Oh, pay day, how I love you so

I just found an online calculator that, when you input your annual income, can tell you where you rank globally in terms of wealth.

If you've ever wanted to feel really, really rich, you should try this calculator (GlobalRichList.com).

Actually, tools like that are mixed blessings. Sure, they make you feel like Bill Gates (which most of us are, compared with a stunning proportion of the rest of the world's population). But they also make you feel a bit guilty. Or at least that's what they do to me.

Being born in the United States means there's an excellent chance you rank among the richest 1% of people in the world (I'm thinking they include children in their formula, but still...) And I don't doubt you've worked very hard to get there.

But Americans strutting around because they're among the richest people in the world is a lot like the guy who claims to have hit a home run after he was born on third base.

Now I'm not trying to start class warfare here. Nor am I a bleeding heart liberal who thinks all wealth is bad. I'm just stating the undeniable fact that, no matter what problems you may have, you're still a lot better off than most people on the planet, and it's largely because of the circumstances into which you were born.

Nothing wrong with that. It just is.

Anyway, I bring this up because today is pay day at my place of employment. We get paid every two weeks, which is a schedule I like.

So does my wife. Getting paid every other Friday means that, two or three times a year, there will be a month in which I get an extra check. And she uses those extra checks to get ahead on bills, pay for emergency repairs, buy me Gala apples, etc.

When I worked at the Cleveland Clinic, we used to get paid once a month...on the 15th, if I remember correctly. Talk about having to manage your money.

On one hand, sure, it's nice to get a huge lump of cash deposited into your checking account all at once. But by the time you got to, say, the 7th or 8th of the following month, unless you were really disciplined, you were running a little short of funds.

But it's not the money I love so much on pay days as what the money buys. Specifically, pay day often means it's Terry Goes Grocery Shopping Day in our house. And that woman can shop. Well.

By the time I come home from work on pay day, she has usually returned from an epic shopping trip that has taken her to three or four different stores, where she has purchased all of the food, toiletries and other staples needed to support a family of seven.

She goes to three or four different stores because she has a system down, you see. She knows where to find the best prices and the best products. She knows how to use coupons to maximum effect. And she knows how to stretch that food budget of ours to its outer limits.

Anyway, by the time I walk in the door every other Friday, the kitchen is filled to overflowing with fruits, vegetables, meats, snacks, and new Keurig coffee cups. I love the fruit, as I've mentioned, but those Keurig coffee cups make me tingly.

I get so excited to see all the newly purchased food that I don't mind the fact that three-quarters of it will be gone by the end of the weekend, thanks largely to the voracious appetite of my 15-year-old son, Jared.

Jared regularly consumes seven meals in a day. I'm not kidding. It's sometimes even more. And he's as thin as a pencil.

I resent him for this, but it never lasts long. I get so distracted by the new crop of juicy apples and the K-Cups that there's no room in my brain for resentment.

Yes, pay day, I love you. You make everything OK.

Four teenagers in the family? Yes, sir, may I have another?

In a few weeks, my daughter Melanie will turn 13. When that happens, we will enter a six-month period in which we have four teenagers in our family at one time.

Specifically, our oldest four will be 19, 16, 15 and 13. I will freely accept offers of prayers, happy thoughts, and Prozac.

(SIDE NOTE: "Prayers, Happy Thoughts and Prozac" could be a good name for a band. Or at least the name of an album. I'm going to form a band not so much to make music, but just so we can use that name.)

This stretch of parenting four teens will end fairly quickly because my oldest, Elissa, will turn 20 in March. Twenty is a weird age. It's only a milestone birthday in that you leave one decade of life and enter another, but it doesn't get you anything in the way that ages 18 and 21 bring new freedoms and legal privileges.

I remember being 20. It was a long time ago, like centuries ago, but I remember it. I remember having more hair (and none of it being gray). I remember being able to go directly from a dead sleep into a fast morning run with no need to "warm up." I remember going to college every day and then working 6-8 hours at night and thinking nothing of it.

I also remember regularly making foolish decisions, so I guess you take the good with the bad.

Anyway, on the surface, having four teenagers in the family at the same time would appear to be a nightmare. And it certainly does have its challenges, from the mood swings to the school drama to the brain damage.

Yes, brain damage. Anyone who has parented a teenager, or even dealt with one, will tell you the only way to explain their behavior sometimes is that they must have suffered some sort of cerebral injury.

And indeed, the teen brain really is still under construction, busily forming the connections and functions that serve a person well later in life.

During those years when the contents of a teenager's skull are being built up, they do things that are puzzling to a rational (and even a not-so-rational) adult. You have to roll with this. Guide them, correct them, help them, sure. But in the end, acceptance is a lot easier.

Still, looking at the big picture, it really is a fun adventure when you have teens in the house. Their friends come over a lot, they keep you busy, and they tend to be noisy, irreverent, and altogether a good time.

Which is what I try to remind myself whenever they frustrate me, since it's guaranteed that I will miss the chaos of these years when it's all over.

I'm interested to see how it will play out when little Jack, our youngest at age 7, is a teen. By then, Elissa and Chloe and possibly Jared will presumably be out of the house, and Melanie will be knee-deep in college, leaving Jack to navigate those years with just his parents and a bunch of pets left behind by his siblings.

Being so much younger than the others, his experience of teenager-dom will be a little different than theirs. It will, in fact, be much like mine. My elder three siblings were 16, 14 and 12 when I was born. Which meant that by the time I started school, they were all either out the door or well on their way.

So when I was a teenager, it was just me, mom and dad living together. It couldn't have been nearly as loud and raucous in their house then as it is in mine now.

But I was definitely just as brain damaged, maybe more so, than my own offspring. Some things, it seems, never change.

There's something to be said for living on a street with a great name

I'll be the first to admit that I have street name envy.

I grew up on Harding Drive, presumably named after the 29th and potentially most boring U.S. president, Warren G. Harding.

Actually, I've come to find out in recent years that President Harding wasn't all that boring. He was quite the ladies man, as evidenced by the four (and possibly more) extramarital affairs he carried on. And as a young guy, he was reported to be strikingly handsome.

But still, he was Warren G. Harding. And that's an awful lot to overcome.

Anyway, I lived on Harding Drive for the first 22 years of my life. Then Terry and I got married and bought our first house, which was on East 300th Street. A numbered street name. That's not even boring, it's something less than boring. East 300th Street aspires to "boring."

We lived there for 11 years. Then we moved to our current residence, which is on Miller Avenue. The only streets more white bread than "Miller Avenue" are the ones with tree names like Oak, Elm and Maple. And even then, Miller Avenue certainly gives them a run for their money.

One reason I've always wanted to be rich is because rich people seem to live on streets with incredibly cool names. Names that evoke English mansions and cool pastoral life. Names like "Fox Hunt Glen Cove Lane," "Crimson Dale Estates" and "Snobby Caucasian Equestrian Bluffs."

These are street names that say something about you. They say, "I make a lot of money and can afford to live in an area populated solely by people who look and sound like me. I own three large SUVs and hire various hard-working minorities to tend to my lawn and flower beds."

I've always wanted to live on one of those streets, but I'm starting to think it's never going to happen.

My brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Dave and Cathleen, have a cool street name: Locust Grove Drive. I like that one. I mean, if you ignore the tendency of locusts to devour everything in their path and destroy vast swathes of farmland, it's actually quite a nice name.

And by the way, who makes the determination whether a given thoroughfare is a "Street," a "Boulevard," a "Lane" or whatever? The developer/builder? The city? A contest winner?

As you'll notice if you bothered to keep track of the details above, I've lived on a "Drive," a "Street" and an "Avenue" thus far in my life. Someday I'm hoping for a "Path," a "Vista", or a "Terrace." I might die from happiness if I ever manage to buy a house on a "Knoll," a "Canyon" or (the best one yet) a "Promenade."

By the way, I cannot recommend the "Street Name Generator" highly enough. Just visit that page, pick a random word from each of the three columns, and in just a few seconds you'll have your own ritzy-sounding address!

One possible outcome from the Street Name Generator? "Umber Snake Swale." If you don't think that's 10 different kinds of awesome, then I'm not sure you and I could ever be friends.

A day at the beach is no day at the beach

I'm sitting at the computer in a wet bathing suit as I type this, having just returned from a couple of hours at the beach with my family.

This is a relatively rare occurrence for us, you understand, or at least it is for me. I go to the beach approximately once a year. I swim in a pool maybe once or twice in that same year.

And that's about it for me, as far as water recreation goes.

It's not that I don't like the water, it's just...well, yes, actually it is that I don't like the water. And I know when it all started for me.

Like suburban moms everywhere back in the 70s, my mom made me take swimming lessons at the local pool one summer. It was good for me, and better yet, I think it may have been free. Or at least it was very, very low cost. So hey, why not?

Swimming lessons were given in "phases" back then. Phase I encompassed the basics, like opening your eyes underwater and reciting water safety rules or something. I cruised through that. And Phase II wasn't much tougher, though I'm not sure how I passed because I'm pretty sure it required you to float on your back, and to this day I cannot float on my back.

I'm one of the few people I know of whom this is true, by the way. Most folks just instinctively know how to float on their backs. But I sink like a rock. My wife is mystified by this, as well she should be. I defy all commonly accepted laws of physics.

Regardless, they passed me through both Phase II and Phase III in fairly short order, though I can't remember what you had to do to get through Phase III.

The trouble came with Phase IV, which was when they taught you to do the American crawl (also known as the "front crawl," or "just plain old swimming.") This is a skill I could not master. It is a skill I still haven't mastered some three decades later.

I don't know why, but there was something about the simultaneous need to kick, stroke and turn your head in rhythm in order to breathe that just stopped me cold. Couldn't do it then, can't do it now. I tried. Oh yes, I tried. But they wouldn't pass me beyond Phase IV because I simply couldn't learn the skill, no matter how hard they tried to teach me.

You have to understand, I was not especially well equipped at that point in my life to deal with failure. Not getting something right on the first try was foreign to me.

So when I repeatedly failed to pass the test to get out of Phase IV, I began to hate swimming lessons. And in turn, I began to hate the water.

The result is that I still don't like spending more than 10 consecutive minutes in any body of water, be it a kiddie pool or a major ocean.

Which isn't a good thing when you live in Ohio, where we have real "summer" for only about 2 1/2 months out of every year. When it's warm enough to swim, people here really, really get into swimming. And if you don't match their enthusiasm for it, they do little to hide their contempt for you.

The stereotypical Ohio vacation is to travel to a body of water and spend a week there doing whatever it is that normal, water-loving people do. My family doesn't take those kinds of vacations, and it's mostly because of me.

In addition to my low-level swimming skills, I should also mention that water always makes me cold. Always. I don't care if it's 95 degrees outside and the water is at bath temperature, I will still be cold.

Having lost a decent amount of weight in the past year doesn't help in this department. Previously, I at least had some insulation that kept my body temperature from falling into the hypothermic range. Now I just look at the water and my temp falls several degrees south of 98.6.

There's also the little matter of not really liking to have my shirt off in public, which I've mentioned before.

The only really enjoyable part of a trip to the beach for me is playing football catch with my son Jared. This is actually fun, or at least it's fun for 10 minutes until my 43-year-old rotator cuff catches my attention and asks, "Um, what exactly do you think you're doing?" And then I have to stop.

Other than that, though, a trip to the beach means, for me, being cold and making concerted efforts not to drown. This is not, by any stretch, a "relaxing" activity.

Which is why I should be living in Kansas or some other severely landlocked state, just so I wouldn't feel so pressured every summer to swim and fake enthusiasm for all things aquatic. As far as I'm concerned, summer can't end fast enough.

Memories of the greatest job in the world (for an 18-year-old)

There are jobs in this world the existence of which most of us are utterly unaware.

I used to hold just such a job.

Twenty-five years ago tomorrow, I reported for my first day of work as a part-time sports agate clerk at The News-Herald, the newspaper that would, a few years later, become my full-time employer.

These clerks, which I believe the paper still employs, do the grunt work that sells papers.

In my case, that meant taking dozens of calls every night from statisticians and coaches reporting the results of their recreational, high school and occasionally college athletic events.

More important than the final scores was the opportunity these callers had to give the names of up to three players on each team who did something noteworthy.

In the case of a little league baseball game, that may have been the kid who hit two home runs. For a basketball game, it was usually the guys/girls who scored the most points.

Whatever the reason for giving these amateur athletes their 15 minutes of fame in small agate type (thus the job title), having their names collected in print every day under the Community Scoreboard was a major reason why The News-Herald was one of the largest suburban daily newspapers in Ohio.

Which you can understand. If Little Johnny got his name in the paper, you can be sure Mom and Dad would rush out and buy 5-10 copies as keepsakes. So would Grandma. And the next-door neighbor.

So the work we agate clerks did had some importance from a sales and financial point of view.

Not that I cared much about that. What my 18-year-old self cared about when he walked into that newsroom for the first time on August 22, 1988, was that he was going to get to work at a newspaper. They could have had me sweeping the floors for all it mattered.

I caught the journalism bug early in life. I read The News-Herald front to back almost every day from the age of 14. Then I joined my high school newspaper and absolutely loved it. I could picture myself making a career out of journalism. And if it could be sports journalism, all the better.

Which is why I jumped at the chance when, one afternoon during the sweltering summer of '88, I came across a blurb in the "Area Sports in Brief" section saying that The News-Herald was looking to hire two sports agate clerks.

I needed a job at the time. I was a few weeks away from starting my four-year undergraduate career at John Carroll, and if nothing else I knew the cost of gas from driving to school every day (I was a commuter student) was going to be brutal.

So I applied and, thanks largely to the fact that News-Herald prep sports writer Joe Magill had been one of my high school track coaches and was therefore a nice inside reference, got the job.

I cannot tell you the thrill of typing or writing something, and then turning around 12 hours later and seeing it in print. Even if my name wasn't attached to it. I could point to it and say, "I did that," knowing that nearly 50,000 copies of my work were floating around Northeast Ohio that day.

A few months after starting at The N-H, I was given the chance to cover high school events with a byline, which was a dream come true. Eventually, at the veteran age of 20, a column mug with my photo began running alongside some of my stuff. This was, as far as I was concerned, the pinnacle.

Later, after I graduated from Carroll, the paper offered me a full-time job as a sports writer, which I gratefully accepted. I stayed there for five wonderful years, leaving only because of the demands of my growing young family.

But the experience I picked up at the paper absolutely shaped my future career in marketing and public relations. Taking those little league and high school scores over the phone for hours on end, night after night, was a great resume-builder, believe it or not.

Nowadays I think the clerks at the paper have most of the scores emailed to them, though I can't be sure of that. I choose to believe it's true, though, because otherwise I wouldn't have the credibility to say, "BACK IN MY DAY, WE USED TO TAKE 1,000 SCORES A NIGHT OVER THE PHONE. AND WE TYPED UNTIL OUR FINGERS BLED. AND WE LOVED IT!"

And honestly, we DID love it. God bless the agate clerks of the world.

Why, on the whole, being a pirate is a pretty sweet gig

The downside of being a pirate

• The hours. It seems like sailing the seven seas is a hard job and requires a lot of long hours. Not a problem if you really love the work, but still...
• Inordinate risk of on-the-job injury or death. There are a million ways to get hurt or get dead when you're a pirate. Like, for instance, when you try to take over another ship, you could get a sword through the gut. Or the captain could make you walk the plank. And then there's the apparently ever-present risk of scurvy. I'm in public relations, and I've never known a PR professional to die of scurvy. So score one for my side.
• Surly co-workers. If the movies and television are any indication, pirates as a group aren't the friendliest lot. The experts will tell you that workplace relationships are important, but I just don't see Black Bart standing around the water cooler talking about last night's ball game.
• High chance of alcohol poisoning. If you're not on duty on a pirate ship, then you're drinking. And usually you're drinking rum. I had a bad experience with rum more than 20 years ago and have tried to avoid it ever since. No way I make it even a week on a pirate ship if I'm forced to drink rum.
• Little chance for advancement. I'm not sure how the org chart looks on a typical pirate ship, but it seems to me that unless you're the captain or at least the first mate, the other positions within the organization are all less than desirable. There's just no potential for promotion for most of the crew.

The upside of being a pirate

• The travel. You get to see a lot of Caribbean islands if you're a pirate. And if you break the ship's rules, you'll get to know one particular island really well when they strand you there. But seriously, no endless days at a desk for you, me bucko!
• The potential payoff. If there's one thing pirates live for more than rum, it's gold. And they tend to find it at an uncanny rate. Assuming your captain is a fair man who evenly distributes the booty once it has been claimed, you're in for a handsome salary. Note, however, that income equity is not a notable feature of most pirate ships.
• The wenches. There are, of course, virtually no women on pirate ships. But when you hit one of those exotic ports of call to patronize a local watering hole, you will almost certainly be waited upon by a busty server in an off-the-shoulder white top. And after months at sea, this will not be an unwelcome sight.
• The status. Pirates are much cooler than, say, accountants. Or PR guys, for that matter. For all the risk of death and dismemberment, there is a certain cachet in being able to say offhandedly at a party, "Yeah, I'm a pirate." And you don't have to look like Johnny Depp to enjoy this little social perk.
• The movie rights. Speaking of Johnny Depp, being a pirate means there's an excellent chance some Hollywood producer is going to want to make a movie about you, or at least he'll want to cast you in a movie, which is just as good. Pirate movies never go out of style.

Conclusion

If you can stand the constant specter of death and the poor hygiene of your shipmates, then being a pirate is a solid and even admirable career choice. You'll need to make sure you have no moral qualms about killing innocent seaman on passing merchant vessels in order to steal their worldly possessions. But really, once you get past that, the rest is all gravy.

Four things I know I'm supposed to do but don't

Read the Classics

I have a degree in English and history from a well-regarded institution of higher learning (John Carroll University...go Blue Streaks!), yet I have never read The Scarlet Letter. Or Pride and Prejudice. Or Moby Dick. Or Don Quixote. How could this be?

(Actually, I know how it can be. Upper-level English courses get so specialized and esoteric that you end up reading the collected works of a 17th-century Finnish poet and have no time for The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, or War and Peace, also books I've never read.)

The point is, I should make time to atone for the glaring holes in my literary resume by actually reading these books. But I don't. Nor will I, at least not any time soon. It's easier to lament not having read them than it is to check them out of the library and crack open the front cover.

Lift Weights

I just mentioned this recently. I'm not a strength training guy. Never have been. I run. I run quite a bit. But I never touch the weights.

And it has always been like this. Even when I played football in high school, I was not a frequent visitor to the weight room. And by "not a frequent visitor," I mean I showed up there once a year to perform the mandatory weight-lifting tests set forth by my coaches. Then I wouldn't visit again until the following year.

I know I'm supposed to lift, but I can't stand it. Just like a lot of people know they're supposed to do cardiovascular exercise but can't stand running, cycling or climbing aboard the elliptical machine. To each his own, I suppose.

Take Care of My Fingernails

First off, I have abnormally small hands. And thus I have abnormally small fingernails. Making matters worse, I bite those fingernails. I bite 'em right down to the nub.

I admire people who take care of their nails, particularly guys. Society doesn't necessarily expect men to do much in the way of fingernail work, so I like the extra effort put in by guys with clean, nicely shaped nails.

My nails are ugly. At our wedding reception, the photographer took a picture of Terry's hand and my hand together as we showed off our new rings. Her nails are, as you would expect, beautifully manicured. Mine look like they belong to a 7-year-old. A hyperactive, nail-biting 7-year-old.

I'm embarrassed by it, but not so much that I'm motivated to do anything about it. My ugly nails will live on as long as I do.

Drive Under the Speed Limit

Depending on the mood I'm in, I'll drive anywhere from 5 to 15 mph over the speed limit. Not terribly bad, but still not legal, either.

The trouble is, I have kids. And I'm supposed to model proper driving procedures for those kids. Which is why I try to shield their eyes from the speedometer when I'm going 75 mph down a stretch of 60 mph freeway.

I should slow down, I know. And I don't. There are those who drive way faster than I do, but that's no excuse for breaking the rules. I will freely chalk this up to a classic case of hypocritical "do as I say, not as I do" when it comes to my children.

The top 5 fruits of all time

(NOTE: Of course this is about actual, edible fruit. What did you think I was talking about?)

I love fruit. I mean, seriously, I love fruit.

Fruit, it turns out, is relatively expensive. And we can't keep it in the house because I eat it all. Fast. Which means we spend a lot of money on fruit.

Since the beginning of last December, I've followed the Weight Watchers PointsPlus plan. The best thing about this plan, by far, is that fruit is free. Meaning that it does not count against your daily points allowance.

Within reason, you can eat all the fruit you want in a given day. And vegetables, too. But we need to focus on the real treat here, which is the fruit.

Also, it should be noted that "within reason" is a phrase subject to a wide range of interpretation. I choose to interpret it as, "Try to keep it under 17 apples in a 24-hour period."

I like all kinds of fruit, but here in reverse order are my top five. Maybe you agree. Maybe you don't. Doesn't matter. The important thing is, fruit is free (in the WeightWatchers sense, sadly not the financial sense).

5. Bananas

I'm a fan. Bananas go a little too quickly, though. It takes me about 25 seconds to eat one. I could slow down, I suppose, but I wouldn't enjoy it nearly as much. Given the chance, I would eat an entire bunch of bananas in one sitting. I would get sick, but it would be worth it.

4. Nectarines

And I do specifically mean nectarines, not peaches. I like peaches, mind you, but they don't crack my top 5. The texture of nectarines (and the lack of prickly little hairs) gives them the nod over what I presume to be their biological cousins. Plus they're not quite as juicy as peaches, which I consider to be a good thing. I can eat them at my desk at work without making a mess. Go nectarines!

3. Pears

We're talking strictly Bartlett pears here, people. Not those D'Anjou knockoffs. Bartlett pears, just like mom used to make. Well, actually, just like mom used to serve out of a can at lunch. Bartlett pears are awesome. They're like the BMW of the pear family. That's a really lame analogy, I know, but I can't help it because I'm too busy thinking about Bartlett pears. Mmmmmmm, pears.

2. Grapes

Again, a distinction must be made here: Green grapes. I have nothing against purple/red grapes. It's just that green grapes are the, uh, Bartlett pears of the grape world. I will not argue this point. It just is, in the same way that the sun, moon and stars just are.

1. Apples

I don't discriminate against various apple types, but I will let it be known that Gala is my apple variety of choice. We would also have accepted Fuji, Golden Delicious, and Granny Smith (if only because I like the fact that any food is called "Granny Smith"). I eat three apples a day on average, and that's only if I'm making a conscious effort to cut down on my apple consumption. It makes me sad that apples are often sold for $1.99 a pound, because Terry won't buy them at that price point. I love apples. I really, really love apples.

Things I miss and don't miss from growing up in the 70s and 80s

Things I Miss

Fantasy Island

There have been some good shows on TV in the past 30 years, but none have matched the awesomeness that was Fantasy Island. Saturday nights at 10, as I recall. ABC aired it right after The Love Boat, and I have to believe they dominated the ratings. Mr. Rourke ruled the island with an iron fist ("Smiles everyone, smiles...NOW."), but it was Tattoo who got the girls. Something about that Hispanic dwarf was apparently irresistible. 

The Sony Walkman

I could walk around and listen to music outside. OUTSIDE. Without carrying around a 14-pound boom box. I could go running and listen to music. Or cycling. Or whatever it was we did back then (I can't quite remember how we filled our days, to be honest.) Of course, the music was on cassette. And you had to fast-forward and rewind to get to different songs. And that fast-forwarding and rewinding drained the life from your double-A batteries. But it was revolutionary, darn it! Don't you understand?

This version of Michael Jackson

The one who was still African-American. And wore one glove. And could dance in a way no one had danced before. And, for that matter, was still alive. I miss that guy.

Things I Don't Miss

People smoking...everywhere

Good Lord, it was terrible. You kids have no idea how good you have it in this department. People just lit up all over the place...in their homes, in their cars, in their offices, in church, etc. OK, maybe not in church. As far as I know. I mean, I didn't go to church in the 70s. The point is, the world smelled like cigarettes. Which is to say the world was disgusting and it stank. The fact that there are still people who smoke amazes me. I just assumed we all collectively came to our senses round about 1997 and that everyone was going to quit. What did I miss?

Four channels of TV

After the iPod and the Keurig coffee maker, I say cable television is Western Civilization's greatest contribution to the universe over the past 40 years. When I was growing up in Cleveland, you had channels 3 (NBC), 5 (ABC), 8 (CBS), and 43 (independent). And at some point there was channel 61, too. And that was it. The reception was bad during storms AND YOU HAD TO GET UP TO CHANGE THE CHANNEL. Who does that? Not us now. Which is why we're all fat. But still...

Rubik's Cube

There wasn't anything intrinsically wrong with Rubik's Cubes, other than the fact that I could never solve one. Ever. Even bought a book explaining how to solve it and couldn't understand it. Yet there were people appearing on "That's Incredible" who, given a randomly configured Rubik's Cube, could solve the thing in, like, 12 seconds. Maybe less, I don't remember. All I know is that I was bitter about it then and I'm bitter about it now. DARN YOU AND YOUR DEMONIC INVENTION, ERNO RUBIK!

Do you think there's anything wrong with this ad? Because I don't.

I want to talk about something I have no business talking about, and that indeed is borderline creepy for a middle-aged male to talk about.

Menstruation.

The cliche would be for me to complain about how women get cranky and irritable when they're on their cycle and be all, "Oh, those crabby ladies!"

But I'm not going that route because, I gotta tell you, I would be pretty darned cranky, too, if that happened to me every 28 days. And I'm glad it doesn't, though I'm very sorry for you ladies that it does. Seriously, that can't be fun.

I live in a house with four women, and all things considered, they're relatively cheerful when it's their time. At least more cheerful than I would be, so I'm impressed.

The reason I bring this up today is because blog reader Angela Kleckler recently posted a link to the following video:

This is a commercial for a company called Hello Flo, which produces something called a "Period Starter Kit" for girls who are newly experiencing this joyful(?) little aspect of growing up female.

I love this ad for at least two reasons:

• As someone who has spent a number of years in public relations, I think it brilliantly markets the unmarketable.
• I love the funny, snarky spin it puts on the whole thing. It takes it from "taboo" to "seriously, can't we just all grow up and talk about this?"

It's not that I'm looking to go around discussing this stuff all the time, because that's just weird and...ugh.

But look, whether or not we like it, this happens to girls of increasingly younger ages. The more we treat it as unspeakable and dirty, the more difficult and unpleasant the experience will be for them. And as a father of three daughters and the husband of, well, one wife, I don't think that's how it should work.

I realize that we, as a society, have become a little too free with the topics we discuss publicly, and I know there is a line to be drawn between the socially acceptable and unacceptable. But in this case, I think we're all a little better off if we lighten up and deal with these sorts of things in an open and more mature manner.

As always, though, I could certainly be wrong. If the ad turns you off more than it amuses you, I would love to hear from you.

Because if there's one thing that women on their periods will agree on almost universally, men are, generally speaking, idiots.

I really want to be a foodie, but I'm having a hard time with it

As part of my job, I spend a little time each week reading foodie magazines.

You know the magazines I'm talking about: Food & Wine, Bon Appetit, Chef, Pretentious and Most Likely Inedible Cooking Monthly, etc.

These are publications read mostly by people who fancy themselves to be amateur gourmets. There is a part of me that wants to be one of these people, but two things get in the way:

1. I rarely cook anything more complicated than macaroni and cheese.
2. I'm honestly not sure whether some of the suggested dishes in these magazines are meant as a joke.

Have you ever read the recipes they print in these high-end food and cooking publications? They tend to be...eclectic.

I recently read an interview with a chef who was asked to describe the best meal he had ever eaten. His answer (I'm not kidding) was, "buttermilk and pine salt chicken with pigeon sausage, and raisin and stout chutney."

I'm sorry, what?

For me, that's nothing more than a string of vaguely food-related words that may or may not mean anything.

Seriously, I'm brimming with questions about this supposedly real meal, like:

• Is the buttermilk separate? Or was the main course "buttermilk and pine salt chicken?" I'll assume the latter, but it should be mentioned that my dad used to drink whole glasses of straight-up buttermilk, so I can't be sure.
• I don't know what "pine salt" is. Or is it "salt chicken" seasoned with pine? I'm not even sure how to read that phrase.
• Pigeon sausage? Really? Pigeon sausage? I just...well, I mean...pigeon sausage? Who does that? Who, in the words of my friend Jennifer Cimperman, lives like that? Pigeons are meant to be fed in the park, not eaten. With OR without pine salt.
• And what's the deal with this raisin and stout chutney? I had heard the word "chutney" before, but I wasn't sure what it was, so of course I let Google figure it out for me. Chutney, it turns out, is "a spicy condiment made of fruits or vegetables with vinegar, spices and sugar, originating in India."
• This does not explain how "stout" ended up in there. I know stout to be a dark beer, and I assume that's the meaning intended here. It would never occur to me to mix raisins (which I like) with stout (which I also like). Just because two things are good doesn't mean you should mix them. That's the one and only culinary law to which I hold firmly.

I shouldn't say this, but sometimes I think chefs compete with each other to see who can come up with the weirdest, most stomach-churning recipe and get people to actually eat it, under the guise that only someone with a refined palette can truly appreciate the combination of, say, bananas and mayonnaise.

Yet ratings for cooking shows have never been higher. Chefs are more than just preparers of tasty food. They're celebrities. They're artists. They're cultural icons.

Not that I'm denigrating their skills. They do something I never could. It's just...I think they (and we) have taken the whole thing a little too far.

Because, you know...pigeon sausage?

Having a son when you didn't even know you wanted one

By the time my son Jared was born exactly 15 years ago today, I had already determined I was destined to have only daughters.

And I was perfectly fine with that.

Jared has two older sisters, which I guess was enough for me to assume I was biologically hardwired to produce only female offspring. I loved, loved, loved having a pair of daddy's girls to come home to every day, so a family of daughters was a nice prospect.

Which was why I was stunned when the doctor yanked Jared from the womb and announced, "It's a boy." To which I answered (this is true), "No, it's not!"

I said it the same way you would say, "Oh, come on!" or "You're kidding!" Before that moment, it honestly had never seriously occurred to me that we might have a boy.

The main reason I didn't know, of course, was that we never found out the gender of any of our babies before they were born. That surprise at the moment of birth was something I'll never forget (five times over). But just because we did it, incidentally, doesn't mean I think everyone should. Whatever you decide is cool with me.

Anyway, my attitude definitely flew in the face of conventional wisdom, which says that all fathers long for sons more than anything else. That wasn't true of me at all. I just wanted happy, healthy children. Whether they were boys or girls didn't matter all that much, truthfully.

But from the moment I became the father of a son, I loved it. More to the point, I loved him. Intensely.

My own father died when Jared was about a year old, and many times since I've looked at my boy and thought of his grandpa. When you have a child of your own gender, you start making all sorts of emotional connections between your childhood and theirs, and your dual role as both a parent and a son/daughter.

Not long after I got married and moved out of the house, my dad told me one of the things he missed was having someone around to talk to about sports. My mom roots for the Indians and Browns, but she'll never host her own sports talk show.

My dad and I would sometimes watch games together on TV, particularly baseball. He used to be a fast-pitch softball pitcher, so he had an uncanny ability to predict what a pitcher was going to throw before he threw it.

That always amazed me until he taught me how to think like a pitcher, then I could sometimes predict the pitches like him. Not as well, mind you, but pretty well.

Jared has spent some time away from home this summer at church and band camps, and it didn't take me long to miss having a boy of my own with whom to celebrate an Indians victory. He and I bond over sports. We talk about other things, of course, but sports is our common ground, as it was between me and my dad.

The circle of life, I guess. At first we're the one who's missed, then 20 years later we're the ones doing the missing.

In a few short years, my "little" (6-foot-1) boy will go away to college, and I hate that I already know I'll miss him terribly. So I guess all there is to do is to appreciate him while he's still around.

Happy birthday, big man. And, as I think we'll both agree, go Tribe.

Someone just tell me exactly how much I'm supposed to exercise and which pills I'm supposed to take

Once every month or so, I agonize over whether I'm properly taking care of my body.

This takes the form of me checking out a few library books on health and wellness, consulting several websites on those topics, and generally complaining to my wife that I don't have a lot of spare time and I'm not sure whether the physical activity I'm doing is sufficient.

There are at least four things that prompt this behavior:


(1) I think I'm neurotic. I had no idea until just recently.

(2) I'm approaching my mid-40s, which I guess is a time when you start thinking about things like this.

(3) I have very limited time in the mornings to exercise, so I want to make sure I'm doing the right thing.

(4) I have a family history of heart disease that's hard to miss.


My dad passed away at age 70 from heart failure, as did my oldest sister at age 56. As I always (morbidly) say, at least I have a good idea of how I'm going to go when my time comes. We don't get cancer in my family, but we're all pretty good genetic bets to have ticker trouble.

The two ways in which I fight this hereditary curse are to try and maintain a relatively healthy weight and to exercise regularly.

The weight thing I've told you about recently, ad nauseum. I think I've also mentioned the fact that I run regularly. Not as far as I used to, but generally 15-20 miles a week almost without exception.

And there's where the trouble starts. Depending on which author/doctor/health professional you consult, running is either the greatest exercise known to man or the worst thing you can do to your body.

You can find well-designed scientific studies that support both points of view. The pro-running crowd will tell you that man was, biologically speaking, born to run. Long-distance running is something that only humans really do, and are in fact built for.

The anti-runners point to joint problems and indicators of arterial inflammation among runners as signs that maybe lacing up the Nikes five times a week isn't the best idea.

I have no idea what to believe. I like running. I enjoy the act of getting out on the road and ambling. Because I really do "amble" nowadays, at least compared to a decade ago. I'm still faster than a lot of people I know, but various factors have combined to limit me to somewhere around 9-minutes-per-mile pace on most runs.

But I know I should probably also do some strength training, something I've never enjoyed and never gotten into. My doctor says my running is sufficient exercise and poo poos the idea of hitting the weights. And since that's what I want to hear, I believe her.

Yet a lot of authorities will tell you strength training is better for you than cardio work. And maybe they're right, I don't know.

I also take a variety of nutritional supplements every day. So many that I have one of those old-person pill cases to keep them all straight. My 17 daily pills, all of which are voluntarily ingested and not prescribed by a doctor, consist of a multi-vitamin (cut in half so I count it as two), two baby aspirin, three fish oil capsules, three calcium/magnesium/zinc pills, two Vitamin C pills, and individual Vitamin B6, B12, D, E and folic acid supplements.

I've built this regimen through my various readings and not from one authoritative source, which is probably not good. And quite likely a waste of money. But they make me feel like I'm doing something to beat the grim reaper, so I keep buying them.

The one thing I've always wanted and never found is a single book or a single website that tells me what to do: Do this much of this exact kind of exercise. Take only these particular supplements. Get this many hours of sleep. Do all of that, and you'll live a happy, healthy life to the age of 200.

This won't happen, of course, and I'm destined to drop dead someday of a heart attack, probably no matter what I do.

In the meantime, I'll drive Terry to her grave with my constant whining and self-doubt, which is the most ironic part of the whole thing.