How do I stop biting my nails?

One thing basketball star Lebron James and I share, besides world-class athletic ability and millions of dollars in sponsorship revenue, is the frowned-upon habit of biting our nails.

I don't know why Lebron is constantly nibbling on his fingertips, and come to think of it, I have no idea why I do it, either. Or why it's so hard to stop.

Believe me, I've tried. I get the urge to chomp off a big section of nail and then I think myself, "Don't do that. It's disgusting. And it also makes your small hands look even worse. Let your nails grow. Take care of them. Make them look nice."

Then I stare at that tempting nail and I want so badly to bite it. I try to ignore it, but it just taunts me. In the end, I always give in and bite it. Why? Why can't I resist? What's the big attraction?

One time my sister, who for decades has owned a salon and knows about such things, gave me cuticle oil to use. And a little tool to push those cuticles back. I vowed to start taking care of my nails and to stop biting them, and I stuck to this punishing regimen for 17 full minutes before reverting back to my old ways.

At our wedding, Terry and I took a picture of our hands to show off our wedding rings. Her hand comes across in the photo across as slender and pretty, with French-manicured nails. Mine appears to belong to an 11-year-old dwarf who got into a fight with a badger (and lost). It's a study in horrible contrast.

I always figured that eventually I would grow up and start taking care of my nails, but I'm 45 and it has yet to happen. My fingernails are jagged and ugly, with peeling cuticles that appear to have been neglected for several presidential administrations.

So how do I stop this? Has anyone here quit the habit and can tell me how they did it? Was there hot sauce involved? Or electric shocks?

I'll try anything. I'm like the smoker who has gone through nicotine patches, gum and hypnosis with no result. I'm desperate here, people. Help me out.

I'll be tearing my nails to bits as I anxiously await your suggestions

Everyone should work in a restaurant at some point in their lives

The first job I ever had was as a dishwasher at Tizzano's, an Italian restaurant not far from my house. I made something like $2.50 an hour, but it was all under the table and it was good money for a 15-year-old kid in the summer of 1985.

I was OK at it. Not nearly as good as my friend Kevin, who took right to kitchen work and was therefore nicknamed "The Natural" by Vince, the head cook. Vince called me "Thornton." I have no idea why, and he never explained it, but he was essentially a good guy so I'll trust it was well-intended.

I only worked there three months before I quit. I was about to start my sophomore year of high school and was playing football, so I didn't see how I would have time for practices, homework AND a job (though that didn't stop other football players from working there...they must have been a lot tougher than me).

In those 90 days or so, I learned a lot. For one thing, I learned I never wanted to work in a restaurant again. It's a tough gig, man! Kudos to all of you foodservice workers who make a living at it.

I also learned that I was grateful for having had the experience. In fact, I think it's an experience everyone should have. Whether you're working behind the counter at a fast-food place, bussing tables at a family restaurant, or scraping congealed marinara sauce off of customers' plates like I was, there is a lot to be learned from working at a restaurant. That includes:

(1) A LOT OF PEOPLE ARE ESSENTIALLY MEAN: I hate to say it, but you see the worst side of human nature when you're a restaurant worker. From lousy tips to unjustified complaints, people who otherwise have no real power in their lives become tyrants when they sit down at that table. The best servers learn this early on and know how to work through it. God bless them.

(2) A LOT PEOPLE ARE ALSO EXTRAORDINARILY PICKY: At least it seems so to me. I eat virtually anything. Anything. Just ask my wife. I never veer from the way a dish is described on the menu, I make no special requests, and I think just about everything I've ever been served in a restaurant has tasted great. I'm a server's dream. But that's not the case with many (most?) other folks. Sometimes I used to think people would send food back just because they could. Again, just so they could exercise their dominance over the poor waitstaff.

(3) HARD WORK IS GOOD FOR YOU...AND IT'S ALSO HARD: I know we already covered this, but I can't emphasize enough how hard the staff at Tizzano's worked when I was there. They were exhausted at the end of the night, and they earned every penny the owner, Mike, paid them. Such work benefits you both physically and mentally – and spiritually, I would argue – but it's also not something I could spend decades doing. You learn a lot about yourself in your first job, I think.

(4) GETTING YELLED AT BY YOUR BOSS IS NOT THE END OF THE WORLD: Mike used to praise me quite a bit, but he also got in my face more than a few times. And I totally deserved it. One time I put away a plate that had come out of the dishwasher with some miscellaneous crud still stuck to it, only I hadn't noticed because I was being lazy. Mike grabbed the plate, saw the crud, and stormed right up to me, ripping me the proverbial new one. Again, I deserved it. And I can tell you it never happened again. Sometimes getting reamed out is the only way to learn.

(5) THE GOLDEN RULE DOTH APPLY HERE: That whole thing about treating people how you yourself would want to be treated? Yeah, you learn that in a hurry when you're in a service industry. I would venture that the best tippers and most gracious restaurant patrons are those who spent some time in the shoes of those waiting on them. Working in foodservice, if nothing else, teaches you basic human decency, which ultimately is why we all could benefit from it.

Wait, why does my shoulder hurt? And my leg? And my hip? And my ankle?

This is the year in which I turn 46 years old. It doesn't happen for another six months, but I'm well aware it's coming.

Do you know what's interesting about turning 46? It's that you've moved inexorably and undeniably into the second half of your 40s.

It's like you spend the years from 40 through 45 going up a roller coaster hill, and when you turn 46 you crest the hill and start barreling down the other side. The idea of being 50 suddenly looms large.

All of which is fine, in some sense. I mean, time marches on without any help or hindrance from us. You either try and fight it (and ultimately lose) or you go with it.

I try to put myself into the "go with it" school, but there's one thing I can't help but noticing: Something on me is always a little bit painful. Not hugely painful. Certainly not debilitatingly painful. But there's almost always a little soreness somewhere on my body.

Right now it's in my right shoulder. And the frustrating part is that I have no idea why. I don't recall having used that shoulder any more than normal in the last few days. Yet if I lift my right arm over my head, I feel it in the shoulder.

Once that starts feeling OK, it will be the pesky left calf that flares up during my morning walks. Or a twinge in my right hip. Again, nothing that would seem to require medical attention, just a series of constant annoyances.

As I understand it, this isn't going away, either. It will just get worse. Little by little, the pains will be more annoying and more frequent. It will start being two things that are sore at any given time rather than just one. And they'll start affecting the way I go about performing certain daily tasks.

This is something that will be years in the making, but eventually it asserts its dominance over all of us, no matter what we do.

It doesn't help that I don't strength train. I walk. My heart is healthy and so, I think, are my bones. But I need to lift weights to help my muscles and tendons remain strong and pain-resistant. I'll start that at some point before I turn 50, I promise.

But if I were smart, I would start now. Joints respond well to resistance exercise and I could hold that soreness back a bit better if I would just carve out a few mornings a week for some dumbbell work.

So will I? Again, yes, eventually. When things aren't so busy. (I'll give you a moment to laugh ironically at that statement.)

Of course, by the time I'm able to free up a couple of hours of gym time a week, my memory will be shot and I'll forget to do it anyway. So maybe aspirin and Ben Gay are my only hope at this point.

I really do miss the urologists

For a two-year period back in the late 90's, I served as the managing editor of Urology Times magazine.

That's absolutely true. UT is one of those obscure publications (of which there are hundreds if not thousands) that exclusively cover very narrow niches within the business world.

These "trade pubs," as they are often referred to among the journalists and publishers who staff them, are great sources of ad revenue because they deliver a very targeted and engaged readership.

UT, as the name implies, offers news of interest to practicing urologists on a monthly basis. Most of the news is scientifically oriented, but there's also notice of new products and legislative happenings that affect the specialty.

If you're not familiar with urology, it's the branch of medicine that deals mostly with diseases of the prostate, kidneys, bladder and adrenal glands, as well as the male reproductive organs.

I'll give you a minute to let out a heartfelt "Ewwwww!"

And it really does score high on the Yuck Spectrum. I watched dozens of urologic surgeries during my 2-plus years with the magazine, and none of them were especially pretty.

Which leads to the question of why someone would choose to be a urologist. I asked a urologist about that when I worked at UT. His answer was two-fold:

(1) He called it a "gentleman's surgical sub-specialty." A lot of urologists wanted to be surgeons in medical school, but they quickly realized they didn't want to be taking out someone's gall bladder at 3 in the morning. Most urological procedures are of a non-emergency nature, so they can be scheduled at convenient hours ("Convenient," that is, to the urologist who wants to make sure he gets in 18 holes of a golf on a nice summer day.)

(2) They also get paid well. Physicians in general score pretty highly in the paycheck department, but at the time I was covering the field, urologists were among the highest-paid sub-specialists.

And I'm fine with that. Someone in our society needs to worry about pee-related problems, and I doubt you or I are going to volunteer. So when a person steps up to the plate and promises to be there if I develop a nasty advanced penile cancer, yeah, I'm OK with them getting a big fat paycheck in return.

Almost to a man (and the vast majority of them were men), the urologists with whom I dealt were hilarious. Which makes sense, doesn't it? You have to have quite a sense of humor if you spend your days sticking your finger into places it shouldn't be stuck into.

I used to attend urological research meetings, and I always enjoyed interviewing the urologists and urologically inclined medical students after they made their research presentations. They were not only nice, they were also genuinely shocked that someone cared about their work enough to write about it.

I freelanced for UT for a few years after leaving the magazine and moving into public relations, and to this day I'm still overly knowledgeable about prostate tumors and the demographics of bladder cancer. It's the kind of stuff that never quite falls out of your brain, even though you have no use for it.

So I miss it a little. Or at least I miss the people.

I also miss the funny names. During my time at UT, I came across urologists whose names were (I'm not making any of these up) Drs. Wang, Johnson and Zipper. And they PAID me to write about this stuff.

I should be in Boston today

On Sunday, October 14, 2001, I ran the Towpath Marathon through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. It was 26.2 miles of trees, drizzle and the occasional spectator.

I finished that first marathon of my life in a time of 3 hours, 46 minutes, 20 seconds. It was a huge accomplishment, culminating months of training and years of planning.

I was a few weeks away from turning 32 years old and was in probably the best shape of my life. The Towpath was supposed to have been the first in a series of marathons over the course of which I would improve my training techniques, lower my times and eventually run some of the most well-known races in the world.

Instead, life got in the way.

Terry and I had four kids at the time, and a fifth would come along less than five years later. I started coaching youth sports and getting more involved in my children's activities. My job responsibilities increased. My free time – the time needed to do those leisurely three-hour Saturday morning training runs – dwindled rapidly.

In the years that followed, I vowed to recommit to marathons dozens of times. I would type up a training schedule, start to follow it, then fall off a few weeks into the process when I realized I just didn't have the time to train for such long races anymore.

I desperately wanted to run the Cleveland Marathon. Or the Marine Corps Marathon. Or the New York City Marathon.

Most of all, I wanted to run the Boston Marathon.

Running a marathon is a bucket list item, but running Boston is the pinnacle. It's the most recognized and most highly celebrated marathon in the world. For one thing, you can't just enter the Boston Marathon. You have to qualify for it, and the qualifying times are pretty ambitious by almost any standard.

To run Boston means that you've not only conquered the marathon distance, it means you've whipped it into submission.

But it has never happened. The 119th running of the Boston Marathon is today, and I won't be there. Again.

Marathon training is a time-intensive proposition. Not just on the weekends, but even throughout the week when you're trying to crank out the 6- and 8-mile morning runs that prepare your mind and body for 3-plus hours of hard effort on race day.

So for now, no thank you. It's time to stop kidding myself. At this stage of my life, if I want anything approaching enough sleep and to spend even meager amounts of time with my family, then marathon training is out of the question.

That doesn't mean it's always going to be out of the question, but for now that's the way it is. And let's face it: None of us is getting any younger. There's the very real possibility that by the time my schedule allows for extended training runs, my body won't. That's just the way it is, folks, and I'm going to roll with it.

But I admit that I'll be watching the highlights from Boston tonight with a little pang of remorse mixed with thoughts of "what if?" Maybe someday...

10 random thoughts on a mid-April Friday

(1) There are all these songs by Maroon 5 that I didn't realize were by Maroon 5. I thought they just sang that "Sunday Morning" song and that Adam Levine was a judge on one of those singing competition shows, and that that was about the extent of their cultural influence. Turns out they've had like 57 hits of which I'm barely aware. I'm getting older by the minute, folks.

(2) Look, you're entitled to your opinion on this, but if that opinion isn't "the dress was black and blue," then your opinion is wrong.

(3) Was Porky Pig the most underrated of the Looney Tunes characters? I say yes. Discuss.

(4) I have never seen a single episode of House of Cards, Breaking Bad, The Wire, The Sopranos, The Office, Downton Abbey, or Game of Thrones. I'm not sure how this happened, but there you have it.

(5) My youngest son is 9 and we still put him to bed every night and say prayers with him. I'm not sure how much longer this will last, but I can tell you I'm going to miss it desperately.

(6) Speaking of missing things, I miss watching Friday Night Fights on ESPN with my dad. Talking while two boxers beat the snot out of each other on the TV screen in front of you is one of the greatest of male bonding moments.

(7) If five years ago you would have asked me whether I would ever consider moving away from my hometown, I would have said no way, no how. Now? With every Cleveland winter that passes, I'm increasingly unsure.

(8) I always rooted for Tom in "Tom and Jerry" and for Wile E. Coyote to catch the Roadrunner. What does that say about me?

(9) I take two showers every day, almost without exception. That's more than 700 showers in a year. That's too much, isn't it?

(10) As I type this, I'm considering dropping my multi-year allegiance to Android devices and buying an iPhone. Is this the equivalent of going over to the dark side of The Force?

I do our taxes and I'm pretty sure I don't do them right

I know a lot of people who hire an accountant or H&R Block or a friend to do their taxes.

Not me. Ever since we've been married, I've handled preparing and filing our federal, state and local income taxes.

I have no formal training in finance, tax law or generally accepted accounting principles, yet year after year I take on the responsibility of filling out these forms on behalf of myself and my wife, knowing that I'm risking an audit or, frankly, arrest.

Because I'm pretty sure I never get it quite right. Which is saying something since I use the popular TurboTax software to do my taxes, and the creators of that program try their best to make the whole thing as easy as possible.

And 95% of it really is easy. It's just a matter of filling in numbers and answering relatively simple questions.

But there are always a few things on my taxes about which I'm not quite sure. Like, for example, when and how to claim my daughter Elissa's college expenses. Or how much to claim. Or even why I'm claiming them in the first place.

A good, conscientious person would take time to do research not only to get the numbers right, but to ensure he or she fully understands the applicable tax code.

Then there's me. Once I start doing taxes, my only goal is to finish doing taxes, and to finish them as quickly as possible.

So if I'm the least bit stumped, I kind of guess a little. To my credit, I try to guess in a direction that favors the government rather than me. But I do guess somewhat.

In the end we always end up getting a sizable refund, not because I'm a tax genius or anything, but mainly because we have five children. And the tax code is set up such that you are encouraged to be prodigious in your childbearing. Got 10 kids? Cool, we're give you a deduction for each and every one of them.

It's always with some degree of trepidation that I click the "File" button in TurboTax to send my information to the IRS. I second- and third-guess myself, but I rarely change anything I've already entered. At some point when it comes to taxes, you figure prison is probably preferable to combing through that stack of receipts one more time to make sure you got everything right.

This past year my employer stopped withholding local tax from my paycheck. When that happens you're supposed to make proactive, quarterly estimated payments to your local tax authority, which we sort of tried to do with the City of Wickliffe but failed.

And then, when I did file our city taxes, I forgot to mail a W-2 form. So the city sent me a letter, the gist of which was, "Hey genius, thanks for your tax forms. Wanna send us a copy of the ol' W-2 this time?"

At least they didn't audit or arrest me. Which is more than I can probably say for the IRS once they stumble on this post.

10 things that have always baffled me for one reason or another

In no particular order (well, they're in numerical order, of course, but the numbers don't mean anything...I'm an equal opportunity baffler. Or bafflee, I guess):

1. The appeal of "professional" wrestling
2. Jigsaw puzzles
3. Bras
4. Lichtenstein
5. Why we need middle names
6. The correct way to clip toenails
7. People who can, without hesitation, put their tongue on a 9-volt battery to see if it's still good
8. How Wink Martindale wasn't more famous
9. The ability of a woman to pass an entire baby through an opening that, no matter what you tell me, was not in any way designed to accommodate even a small human
10. The disappearance of guys named Bruce

The top 5 fruits of all time (Blog Rerun)

(NOTE: So this post originally ran on August 14, 2013, and it's one my friend Kevin asked that I resurrect, presumably because he's a fellow fruit fan. I've been friends with Kevin since I was 4 years old. He served as my phone-a-friend on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," which I guess means he at least deserves a shot at selecting which blog posts get rerun. So here ya go, Kev...)

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.

The 40-Year-Old Nephew

Today my nephew Mark turns 40 years old. When something like this happens, you are forced to deal with the fact that you yourself are not quite as young as you like to think you are.

I remember when Mark was born, sort of. I was 5 years old, hadn't started kindergarten yet, and spent most of my days in the kind of brain-damaged haze that is the domain of accident victims and 5-year-old boys.

I had some vague idea that another human being was about to become part of our lives, and that my brother Mark was apparently going to be this person's dad, but that's about it. Mark Sr. was only 17 years old at the time and still pretty much seemed like a kid to me (as I'm sure he did to himself).

So then Mark Jr. was born and it didn't take long for him to seem more like a little brother to me than a nephew. When you're 5 years old, you shouldn't have anyone calling you "Uncle _______."

Mark spent a lot of time at our house growing up, which was generally OK but got a lot better when he became a teenager and was more fun to be around. In those few years when I was working at the newspaper and still living at home while in college, I would sometimes come home from my job around midnight, and Mark and I would go out for a late-night meal at Denny's.

Occasionally I would let him drive my high-powered, chick-attracting 1979 Chevy Chevette, which was technically a violation of the law given that he wasn't yet of legal driving age, but turned out OK in the sense that he didn't actually kill anyone. This was 2 o'clock in the morning, remember, so the streets were pretty empty (I wasn't so stupid as to let him drive in rush hour or anything.)

Then I got married and started having kids and I saw less and less of my little brother/nephew. We still see each other on holidays and we still laugh about the same stupid things, which makes 1990 not seem like such a long time ago.

And now "little" Mark is married with a daughter of his own, and like I said, he's 40 years old today. All of which blows my mind and makes me wonder how my mom feels as her "baby" (me) creeps closer and closer to 50.

That's the whole Lion King circle-of-life thing, I guess. We get older. It happens. We grow up. It happens. We stop driving Chevy Chevettes. Thankfully, it happens.

So at the risk of making this occasion about me (yeah, I know, too late), let me just say happy birthday to Mark, my nephew, substitute little bro, fellow Sting fan, and long-time Denny's connoisseur. Here's hoping you get at least 40 more.

And here's hoping you're still around when your little daughter turns 40 so that you can feel as old as I do right now.

I have no idea how to relax

It's Saturday afternoon as I type this and I don't know what to do with myself.

Which is a novel thing. Normally if I'm not at work or sleeping or running or engaged in some other part of my daily routine, I'm checking things off the to-do list. Running errands. Completing some household chore.

The point is, I'm always doing. And I'm afraid I haven't the first clue how not to do.

So far today I've done my running and Bible reading, I got the oil changed in the car, I went to the market and picked up a bunch of produce, I made my weekly run to CVS, I dropped off some clothes at the dry cleaner, I emptied the dishwasher, I vacuumed the living room and our bedroom, and I cleaned up the kitchen.

Other than helping Jack nail down his memory verse for Sunday School, I have nothing left on my to-do list today. And there are three more hours before Melanie and I leave to attend a hockey game tonight.

That's three hours available to do anything I want. So what do I do? I sit down to write this blog post. Not because I particularly want or need to (I'm writing this on February 28 and you're reading it in early April...I'm way, way ahead of the game right now, blog-wise). I'm doing it because I feel like it's my duty. Like it's another thing that has to get done. That doesn't seem right.

What would a normal, non-task-oriented person do? Probably relax. Take a nap. Read a book. Watch some TV. I could do any of those things, but I know that while I did them, there would be a very vocal part of my brain saying to me, "Think of everything you can get done in three hours. You're wasting the time. YOU'RE WASTING THE TIME! GET UP AND ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING!"

Which I suppose is the problem. Relaxation is accomplishing something. Your mind and body need downtime.

But I guess when you're married and a homeowner and a parent, you just come to assume that there's always something that needs to be done. And right now, other than washing the kitchen floor or something, I suppose, there's nothing urgent left on the To Be Done List.

And that makes me nervous. I assume I'm forgetting something.

Terry tells me I should get a hobby. I do have a hobby in running, I guess. But I do that as much out of obligation as I do for enjoyment. Gotta stay ahead of the family history of heart disease!

In the end, I know she's right. I definitely have to learn to relax.

I know what I'll do: I'll enroll in a course on relaxation. I'm sure they exist. And maybe there'll be homework. And class notes! I can buy a binder or something and keep everything organized. I can make a weekly relaxation to-do list: "Things to Do to Relax."

I will get everything done first and I'll be the best student in the class. It'll be great!

I'm totally going to be the world's most intense relaxer.

Making middle children feel special

As a father of five, I have two kids who are always being celebrated as the first in our family to do something (Elissa, my oldest) or the last in the family to do something (Jack, my youngest).

Being first or last among siblings holds a certain amount of prestige because everything you experience is associated with some sort of milestone or celebration.

Elissa was the first among my children to attend college. That was a new experience for us and we enjoyed it. When Jack gets there, he'll be the last kid to attend college, and that will also be an interesting experience and probably cause for some reflection.

So what about my three "in-between" kids? No. 2 (Chloe), No. 3 (Jared) and No. 4 (Melanie) are doing the same things now that Elissa did a few years before them, but there's an unavoidable element of, "OK, this is cool, but we've been down this path already." And for every life achievement they have, we know that we'll likely experience that same thing at least one more time when the next kid gets there.

When you are the parent of three or more children, you have to make a concerted effort to ensure your middle kids feel every bit as special and appreciated as those on the ends. Because they ARE just as special and appreciated.

Straight A's need to be celebrated and rewarded with the same enthusiasm you showed Kid #1. Newly acquired skills should be praised equally, even if you're a little fatigued by the time you teach a fifth child how to tie his/her shoes.

You also have to avoid the temptation of comparison, both positive and negative. Saying, "Well, your sister never had this much trouble in Algebra" is just as bad as, "You're so much better at this than your older brother!"

Evaluate and laud your children on their own merits and not in comparison with one another. That's something I've learned along the way.

I am the youngest of four, and on top of that, my siblings are much older than me. (Sorry, Deb and Mark...maybe I shouldn't have said "much.") Therefore, I grew up almost like an only child, and thus I never had to worry much about sibling comparisons.

Not so with my poor daughter Melanie. Mel is one of those people who is very good at almost everything she does. She's a good soccer player, a good trumpet player, a good student. Just an all-around solid, talented person. She's beautiful, too, but I try to play up her other qualities more.

One thing at which Mel is average is spelling. She's not a bad speller, just a little above middle of the road. Her older siblings are all, for whatever reason, excellent spellers. Elissa won the school spelling bee twice, Chloe won it once, and Jared finished second the year Chloe won.

And just this year, Jack and his friend Allie both did really well in their elementary school spelling bee competing as fourth-graders even though they both skipped a grade last year and are, age-wise, third-graders.

Mel never qualified for a spelling bee. She just never happened to be one of the top three spellers in her grade. Does this make her unintelligent? Untalented? Not special? Not in the least. But because her siblings happened to qualify for, and do well in, an event conducted in front of the whole school, I think she feels like she has failed.

Which is so wrong. She is blessed with an abundance of talent, but it happens to be in other areas. So Terry and I have spent years working on her self-confidence and self-esteem. I remember Terry making Mel say over and over, "I'm a beautiful, confident woman. I'm a beautiful, confident woman. I'm a beautiful, confident woman."

And I think it has finally taken hold as Melanie finishes middle school and gets ready to start high school in the fall. At an age when many girls start to doubt their own abilities and worth (thanks to the negative messages with which society bombards them), she is feeling good about herself, which is wonderful to see.

We have a long way to go in our parenting journey, but if there's one thing Terry and I will never stop doing, it's making sure the kids in the middle of the Tennant Family Sandwich feel just as special as the bread on either end.

Does your spouse hide food from you? Mine does.

And let me just say that I understand why she does it. But that doesn't mean I have to like it.

Let's say Terry goes to the grocery store and buys a dozen nectarines. Nectarines go fast in our house. All fruit does, really, but stuff like grapes, cherries, strawberries, blueberries and nectarines go really, really fast.

Those dozen nectarines, if left out on the kitchen counter for general consumption, will be gone in less than 48 hours, guaranteed. Probably less than 24 hours, actually.

If Terry wants to consume at least one or two of them and she would rather they ripen a bit before she does so, she has only one choice: She has to hide a few away where none of us will find them.

This makes me feel like I'm 5 years old and my mother can't trust me to be around the candy, but like I said, I totally get why she does it. It's a survival instinct. She either hides the food or she starves.

If I were in her shoes, I would choose "hide the food," too.

Occasionally I'll discover a Terry Food Stash somewhere, and I'll feel like I've beaten the system or something. I won't eat it. I won't even let her know I found it. I just walk around in the quiet knowledge that I've won.

Granted, I probably only find the hidden food once out of every 100 times or so, but it's a meaningful victory. I am suddenly the one dictating whether or not I eat something, not her.

When you live in the chaos of seven people under one roof, it's the little things that keep you going.