Thus we are led to the next logical question, what is the natural predator of the stay-at-home Dad? Is it a child with chickenpox? Is it a missing television remote that his child habitually steals and puts in odd places such as gum boots or kitchen garbage bins? Is it even his wife's credit card bill? (I'm going to pay for that one later...) The answer to these questions, as terrifying as they are, is no.
The true natural predator of the stay-at-home Dad is Rob from Better Homes & Gardens.
Living in a home built in the mid-1980's means that seemingly every day we are cataloguing and prioritising projects that need to be completed in order to keep the house from crumbling into the earth from whence it came. It was during one of these sessions that this Suburban Aussie Dad happened to be watching an episode of Better Homes & Gardens on the television and enjoying one of three cold beverages (because, and I'll let you in on a secret here: nothing is worse than being hung over when it's your turn to get up early with your child!) and on comes Rob with a segment of '20 Minute DIY jobs that anybody can do and save a bundle of cash'. One of these jobs happened to be re-sealing a bathroom.
So Rob is running through a series of questions with the audience: 'Is the sealant in your bathroom dry and cracked?' Check. 'Is the sealant in your bathroom moldy?' Check. 'Is the sealant in your bathroom separating from your baths, showers, and sinks?' Check, check, and check. And segment continues. Rob runs a Stanley knife under one edge of the sealant in the demonstration bathroom, grabs the end between his fingers, gives it a pull, and up it comes in one nice big 'easy-peasy' strip. Then he grabs his tube of sealant and his caulking gun, shows a 2 second clip of himself applying the new sealant then 'simply wiping off the excess with a finger' and 'Job's done'.
Then go-to-work Mum turns to stay-at-home Dad and says 'That looks easy. We need that done in our bathroom. That'll give you a project tomorrow.' And by now into my third and final lager for the evening I agreed.
A trip to the hardware store the next day allowed me to get a tube of fast drying, white coloured bathroom sealant and some cleaning solvent for cleaning up the old sealant. So my son and I got home, watched yet another Wiggles DVD and then he was off to bed for a nap. It was during this usual three hour nap time that I decided I would do my twenty minute project. I had a bath, vanity, and shower to seal and got hooked into it.
The first indication of an encroaching predator was when my thirty year old sealant did not want come zipping off the bath as easily as Rob's. My ears started to twitch. As a result, I had to get a razor blade and use it and a Stanley knife on the sealant to bring up the sealant teeny-tiny piece by teeny-tiny piece. By the time I got the sealant up on the bath and the vanity an hour had passed and I was beginning to cautiously sniff the air, definitely sensing a threatening presence.
The next step in this simple DIY project was to apply the new layer of sealant. On Better Homes & Gardens, the amazing Rob simply squeezed out a bead of sealant, wiped his finger along the joint and that was it. So, I started applying my bead of sealant, which was reasonably easy, with the hardest part being getting the sealant into the corners and following the curves of the bathtub. However, it was the next step that proved to be the most difficult. Upon wiping my finger along the joint to clean up the excess I discovered that what actually happened was the excess was smeared up to fifteen millimetres up both sides of the joint, creating a huge unattractive mess. Stay-at-home Dad was going to have big trouble with go-to-work Mum if this wasn't fixed before home-time.
This meant a bucket of warm water and a cloth to erase the excess excess. By the time I had finished running along both sides of the joints all along the bath and vanity with my wet cloth, my three hours was up and my son was starting to shout and demand another bottle of formula and yet another Wiggles DVD. But what about the shower? That's right. My twenty minute easy-peasy DIY job had taken me three hours and the job was only two-thirds complete. By this stage my ears were standing straight up, I was sniffing the air hungrily, my head was twisting around frantically, and I was fighting an overwhelming urge to urinate. However, my fight-or-flight instinct kicked in and I devised a cunning plan: stay-at-home Dad told go-to-work Mum that in his wisdom he'd decided to leave the shower until the following day as although the instructions on the sealant said it would be dry in two hours, he wanted to give it at least twenty four hours to make sure.
During nap time the following day, I decided to attack the shower. It began much the same as the bath: the old sealant refused to come up easily, or in the case of the shower, it refused to come up at all. The only course of action available was to take up a hammer and chisel and very gently, very carefully tap, tap, tap at the old sealant to remove it. Three cracked tiles later I had removed all the old sealant. Following this I had the same problems as I'd had with the bath and the vanity: smearing the sealant up both sides of the joint and having to spend a ridiculous amount of time cleaning it up with warm water and a cloth. Two hours later, the shower was finished. My twenty minute DIY easy-peasy job ended up taking me five hours over two days.
From this it can be seen that the natural predator of the stay-at-home Dad is indeed Rob, from Better Homes & Gardens. Now every time that show comes on the television my ears start to involuntarily twitch, my nose starts sniffing the air, and I have an unnervingly strong urge to urinate...
