Bad blogger! No link love for you!!! I’ve been hiding. You know you’ve neglected your blog if several WordPress updates have been released since your last post.

I have some good news to share. Life circumstances and the random acts of others in the blogosphere have brought me out of hiding. There are some new and exciting things on the horizon for 21st Century Dad. Just wait. Hang out. Add me to your RSS feed reader and you won’t miss a beat.

Despite my inactivity, I’ve been featured on a couple of blogs.

Beth at “Open Seven Days A Week. Closed Sundays” decided that I would be a good single dad to profile for Single Parents Day. Don’t let the pretty face and blonde hair fool you. She actually knows what she’s talking about and she is a gifted writer. This is a long-overdue shout-out. She did her little write-up about me back in March! Read all about it.

Once your blog gains some traction, you become interconnected with other bloggers. Through this interconnection, Chris Goforth tracked me down. He’s a Real Authentic Man. I am so tapped out for time to engage in yet another social networking site. I am ashamed to admit that I haven’t responded to his invitation to join Real Authentic Men. OK, so I’m already a member of one Ning site, and that’s the only sign-in I need, but do I just create a profile, post the obligatory profile pic and just pad his numbers? I feel more than just a twinge of guilt if I don’t participate. As if that wasn’t enough, my job has a social network for its employees.

You might know Chris as PapaRocks6 on Twitter. I was featured in his series on Real Authentic Men.

Today is Father’s Day, a celebration of fatherhood and a day to be the best dad you can be. Spend a little extra time with your children. Twilli is visiting her extended family in Oklahoma this week. Mom’s posting photos on Facebook and I can see that they’re having a great time.

Say hi to some of these great dads out there in the blogosphere. Most are dad bloggers, but some are bloggers who happen to be dads.

• Bobby Williams
• Buck Daddy
• Building Camelot
• Dad of Divas
• Dad Thing
• Dad’s Workbench
• Daddy Dazed
• Daddy’s Toolbox
• Discovering Dad
• DIY Father
• Frugal Dad
• Hubby, Daddy, Techie
• Joeprah
• Metro Dad
• Mocha Dad
• Planet Saturday
• Rice Daddies
• Steve Pavlina
• Strobist
• The Busy Dad Blog
• The Wisdom Journal

We all wonder what skills and traits you need to be a good parent. Who would’ve thought aeronautical engineering would make the list?

I bought a toy styrofoam airplane at Dollar Tree a few weeks ago. I took Twilli to the park and busted out the glider. She loved how I could throw it. She loved throwing it. She had a blast.

This past Thursday, I brought it out again. Twilli saw some young children close to her age playing across the street. She went over there to say hi. The other children really liked the glider too. They all took turns playing with it.

One of the children stepped on it and broke a piece of the wing off. His mother scolded him and offered to replace the toy. What a stand-up kind of mom! I declined the gesture. It was only a dollar. The lady insisted. Twilli promptly pocketed the money.

Later on that day, I examined the broken wing and determined that I could fix it easily. The pieces came back together very easily. I used a couple of staples and a few small pieces of tape. I don’t want to add more weight to a glider than necessary. I duplicated the repair efforts on the other wing to balance the weight out.

You know you’re being frugal when you decide to repair a toy you bought at Dollar Tree! I paid $1. The State of Tennessee got an additional 9.25% out of me. The debit card processing company got  a piece of that dollar too. The Chinese guy working in the factory (who also makes the “We Support Our Troops” stickers and ribbons) got a piece of it as well.

In the first photo, you can see I put some black tape on the nose of the airplane. Initial test flights showed that the center of gravity was too far back. It needed to move forward, so I added a screw to the nose and put black tape over it. It flies much better now.

Since this is Twilli’s airplane, I had to decorate it appropriately. As a young boy, I was obsessed with airplanes. I loved going to the airport. I loved flying. I loved playing with toy airplanes. I didn’t have to tell her any of this. She just knows that daddy would be tickled if she loved airplanes too.

The frequency of postings has declined over the past year. Those of you who know me on Facebook and Twitter also know I am fairly active there. Longtime readers, or rather, the friends I’ve made while I was posting regularly, will know that I tend to put a lot of thought into my blog posts. For the regular news from my life, Facebook and Twitter have been my outlets. I’m sure the time I spend chatting with friends or leaving witty comments on people’s status updates could’ve been used to craft a dozen or so blog posts over the past year.

Guitar Center

After moving to Tennessee, I wasn’t very picky about job prospects. I knew I needed to get a job ASAP. I wasn’t really interested in working at a music store again, but I had experience and knowledge to do it. Guitar Center was the first place that offered me a job, and it turned out to be a much better place to work than I had initially imagined. I am in control of how much I earn. I have fun every day. I work with a great bunch of guys and gals. I have announced to upper management that Guitar Center is part of my long-term plans.

Being around musicians and people who love music has reawakened the desire to play again. This time around, I’m going to refresh my piano playing skills. The keyboard excites me now. Guitar doesn’t do it for me like it used to.

No More Amazon.com Goodies

Due to my employment at Guitar Center, my involvement with the Amazon Associates program would constitute a conflict of interest. Yes, Amazon.com sells musical instruments. Of course, I would much rather you buy from Guitar Center. I quietly terminated the Amazon goodness a while ago, but haven’t gotten around to announcing the end of a good run.

Final Thoughts for the Day

Most people probably stopped reading about 200 words ago. Put “Facebook” in the title of a blog post or mention social media, and it’s instant link-bait. If you’re still with me, that probably means you’re a stalker or immune to the rampant ADD in our society today.

This blog isn’t going away. It’s just become more like a quarterly newsletter than a blog. There is plenty in the archives for new dads. I still get a fair amount of traffic based on the strength of some of my posts.

I still schedule posts to go live at 8:07. 8/07 is Twilli’s birthday. 8:07pm in 24-hour format is 20:07. Twilli was born in 2007.

F-Bombs and Other Linguistic Landmines

One of the cutest things a toddler does is repeat something he or she just heard. It’s cute until your precious little one says something that would be bleeped on TV.

Many years ago, an old boss of mine admonished his young son for dropping an F-bomb. It was clear from his response that he disapproved.

“Don’t ever #*&@ing say @#^% again!”

It became a running joke.

In another instance, I witnessed a woman on the bus talking to one of her son’s friends. He showed the woman a picture of her son on his camera phone. The boy was making a hand gesture commonly used on the roads in South Florida. The woman was appalled and liberally peppered her diatribe with F-bombs. She took out her cell phone, called her son, and a colorful lecture ensued. Because of an editorial decision that affects all my writing here on 21st Century Dad, I cannot provide a transcript.

In Frugal Dad’s review of  Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream, by Adam Shepard, he lamented that it contained enough profanity to turn off much of its potential audience. It’s a shame that it would be seen as such a problem. I encounter plenty of profanity, but I don’t pass harsh judgment on people who use it. The author’s intent was to give the book another layer of realism. I don’t consider that gratuitous usage. It was a creative decision made by the author.

One night, Renee and I brought Twilli to a meeting. A guy was wearing a t-shirt that said, “New York F—ing City.” He apologized for displaying profanity around our baby. I replied, “it’s all good, bro. She can’t read yet anyway.”

Who Blinks First

Most of the adults I know are sensible enough to know when and where profanity is inappropriate to use. There are some adults who refrain from it altogether. I have an ex-girlfriend who only managed to say, “fuh!” in a moment of extreme duress.

I am no saint, but I refrain from using profanity in mixed company. I don’t use it in my writing because it forces me to be more creative. I will rarely blink first when talking to someone I just met. But I do keep a mental roster of those who are OK with it, those who are definitely not OK with it, and those who I prefer to stay on the safe side with, but would move into the “safe” column once they blink. Those who blinked first are in what I call my “circle of profanity.” Okay, I never called them that before. I just made it up. The Bible Belt has a buckle shaped like a giant parallelogram. I live inside that parallelogram. I’ve always been careful, and my usual verbal patterns need no modification here.

If you are a user of profanity, you probably self-censor depending on who you’re with or where you are. You feel a sense of relief when it’s OK to refrain from editing. Sometimes we use it to build rapport.

What You Can Do

The easy answer (and the harder thing to do) is not to swear around your children. If you never use profanity, and your child drops an F-bomb, you can always blame an in-law.

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