dad, it\u2019s always not enough time to where I can deprogram myself from being concerned about doing dad things, and I just end up squandering it and know I squandered it, which propagates the downward spiral of falling back into states of depression.<\/span><\/p>\n But seriously, if I were suddenly able to have a stretch where I didn\u2019t have to worry about my kids, worry about my house descending further into chaos, worry about their meals, their care or anything else, I don\u2019t know the fuck I\u2019d do.\u00a0 I have no hobbies anymore, I have no interest in video games, reading books is harder for me to do these days because I\u2019m in such a general sleep deficit that no matter how interesting a book is, I still get tired by the act of it that I can\u2019t really accomplish any productive reading anymore.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Traveling is expensive and I\u2019m always too cognizant of bills and expenses that I just don\u2019t want to go into debt for just my own indulgences.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to pretend to be a foodie again because I\u2019m well past 40 now, and eating anything makes me feel like I\u2019m gaining 8 lbs a meal and that I\u2019ll look bad in my clothes.<\/span><\/p>\n So basically all I ever do with any free time is watch television or write in a brog nobody on earth reads because I don\u2019t have the time to do anything more substantial in my life right now, and I\u2019m basically in the mother of hold patterns until my kids are old enough to be self-sufficient and I\u2019m trying my hardest on a regular basis to not keep falling into pits of despair.<\/span><\/p>\n Or maybe I\u2019ve just had a bad day.\u00a0 Either way, I could use a break, a real one, but I don\u2019t see that happening any time soon, either.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today, I sent my kids to bed without having eaten anything.\u00a0 I gave them dinner and they flat out refused to even try a single bite of it, despite having tried it the night prior and finding it somewhat satisfactory to where I didn\u2019t feel like a complete failure of a parent.\u00a0 But today, they … Continue reading Dad Brog (#132): Book title says it all<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49958,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49956\/revisions\/49958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}