How Tough Could It Be?
The Trials and Errors of a Sportswriter Turned Stay-at-Home Dad
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- € 10,99
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- € 10,99
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A father takes a break from every guy's dream gig--covering football (and the odd swimsuit shoot) for Sports Illustrated--to give it a go as Mr. Mom, in this hilarious and heartfelt book
After nineteen years as a writer for Sports Illustrated, Austin Murphy should have had it made. Instead, he'd had it--with measuring his life by hotel rooms and Heisman stories, with members of his church assuming that his wife, Laura, was a single mother. With each missed birthday and recital, he became more convinced that he was missing out on his kids' lives.
So he decided to trade in his current job for a new one: Laura's. Once an ambitious young journalist, Laura's career had slowed when she went on the mommy track. Now, with a "wife" of her own, she would be able to write full time, while he could be present for more Kodak moments.
Alas, the man charged with preparing three nutritious meals a day had never mastered his own outdoor grill. Sublimely ignorant of everything from grocery shopping to house-cleaning to the need to trim his children's nails more than, say, semi-annually, Murphy embarked on his journey much as Shackleton took on the Antarctic: spectacularly ill-equipped to survive it. Between the lice checks, the spring break trip to Las Vegas, and the chairmanship of the Lower Brookside Elementary Variety Show, there were bound to be casualties.
Lively, poignant, and laugh-out-loud funny, How Tough Could It Be? is the story of one man's decision to reorder his life around things that really matter and of his adventures (and misadventures) along the way.
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Murphy (The Sweet Season) has been a Sports Illustrated staffer since 1984, covering everything from football and swimsuits to the Tour de France and the Olympics. Unfortunately, while globe-hopping and meeting deadlines, he was missing key events in the lives of his young children. A six-month sabbatical enabled him to explore a new, unfamiliar lifestyle as a Marin County Mr. Mom, while his wife "flung herself into her long-neglected writing career." Murphy soon found himself donning oven mitts, picking up dry cleaning, buying toothpaste and tampons, housecleaning, slicing onions (and fingers), carpooling to the elementary school and folding laundry. Despite pointers from his wife, meals remained a challenge: "There is homework enforcement and, if I'm on the ball, the preparing of tomorrow's lunches while cooking tonight's dinner." Skilled at capturing human interest details, Murphy writes in a fluid, anecdotal manner, displaying a sensitivity and homey humor that will be equally appreciated by men and women. Female readers will smile with satisfaction as Murphy attempts anger management while confronting "unpaid work to which there is no end." Asked how "the Experiment" is going, he compares it "to entering the ring with the unseen adversary. I never know where the next blow will come from." At the end of the six months, Murphy realizes he's "now equipped to be a bigger help for the remainder of our days together.... If I am not, like Thomas, a 'very useful engine,' I am at least a more useful engine than I was." with an author tour and Internet marketing.
