Two wildly divergent items to mention today. The first is a Washingtonpost.com chat by the paper's resident humorist, Gene Weingarten. (Thanks to RebelGodmother for the link) In addition to penning a weekly humor column, Gene is known for discovering Dave Barry and for once trying to score leeches from me (OK, Gene is not known for trying to score leeches from me. But he nonetheless asked me about leech dealers. But that is another story.)

At any rate, he begins his chat thusly:

I have made an important decision about my life. I am going to become a stay-at-home Dad. I resisted this for the twenty-odd years in which my children were minors, but now that they are adults, it makes all the sense in the world:

1. Chicks dig it. Revealing you are a stay-at-home dad to a woman is like revealing you are a puppy breeder, a pediatrician, or a sexual-harassment plaintiff's lawyer. Serious benefit of the doubt.

2. It will not be a lie! I will be a dad, and I will be at home. The fact that I do not happen to have children to care for is immaterial.

3. Job stress is minimal.

Okay, just wanted to share that.

The other item worth pointing out is this bit from the San Jose Mercury News (reg. required) on Armin Brott, a.k.a. Mr. Dad. This is interesting to me because I don't think I've ever seen a profile of Brott in the years I've been reading about fathers. Brott occupies an interesting space: he is the only real non-academic authority on fatherhood, so reading about his story puts some things into perspective.

Two parts of the story are worth mentioning. One is Brott's opinion that things have changed for dads over time, but the change has been modest: "'I see a change, a perceptible change from 15 years ago when I started doing this. But not as much as I'd like.'" And the author of the story throws in this line: "Stay-at-home dads are no longer considered suitable for a carnival freak show." Ummm ... kind of strong language, but I think it's a compliment, so I'll take it.

Upcoming: I've finally finished If You've Raised Kids, You Can Manage Anything, by Ann Crittenden. I simply don't have the time to get my thoughts in order enough for a review today, but I'll work on getting it out later this week.