I'm ready for Oakton. The convention kicks off in just a couple of days, and it reminded me of a piece I wrote about a year ago, as I prepared to attend my second At-Home Dad Convention. As it turned out, I couldn't sell the story -- my first-person views on the event aren't terribly marketable, apparently. But I thought I'd share it with you. It's been sitting on my laptop for some time, and now, here it is ...

Humorist Dave Barry once warned that giving men responsibility for housework was a recipe for disaster. "The trouble is that men, over the years, have developed an inflated notion of the importance of everything they do, so that before long they would turn housework into just as much of a charade as business is now," he wrote. "They would hire secretaries and buy computers and fly off to housework conferences in Bermuda, but they'd never clean anything."

When I heard of the National At-Home Dad Convention, I felt a certain inescapable curiosity. I was a proud at-home father, who spent the days shuttling my toddler from coffeeshop to playground to swimming pool. The idea that my peers absolutely required a weekend of keynote speakers and breakout sessions to keep current with the latest fathering trends struck me as inherently silly. I had to see it for myself.

Click here to read the rest.

Also: I'd encourage you not to watch TV tonight. Wife Swap is apparently featuring an at-home dad (not one of the swappers), and I fear -- as I always fear with television -- that it will be ugly. Not only will I be keeping the tube off, I'll be covering my eyes, too, to be extra safe.