Whose job is it to push in the kitchen chairs?

I am almost always the first one awake in our house in the morning, which means I'm the first one to see the condition in which certain younger members of our family have left the kitchen.

Oftentimes when Terry and I go to bed, some combination of my children can be found in the kitchen eating anything they can get their hands on, looking at their phones, listening to music, doing homework, or even all four of those things simultaneously.

I never know exactly when they go to bed because I fall asleep almost instantly and am absolutely dead to the world for the next several hours.

So morning comes and I wake up. Usually I get dressed to go running or walking, depending on my mood and overall physical state, and the next thing I do is go into the kitchen to feed the cats.

Sometimes the kitchen is pristine, exactly the way Terry or I left it the night before.

Most of the time, though, that's not the case. Most of the time there are things left on the floor. Food on the counter. Crumbs on the table. Lights blazing away to the benefit of no one in particular.

All of which annoys me. But nothing is more grating than to see the chairs pulled out three feet from the kitchen table rather than pushed under said table, which is where they belong.

I don't know why this irritates me so much. Maybe because it looks so much nicer and it's SO easy to do. When you get up from the table, just push your chair in. Don't worry about waking us up, because it can be done quietly. Push. Your. Chair. In.

And yet they don't do it, no matter how many times I tell them to do it. No punishment, no incentive, no amount of cajoling can change this behavior.

I always end up pushing in those chairs in the morning. You might say, "Well, they know you'll just do it for them, so why should they?" Ah, but you see, they couldn't care less whether those chairs are pushed in. If I leave the chairs out, it won't even occur to them that anything is wrong when they come down to the kitchen the next morning.

Just to make sure we're clear here, this should be the job of the person who actually sits in the chair the night before, right? This isn't my job, it's their job. Right? Am I crazy? This is a simple request, and I am in no way being unreasonable in making it. I just need you to tell me that.

Because one of these days I'm going to snap. I'm going to take one of those rogue chairs, carry it upstairs, and hit a child over the head with it. And no matter how you look at it, that's premeditated murder right there.

I'm having a really hard time resisting the urge to say, "But it will so be worth it."

First-time parents: Trust me, you've got this

(NOTE: Following is something I originally posted on June 11, 2012. It was titled "The Numbing Realization That No Parent Really Has Any Idea What They're Doing," and it got a nice response. Probably because it expresses fears and feelings that most rookie parents experience. I changed the headline a bit this time around, but the sentiment remains the same. I hope you like it.)

Howie Mandel said something once that still resonates with me.

This was when Howie was doing stand-up comedy back in the mid-80s. And he still had hair. And he wasn't so OCD about people touching him. And he used to stretch a surgical glove over his head and blow it up with his nose, which I still find hilarious because I'm an extremely simple man who will laugh at almost anything.

Anyway, Howie and his wife had just had their first child. He said that sometimes he would stop in the middle of what he was doing and say to himself, "I'm someone's dad." The point being that he was just a big goofball and someone in authority had clearly messed up if he, Howie Mandel, was allowed to be the father of a tiny human being.

I'm willing to bet there's not a parent alive who has not felt something similar. You can read all the books you want. You can babysit all the kids you want. You can take all the classes you want. But when you bring that baby home from the hospital for the first time and there are no longer any nurses around to take the little rugrat away whenever you feel the least bit sleepy,that's when reality sets in.

It starts as a low-grade panic somewhere deep in your stomach. And then it gets worse as you realize this is actually happening, and that YOU are the one who is ultimately responsible for the well-being of this impossibly small creature.

And you think to yourself, "This isn't good. I am not in the least bit qualified for this job. I am a Grade A screw-up who can barely remember to change the filter in my fish tank, and suddenly I have to feed, dress and otherwise oversee the upbringing of another person? No, this is not good..."

I remember when Terry and I brought Elissa home from the hospital. We were both dead tired (she more so than me, for reasons that should be obvious). Elissa was sleeping peacefully, as I recall, but when we unloaded everything from the car and laid her down in her little bassinet, we realized we had no idea what to do next. Not a clue.

I think we just sort of sat and stared at each other for a minute. Then we turned on the TV. Whenever Elissa made any sort of noise, we both jumped up and checked on her to see what was wrong.

That night, our first as parents in our own home, was terrible. Elissa continued making the sort of small, ultimately inconsequential noises that newborns do. And every time she did, one or both of us would jerk our heads up and wonder if we needed to go and get her.

By the next morning, we were wrecks. Tired, disheveled and most of all crushingly disheartened at the prospect of spending the next several hundred nights doing the same thing.

But somehow we got through. Night by night we survived. We developed a little routine where I would get up first whenever Elissa awoke, change her diaper, and bring her to Terry for breastfeeding.

Slowly but surely, things got easier. We managed to keep Elissa alive long enough for Chloe to be born. And then Jared. And then Melanie. And finally Jack. And somewhere along the way we learned what it meant to be parents. We're still learning, in fact.

I hope Howie eventually did, too.

5 ways you can tell it's summer in Northeast Ohio

(1) Acres of pasty white flesh. Everywhere.
My buddy Kenny Beavers, a wise man of African-American descent, once said, "The snow melts and white people think it's summer." Which is of course absolutely true. White people around this part of the country have been walking around in shorts since late March. But here we are three months later and there's no denying that summer is actually here. The direct result of this is that those same white people think it's perfectly fine to wear next to nothing when they're outside these days, regardless of their physical condition or the degree to which they do or do not tan when exposed to sunlight. If the sight of these people bothers you, then I can only apologize on behalf of my fellow Caucasians.

(2) Fourteen people per square foot in every public pool
Our Window of Summer Fun Opportunity is very small here on America's North Coast, which is why we try to cram in all the summer activities we can from mid-June until school starts up again in August. Your neighborhood pool is likely packed with people doing their best to have fun despite the fact that they are hemmed in on all sides by others trying to do the same (every third person of whom has most definitely peed in that pool sometime in the previous 20 minutes...just saying).

(3) Mandals
I don't know how I feel about man sandals. I don't think they look good on me because I have big calves. But guys with sleeker legs than mine can pull them off, I think. Not everyone agrees with me (case in point: my former Dix & Eaton colleague Lisa Zone ). And when I say sandals, I'm talking the strappy brown variety. I'm cool with the black athletic slider-type sandals that also come out of hiding this time of year.

(4) Cookouts and their associated smells
We don't own a charcoal grill, but I love the smell of charcoal because it just screams "June" to me. If you live in the suburbs, then you know how much people like us love their cookouts. "I can cook outside! On the deck! Without shoveling a path to the grill! Isn't this awesome?

(5) Cornhole
I hate to come back to the white people thing again, because I'm sure there are plenty of other ethnic groups who enjoy this game. But by and large, cornhole is the domain of white people. They even love making their own customized cornhole boards. Technically you could play cornhole in the fall or even the winter, but just...no. It's a summer game. Playing it any other time violates the spirit of Middle Class Person Summer, and I won't have it.

As we reach a milestone today, I need to thank YOU for reading this blog

About 5 minutes ago, this blog received the 100,000th page view in its history.

On the grand scale of the Internet, that's as nothing, really. There are blogs that get 100,000 page views in a single day.

But for my little enterprise, it's a nice achievement and one for which I'm very grateful.

I started this blog back in December 2011, but I've twice taken hiatuses, so it has actually only been in operation a combined 21 months or so.

At the outset the blog was called "They Still Call Me Daddy," which was actually an extension of an even earlier blog I had (back in the mid-2000's) simply titled "They Call Me Daddy."

"They Still Call Me Daddy" existed from mid-December 2011 until July 2012, when I decided I didn't have enough time to maintain it and thought I would quit the blogging thing for good.

Which of course I didn't, because I resurrected it in February 2013 when I was unemployed and had some time on my hands. That run lasted until October 2013, by which time I had secured a job I still hold today as Director of Communications for Vitamix and found myself regularly working very long days. Once again, I figured I just didn't have the available hours required to blog.

That time I stayed away from it for 14 months, deciding to come back for a third go this past December 2014 with a new name and a new URL. I've been able to keep it going for six months only because I've kept things to a very reasonable three-posts-a-week writing schedule, which I hope is satisfying for everyone involved.

Anyway, yeah, 100,000 page views. I don't know how many of those views come from web-crawling "bots" and other non-human sources, but I do know there are lot of people who have become faithful readers, and for that I'm extremely appreciative.

Thank you so much for reading, for commenting (on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and directly to the blog), for encouraging, and for occasionally telling me why I'm wrong. You make the whole experience far more satisfying than it would be otherwise, so if you don't mind, we'll see if we can keep it going for many days/months/years to come.

Sound good? Cool.

I want to grow up to be Bob Snyder

Bob Snyder is a guy I went to school with. One of the nicest guys you'll ever want to meet. I think we started playing softball together when we were 10 or 11 years old, then later we played football together in middle school and high school until Bob (a quarterback) suffered a terrible injury that ended his football career.

Anyway, Bob's a good man who still lives here in Wickliffe with his wife Michele (also a former classmate of mine), daughter Hannah, and son Bobby.

He's also pretty much my hero, though he doesn't know it.

The reason is, besides being an all-around good guy, Bob is also the definition of a Man's Man. And I don't mean he's stupidly macho or anything as much I mean he does manly things. And he teaches his son to do manly things.

Like hunting and fishing. Calling Bob an avid outdoorsman is an understatement. He's out in the woods all the time doing the kinds of things that end up as multi-page photo essays in Field & Stream. And he teaches his son to do these things. They do them together, and they take pictures of themselves doing them together, and I gotta tell you, they always look happy in those pictures.

One day it's Bob posing next to a big buck he has bagged during deer hunting season, the next day it's Bobby holding up a gigantic fish he has caught.

I've never hunted, and I've fished a literal handful of times. Terry knows way more about fishing than I do.

At the risk of gender stereotyping, that doesn't feel right to me. I feel like Jared and Jack should know how to fish, and that they should learn it from me. And I feel like I should have gained some hunting experience at some point and I should have taught them to do that, too.

This is a clear-cut case of Testosterone Envy, I realize, but it still nags at me.

Bob is also very handy, and more than once on this blog I've documented my own lack of handiness and the difficulties it creates in life. If you were to put Bob on a deserted island with only a rusty machete and four feet of rope, he would create a livable hut in a few hours.

I, on the other hand, would perish from exposure. And from starvation, since Bob would instinctively know how to hunt and cook his own food, while I would try to subsist on sand and bird droppings.

This is not to imply that I don't have a close relationship with my sons. It turns out I do. But with Jared it's based on our mutual love of sports and cats (and cats playing sports), while with Jack it's based on...well, actually, I'm not sure what it's based on. We just get along really well.

But as a dad, you feel like there are manly skills that you're required to pass along to your sons, and I'm passing along very little in that department. I'll make sure they both know how to check the fluids and tires on their cars, and I can teach them the offsides rules in both soccer and hockey. But beyond that, there's really nothing specifically man-oriented they're going to get from me.

I need to take them over to Bob's house. I'll bet he can teach them how to spit really well in addition to the whole hunting, fish and tool thing.

Here's what I think Dad might want for Father's Day today

Hey, it's Father's Day, so I just wanted to pop in for an off-the-normal-schedule post to offer up a thought...

If you haven't bought Dad anything for his big day today (assuming you're even planning to get him something in the first place), I have a suggestion for a gift that will cost you nothing.

And please understand I'm not saying that all fathers want this. You can't say all dads want a certain thing any more than you can say all moms want a certain thing. Everyone is different.

But from my experience, I think there's a good chance the dad in your life will enjoy this particular present. And it's this:

Leave him alone.

Just for an hour or so. Leave him alone. Let him do what he wants or go wherever he wants to go. By himself. In a noiseless environment. Just be quiet and leave him alone.

That's all. Dad wouldn't mind some alone time. It's none of your business what he does with it. He may very likely just sit on the couch with his hand in his pants. Doesn't matter. The key factors here are:

• Leave Dad alone
• Be quiet
• Don't ask him what he's doing

Do we have that, kids?

Happy Father's Day to all of my fellow dads. And to the rest of you, just leave us alone for a few minutes, OK? Great, thanks.

Your kid's graduation party: Money for them, a nice yard for you

Tomorrow we're supposed to have Chloe's graduation party, and we're following the standard formula:

• Hold it on a summer Saturday afternoon? Check.
• Set up a canopy/tent in the backyard and invite people to come over any time they'd like throughout the day? Check.
• Work our fingers to the bone in the days leading up the party to make sure the house and the yard are semi-presentable? Yeah, check.

This is the second graduation party we've held in our family, and as was the case with Elissa's shindig back in 2012, I took a few days off work this week to help with the preparations.

We've been doing all sorts of things to get ready, most of which are intended not to enhance the experience and enjoyment of our guests, but to make it so that they don't laugh at us when they see what passes for our "landscaping."

Like mulching, for instance. From time to time we like to mulch our various flower beds. We should be doing this every year, but if I'm being honest, I'll tell you the last time we mulched before now was...Elissa's graduation party in 2012.

Give us a break, we're busy people!

We're also power-washing the deck, killing weeds, washing floors and bathrooms, running our string trimmer to the point of exhaustion, etc. Then there's the cooking and general food prep, which Terry is handling like a champ. She is fast becoming the Master Chef of grad parties.

As for the party itself, it will be a run-of-the-mill affair with food eaten off of (nice) paper plates, extended conversations with people we haven't seen in ages, and graceful acceptance of monetary gifts by Chloe.

Because that's what you do when it's high school graduation time, right? You celebrate the student's success (a relative term) by giving them money. I always thought this was a strange tradition until I had my own graduation party 27 years ago and walked away with armfuls of cash. Then I thought it was a GREAT tradition.

Oh, and she'll get cards, too. They'll essentially be the same four cards purchased from CVS at the last minute, but still, cards are nice.

Then, after it's all over and Chloe is sifting through her piles of checks and currency, I'll be outside cleaning up. Because that's my role: I get stuff ready, and then I put it all away when we're finished with it. I am Dad. Hear me roar.

If I'm extra good, Terry will let me have a piece of graduation cake, too, which is my favorite part. Well, that and the mulch. Those flower beds look awesome right now.

Why you shouldn't yell at referees or coaches when your child participates in sports

Actually, we all know we shouldn't do this. Yet a lot of us do it anyway. I sure have.

Let's say your kid is playing soccer, which is something I can personally relate to since all of my kids currently play or have played soccer. Soccer is thought of as a passive, non-contact sport, which is absolute nonsense once your child gets to be, say, 12 or 13 years old. Soccer from that point on becomes an aggressive, full-body contact game. Kids can and do get hurt. Regularly.

Anyway, let's say your kid's team is playing in a tournament against a local club team, and the opposing team's players are all head-and-shoulders bigger than your players. I can also relate to this because it just happened to me recently.

Melanie's soccer team played in the finals of a tournament against a group of girls who were all supposed to be 14 and under, but who looked to be juniors and seniors in high school. Clearly at least half of them drove themselves to the field for the game. (NOTE: I'm being facetious here. I'm sure they were all legal, but man, they were huge.)

This team used its size to great advantage, repeatedly bumping our girls off the ball, leading with their elbows, and generally doing things that technically are violations of the agreed-upon rules but that the referee in this case was letting go without calling fouls.

Many of our parents spent the game screaming at this ref, which I understand. But I wasn't one of them. It's not because I'm especially virtuous or anything, but mostly because:

(a) I spent years as a coach, and I know that screaming at an official gets you nowhere, in terms of helping your team. (Like I said, I've done it before. I'm certainly not without sin here.)

(b) I also officiated dozens of soccer games, and I'm here to tell you it's difficult. You have to find a balance between keeping the players safe and letting the competition flow naturally. That's not easy.

Look, I get why any parent wants to scream when they feel their kid is being wronged or threatened. Your natural instinct is to protect your child. Anything you can do to keep them safe, you do. I get it.

But unless you're 100% sure your kid is about to suffer a concussion or something, I suggest you keep quiet. Sooner or later that child is going to have to learn to work through seemingly unfair situations on their own. And I have just enough parenting experience to tell you that "sooner" is the better choice.

Life isn't fair. Never has been, never will be. You can choose to raise a child who accepts that and learns to adapt, or you can choose to raise one whose reaction to the inherent unfairness of his/her existence is to whine and complain.

Because that's what you're getting when you constantly berate an official and/or your child's coach. You're sending the message that the proper reaction is to yell, and that that's how mature adults handle tough situations.

Trust me, you don't want that.

If it's a case of your child seemingly not getting enough playing time or maybe not being set up for success by the coach, that's a legitimate concern. And it should be handled in a private conversation in which you express that concern and allow the coach to respond.

Unless your kid is playing for a high-level athletic organization, chances are that coach is an unpaid volunteer. He/she just wants to help. They do what they do in most cases because they love working with kids, and they love being around the sport.

That doesn't absolve them from the responsibility of doing what's best for every kid, but what your child learns from the experience largely comes down to how they see you react to it.

I am often afraid that my city – a place in which I take a great deal of pride – is starting to get branded as a home for yelling, screaming, whining, unreasonable parents when it comes to athletic competition. And I don't want that to happen. Not only because it reflects poorly on our town, but also because I know it's not helping our kids.

Like I said, I have the same urge to yell and complain sometimes. But there are better alternatives for all of us.

You're a parent. Act like one.

The roller coaster ride that is your weight

A couple of years ago I lost 43 pounds on Weight Watchers. I was pretty happy about that.

Then, beginning around Christmas 2013, I started gaining it back. A pound here, a pound there. At first I was fine with it because I had gotten a little too gaunt, or at least that's what many people said.

But then I went past the upper limit of where I wanted to be. Then I went way past where I wanted to be.

And now I've regained more than half of what I lost, which is more frustrating than I can tell you.

I come from a family of solidly built Welsh-German people. We have big thigh and calf muscles, which is good if you're a runner/walker like me, but we also have have a tendency to be "stocky," to put it politely.

In December 2012 I weighed something like 215 pounds. Six months later I got as low as 172. I wanted to stabilize at 185.

But as I type this, I'm almost 200 pounds with clothes on.

Weight Watchers is a great program and I think it works wonders. But like any healthy eating plan, it comes with the little caveat that you actually have to keep doing it if you don't want the weight to come back.

I tend to eat healthy. I just eat too much.

So now I'm slowly trying to lose the weight again. I've already dropped a few pounds, and I'm hoping by the end of the year to be back at a comfortable, healthy number.

In the meantime, I have a whole closet full of men's medium-sized clothing that's too tight on me. Stuff I bought after my The Big Weight Loss of 2013 when I figured I would be the same size forever. I hope to fit back into most of it before the calendar turns to 2016.

Losing weight is actually relatively easy, especially for guys. Maintaining weight loss is a whole different ball game, and for me it requires a full mental, spiritual and physical commitment. I lost my focus over the last year-plus, and now I'm trying to get it back.

That's life, I guess. Sometimes you're good, sometimes you're bad. Some people say it's important to maintain that healthy number on the scale, others say you shouldn't obsess over it.

All I know is that when the number is low, I feel better all around. Nowadays I feel like my clothes are tight and I'm more tired than normal. All because I can't stop going to the refrigerator.

Or at least I couldn't do that for several months. Now I'm back under control...I think.

So it's back down the roller coast hill I go. Only this time, I plan on getting off once I get to the bottom.

The older I get, the more impressed by technology I am

I'm writing this post on an airplane. This may not mean much to you, but to me it's one of the coolest things in the history of forever.

In-flight WiFi has been around for a few years, and by now the techno illuminati are less than impressed with it (especially if it's slow and/or not working right). Then there's me. I'm sending real-time Facebook messages to friends who are several hundred miles away, and I'm doing it from seven miles in the air.

How can anyone do that and not at least think, "Huh, that's pretty cool."

My dad always loved technology, and I remember him saying that he wanted to live until the year 2000 just to see the latest gadgets and how they worked. Alas, he died in October 1999. I can't imagine how incredible smartphones and tablets would have seemed to him.

Terry and I are flying back from a trip to Los Angeles, and while there I used Uber for the first time. Are you hip to the whole Uber thing? You download an app to your phone, and when you're in a big city and want a cheap ride someplace, you just "hail" an Uber car through that app, and in minutes a driver comes and picks you up.

Chances are the fare for that trip will be half what you would pay for a traditional cab.

The first time I tried Uber in L.A., I was standing on Hollywood Boulevard on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. My phone knew my exact location, thanks to the miracle of GPS, and transmitted that information to the nearest Uber driver.

He got there in less than two minutes, and the cost of the ride from Hollywood to the Santa Monica beach was $15. Seriously, 15 bucks for what would have been well over $40 with tip in a cab. (There's no tipping in Uber.)

And by the way, I knew my driver was close because the minute I requested the ride, my phone showed me a little map of the surrounding streets and a little car icon pinpointing his exact location.

I just...I mean...isn't that amazing? I'm blown away by this. It was cheap, easy and fun. Which is exactly how life should be.

Like my dad, I can't wait to how technology advances in the remaining years of my life. It's just all so cool, and if I had the money I would buy every electronic gadget the minute it comes out.

Say what you will about technology destroying the soul of our society. I'll be too busy to hear you anyway because I'll be playing with my Apple Watch.

Searching for a mellow place to live

As I type this, I'm sitting in a Starbucks in Santa Monica. It's mid-April and the temperature is in the mid-60's. Which is actually a bit cool for Southern California this time of year, but feels great to my Northeast Ohio bones at the tail end of what can only be described as a long, long winter.

Chronologically, of course, winter wasn't any longer than it normally is, but man, it sure felt like it.

I've traveled just enough to have experienced a wide variety of cities in different parts of the globe, and I find that not only are they different physically, they also vary in overall vibe.

Like New York, for instance. New York is stereotypically fast-paced, but to me it's a "good" fast-paced. I don't find it overwhelming, I find it exhilarating.

And London. London is one of my favorite places in the world. If it wasn't so darned expensive, I would consider living there someday. I just like the way the Brits view the world.

As for Los Angeles, where I am now? It's an intense cool here, I would say. Just a pervasive mellow vibe that I love. It resonates with me after long months spent in the oppressive dark and cold of Cleveland in mid-winter.

People are different, of course, and I'm sure there are many Los Angelenos who approach life with an artery-hardening intensity that shortens lives and dampens spirits. But for the most part, the ones I come across are happy and, while not exactly care-free, certainly pleasant and relaxed.

Is it because they live most of their lives in the sunshine on the edge of the world's largest ocean? Maybe. I don't know. All I know is that most of them are what I want to be when I grow up.

I've said before that one of my personal downfalls, health-wise, is the fact that I don't manage stress especially well. I really should be practicing daily meditation or Tai Chi or something, but to this point it has been too low on the priority list to work it into my routine.

Which is probably flawed thinking. If I let stress get the best of me, I'll have far fewer days available to me in which to enjoy that routine.

I'm sure I could live the easygoing life in Cleveland if I tried. It's just that it seems so much easier to do it out here. Or in Colorado. Or in the other places I've visited where things seem to run more slowly and people take everything in stride better than I do.

There may a grass-is-always-greener component to all of this, but it wouldn't surprise me if Terry and I eventually end up someplace sunnier and more mellow. For now, though, I'm going to continue trying to take it easier in the only place I've ever called home: America's North Coast.

If I squint when I look out over Lake Erie, sometimes it looks just like the Pacific...

Let's take a tour of all the stuff around my house that has been left on the floor for someone else to clean up

I just spent three minutes walking around my house taking pictures of items that have been left on the floor by my family, apparently in the confident expectation that someone else will come along, pick them up, and put them back in their rightful place.

As you might expect, this is just a fraction of the mess that is our home. The full scope of the slobishness would be too depressing to chronicle.

Here we go! Let's start in the living room:

So what do we have here? Looks like a pillow from the couch, a blanket that should have been folded up and put back into the closet, and a lonely little cup that's thankfully empty and not spilling its contents onto the floor. That's probably the only mess in the living room, right? Hahahaha! You're funny.

A few feet away is this open box of cereal and a coffee mug, both of which have probably been there since last night because, you know, why put them away when you'll probably use them again?

And oh, look at this in front of the chair! It's a bunch of Xbox controllers and headphones. Because, again, I'm sure someone in our family whose name rhymes with Herod will be playing Xbox again sometime soon, so it's just more convenient to leave everything out so he can pick right up where he left off!

This is our cat Bert catching some sun rays by the window. It's OK that he's on the floor. I just think it's funny when, on a relatively warm day, an already-fat-and-fluffy cat feels the need to lay in the sun. Since we're by the stairs, let's move to the second floor and see what's going on up there...

The fun begins right at the top of the stairs. I'm not even sure what the situation is here, other than that there appears to be an abandoned clock radio and a sponge. You guys, I can't even...I just...sigh.

Nearby is...a curtain rod holding what I think is referred to as a "valance." Is that right? In any case, while I may not be the world's leading home improvement expert, I'm pretty sure a valance doesn't belong on the floor.

Near the stairs we find, I don't know, more stuff that shouldn't be there. Why doesn't the person to whom these items belong come and pick it all up? I realize that would be an act of unselfishness unparalleled in our family annals, so perhaps I'm asking too much.

This is the only picture I'm going to show you from the room in which two of my daughters live, because we could do a long series of these posts just in that area alone. Of all the many things on the floor in there, this pile of used tissues is my favorite. If you have a cold and need to blow your nose in the night, throwing tissues on the floor near your bed is fine. But when you get up in the morning, is it a great hardship to dispose of those tissues? (NOTE: This was taken around 4 in the afternoon, so even if these were just used last night, I in my slave driver fashion am thinking they should have been thrown away by now.) I need to get out of this room. In fact, I need to go back downstairs...

...to the kitchen! It's actually not too bad in here (today). But I did notice these headphones just sort of laying on the floor under the kitchen table. How and why does that happen? On second thought, don't answer that. Let's visit the basement.

At the bottom of the basement stairs is all of this. A nice mixture of winter and summer apparel, with a little kid's tray (the kind you attach to a table, I think) thrown in for extra special measure. And I think that's one of the kid's pool passes, as well. And we just got down here!

OK, this one is my bad. In the back room of the basement is this lonely dumbbell, just sitting all by itself instead of laying next to its compatriots in the little nook where the weights are kept. I don't even lift weights regularly, but somehow I managed to leave it out. Sorry about that.

There's all kinds of stuff clogging the floor of the front room of the basement, but in Terry's defense, it's because she's valiantly trying to clean that area. I just wanted to point out this red soccer sock next to the treadmill. Having five kids who all play soccer or have played soccer in the past, there are a LOT of soccer socks around our house. And shin guards. And jerseys. And shorts. And soccer balls. And cleats. And...you get the point. I'm just always amazed at how, even during the off-season, these soccer socks continue to clutter up the house.


OK, you know what? That's all we're going to do. Like I said, there's a lot more, but I can only do this for so long. One day when the kids are all moved out, I'm going to do a version of this post in which I take photos showing NO items left out on the floor. I'll be sad the offspring are gone, but having such a clean house is going to be awesome.

I can't even imagine it.

23 years and counting with Terry

My wife started out beautiful. And now in her mid-40's, she has moved on to "hot."

This is the mother of all mixed blessings for me. Any guy wants to be married to "hot," but it also puts pressure on you to try and match your wife's hotness, which I honestly cannot do.

So I try to make up for it by earning money to support our family and occasionally writing nice, heartfelt things about her.

This blog post, for the record, is the latter.

Tomorrow is our 23rd wedding anniversary. We're just two years away from our silver anniversary, which is funny in that:

• It feels like we got married two weeks ago. I'm not quite sure how we got here so fast.
• I remember my own parents' silver wedding anniversary, and man, they seemed a lot older to me then than I feel now.

But 23 years it has been, and every June 6th I give her credit for having stuck it out.

Terry knew I wasn't very handy when we got married, but at some point in the months after our wedding when we were living in our first house, I'm sure she thought, "Oh, you were serious about that not-being-able-to-fix-stuff thing? Like, really serious? I didn't know it was going to be this bad."

And so she has become quite the handy-woman, with occasional and greatly appreciated assistance from her father, the saint-like Tom Ross.

She is also chief cook and bottle washer, head homework helper, vice president of interior design, and director of finances, and she holds a myriad of other positions (all unpaid) around our house.

I have invested my life in her because I figured it was about the safest bet I could make, and for once it turns out I was right.

For the remainder of my days, I will go where she goes, I will essentially do whatever she tells me to do, and I will continue to stare at her sometimes with the vague expression of a guy who can't believe his own dumb luck and realizes he has most definitely outkicked his coverage (click on that link if you're unfamiliar with the expression).

Happy 23rd anniversary to my hot wife, whom I'm hoping can get around to tightening the faucet in the downstairs bathroom sometime this week because it's loose again...

Should you have another child? Here's my advice.

No.

Haha, just kidding! Sort of!

So I have five children, all of whom are wonderful and a joy and a constant source of pride and all of that, and all of whom also occasionally frustrate me to the brink of homicide.

Right? You parents know what I'm talking about. Most of the time they're awesome. One of the best things that ever happened to you. Other times you want to strangle them.

That's the dichotomy of parenting: Deep, intense love intermingled with periodic criminal rage.

"I just love you so much. You're so wonderful and the best daughter anyone could ask for and...wait, did you just leave your granola bar wrapper on the floor again? YES, YOU DID. PICK IT UP. PICK IT UP NOW! HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU NOT TO DO THAT? WHY ARE YOU SO BRAIN DAMAGED?!? PICK IT UP NOW! NOW! NOW!"

And so on.

Single-kid parents sometimes worry that they could never love a second child as much as they do their ever-so-perfect first one. Which is wrong. If you have a second child (or a third child, or a fourth child...), your capacity for love will grow proportionately. I don't know how it works, but it does.

So don't worry about that part of it. Worry about the bills. I know that's a Dad Thing to Say, but seriously, multiple kids means multiple expenses.

Like car insurance. If you have a toddler, the last thing on your mind is car insurance. But trust me, it will be an issue for you one day very soon.

Car insurance is expensive no matter who you are. But try getting coverage for a 16-year-old boy. Or an 18-year-old girl who has had a couple of accidents. Your premiums will have more digits than you even knew existed.

"Make the kids pay for the insurance themselves," you say. Which I would do if they didn't have to go to school and instead had 30-40 hours a week available to work and earn the requisite cash.

So there's that. And college. There's college. Presumably you'll want your children to pursue some form of post-secondary education. As you may have heard, college is a wee bit expensive.

As are clothes, food, housing, and everything else the law (for whatever reason) requires you to provide for your children.

You need to take that stuff into account.

Another important factor? Your age. People are different, and we all have different levels of energy. But as you may have figured out from your first kid or two, having a baby is exhausting. Doing it in your 20's or even your early to mid-30's is a whole lot different from doing it in your late 30's or 40's.

If you're pushing middle age – or if you're already there – you need to consider what having a baby will do to you. Even a baby that sleeps through the night the day you bring it home from the hospital. Babies in general sap a lot of energy from their parents. If you're cool with that, OK. I just want to make sure you're aware.

One last thing: If you decide to venture into large family territory, which I define as four kids or more, then understand that people will look at you funny. They'll assume you're Mormon or Evangelical or angling to get your own reality TV show or something. They'll say things to you like, "You know what causes that, right?" (NOTE: The correct reply to that is, "Yes, but look at me. My wife can't resist me, and if I'm being honest, neither can yours.")

As a father of what nowadays passes for a large family, I can tell you that you will become a borderline outcast from society. Few people will want to have you over their house for fear that your family will wreck the place, which they most likely will. They'll make assumptions about you and your motivations and the amount of time you're able to spend with your children.

Ignore them. You need to save your energy for walking around the house picking up discarded granola bar wrappers anyway.

The greatest month of the year has arrived

It's June 1st, everybody, which means several things:

• Winter has definitely ended in Cleveland. I never feel safe in saying that until the first of June.(NOTE TO NORTHEAST OHIOANS: Pay no attention to the fact that it was in the 40s this morning. We'll be back into the upper 70s by mid-week. It's all good.)
• Suburban white guys from one end of Northeast Ohio to the other are out working in their yards shirtless in the hope of getting a nice tan while minimizing their risk of developing a nasty skin cancer.
• The smell of charcoal and burnt steak will hang over my neighborhood from now until mid-September.
• School is almost over.

Ah yes, school. My kids' last day is tomorrow, which is amazing to me. When I was growing up, we never got out of school before June 10th. And it was generally more toward the middle of the month before they finally set us free.

Of course, that's because we didn't even start school until after Labor Day. This year, classes here in Wickliffe will start up again on August 18th, which is a bit puzzling to me. August 18th is still summer. It's still the time when we get 90-degree days with high humidity. It's still a time when kids should be out swimming and having fun, rather than being stuck in our ancient, non-air-conditioned school buildings.

Or maybe that's just me. I would love to see us go back to the old calendar when Labor Day marked the end of summer, academically and otherwise. But it won't happen, largely because school districts are, as I understand it, trying to increase the amount of instructional time the kids get before they're subjected to mandatory state testing. So I get it. I just don't like it.

Still, regardless of when school lets out, June is the best month on the calendar. It's warm, people are happy, vacations are starting, and in our case we get to hold Chloe's graduation party in a couple of weeks. Just an all-around good time.

June also has Flag Day. I feel bad for Flag Day because it's essentially the Millard Fillmore of holidays, so I always think it deserves more credit than it gets. It's the one June holiday we have besides Father's Day, everyone, so be nice to it.

June also has my wedding anniversary (which perhaps not coincidentally is also the anniversary of D-Day), the summer solstice, and Bloomsday, which happens on June 16th and celebrates the day on which James' Joyce's novel Ulysses takes place. I hated reading Ulysses in college and thus will not be celebrating Bloomsday, but I wanted to throw it out there in case you're interested.

Before we know it, it will be July 4th, which to me always feels like the halfway point of summer even though that's not quite true chronologically. Once the Fourth of July hits, summer starts going by way too quickly. My kids get involved in church and school activities, and the chaos of fall and back-to-school gets more and more real every day.

So enjoy June while you can. Get out there and embrace summer.

And Flag Day. Don't forget poor Flag Day.