Here's what I use social media for

FACEBOOK: Posting incoherent thoughts and occasional pictures of my cats. And news of family deaths, I guess. Oh, and also bragging any time my kids manage to do something that can be construed as the least bit positive, which includes going entire days without burning down the house or destroying any of our personal property.

TWITTER: Reading and favoriting uninteresting tweets from professional athletes and the journalists who cover them. And sending out links to these blog posts for the three or four of my Twitter followers who care.

INSTAGRAM: Posting highly edited pictures of smoothies.

LINKEDIN: This is basically Facebook for Professional People in that you spend most of your time bragging about yourself. This would work well for me if my greatest accomplishment was something other than appearing on two game shows and was relevant to my job and my worth to potential employers. So while I have a lot of connections and my profile is pretty good, my use of LinkedIn is minimal.

PINTEREST: I don't use Pinterest because I am a man. This is generalizing, I realize, and I'm sure someone has a Pinterest board of "Photos of Daddy Bloggers Who Make Sexist Comments." But according to one online report I read that I'm choosing to believe, 80% of Pinterest users are women, and 90% of all "pins" are created or shared by women. And I don't know exactly what that last part even means.

TUMBLR: Honestly? I'm not sure what Tumblr is. It's apparently a "blogging platform," but it's inhabited by people who are, in essence, not me. So I ignore it.

REDDIT: See "Tumblr."

GOOGLE PLUS: HAHAHAHAH! No, seriously, what's next?

GOOGLE PLUS: Oh, you were serious. Well, I'm ON Google Plus, at least in the sense that I have an account there. Beyond that, though, I have no idea what it does, nor whether it's even real. Its existence could be an elaborate hoax and I'm one of millions of victims.

FLICKR: Looking at pictures of myself from 2005.

VINE: Wasting my life away, six seconds at a time.

What Daddy's Little Girl wants, Daddy's Little Girl gets

One of the long-accepted tenets of parenting is that fathers will do virtually anything their daughters ask them to do.

This is absolutely true.

Every daughter is, in one way or another, Daddy's Little Girl. Or at least that's how Daddy sees it. So usually when they want something, and especially when they use that deadly "Oh Daddy You're So Wonderful and I Love You" voice, we cave in.

We can't help it, it's how we're wired.

At least two of my daughters understand this dynamic, and I think the third is catching onto it.

The other day, one of my daughters whom I will only identify as "Chloe" asked me to go outside to her (locked) car and retrieve her baritone horn and her music for her so she could practice. It was cold and snowy, and it was clear that "Chloe" was perfectly capable of putting on her shoes and doing this herself.

"But," she said, "it's so cold outside and you're so big and strong, Daddy, and I just..." OK FINE I'LL DO IT JUST STOP LAYING ON THE DAUGHTER GUILT.

The right parenting move here, of course, would have been to make her do it herself, since the world doesn't cater to our whims and Daddy won't be around to do every little thing for you.

But I was in no way capable of resisting her pleas. It's like girls emanate Waves of Persuasion and we just bend to their will. Even when we know we shouldn't.

So I put on my shoes, traipsed outside in single-digit temperatures, unlocked her car, grabbed the large brass instrument and sheet music and brought it all back in for "Chloe," who thanked me and headed upstairs to practice.

As a rule, moms are not subject to the reverse effect with their sons. No matter the gender of the child asking, they're able to say "no" to any and all unreasonable requests. This is why kids, being essentially evil, know it's best to go to Dad when they really want something and expect resistance from Mom.

We don't raise them to be evil, of course, but it's in their nature. And some of us never grow out of it.

What it comes down to is that fathers, no matter how much they see themselves as stern disciplinarians, generally regard their daughters as precious little flowers. This leads to many things, including the bizarre popularity of daddy-daughter songs as sung by male country music artists (that link will take you to a post on this topic I wrote a couple of years ago).

It also leads to dads blubbering on the dance floor at their little girls' weddings when it's time for the Father-Daughter Dance.

If these young women were even smarter and more evil than they already are, they would ask their daddies for $10,000 right in the middle of this dance. They would be rich in no time.

I'm American, so I only speak American

In a couple of weeks I'll be jetting off to Frankfurt for a business trip. I'll spend four days or so in Germany, and then another two in London before returning home.

This will be my second time in Germany and my third time in the UK, and I think both countries are great.

That's partly because there's virtually no language barrier in either. They invented English in the UK (though I naively like to think we in the U.S. perfected it), and virtually everyone I ran into during my first trip to Germany spoke English. Excellent English, in fact. It was weird.

I mentioned to several Germans how stunned I was at their ability not only to speak my language, but to speak it so fluently. One woman with whom I regularly work at our German public relations firm at times has no accent whatsoever when she speaks English. It's like she's from Iowa.

Generally their response is something along the lines of, "Well, we learn English in school at a young age, and of course we're bombarded by American culture and American TV shows and movies all the time."

Which always makes me feel bad. Not only that relatively few of us in the U.S. bother to learn a second language well, but that our influence is everywhere and we sort of take for granted that that's the way it should be.

A lot of Americans take foreign languages in high school, but that seems way, way too late to start. The time to start learning a language is when you're really young and you're an absolute sponge for vocabulary and pronunciation.

When I was growing up in the Wickliffe school district, everyone took French class from the time they were in first grade. In fact, I took French every year from first grade through my third year in college.

You would think that would make me fluent, but I'm not. I can read it fairly well, and I can get by in a conversation if the person to whom I'm speaking talks slowly. But I never spent any significant amount of time in a Francophone country, and therefore I was never forced to really learn the language the way you are when you're immersed in a culture and have no choice but to learn the words or be utterly lost.

Nowadays Wickliffe has gone to a more traditional model whereby the kids don't get any exposure to foreign languages until sixth grade, and even then the only choices are French and Spanish.

It probably makes more sense in today's world to learn Mandarin, or maybe even Russian or Arabic. But regardless of what language you take, there is value in the learning itself. Taking a foreign language forces you to think in new and unfamiliar ways, presumably forging new pathways in your brain and making you smarter and all of that stuff.

But I'm American, and  I will likely die knowing only how to say "Please open the window" in French and how to count to 10 in Japanese.

Which puts me ahead of about 99% of my countrymen. Sigh.

I'm going to need reading glasses soon, right?

There are many signs that I have aged over the last 10 to 20 years, including (but not limited to) a distinct lack of hair at the top of my head, a few varicose veins on my legs, and a general crankiness that I can only assume will get worse as time goes on.

But somehow, inexplicably to me, I have reached the age of 45 and have no trouble reading small print.

Many others my age – and my lovely wife is a member of this group – wear reading glasses and/or have to hold documents with tiny type at arm's length in order to have any shot at reading them.

Not me, though. At least not yet. I know it's coming, but for now I can still read even the hardest-to-decipher sections of the newspaper without the aid of optical enhancement.

(NOTE: That I still read a newspaper is, in fact, another sign that I'm not as young as I used to be.)

I had Lasik surgery 14 years ago this week, but as I understand it, it only affected my near-sightedness. The doc even told me that the procedure, which by the way has been everything it was cracked up to be and more, would not obviate the need for reading glasses.

(ANOTHER NOTE: I like the word "obviate." I could have gone with an easier word there, but I chose "obviate" because I'm just that kind of etymological rebel.)

So I'm waiting. The first time I have to break down and buy a pair of reading glasses, I will do it with some pride, knowing I held out as long as I possibly could. But until then, my youthful eyes and I will continue on our merry, unaugmented way.

It will come in handy when I have to read the small print on the contract I sign before I undergo laser surgery for these varicose veins.

5 things I should know how to do but never got around to learning

(1) HOW TO CHANGE MY OWN OIL
It isn't difficult, I know, and there are plenty of YouTube videos to answer my two most burning questions, which are (a) Where is the oil plug on my car? and (b) What do I do with the old oil? But I continue to pay 20 or 30 bucks a pop to have someone else change the oil on our cars. At some point I'll learn. Really.

(2) HOW TO WEAR A SCARF
Like a winter scarf, I mean, not one of those women's infinity scarves that we'll all look at someday in old photos and say, "Wow, that must have been 2014 or 2015 because I was wearing one of those scarves. Those things were huge! What were we thinking?" Anyway, given that the temperature is something like 5 degrees outside as I type this, this is a relevant question. I'm never sure whether you wrap it around your neck or just let it hang down or what. This should be obvious to me. It's not.

(3) HOW TO PROPERLY GRILL MEAT
This is one of those things that American men are supposed to know. And most do. But not me. When I grill, the meat comes out dry, burnt, or both. What am I missing?

(4) HOW TO APPRECIATE OPERA
I try! Seriously, I try. I love classical music, especially symphonic music and concertos. Listen to it all the time. But any time I tune into WCLV 104.9 FM, our local classical station to which I donate $5 a month (hey, it's something) on a Saturday morning or early afternoon, there's an Italian man yelling at me. Or at least that's how it seems to me. I have excellent recordings of "Otello" and "Carmen," but I have to struggle to get through them. Someday opera and I will be good friends. But as of  yet, it hasn't happened.

(5) HOW TO STOMACH WHISKEY OR ANY OTHER HARD LIQUOR
Oh man, that stuff is horrible. All of it. Don't tell me you have some excellent sipping whiskey or a great vodka or something because it all tastes like floor cleaner to me. Of course, I used to say that all wine tastes like vinegar and feet, and suddenly I find myself a wine drinker, so apparently taste buds change. But for now, keep the fancily bottled floor cleaner away from me.

Sisters being sisters

Sometimes my three daughters sit around the kitchen table and do their nails and talk.

This sounds like a pretty mundane activity, and I guess it is. But I love when they do it.

I don't love when they leave the big plastic container of nail polish on the table and it's still there the next morning. Or when they don't push their chairs in after they're finished.

But I can live with those things if it means that from time to time, my girls get to sit around that table and just be sisters.

This is what you want when you have multiple kids, of course. You want them always to be close. You want them to love each other like you love them.

They will argue. That's inevitable. They have different personalities, and sometimes that means different attitudes that will lead to fights. It happens.

But in the end, long after you're gone, you hope that they'll be close. You hope that someday they'll still be sitting around that table telling stories about you. Chances are they'll make fun of something you did or something you used to say all the time. And that's OK.

Just so long as they're talking and laughing and having fun together. Just so long as they're tight. Just so long as they understand the value of what they have in their siblings.

Elissa is going to be 21 years old in a couple of months. That's stunning. It also means that a time is coming soon when she will be moving on, and those around-the-table nail-polishing sessions will become fewer and further between.

It happens. So it goes. Chloe and Melanie will do the same in not so many years.

But as they get older, wherever they're living and whatever they're doing, I hope they'll make a point of getting together regularly. The nail polish doesn't have to be a part of it, but their connection as sisters does. I hope they never let time, distance or busy schedules keep them apart for too long.

However it goes, I just hope they eventually learn to push their chairs in when they're finished. And put the nail polish away, too, girls. Your father would appreciate it.

Everything I think is true about my past is apparently wrong

Not long ago, I found a plastic bin in our storage room filled with memorabilia from my high school and college years.

When this happens and you're in your mid-40s, you may as well block off the next couple of hours on your calendar, because you're going to have a grand old time rummaging through that bin and reliving what apparently passes for your glory years.

And it was fun. Among the items I came across was a spiral-bound booklet recapping my senior football season in the fall of 1987. I read through almost the entire thing.

Football was a funny thing for me. I was the only person I knew who played football mostly to stay in shape for track, which was my main sport. For most other guys, sports like track were used to stay in shape for football.

I was a running back, and a career back-up at that. This was partly because I had some excellent athletes playing ahead of me in Scott Martin (tailback) and Ron Szinte (fullback). I was faster than both of them, but they were both stronger than me and had much better football sense.

We also had a very good team overall, going 8-2 my senior year and losing to Youngstown Cardinal Mooney, the eventual Division III Ohio state champions, in our one and only playoff game.

As a result, I carried the ball on the varsity level fewer than 30 times through four seasons. I managed to score four touchdowns during that time, and I somehow averaged more than 10 yards a carry my senior year, but I was never much more than a third option when it came to running the ball in our Wing-T offense.

Which was actually fine with me. Like I said, football was there to keep me in shape in the months before indoor track started. And what I mostly liked about it was the contact and daily routine of our practices.

Anyway, as I read through that old booklet and relived those 11 games from my senior year, I realized that over time I have completely fabricated many memories about them.

Final scores I have in my head were wrong. Carries I thought I had were nowhere to be found in the stats. And details I was sure would never leave my brain were almost as inaccurate as they could be.

This leads me to believe that at some point when we reach our 20s, we create a narrative of our childhoods and our high school experiences that we take as gospel truth. And many times it is.

But in some cases, we either believe what we want to be true, or else we inadvertently change up the story in our heads and after awhile it becomes our own personal version of reality.

I can't tell you whether this is good or bad. Only that it is.

I'd like to think that my overall impression of high school is accurate. As I remember it, I had a ball. I have no desire to repeat that time of my life, really, but all in all, it was a fun time for me.

So now I'm scared to death that somehow these happy memories are going to get blown up the way my supposedly crystal-clear football memories were rocked by reality nearly 30 years after the fact.

Do me a favor: If I served time in prison or something when I was in high school and I've simply blocked it out, please don't tell me. I'm perfectly fine living in this Bubble of Happiness I've created for myself.

Four bathrooms in our house and it's still not enough

Technically we have 3½ bathrooms, since the one off the kitchen is a half-bath. But the fact is, there are four toilets in this house, yet someone is always complaining.

Why? Well, for one thing, there are seven of us living here (six during the school year when Elissa is at college, but still...) No matter how you look at it, that's still more people than privies.

But there's also this: Many of us have favorite bathrooms depending on what we plan to do in them. Some, for example, will shower in the master bathroom, but they refuse to do so in the upstairs bathroom. Others will perform a certain bodily function only on a designated toilet and no other.

And no one except me seems willing to use the basement bathroom for anything. It's a full bathroom down there, and it works just fine if you ignore the shockingly low capacity of the toilet (let's just say you don't want to eat a large Mexican meal and then have to use our basement bathroom).

But really, it's a good bathroom. The problem is that when we first moved in 11 years ago, and admittedly for some time thereafter, no one used that bathroom and it got a little ratty after awhile. Like, spiders were in there along with who-knows-what-other-sorts of wildlife.

But now it gets regular use and I can assure you there are no bugs of any kind. I just recently washed the floor, shower, toilet and sink, rendering it perfectly acceptable for use by almost anyone except maybe the Queen of England. And depending on her personal preferences, even Elizabeth may be OK with it.

Still, the image of The Nasty Basement Bathroom persists, and as I said, no one takes advantage of its presence except me. Which is fine, but no matter what my kids say, it's a viable solution to the occasional bathroom conflicts that erupt in our house. (I will also admit it's pretty cold down there, but you learn to deal with it.)

My theory is that it's impossible for anyone to have enough bathrooms. I don't care how big your family is, I don't care how big your house is. You will adjust your hygiene habits to the point that even if you have 17 bathrooms, you'll still want the variety and comfort of that 18th bathroom you lack.

Of course, when I was a toddler, I lived in a house with six people and only one bathroom. But people were changing my diaper every day, so I really didn't care. But if the Tennants of the early 1970s could hack it, I'm sure the Tennants of the mid-2010s can soldier on somehow, too.

I can no longer chew gum because I'll bleed to death

Over the past year or so, I've taken to buying a pack of gum every time I visit CVS, which incidentally has become my favorite store in the world.

I love CVS. They have all of the stuff I need to lead a semi-healthy lifestyle: Vitamins, supplements, dark chocolate, nuts, etc. And they also carry creamer for my coffee. And, as I said, gum.

I was never a regular gum-chewer until recently. But I think it's a habit I'm going to have to give up because almost every time I chew a piece of gum, I inadvertently bite my lower lip on the right side. Seriously, my right upper canine tooth (which has apparently grown in size and sharpness as I've aged) will inevitably catch that hunk of lip tissue and bite right into it at least once, which immediately turns my mint-flavored gum into a yummy mixture of mint and blood.

This is disheartening, not only because I like chewing gum but also because I like having a lower lip, too.

Am I the only one to whom this happens?

Things I'll miss about having a child in elementary school

Every year since 1999, we have had at least one kid attending Wickliffe Elementary School, a stately(?) old brick building that stands majestically on Lincoln Road and contains vomit residue from generations of students.

That's what I think of when I think of elementary schools: puke. I don't know why. It's not like there was a kid barfing every day when I was a student at the now-defunct Mapledale Elementary School in the 70s and early 80s. But it did happen occasionally.

The only time I upchucked in school wasn't actually in the school building. It was at our end-of-the-year second-grade class picnic at Twin Lakes Park (now Orlando Park...things change...so it goes). We had just eaten lunch, and a bunch of us had taken our gloves over to the dirt field for a quick game of softball.

It was hot, and as I said we had just eaten. And I'm sure I was wearing jeans because there's no way they would have let us wear shorts. And suddenly, well, as I stood in the dusty infield, my lunch (which I'm sure somehow involved a couple of slices of Fazio's Italian bread) decided to make a reappearance all over second base.

After I had expelled the contents of my stomach and felt much better, Vince Boyce very casually yelled, "Time out! Scott barfed." Just like that. I don't remember what happened then exactly, but I think we just covered it up with dirt and resumed our game. Little boys are like that.

Anyway, what was I talking about? Yeah, the things I'll miss about having a kid in elementary school. Our youngest, Jack, is in fourth grade, which means next year he'll move next door to Wickliffe Middle School, and the long line of Tennants at Wickliffe Elementary will come to an end.

By the way, speaking of Tennants in Wickliffe schools, our family has been in the system for a long time. It started in the spring of 1963 when my siblings moved from Euclid to Wickliffe and enrolled as students at Mapledale. There was then at least one Tennant in the school system without interruption until I graduated from high school 25 years later in 1988.

Then, after an 11-year absence, we were back again in 1999 when my oldest, Elissa, started kindergarten. So assuming Jack doesn't drop out of school to become a crime lord or something and graduates on schedule in June 2023, that means there will have been Tennants in the Wickliffe schools for 50 of 61 academic years spanning from 1962-63 to 2022-23. Did I do that right? I'll trust that my Wickliffe education was sufficient to ensure that the math is correct.

Anyway, the things I'll miss about having a kid in elementary school. There are three:

(1) THE INNOCENCE: Yeah, I know that kids are getting more and more street-wise at younger and younger ages.  But elementary school kids are still essentially innocent and fun. I've coached them enough in baseball and soccer, and had enough of them in my house over the years, to know this is still true. Then middle school comes and suddenly there are hormones and drama and the emergence of The Bad Kids and...I don't know, it's just not the same. I'll miss the innocence of elementary school.

(2) THE CHEESY SCHOOL PROGRAMS: Nothing beats a first-grade play for sheer unintentional comedy value. Nothing.

(3) THE TEACHERS: I can only speak from my experience as a parent at Wickliffe Elementary, but I am blown away at the extent to which the faculty there genuinely cares about my children. Not only professionally, but emotionally and socially, as well. They're great people, and they've obviously played a huge role in shaping my kids, and for that I'm eternally grateful. I'll miss every one of them.

I have zero attention span, and my smart phone is to blame

Actually, I'm to blame. But I would rather ascribe my complete inability to concentrate on anything for more than 10 seconds at a time on my Galaxy S4 device.

Smart phones are awesome, aren't they? They give us instant access to information, social connection (in a fashion) and entertainment, and we can carry all of that processing power around in our pockets.

But my Galaxy is SO awesome that I've become addicted to it. And I'm not even kidding. I am unable to just sit and do nothing. If I'm stopped at a traffic light, for example, I instinctively grab for my phone. Maybe an email has arrived in the 17 seconds since I last checked it, AND I MUST ANSWER IT RIGHT NOW.

This inability to just be, to just exist, is alarming. Must I be constantly stimulated? Must I be made aware of every news story, big and small, in the 60 seconds after it happens? Must I finish that game of online cribbage before proceeding through the intersection?

Apparently the answers are yes, yes, and most certainly yes.

That last point bears some explanation. I have a cribbage app on my phone that I play constantly. Like, all the time. According to the statistics the app maintains, I have played 2,955 games of electronic cribbage since I bought this phone in October 2013. That's an average of nearly seven games every day. Every. Day. Seven games. Of virtual cribbage.

I shouldn't even mention this, but I'll tell you that many of those games have been played while standing at the urinal at work. And suffice it to say that I'm very good at multi-tasking in these instances, if you catch my drift.

Why? Why can't I just do the one thing for which the urinal is designed, wash my hands and walk out of the bathroom without also engaging in a simultaneous game of cribbage? Or checking my email? Or crushing some poor sap in Trivia Crack? Why?

I don't know the answer. All I know is that in the past year or two, I've lost the ability to be still. I must constantly be doing something. Just sitting and thinking? That's for analog losers. I will be productive and/or entertained during all waking moments. Welcome to the 21st century, ladies and gentlemen!

This, by the way, is why so many of us panic when our phone batteries start running low. "My phone is dying! My phone is dying! Somebody get me a charger and a wall outlet, STAT! MY PHONE IS DYING!" We're addicts, plain and simple.

Did you ever see that movie "Wall-E," which portrays a future in which people no longer walk around or even stand? Instead, they sit on floating platforms and spend their days eating and staring at holographic computer screens. I'm already well on my way to that type of existence.

By the time the Galaxy S7 comes out, I'll weigh 550 pounds and will be confined to my room. But man, there's no doubt I'll also be the online cribbage champion of the world. And there's something to be said for that.

Legos, Legos everywhere...

This is the scene in our living room right now as my wife (that's her on the right) helps my youngest son, Jack, sort through approximately 8 billion Legos and build The Burrow, which you Harry Potter fans will recognize as the name of the Weasley family's home.

It's one of the things that makes her a hero. Not only that she has Lego-building skills that she has passed on to our son, but also that she has the patience to sit on a living room floor and sort through the pieces with (and for) him.

Jack has been on a Lego kick of late, but trust me, what you see here is just a portion of our vast Lego empire. These are Lego bricks assembled through the course of many years of birthdays, Christmases, etc.

I was never into Legos as a kid, and it's honestly one of my least favorite things to do with the kids now. I'll do it, if pressed, but I guarantee I won't enjoy it.

To her credit, Terry likes Legos and she'll do anything to keep Jack occupied with something other than electronics. Given his druthers – and someday I hope someone gives me a big ol' pack of druthers – he would spend entire days on the Xbox and iPad. This is generally undesirable, so if he shows any interest in something non-digital, Terry is ready to pounce.

She's a good mom that way. She's a good mom every way, really.

When your pets suffer from mental illness

We have a cat named George who is very special. And by "special" I don't mean unique and wonderful and precious so much as "should be in some sort of feline assisted living facility."

Everyone in the house agrees that George has a problem, but none of us agree on his diagnosis. One daughter thinks he has obsessive-compulsive disorder, while another believes he may be autistic. I can't say exactly where he falls on the spectrum, though I know something is not right with George.

For one thing, he's pretty slow on the uptake, at least in relation to our other three cats. This doesn't make him any less valuable or less lovable; in fact, it makes him far more entertaining to us.

I actually have a long history of pets with mental illness. Growing up, we had a dog named Bootsie (Or was it "Bootsy" like Bootsy Collins? I don't think there was ever an official ruling on the spelling of her name.) Bootsie/Bootsy had a big knot on top of her head, which my dad believed was some sort of brain growth that made her...different.

Later on, I owned a hamster whom I called Ariel who had extreme anger issues. She seemed pretty lovable in the store, but once I got her home, it was nothing but teeth and rage with that little rodent.

I made the mistake of placing Ariel's cage next to the fiberglass/nylon curtains my mom had sewn for my room. She (the hamster, not my mom) managed to reach through the bars and gather in some of the curtain material, which she proceeded to eat in great chunks. I'm guessing the resulting chemical poisoning did nothing to improve her mood swings.

Nowadays we own two chinchillas, both of whom I think are strange, but I'm coming to believe that's just how chinchillas are and that our two are pretty average, as chinchillas go.

Sometimes, your pets' mental issues can work to your advantage. Our cat Fred is a great example. Fred's problem is that he is obsessed. Specifically, he is obsessed with me. Fred loves me. He sleeps virtually on top of me every night, which keeps me warm. I love having Fred in bed with me. He's like a big, fat, loudly purring electric blanket. When he dies, I'll be sad.

And cold.

Sometimes crazy/obsessive is good.

Jobs I do around the house because I'm the man

My inability to fix things and/or do anything remotely mechanical is well documented. And I freely own up to it. But there are still certain jobs I do within our household simply because I have testicles.

I don't know why these are Man Jobs, but they are. My list includes the following:

(1) KILLING BUGS
This is pretty stereotypical, and it's also true. My wife and daughters - strong, confident women all - will force me to fly in from the other side of the continent, if necessary, if a spider is found in our kitchen. They could easily squash it themselves, but for whatever reason, insect and arachnid killing falls to me or my son Jared.

(2) CLEANING THE CAT LITTER BOXES
As I've mentioned  before, I got roped into this one years ago when Terry was pregnant with Elissa. Terry and her doctor conspired to make up a fake disease called toxoplasmosis, which they claimed pregnant women could contract if they come into contact with cat waste. I stupidly believed them, and 20 years later the first thing I do every single day is still cleaning the litter boxes. I can't believe I fell for it.

(3) MAINTAINING THE CARS
This may seem surprising, given my aforementioned lack of mechanical aptitude, but all it really means is that every few weeks I pop the hoods on our cars to check that they have the proper levels of windshield washer, transmission and power steering fluids, coolant, oil, etc. I also make sure the tires are inflated to the correct pressure. This not only extends the life of our vehicles, it also makes me feel semi-manly. Everybody wins.

(4) CLEANING UP PEE, BOTH ANIMAL AND HUMAN
If one of our cats pees on the carpet and I'm home, I clean it up. I'm not sure why this is, but I'm fine with it. The problem is that, from time to time when the kids were little, they would also pee on the carpet, and again...the clean-up was assigned to me. Like this one time, one of my daughters who shall remain nameless was sleepwalking at our old house. Wearing her little Barbie nightgown, she stood at the top of the stairs and announced, "I can't take it anymore." And then she just started peeing. Terry cleaned her up and got her back to bed, while I soaked up the pee and broke out the stain remover. The unwritten rule is that Scott is to clean up any and all urine-related incidents within the confines of the house.

(5) MAKING SURE THE KEURIG RESERVOIR IS FULL
Our Keurig coffee maker gets used a lot. Which means the water level in the little plastic reservoir attached to the machine tends to drop quickly. In almost all cases, I'm the one who fills it back up. Again, I don't know why, but it bothers me to see that "Add Water" indicator on the little Keurig screen, so I'm quick to take it over to the sink and fill it up. It's my job. It's what I do.

I'm The Man.