Why I hate Pinterest

Diet is important in our house.  It's probably because my wife and I both grew up as "the fat kid".  I think we're both a bit petrified that Thing 1 and/or Thing 2 might have to go through that growing up. We take it pretty seriously.  We even fired Thing 1's first daycare provider for taking him to McDonald's without asking. Seriously.

We also have a lot of dietary restrictions around here.  The kids can't have dairy, the adults don't eat gluten, my wife doesn't eat meat.  We don't use refined sugar or eat processed food.  It means I pretty much have to make everything from scratch. It's a pain in the ass really, eating healthy and all that.  It leads to spending way too much of my time in the kitchen. And just like I have no natural athletic ability, I also have no natural cooking ability. If I don't have a recipe, I'm up a creek without the proverbial paddle.

Which brings me to Pinterest.  Pinterest has every recipe imaginable, and a few you wish had never been thought of.  And my wife loves the damn app.  If I make the mistake of asking her what she wants for dinner this week, I wake up the next morning to 47 new pins with such meals as Vegan Chicken-less Tofu Noodle Soup and Vegan Moroccan "Meatballs".  Some of which have 47 frigging ingredients.  Who has time for that shit??  I've made cauliflower "popcorn" and vegan "bacon" out of portobello mushrooms.  I kid you not.  Just last week my wife read somewhere that the Flintstones chewable vitamins that we give to Thing 1 cause cancer, so I  woke up to pin for homemade gummy vitamins.  Did I make them? Of course I did.   Luckily, the kids are still at the gullible stage when they'll eat anything if you tell them it's candy or a cookie or a pancake.  Beet or spinach pancakes?  More please, Daddy!  We eat so healthy that if I ask Thing 2 if she wants a snack, she heads to the cupboard and hands me a can of chickpeas.  Chip of the old block, that one.  These kids are going to be really pissed off when they find out what real candy tastes like.

So just because someone took the time to post a recipe on there, it does not mean it actually tastes good.  Even if the author puts "Amazing" or "Delicious" in the title.  I've made countless dinners where not even the dogs came around for a taste.  What happens to those dinners?  They get put in those aluminum trays and frozen for a year until I finally throw them out blaming freezer burn and not the fact that it was crap to begin with.

In case you're not familiar, I'll give you a bit of a description on how a Pinterest recipe works.  First, the person writes a long diatribe on how good and easy the recipe is, including about 47 pictures of the dish at different angles, then finally gets around to posting the damn recipe way down at the bottom.  Oh and there's always a pop up ad as you're scrolling down that stops you midway asking you if you want to subscribe, of which you have to search for the little black X to close it.  Now I'm perfectly aware of  the irony of bitching about other peoples' long blog posts in my own blog, but you didn't come here to get a recipe as two kids are whining at your legs saying they were hungry, did you?

Also, never believe the prep time and cooking time calculations.  If it says prep time is 15 minutes, it's at least triple that.  Fifteen minutes if you employ a sous chef maybe or spent 47 minutes cutting everything up the night before.  Oh and if the kids want to help make it?  You may as well forget about everything else you had planned to do that afternoon.

It's 8:30 am, I better get cracking on dinner...

Today's post was brought to you by the number 47.

Intro to My SAHD Existence

Disclaimer: Being a Stay-at-home-Dad (SAHD for the purposes of this blog) is the best and most fulfilling job I've ever had (Mind you I worked in accounting for 11 years, so the bar wasn't set very high).   The hours are brutal and pay really sucks, but the benefits are pretty sweet. Having said this, my life is now filled with some pretty hilarious, ridiculous, and the downright bizarre moments.  

As this is my first post, I should give a little background.  I quit my job to stay at home with our two kids back in September 2014.  At the time, my son (Thing 1) was barely 2 and my daughter (Thing 2) was 4 months. Not that I thought it would be a cakewalk, but I did think it would be less stressful than being a credit manager, of which my career had dead-ended at. Now, the most stressful thing I have to worry about is what the hell I'm going to feed everyone for dinner...

Before I began this endeavour a year and a half ago, I had read that more and more dads were choosing to do the same.  I thought, great, I'll make the leap and easily find like-minded dads who've done the same.  Well, not so much. 

So far, I've met one other guy on parental leave. The rest?  All women. ALL OF THEM.

For the most part , outings with the kids leave me with the feeling like I'm intruding on Uterus-only territory.  If you've seen any meme's about stay-at-home-dads, I'm telling you now, no matter how ridiculous they seem, they're all freaking true.  

Like this one:

See the one there with the Predator at the park?  That's me apparently. I've brought the kids to the park many a time where the moms/caregivers immediately start talking in hushed tones as soon as we arrive.  Huddling closer to each other, glancing over their shoulders, making sure I'm at a safe distance from them and there kids.  Look, I already have two kids under 4.  Do you really think I'd want one of yours too? Also, I'm wearing a wedding ring.  I have all the crazy I need in my life.

So the other day, I took Thing 2 her little story and song group at the local library.  It's for 2's and 3's and she loves it.  So we were the first ones in the room and I took a spot along one of the walls and sat down on the floor.  Now it's a small room and there's about 12 or so adults and a ton of kids.  So not a lot of room to share.  Did I mention I was the only male over the age of 3? Well, I am.  So anyway, the next six women that come into the class with their kids cram themselves shoulder to shoulder as far away from me as possible as if I'm a ripe diaper.  It's like junior high all over again I tell you.  Eventually, the room fills up and some older caregiver ladies sit next to me and I feel a little less awkward in the room.  At least my daughter enjoys herself.

Oh that's not all for this excursion.  So then they brought out the big parachute in the open room next door after the class.  You know the kind where everyone grabs a handle and makes it blow up and down while the kids run under giggling and screaming?  Thing 2 was off playing and suddenly decides she wants to partake.  So I go over and grab a handle.  The lady next to me immediately moves away and grabs a different one.  I seriously smelled a pit on one of the parachute upswings to see if I was a little rank or something.  I wasn't.

Welcome to my SAHD existence.