Excited father-to-be

Months have passed since my last entry. To get you caught up, my bride and I are expecting a wee one next month. That's about all that's happened. I honestly haven't had a great deal to write about. Preparations for the arrival of our bundle of joy and poop are the subject matter for stultifying "Mommy blogs," not a blog about nothing, such as this one, and I try not to use this as a log of the mundane minutiae and inconsequential happenings of day-to-day life. Sure, I'm excited, but so is every father-to-be, and I see no point in blogging about it when there are millions of other I'm-gonna-be-a-daddy blogs out there waiting to turn your brain to sludge. If you want sentimental drivel about the excitement of becoming a dad, change your tampon and find another goddamned blog. We'll have none of that here.

The excitement I will share with you, however, is the excitement about my bride choosing to leave her job with a spoiled rich family and stay at home to care for our baby and manage the household. I am no longer troubled by financial worries, due to our disciplined efforts and success at eliminating all our debts and even saving up a bit as well. We will be in a position such that my bride can be a lazy housewife, just as I've wanted. And thanks to modern technology, she can enjoy far greater free time than the put-upon housewives of our parents' generation.

I look back on my mother's stint as a housewife with pity. She took me along to the food-jobber, where I would run amok and knock things off of shelves. She went through the bank drive-through at least once or twice a week, and picked up my father's stiffly starched shirts from a professional launderer once a week. Then there was always the occasional trip to the post office to procure stamps so that she could mail out bill payments. And now and then, she suffered through taking me shopping for clothes and shoes. While housewifery hasn't exactly become a carefree existence, today's housewife has technology on her side to eliminate the hassle of scurrying about town. My mother probably would have sold me to gypsies in exchange for the advantages we have today.

We have already relieved ourselves of our most-loathed chore: grocery shopping. Our supermarket offers a fee-based curbside pickup program, whereby a shopper may order groceries online and then park outside the store and summon an employee to bring the entire order to the vehicle and load everything. The shopper needn't set foot outside the comfort of her vehicle; she merely swipes her payment card on a mobile device. Hence, a precious hour of time is saved, and a mother needn't push a screaming infant around a store while contemplating dunking him in the live lobster tank.

The only time I set foot in a bank anymore is to convert rolled coins into paper bills, because I refuse to pay Coinstar's exorbitant 9% fee to count my coins for me. Any checks that come to me are deposited via my iPhone. Most of our household bills are paid through our bank's website, and the occasional bill that necessitates a check can be sent from my office mailroom. Checks, of course, are ordered online and delivered to me. Ditto for postage stamps if I don't want to abuse the mailroom.

Non-iron shirts have relegated the iron and ironing board to gather dust in the linen closet, and we make sure every article of clothing we buy that will be worn often is machine washable. No trips to a dry cleaner for us.

No longer must one pack up the rugrat and truck over to Target for diapers when Target offers free shipping on everything. Keep an eye on your supply, order in a timely manner, and you won't be caught with your diapers down.

Clothing and shoes of all colors and sizes can be viewed on an iPad while your child plays on the floor instead of shuffled through on a department store rack while your child kicks and screams on the floor. Generous free shipping policies enable a mother to buy different sizes, pick the one that fits, and send back the others. And for us, there's no need to truck them over to a UPS store; my office has its own UPS dropbox.

While she'll still have to venture out now and then for necessities, such as doctor visits and medicine for a sick child, I am excited that for the most part, my bride will have time to relax, read, take naps, watch movies, and take care of herself.