BLOG RERUN: I generally don't cook because I end up bleeding into the food

I prompted the AI Blog Post Image Generator with the phrase "man bad cook," and it returned this. Which is...actually pretty good, though it appears that steaming pot is not in fact resting on top of either stove burner.

NOTE: Today's Blog Rerun was originally posted here four years ago today on December 20, 2020. You will note that I continue not to cook.

As I type this, I have a batch of Moroccan Lentils bubbling in the slow cooker on the kitchen counter.

This is an extraordinary sentence in that I very rarely have anything bubbling, cooking, roasting or otherwise being turned into something edible through the application of heat. I don't cook. Or at least, I hardly ever cook.

There are reasons for this, the chief one being that I married an incredible cook and she feeds me and my family delicious food every day. Terry and I laugh over the fact that in 28 1/2 years of marriage, she has made exactly one dish I didn't like. And for the record, she didn't like it, either. It was an eggplant thing, though I generally like eggplant.

That means she's batting something like .99998, which is a championship-level culinary performance by any measure.

To be fair, I am also the least picky eater you may ever run across. I like everything. I really do. You would be hard pressed to name a food I haven't eaten and enjoyed, or at least wouldn't be willing to try. So that helps.

Still, she's a great home chef.

So I don't really have a need to cook. Plus (and maybe this is just because I haven't done much of it and therefore haven't developed the knack) I don't really have the talent or inclination for cooking. It doesn't interest me. Only the eating part does.

One of the last times I tried cooking a full meal for my family, I think the main dish was fennel chicken. As I was chopping ingredients, I sliced my finger and, despite my best efforts to staunch the flow, managed to bleed directly into the pot.

I look at it as added protein.

Anyway, these Moroccan Lentils caught my eye when I saw the recipe in one of Terry's cookbooks, so I bought the ingredients and am making them. And really, there's no "making" involved. It's a slow cooker recipe, so you measure everything out, dump it in, mix it, set the slow cooker going, and that's pretty much it, other than occasionally wandering over to smell your creation and stir it.

If that was all there really was to cooking, I would be the Gordon Ramsay of our house.

The old band uniforms in our living room are full of meaning

As recently as mid-November, these old band uniforms and hats were still sitting on a table in our living room.

Just before our local high school was torn down a year and a half ago, my wife heroically rescued a wealth of Wickliffe Swing Band artifacts that otherwise would have been destined for the dumpster.

Like someone pulling valuables out of a city about to be overrun by an invading army, Terry loaded up her car with old band photos, trophies, uniforms, recordings and other memorabilia.

The fact that the school didn't appear interested in making the effort to save most of it was somewhat despairing, but that's a different conversation for a different time.

The result was that, for many months, our basement and garage have been filled with band stuff. This has only been an inconvenience when I've had to haul around boxes of heavy old trophies and plaques from as far back as the 1950s. Those were the only times I complained.

Otherwise, I'm glad our house could serve as an impromptu storage facility for what I consider to be vital artifacts from our city's history.

Because all of these items mean something. They are reminders of generations of Wickliffe musicians and their directors, and of the hard work that went into countless halftime performances, Christmas concerts and jazz band performances.

They are not nuisance items to be swept aside in support of some vague notion of "progress." They are tangible remnants of an institution that has, for decades, been important to our community. They should be preserved. They should be with the people who care about them and about the band itself.

As I type this in mid-November, we still have most of these items in various places around our house. Terry was able to give away some of the uniforms to various alumni, and her plan is to give away as many of the other items as possible at some point soon (with an encouragement to make a donation to the band if you take something).

In the meantime, it's all still here. The trophy the band received for its participation in the 1981 Nordonia Festival of Bands, the plaque it was given for marching in the 1977 Fairview International Band Festival, the composite photo of band members from the 2001-02 school year, and countless other bits of nostalgia are strewn about our living room, our basement storage room, and our garage.

And I couldn't be more proud.

Any community or organization is the product of its own history. That history shapes us all. We really shouldn't be so quick to throw it away.

The guy who almost never works from home is working from home

My company's headquarters building is undergoing some pretty extensive renovations, so they kicked us all out and told us to work from home for a couple of months.

That makes it sound harsh, but the renovations are very much welcomed, and we're already an organization in which office-based employees work from home two out of five days each week anyway.

Or at least most people do. As I've mentioned here before, I go into the office every day, even on Mondays and Fridays when only a relative handful of people are there. It has nothing to do with being anti-work from home. I just focus better and prefer being in the office environment.

What happens when you do that, though, is that you kind of forget how to work from home when you have to. And by that I mean I have trouble getting into the right mindset when it's time to head upstairs to my office and start the workday.

All of the things that are so convenient about working from home are the things that distract me from my work tasks.

Like, for example, you can do laundry when you work from home! But on laundry days, I mostly think about when it's time to put the clothes into the dryer and when I can fold them rather than the things I'm supposed to be doing for my job.

You can also see your spouse/housemates when you work from home! Yes, but while this is enjoyable, it's also distracting. And while I know my wife loves me dearly, when I'm working from home, I'm invading the space she's used to occupying alone Monday through Friday. I totally get where she's coming from here after 32 years of marriage.

You can run to the store if you need something or schedule an oil change when you work from home! Again, yes, but again, distracting. I lose focus.

I realize this is a me problem, and that most people are mentally strong enough to be productive when they work from home. I'm simply not one of them.

So while there have been certain conveniences during this extended period of the office being closed, there is admittedly part of me looking forward to January 20th, which is the day our building is supposed to open back up and I can return to some semblance of a routine.

Somehow I think Terry is looking forward to that day, too.

Look, if the guy in front of me is driving slowly, there's not much I can do, so stop tailgating me

This happens to me all the time on my drive to work. I take mainly one-lane (each way) side streets, most of which have posted speed limits of 35MPH and on which the majority of drivers do about 40, maybe a tad faster.

The system works well for everyone involved until one person decides to go under 30, even on the driest, clearest day when driving conditions are optimal.

A line of cars quickly forms behind them, but they are insistent on proceeding well under the speed limit.

Not the worst thing in the world, but admittedly a tad annoying.

Quite often I will be the car directly behind the offending dawdler. I will move a bit to the side so the other drivers can see what's going on, and to convey the message, "Hey, it's not me, it's that guy. What are ya gonna do?"

Yet even when I do this, the car behind me will often position itself about 6 inches from my back bumper, as if tailgating me is going to make Slow Poke Rodriguez speed up.

Why? Why would anyone do this? What do you think you're accomplishing riding my butt when I have absolutely no control over the speed we're going?

Back. Off.

I hate to generalize here, but almost every time this happens, I will look in my rear view mirror and notice that the driver behind me is a young person.

Pardon my old man ranting, but what exactly are they teaching these kids in driving school?

Ease up on the gas pedal, Sophia, and put some more distance between you and me. You're accomplishing nothing.

You know, most of the time my blog posts are meant to convey something funny, touching or otherwise positive. It's not often I complain, or at least not often I end with a complaint.

But that's all I have today, along with the following bit of advice:

If you're someone who does this, stop it.

Yes, I'm looking at you, Liam. You're not getting to first-period Biology any faster by rear ending me.

I told Terry, "No more cats!" And then along came Cheddar...

I became a cat person only because I married a cat person.

Having grown up with dogs, I didn't know much about caring for felines until the spring of 1992 when Terry and I got ourselves a little kitten that we named Alex.

This was during my three months of bachelorhood after I moved out of my parents' house and into the house on East 300th Street that Terry and I bought before we got married. Alex and I lived there alone until June, when Terry moved in following our wedding.

I quickly learned that cats are self-sufficient, territorial, and depending on their personality, varying degrees of affectionate.

In the three-plus decades we've been married, Terry and I have had a range of cats, including a long stretch in which we owned five of them. Over time, I became the one who fed them all every day and cleaned their litter boxes.

Thus, while I was sad when our cats Fred, George and Charlie all died within about 15 months of each other, there was also a sense of relief that morning cat duty might someday be lifted from my shoulders.

At that point we had just two kitties, our girls Ginny and Molly. I was fine with this arrangement and was always the first one to say no when someone suggested we take in a stray or claim a kitten in need of a home.

Meanwhile, our daughter Melanie had moved out of the house, and she was building a little cat army of her own. That included an orange stray who started hanging around her place last winter, and who she would regularly feed and pet.

She eventually took him into her home and named him Cheddar. She loved Cheddar, and with good reason. He's a good cat.

The problem was that one of Mel's other kitties, who generally hates the world and everything in it, took to tormenting Cheddar. They couldn't even be in the same room together, which forced Mel to keep Cheddar locked up in a bathroom while she figured out what to do.

I didn't want any more cats, but I also didn't want Mel taking Cheddar to the Humane Society. One night she came to our house for dinner and mentioned him, and I went ahead and said what was on everyone's mind.

"Oh, just bring him over here," I said. "He can live with us."

And so she did. And so he does. It took a little while for Ginny and Molly to accept him, and even then, at best, they tolerate him.

But Cheddar has been a big hit with the three humans in our house. He's affectionate, inquisitive, entertainingly vocal, and fun to watch whenever he goes into kitten mode and starts playing with whatever he can find on the floor (a hair tie, a cat toy, a piece of string, a dust ball, etc.)

So now we have three cats again. It's not five, and I don't intend for it ever to be five again. Or even four, for that matter.

We're sticking with the ones we have. And once they're gone, no more.

And this time...I mean it.

The Atari 2600 was the greatest Christmas present I received as a kid

I don't know these kids, but I'm very familiar with the thrill of unwrapping an Atari on a memorable Christmas morning in the early 80s.

I had great Christmases when I was growing up thanks to my parents, who were not only generous and loving but also big fans of the holiday itself.

Until maybe the late 1980s, in addition to a tree and the usual household decorations, my mom would also set up a table in the living room on top of which she would lay out various Christmas desserts, candy, nuts and fruit. It would all just be sitting there for the taking for the two or so weeks leading up until December 25th, and believe me when I say I did plenty of taking.

When I woke up on Christmas morning, my presents would usually be laid out on the couch in the living room. And they were all unwrapped, which in retrospect seems a little odd, but that's the way it was.

Well, I should say that some presents were unwrapped and some were wrapped. Until I was maybe 9 years old, those unwrapped presents were the ones from Santa, while the wrapped ones under the tree were from Mom and Dad.

There would always be one expensive "featured" present. In 1984 (maybe '83) it was my Commodore 64 computer. Other years it was usually some electronic game or simply a physically large gift like an electric race track or something.

The most memorable of these marquee presents put an exclamation point on Christmas 1980 (or maybe '79...again, these years are getting fuzzy). It was an Atari 2600 video game system, and it changed everything.

Until the Commodore 64 came along, I played lots and lots of Atari games. I even had a little black case that was designed to carry 8-track tapes but in which I stored my Atari cartridges. Or at least I stored some of my cartridges, because after a while I had way more cartridges than the case could hold.

I would not only play Atari at home, I would also pack up my most popular games in that case and take them to my friends' houses to play on their Ataris. Those friends included Kevin, Mike, Todd, Ray and Dave, among others.

My friend Matt lived right across the street, but he had an Intellivision instead of an Atari. The Intellivision featured graphics and sound that were clearly superior to the Atari 2600, but the game play was sometimes lacking and it never quite earned the market share it probably deserved.

I have great memories of Christmas mornings and afternoons spent playing with everything I had received, and I will say that even at a young age, I was very grateful for it all.

It's a little more than two weeks until the big day, and even now at 55 years old, I can't wait.

Internet pro tip: There's probably no need for you to repeat what 14 other people have already said in the comments

I'm sure Dr. Rick would appreciate what I'm saying here.

Quite often I'll come across a Facebook post in which a person is asking a question that has a short, definitive answer. It's usually something like, "Hey, does anyone remember the name of the auto parts store that used to be at the corner of Main and Orchard? What was it called?"

Someone will immediately post in the comments, "Bob's Auto Mart," to which the original poster will respond, "That's it! Thank you!"

And that should be the end of it. Yet within minutes, there will be a dozen other essentially identical comments:

"Bob's Auto Mart"

"Bob's Auto Mart"

"Bob's Auto Mart"

"It was Bob's Auto Mart!"

"Bob's Auto Mart"

"Definitely Bob's Auto Mart"

"Bob's Auto Mart"

"Bob's Auto Mart"

"I think it was Bob's Auto Mart, but I'm not sure."

And so on...

I don't claim to know a lot about a lot, but I am confident in giving you the following piece of Internet posting advice:

If someone asks a question, and you're pretty sure you know the answer, check the comments/responses to the post first. Did someone else already give the exact answer you were going to give? Great, mission accomplished, no need for you to respond at all.

If anything, you might want to "like" the comment of the person who already said what you were going to say.

No need to post it yourself. though. You wanted to help, which is admirable, but someone else has already done the job. Move along. Thank you for your service.

Now, are there exceptions to this rule? Yes, at least one.

Using the example above, if you knew the answer was Bob's Auto Mart, but you also have an interesting bit of detail to add to the conversation, then feel free to reply. Like maybe you want to say something like, "As others here have mentioned, it was Bob's Auto Mart. They closed in 1978 when Bob moved to Florida to join a Hare Krishna commune."

That is interesting. That is new. That is something no one else has added. Please, post away.

But for the love of Mark Zuckerberg, understand that posting the 28th "Bob's Auto Mart" comment is not helpful.

When I become Internet czar under the new presidential administration, violating this policy will result in either a $5 fine or imprisonment for life. I haven't decided yet.

Sometimes I think I enjoy planning life more than I enjoy living it

When it comes to going to the gym, while I do genuinely like the act of lifting weights, what I really like is sitting down the week before and planning out which days I'll be working out and exactly which exercises I'll perform (with the attendant number of reps, sets, etc.)

In the same vein, Sunday afternoon is one of my favorite times because it's when I sit down and type my to-do list for the coming week into Microsoft OneNote.

And while I've never really had a vacation I didn't enjoy, to me nothing beats the fun and excitement of actually planning the vacation.

Do you see a pattern here?

I am by nature a planner. This is good thing to be in many respects, as it provides some degree of control – or at least the illusion of control – in an otherwise chaotic world.

But the drawbacks of being an inveterate planner are perhaps equally apparent. You don't always respond well when a plan (inevitably) goes awry. And you'll never be known as the most fun and spontaneous guy in the world.

There's also a tendency, at least in my case, to skip from one life plan to another in a futile attempt to discover the perfect way of living.

In my heart I know there is no such thing as "the perfect way of living," but my head insists it's out there somewhere and that, with each iteration of my life plan, I get that much closer to it.

To be clear, by "life plan" I mean a philosophy or approach to everything that consumes my time, both at home and at work. How should I do my job? How should I eat and exercise? When will I find time for spiritual nourishment? How much of my fall and winter nights should I devote to PA announcing gigs?

I try one life plan for a few months, then when I discover where it falls short, I switch to another. Sometimes these are small tweaks, while other times I make large-scale, wholesale changes.

All of which begs the question of why I can't just acknowledge that circumstances vary and I need to take things a day at a time, adapting to whatever comes my way without searching for a one-size-fits-all template.

In short, why don't I just, you know, live life?

As if often the case when I examine my own personality quirks, I don't have an answer to that question.

BUT...it's on tomorrow's to-do list to check some books out of the library that might explain why I am how I am.

I have become one of those New York Times puzzle people

Do you sometimes log onto Facebook and see friends posting little graphics that look something like the image above? And do you ever wonder exactly what they are?

Or do you know what they are but you don't care and instead keep on scrolling while grumbling about people clogging up your feed?

Whichever may be true for you, I understand both ends of this equation. For a long time I would see Facebook pals posting about how long it took them to figure out the Wordle, or how frustrating that day's Connections was, and I would just scroll right past without giving it a second – or sometimes even a first – thought.

Until one day a couple of months ago when I downloaded the NYT Games app and became one of...Them.

Rarely does a day go by now when I don't play (in this order) the New York Times' Wordle, Connections, Strands and Mini games.

You can also do the full NYT Crossword on the app, along with games like Spelling Bee, Sudoku, Letter Boxed and Tiles, but I stick to my core four.

This is mostly because I don't have the time to play every game the paper offers, but also because, after mentally working my way through those four, I have little patience and even less mental energy left to devote to the others.

There is something to be said, as you get a little bit older, for stretching your brain through these types of puzzle games. And Lord knows my brain could use a little stretching, given all the things I either forget or fail to notice on a daily basis.

But ultimately, I just find them fun. And there's a sense of accomplishment when, for example, I get the Wordle in 2-3 guesses or figure out the four Connections categories without a single mistake.

I'm not one to post my results on Facebook, but I'm grateful for friends who do because I like getting tips from them or commiserating over a particularly devilish offering from the Times folks.

I encourage you to join our little cult community of puzzle people. It's fun. Really.

Believe me, no one is going to force you to start sharing your performance on Facebook.

You'll do that on your own with no prompting from any of us.

You have to face some hard truths about yourself when you listen to a 28-hour audio biography of Ulysses S. Grant in its entirety

According to the comedian John Mulaney, "All of our dads are cramming for some World War II quiz show, and I can't wait to watch it. We're just gonna change channels and see our dads winning $900,000...on Normandy trivia."

He was referring to the penchant many men of a certain age have for military history. For me it's more about World War I, while a lot of other guys I know are fascinated by the Civil War, but his point is well taken.

I never thought much of this until a couple of months ago when I checked out an audiobook biography of U.S. president and Civil War general Ulysses S. Grant and proceeded to listen to it from start to finish over the course of three weeks.

All 27 hours and 51 minutes of it.

When you happily invest that much time learning – in minute detail – about the life of someone who died nearly 140 years ago, you're forced to step back and ask yourself a seminal question:

Why?

Why did I do that? What drove me to want to know all about, say, the Grant Administration's fiscal policy in the 1870s? Or his military strategy in the Vicksburg campaign?

Why did I care so much? Why was the whole experience so enjoyable?

My first instinct is to say I don't know, but that's only because I don't want to acknowledge the truth, which is this:

At some point in the recent past, I have become an Old Guy.

There's no denying it. If you were able to break down the readership of that Ulysses S. Grant book ("The Man Who Saved the Union" by H.W. Brands...highly recommended), I'm certain the vast majority of its readers/listeners are men between 50 and 80.

There are exceptions, of course, but there is little doubt we are the target demographic.

Listening raptly to a 28-hour retelling of President Grant's life also suggests that you have given up caring about the things that really matter in life. Instead, you have decided to focus on the most irrelevant details. "Save for retirement? Who cares? What I really want to know is where Ulysses S. Grant ranked in his graduating class at West Point!"

This probably goes without saying, but it also suggests you're a nerd.

Well, I should say I'm a nerd. And an old guy. And someone whose head is filled with useless knowledge and a strong desire to obtain even more of it.

C'est la via, that's me. But I'll bet you didn't know that when President Lincoln promoted Grant to General of the Armies in 1864, he was the first commander to hold that rank since George Washington.

That's impressive that I know that, right? I mean, that's pretty cool?

Right? Pretty cool?

Sigh...yeah, I know.

If you need me, I'll be in my room reading my next fascinating book, the life story of World War I French general Joseph Joffre.

Don't act like you're not jealous.

Our Thanksgiving dinner table looked exactly the same every year in the 1970s and 80s...and the 90s...and the 2000s

 

Full disclosure: I stole the photo above from the folks at Bob Evans, who want you to know they're basically ready to cater your entire Thanksgiving if you'd like.

But in some ways that image isn't too dissimilar from the reality of my Thanksgivings growing up on Harding Drive. We had a lot of the same foods, and every year we would take a picture once they were all cooked and set out on the table.

The thing is, other than maybe some discoloration from the early years before film technology really evolved, you very likely couldn't tell the difference between the 1972 photo and the 1998 photo.

Or between any two years, really. This is because we ate the same stuff year after year, decade after decade.

Don't get me wrong, it was all tasty stuff, but it never varied.

Which was fine by me, though I always thought it was funny that we took pictures of the same table with the same tablecloth and the same platters of Thanksgiving deliciousness, with no regard to the fact that these images ended up being essentially photocopies of one another.

My mom was a great cook, but she also scored points for consistency.

Terry started attending our Thanksgiving dinners as a teenager. She found it strange that we had turkey and ham and roast beef as options, but we never had homemade pies (they were, she recalls, usually store-bought Marie Callender pies).

To be fair, I always thought it was odd that her family had side dishes like rutabaga on their Thanksgiving table, though for the record, I liked that rutabaga. Some years I think my mother-in-law Judy and I were the only two people who ate it.

Anyway, I miss the Thanksgivings of years past, probably because so many of the people who were there are now gone. So it goes.

I still don't think there's anything wrong with having multiple meats on Thanksgiving, though.

I expend inordinate amounts of mental energy making sure all of my devices are sufficiently charged

We live in a world of wonderfully advanced personal technology, at least compared with the largely analog one in which I grew up.

We have mobile phones, tablets, laptops, watches and sundry other gadgets designed to make our lives easier, and in some cases more fun.

You can argue whether these devices achieve their stated purpose, but one thing you can't argue is that they all require some sort of electrical power to operate.

I don't know how much of my brain is used to make sure all of my stuff is fully charged and operating throughout the day, but I bet it's an embarrassingly large amount. I constantly find myself wondering:

• "How's my phone battery doing? 30%? I'll never make it through tonight. Gotta charge it."
• "Will the iPad have enough battery life to last through this flight?"
• "When's the last time I charged my Powerbeats?"
• "Why is my watch always at 5% when I take it off at night? What am I doing all day that drains it so much?"

That kind of thing.

I'm forever looking around for charging cords and complaining that I need a new <INSERT DEVICE NAME HERE> because the battery doesn't last as long as it used to.

Speaking of which, there's a subtle art to prolonging device battery life. In the case of my personal laptop, I try to keep it charged between 20% and 80% because that's supposedly the "sweet spot" that keeps a lithium battery working most efficiently.

Or so I've read. This is one of those areas in which I'm relying on Internet strangers to tell me what I should do. (Increasing battery life and changing various filters on my car. Those are the two areas in which the world's collective online knowledge serves as my guide.)

I used to keep constant mental track of how my AirPods were doing charge-wise back when I was running and walking a lot. I rarely exercised without those little white headphones jammed into my ears.

Now that I go to the gym most days, though, I don't listen to music. And I'm not sure why. I like to concentrate on my lifts and making sure I'm using correct form, I guess.

I'm usually one of the only people at the gym not wearing some sort of headphones, I've noticed. I'm also frequently one of the oldest – if not THE oldest – person there.

I don't think this is a coincidence.

9/11 was the closest thing my generation has experienced to the JFK assassination

Today marks 61 years since President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas. Every year on this day I go back and read old news accounts of the assassination, and I watch Walter Cronkite's coverage of the event, including his emotional confirmation that the President had died.

It would be six more years before I was even born, so I of course did not experience JFK's death firsthand. But I've heard enough about it from my parents and siblings to get a sense of just how shocked the nation really was.

My brother Mark tells a story of having to play outside by himself later that week because so many families were keeping their kids inside, apparently as part of some unspoken, quiet and respectful mourning process.

Talk to any American who was a child on Friday, November 22, 1963, and they will likely have a story of being in school when the news broke. For many, it was the first and only time they saw their teachers show emotion, let alone cry.

The only point of reference I have as a Gen Xer is September 11, 2001, though I wasn't in school at the time but rather a 31-year-old father of four toiling away at my job in marketing communications at the Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital for Rehabilitation.

One of the nurses came running down the hall past our office that morning saying, "They bombed the Pentagon!" While that wasn't strictly true, it did get my co-worker Heidi and I to turn on the TV to find out what had happened.

The first of the two World Trade Center towers had already come down, and we watched live as the second one fell, shockingly and unexpectedly.

Then we heard about the plane crashing into the Pentagon. That was quickly followed by rumors that another hijacked plane was flying near or above Cleveland, prompting the Clinic to shut down and send us all home.

That night our family attended a prayer service at church, then we waited in a long line at a Shell gas station amid speculation that the price of gas was going to spike above $5.00 the next day (it never did).

The parallels between JFK's assassination and 9/11 are somewhat obvious. In both cases, if felt like the world had changed forever.

But I get the sense that JFK's death was a bigger collective shock. Kennedy's election had brought a fresh new spirit to the United States. The aura of "Camelot" made him and his family objects of adulation by millions.

There hadn't been a presidential assassination in 62 years, since William McKinley was gunned down in Buffalo in 1901. There was no template for people on how they should react, how they should mourn, how they should speak.

Not that 9/11 wasn't horrifyingly unique in its own right. But we had been dealing with lower-level terrorist attacks for many years, both inside and outside of our borders. It was horrible, but it wasn't entirely out of the realm of possibility.

Not that it matters either way. Both events are seared into the brains of those who experienced them, and few will ever forget where they were and what they were doing when they got the news.

It's not the kind of thing you ever want to carry with you, but if you were there, there's simply no getting around it.

BLOG RERUN: One unfortunate side effect of full-time work is feeling disconnected from the day-to-day reality of your home

True to form, the AI Blog Post Image Generator created this surrealistic tableau when I prompted it with the phrase "busy household." Yet somehow I think it fits.

(I originally posted this on November 27, 2015. It still rings true.)

We are a single-income family. I go to work five (sometimes six) days a week, while my wife Terry stays home and runs the house. This is no small feat, considering that seven of us live there, but she does it well.

Or at least I assume she does it well, because I am rarely a witness to the daily operations of our household. I leave for work at 7 a.m. and am usually not home until somewhere between 6 and 7 p.m. In between, there's a whole bunch of stuff that happens without any input from me whatsoever.

Well, except the money. The money I earn funds the operation. But that's OK because I like it that way. As I always say, I am in charge of Accounts Receivable. My wife – who pays the bills and manages monetary outlays – has complete jurisdiction over Accounts Payable. This system works for me.

But on those days when I happen to be off or working from home, I get a glimpse into how one goes about helping to manage the lives of two college students, two high schoolers and a middle schooler. Terry is constantly running to and fro, packing lunches, helping with homework, reminding kids to do this assignment or practice that piece of music for band.

She spends much of her days driving to various schools to drop off forgotten soccer socks and misplaced trumpets. She runs errands and cleans the house. She serves as the Uniform Mom for the high school band, a never-ending job that requires gobs and gobs of hours and effort. 

She goes to daytime school events, emails teachers when there are issues to be addressed, and takes kids to various doctor and dentist appointments.

It's like this day after day after day after day.

And all the while I get only a glimpse into it. I hear about what's going on through hurried texts and quick afternoon check-in phone calls.

A typical conversation between Terry and me goes like this:

ME: So how was your day?

TERRY: <proceeds to rattle off 147 different things she did involving the kids>

ME: You did all that? Today?

TERRY: Yes.

ME: This Melanie person you mention. That's our ninth-grader, right?

And so on.

Don't get me wrong, this approach to life is a good one for us. Or at least it is for me, as I'm not the one having to serve as cook, maid, chauffeur and administrative assistant for six other people with crazy schedules. But I think Terry is OK with it, too.

It's just that all of these things happen without my knowing it, which makes me feel a bit disconnected from the reality. It's as if the family lives a separate life that I get to participate in for only a few short hours every night and on weekends.

Speaking of my family, if you see them, tell them I said hello. I miss them. And I'm fairly sure I know all of their names, too.

The chick magnet that was my 1984 velcro Men at Work wallet

 

My first wallet was very much like the one pictured above: an all-fabric, velcro-closing affair with the logo of the Australian band Men at Work prominently displayed on one side.

While Men at Work were a very, very big band in, say, the 1982-85 range, they were never a cool band in any sense. Nor, it must be said, were Velcro wallets ever particularly fashionable.

That wallet was an undeniable (almost defiant) confirmation of my dorkiness.

Yet I loved it. I really did.

Besides the fact that it touted my favorite musical group, it also suggested I was grown-up enough to need a wallet. Which, in fairness, I probably did. I would usually have a few bucks to put in it, thanks in part to my dad's continued generosity and in part to my job as a dishwasher at Tizzano's Restaurant.

That job, my first, paid $2.50 an hour. All under the table. Oh, and the owner of the restaurant, Mike, would make you anything you wanted to eat during your breaks.

I didn't have credit cards at the time, of course. And by the time I got my driver's license in November 1985, I had ditched the Men at Work wallet for something in plain black faux leather (i.e., the kind of folding wallet I still carry around today).

So my Velcro treasure keeper was never especially full.

But it was mine, and it told the world about my favorite band, which was good enough for me.

By the way, I took the image at the top of today's post from eBay, where as of this writing you had two choices if you wanted to buy your own vintage Men at Work Velcro wallet. One was going for a reasonable $19.95, while the other was priced at a somewhat overblown $49.96.

All of which goes to show that you can buy absolutely anything on the Internet...even if, by any standard of good judgment, you probably shouldn't.

Smaller pets are eternally babies, even when they're getting on in years

 

The feline in the photo above is Ginny, the oldest of our three cats and also – by a considerable margin – the smallest in stature.

Ginny (named after Ginny Weasley from the Harry Potter series) joined our family nine years ago this month. According to one online source I found, this makes her about 52 in human years.

Not a senior citizen, by any means, but a lot closer to old-cathood than she is to kittenhood.

Yet I still often think of Ginny as our youngest simply because she's so small. She just seems very kitten-like.

By the way, it's commonly thought that calico cats like Ginny are smaller than other cats simply by reason of being calicos. That's not true, though. It turns out calicos can range from small to large. The reason calicos tend to be smaller is that 99.9% of them are females, and female cats are naturally smaller than males.

Whatever the reason, Ginny will seem forever young any time she is near her two siblings: fat floofy Molly and svelte-yet-undeniably-masculine Cheddar.

When those three are physically close to one another (which isn't often, given their mutual distrust), Ginny always looks like the little kid tagging along with the big kids.

We are in a period of relatively good cat health in our house right now. We lost three of our kitties in one 16-month period between February 2022 and June 2023, so it's nice to have everyone looking and feeling good, especially when I realize how much we pay in vet bills when they're not looking or feeling good.

Still, whenever I see Ginny and realize she's going to be a decade old next fall, I remember what it's like when they start going downhill.

Not at all fun.

Which is why I choose to continue fooling myself and believing Ginny is in fact a kitten who will live forever.

It's better that way.

That smell when you first turn on the heat in your house

We've reached the point on the calendar (at least here in Northeast Ohio) when our long-dormant furnaces have come to life in order to keep our homes feeling somewhere between "livable" and "inferno," depending on your personal temperature preference.

It should be noted, though, that as I type these words in early October, this has not yet happened. However, I imagine that by now your furnace has awakened and, as you read this, is now working around the clock to keep you comfortable.

Which means that, at some point recently, you likely experienced the "Smell When You First Turn on the Furnace."

My fellow Clevelanders and those living in similar climates know what I mean. When you haven't used your furnace in months then switch it back on, there's often a certain smell that permeates the house while everything heats up for the first time.

Scientifically, at least from what I've read, this smell is nothing more than several months' worth of dust and dirt accumulation in the furnace and ductwork burning off.

Emotionally, though, it has a very specific meaning.

It means that summer – even of the Indian variety – is officially dead and buried.

It means Thanksgiving is right around the corner, to be followed startlingly soon after by Christmas and New Year's Day.

It means the long, cold, gray slog toward spring has commenced, and there's no turning back now.

That smell is the passage of time.

It is, like all distinctive smells, associated with a very specific situation. It is the smell of mid-November, and it carries more weight and meaning than you may have realized.

Or it's just the dead mouse that got into your furnace in July finally being cremated.

Either way, it's going to be a while before you can take a dip in your backyard pool.

Buckle up and enjoy the ride.

On this Veterans Day, I hope you'll take a minute to read about my Uncle Dan

Several weeks ago we lost my Uncle Dan. He was 99 years old and the last of many aunts and uncles from both sides of our family. His was, by all accounts, a life extremely well lived.

Uncle Dan was a veteran, so I thought today was an appropriate time to share both the photo above and my cousin Donna's tribute to her father, which was so well done.

Before I let Donna tell that story, though, here is a quick summary of Uncle Dan's military service from his obituary, which published over the weekend in the Houston Chronicle: "He enlisted in 1943, serving with the U.S. Army's Anti-Aircraft Artillery in WWII. He trained with the U.S. Air Corps, but later was transferred to the Army Signal Corps...During the Korean Conflict, Dan served as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force."

I'll let Donna take it from here. She posted the following on Facebook on October 6:

I am sad to share that my father, Dan Tennant, left us on October 2. He fell on August 24, had a partial hip replacement the next day, and ten days later went to rehab despite an infection they couldn’t diagnose. Dad did well for about ten days, then began complaining about pain in his abdomen. We went back to the hospital, where a CT scan revealed issues with a previous hernia surgery, as well as a bacterial infection. It was downhill from there. 

On September 30, Dad returned to his beloved Parkway place, where he was cared for by the many people who loved him, including his caregivers Jasmen and Cici. There was a steady stream of visitors in those final days. There were the many friends he had made since moving to Parkway after my mom passed away five years ago. There were current Parkway employees and past employees who came back to see him. There were flowers, balloons, and many, many cards. There were prayers and tears and laughter. 

Dad would have been 100 years old on January 1, 2025, and we were already planning the celebration. At 99, he was still driving (a little) to get groceries and a haircut. He became quite a good cook after my mother got dementia. He had always made waffles for his beloved grandson, Daniel, but now he was making cherry and apple pies from scratch, meatloaf, chili, soup, etouffee, and much more. He loved the exercise classes at Parkway and did his time nearly every day on the NuStep machine while reading large-print books. He enjoyed chair volleyball, called bingo, hosted happy hour with margaritas, and played bridge (the ladies told me he was the best bridge player at Parkway by far). He walked everywhere with his walker until he finally bought a used scooter. He liked it so much that he got the VA to buy him a shiny new red one. 

Dad loved his family dearly, as well as his seven brothers, who preceded him in death. He took care of our mom until she passed, and five weeks later, he moved to Parkway Place. My sister and dear friend Nancy have been with me this past week as we began sorting through his belongings, and we were constantly being told what a special, amazing man my father was. One lady who was visiting her Godmother made a point of telling me that he could remember everyone’s name. His door was always open, and I have been told how everyone is sad now that it is closed. Dad was a Parkway “ambassador,” welcoming the new residents and helping them get settled. 

Dad retired from Tenneco at 62 and bought a camper so that he and my mother could travel the U.S., visiting friends and relatives, playing different golf courses, and visiting national and state parks. Dad could fix anything my two sisters and I brought him. He was an excellent golfer, and he always told us that “it never rains on the golf course.” My mother took up golf in her 50s so she could spend more time with him. After he finally gave it up, he would watch it on TV. He loved football, especially the Steelers, and he liked the Astros, of course. Over the years, Dad worked thousands of crossword puzzles, and he always had a nice car. 

My sisters and I are so grateful for all the expressions of love and sympathy. I could go on and on, but I guess that is enough for now. Dad was part of the greatest generation, and we will miss him terribly. He was indeed one of a kind.

One good thing about social media is that you can find your tribe(s) more easily than ever

For all the bad that social media has wrought in our society – and man, there is a lot of it – one area in which it seems to have fulfilled its potential is connecting us with our personal communities.

The Internet is really good at helping us find people with common interests, hobbies, jobs or otherwise defining characteristics.

Whatever you're into, you can bet there are a lot of other people who are into it, as well. Whether it's stamp collecting, gardening, genealogy, crafting, travel, the music of John Denver, or even something as self-damaging as rooting for the Cleveland Browns, it's simple to find folks who occupy (or want to occupy) the same niche as you.

I am, for example, a member of two Facebook groups for sports public address announcers. We share our experiences, seek and offer advice on sound gear, complain about team rosters not being listed in numerical jersey order (a cardinal sin that all coaches and athletic directors should avoid), and even debate the pronunciation of words such as the "libero" in volleyball.

For the record, I use the common American pronunciation of that word: li-BEAR-oh. But there are many who adhere to the European pronunciation: LEE-bear-oh. I love and respect these fellow announcers, so it pains me to have to inform them how wrong they are.

The point is, while social media has created or exacerbated real societal issues, it's at least good at helping us find others with whom we share something in common.

That's not to say this didn't happen in the pre-Internet age. Not at all. Hobbyists have been meeting together for centuries in clubs and societies.

But it was a little more difficult back then to seek out the members of your tribe. You had to reach each other through some common and non-electronic means of communication, whether it was an ad in a newspaper or magazine, or a notice pinned to the bulletin board at the public library.

It happened, but it didn't happen nearly as efficiently and rarely at the same scale it happens today.

The next time you complain about these kids and their damn phones, understand that sometimes, those phones are their only connection to people who "get" them.

Even if getting them involves wearing brown and orange on fall Sundays and supporting the Browns...something I can say from years of personal experience you should never do.

It's already to the point that I can't clearly remember when the kids all lived at home

I used to live with all of these people. Just don't ask me about the details.

It's not like Terry and I are 80 years old or anything. We're not even officially empty nesters yet.

But to my surprise, I have trouble remembering the days when all seven members of our family lived together at 30025 Miller Avenue. The last time it happened, I think, was 2015. Maybe 2016.

Which for the math-impaired isn't even a decade ago.

Yet things get blurry when I try to recall what the mornings were like, or how we all squeezed in around the kitchen table for dinner. I was at work quite a bit of the time, of course, but I was there enough that I should be clearer on the details.

What I do remember is general chaos most of the time. Sports, band, church activities, movie nights, sleepovers, vacations. It was great, but it has all run together in my increasingly addled mind.

It's the small-but-important details that have escaped my brain. Who slept in which room? Who left the house first in the morning? At what age did they start spending more time with their friends than with us? Were Terry and I the only ones who woke up for late-night infant feedings, or did the newborns also awaken their siblings?

It's all a jumbled mass that has separated itself into two broad periods of time: the years when Elissa, Chloe, Jared and Melanie lived with us (1994 to 2022) and the years when it has just been Terry, Jack and me in the house (2022 to the present).

The particulars are increasingly fuzzy.

Naturally, this effect is most pronounced with my 30-year-old daughter Elissa. I know she lived with us for the first 20 or so years of her life, and I remember many individual moments and milestones, but the day to day is indistinct.

What did she eat for breakfast? How often did she hang out in the living room and talk with us? Where did she do her homework?

You got me. I was there, but I just can't recall much of it.

I would feel much better if other middle-aged parents consoled me with tales of their own kid-related amnesia. Otherwise, I can only conclude that my cognitive decline is accelerating and I am that much closer to being a drooling mess who can't even remember yesterday, let alone 10 years ago.

I go to the gym to experience regular doses of misery...and that's OK

I'm not sure "misery" is even the right word, but there's no doubt my most productive gym workouts involve bursts of discomfort.

Like, for example, leg days often include walking lunges. I carry a dumbbell in each hand and take elongated steps from one end of the gym to the other, then I turn around and lunge my way back to where I started.

If done correctly, this exercise makes my hamstrings, quadriceps and calves burn. And my legs invariably feel like jelly for some time after I finish.

But then I do another set. And another. And usually another.

The same holds true for any exercise. When it comes to strength training, if you can comfortably perform a particular movement, you either need to add more resistance or more repetitions to make it more challenging.

Or both.

While I am in no way a workout veteran (I'm still adapting from being a runner/walker to being primarily a lifter), I have learned to "embrace the suck," as someone put it.

In other words, there not only have to be times when you say to yourself, "Man, this is no fun at all," you also have to figure out how to enjoy that feeling.

I'm getting better and better at it.

I go to the gym five times a week. Two of those sessions are done under the supervision of my trainer Kirk, while the other three are entirely on my own.

It never fully escapes my notice during those solo sessions that, should I choose to put down the weights and walk out of the gym at any point mid-workout, no one would stop me. Nor would/should anyone even notice or care.

I am 100% responsible for my own motivation and for pushing myself to muscle failure, which is the point where you really benefit physically from weightlifting.

While I've never actually quit in the middle of a workout, early on I found myself backing off effort-wise when things got tough. I might do fewer repetitions than prescribed, or I might ignore proper form in favor of just getting the weight into the air.

But as I've built physical strength these past 5+ months, I've also built mental strength. I continue to need Kirk to set my workouts and ensure I'm performing exercises correctly, but I don't need him there in person for my one-man workouts to be beneficial.

I am slowly learning to embrace the suck, a point I never thought I would reach.

The application to life outside of the gym is readily apparent. Whatever you do, the only way to get better is to apply yourself in a way that's not always going to be enjoyable. "No pain, no gain" has some truth to it, though it doesn't necessarily have to hurt.

It just needs to be uncomfortable for you. Sometimes very uncomfortable.

I find myself these days with more muscle on my frame than I ever had (or thought I had) when I played football as a high schooler, but the real benefit for me to this point has been mental.

I just wish it hadn't taken me more than a half-century to learn.

I can drive 55, but can I live it?

By way of context today, kids, you should know that for a time in the 1970s and 80s, the maximum speed limit on our nation's highways was a uniform 55 miles per hour. And it felt every bit as slow as it sounds.

In 1984, a guy named Sammy Hagar released a song called "I Can't Drive 55," supposedly in response to having received a ticket for going 62mph in a 55 zone.

The gist of the song was, "Go ahead and give me a ticket or throw me in jail or whatever you want to do, but I can't stop myself from going faster than 55."

I don't drive as fast now as I once did, which I attribute to getting a little older and hopefully a bit wiser.

Speaking of getting a little older, we arrive at the point of the post, which is this: Tomorrow I turn 55 years old.

This is not an especially momentous occasion for anyone, least of all me. I'm not a huge birthday guy to begin with, though I do enjoy hearing from my kids and other family and friends wishing me well, making fun of my advancing years, and generally touching base in the course of their otherwise busy days.

This just happens to be one of those birthdays that has some significance to it. When the second digit of your age is a '5,' it means you're halfway between age milestones. In my case, I'm five years from having turned 50 and five years away from a number that sounds particularly imposing: 60.

I don't know why I think this way, though. Those who are 60-plus in my immediate family (my sister Debbie, my brother Mark, my sister-in-law Chris) are all energetic and youthful and fun. They look and act nothing like 60 seemed to me when I was a teenager.

There is evidently much truth to the idea of age just being a number.

Still, I remember clearly when my dad turned 55 in 1984. Despite having always had gray/white hair since I was a baby, it was the first time I thought to myself, "Oh man, he's getting OLD. This is a little scary."

I don't feel that way now, though of course none of us feels a certain age is "old" once we ourselves approach it.

You get to a point where "old person" just means, "anybody older than me."

I think I'm going to go with that approach for now.

In the meantime, while I do drive faster than 55, I'm still sticking to the right two lanes along with all the other geezers. You reckless whippersnappers can feel free to blow past us in the finest Sammy Hagar tradition.

I'm very proud to welcome my son Jack as the only other member of The 5:30am Club in our house

I've mentioned here more than once that I'm an early riser. Not as early as some people I know, but most days (even weekends) I'm out of bed somewhere between 5:00 and 5:30 in the morning.

This has been especially true since I started going to the gym five days a week. Getting out the door well before the sun rises means having your pick of weight machines, dumbbells and workout spaces.

I have been the first one awake in our house almost every day for the last 25+ years. Even when all five kids lived with us, my feet were consistently first to hit the floor every morning.

Now, however, I have a buddy who joins me in this ritual of early rising. It's my 18-year-old son Jack, who I can count on seeing Monday through Friday right around 5:30am.

The reason is that Jack is working his first full-time job. He is an Animal Husbandry Technician at Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University, and his hours are weekdays 6:30am to 2:30pm.

The semi-fancy title simply means that Jack cleans out cages and does related chores within the university's animal research lab. My brother Mark worked many years at Case as an IT guy, but he also pitched in and did Jack's current job a few times himself when Covid hit in 2020 and the lab folks were scrambling to cover certain roles.

As in any job with an early start time, the advantage is that Jack is home mid-afternoon and has the rest of the day to himself. Another perk (besides making more money than he ever has) is that, if he chooses, he can take classes at Case for free.

This is no small benefit. Case Western Reserve is a very prestigious – and very expensive – university. I was offered a job there in 2013 and came this close to accepting it despite a significant salary cut, simply because it could have meant free college for my kids.

I'm very proud of the way Jack has adjusted his life and his routine to accommodate this new job. He works hard at it, as evidenced by the fact that nearly every day I receive a notification on my Apple Watch that Jack has already closed his movement, exercise and standing "rings."

It's a pretty physically demanding gig.

So, whereas I used to be alone for the first 1-2 hours of each day, now Jack and I meet up early while Terry is (smartly) still sleeping. We talk a bit when he comes downstairs to make his coffee and get his stuff together.

I facilitate the coffee-making by turning on the electric kettle so the water will be boiling by the time Jack comes down. It's the least I can do for my fellow 5:30am Club member.

After all, we're a very exclusive group.

I have so many questions about this man's cribbage-based approach to attracting women

 

I have a cribbage app on my iPhone that I play from time to time.

(In referencing "cribbage," I'm assuming you're at least passingly familiar with the game, which in the "real" world is played with a deck of cards and a small board with holes around which you move colored pegs.)

One of the features of this app (Cribbage Pro) is that you can play live games against real people.

Or at least I assume they're real people. Either that or it has been a long series of matches between me and very human-like bots since I started playing the app in 2016.

I do think they're actual people, though. If I have a few minutes free, sometimes I'll take out my iPhone and see who's online and looking to play a quick round of crib.

When you make yourself available to play, you have the option of naming your game. My game is usually called "Fast please" because, as you might gather, I'm looking for opponents who play the game quickly like I do, rather than dawdle over their cards endlessly like they're trying to solve world hunger.

Occasionally I will join someone else's game, especially if it's clear they're going to be a fast player.

Recently as I've perused the list of available cribbage games on the app, I have repeatedly come across the gentleman pictured above. His game is always named "Hot ladies plz ;)"

When I fire up Cribbage Pro, I'm just looking for a few minutes of gaming enjoyment, win or lose. When this guy does it, he's apparently looking for love.

I have so many questions I almost don't know where to start, but here are a few:

• First, is he serious? That is, is he really looking for women, or does the little winky face suggest he's just being a cheeky little rapscallion with no intention of actually hitting on female cribbage players?
  
  
• If he is serious, what then does he expect to happen? As you can see above, he has enabled the chat feature on his game, so is he assuming that, instead of studying her cards, a hot lady will instead engage in some sort of dirty online chat with him?
  
  
• Taking this a step further, is it his contention that he can, simply through the force of what are undoubtedly his witty, typed-out bons mots, convince a woman to meet up with him for, say, dinner and whatever I shudder to think would come next?
  
  
• Is he convinced that his profile picture – featuring him in what appears to be a polo, sunglasses and some sort of headgear...possibly a visor – is enough to drive any straight woman wild with desire? (If this is your opinion, sir, while I cannot count myself an expert on female psychology, I respectfully submit that your profile pic alone isn't going to do the trick.)
  
  
• Is it possible I'm underestimating his chances at success? Does the world's hot lady population have a surprising penchant for cribbage, and particularly an attraction to the doughy guys who play it? Maybe there are way more hot ladies on Cribbage Pro than I realize. I certainly haven't noticed them, though, as I'm too busy squinting at the tiny cards on my phone screen and thinking how I may need a pair of bifocals.
  
  

It would make me feel so much better to find out this guy is just a fun-loving dad who names his cribbage game "Hot ladies plz ;)" with tongue planted firmly in cheek (and nowhere else). And that his wife knows he does this and just rolls her eyes at him, causing him to laugh and think to himself, "Mission accomplished."

That, at least, would be a man I could relate to.

As it is, though, I can only wonder how many hot ladies he has attracted. My rough guess is zero, but then I don't claim to understand the ways of cribbage-based romance.

Time to put away the yard stuff, which if I'm being honest is OK by me

An empty yard...my favorite kind

This is about the time of year when Terry, Jack and I gather up the summer stuff around our yard and put it into storage in (and above) our garage.

While this isn't the most fun of chores, it's also one that doesn't faze me unduly. I can take or leave all of the outdoorsy activities that many of my fellow North Coasters immediately dive into once things warm up in May or June.

It's not that I don't like being outside. It's just that, when it's 80- or 90-some degrees around here, I would rather be in my air-conditioned living room than sitting on my deck.

Speaking of that deck, I mentioned here a couple of months ago that we got a new one. It's pretty nice. When we had Chloe's PhD celebration party at our house in September, several people made a point of complimenting us on it.

Yet you very likely won't catch me sitting on the deck other than for occasional outdoor dinners and the even more occasional family movie night where we project a movie onto my father-in-law's old slide screen.

I very willingly worked to help pay for it, but the deck is more a Terry and Jack thing than it is for me.

Same for our backyard fire pit. If my housemates want to go out and have a fire in the summer, I'll do it. But I almost never initiate the idea.

You could also put a hammock in our backyard and I would seldom use it, if ever.

As a Gen Xer, I spent a lot more time outside when I was growing up than my kids did. But that experience has not translated into adulthood. I just...well, I'm not an outdoorsman in any real sense of the word.

I don't even run outside anymore. I do all of my exercising at the gym.

My kids are uniformly bitter that, when they were little, I would never consent to getting a trampoline or a pool. The truth was, I didn't want to mow around the trampoline, and I didn't want to have to take care of the pool. 

Those aren't the best reasons, admittedly, but I'm just being honest with you.

My daughter Melanie will tell you that I "hate luxury and joy." She said those words to me a couple of months ago, and she was only half-kidding.

Maybe one quarter kidding.

I would counter that I very much embrace luxury when it's offered to me. And I'm as joyful as the next guy.

It's just that I prefer the kind of luxury and joy that comes with a roof over my head and a functioning HVAC system.

Ask yourself, is that so wrong?

(I'll be in the living room if you want to come and explain your answer.)

Those three months when the kids' ages are easy to remember

Me trying to compute the exact ages of my children

I call August through October "birthday season" in our family, as three of our kids were born in this time frame.

It starts with Jared on August 5th, continues with Melanie on September 21st, and culminates today with the anniversary of Chloe's birth.

In addition to Chloe being a person worth celebrating, I also like getting to October 23rd because it means that, from now until late January, all of the kids' ages are either even or odd and thus easy to remember.

Today, for example, Chloe turns 28. That matches nicely with Elissa (30), Jared (26), Melanie (24) and Jack (18).

Until Jack's birthday arrives on January 27th, I don't need to give much thought when someone asks me how old my children are. As long as I remember Elissa's age – and I always do – I can just step down in two-year increments through Melanie, then subtract another six years for our relatively late-in-life baby Jack.

Once Jack turns 19 in a few months, though, it all goes out the window. It will take me a few extra seconds to get all of the ages in order in my head, at least until we get back around to next year's birthday season.

Your kids reach their 20s and 30s and suddenly their exact ages are not only a little blurry, but in some sense a little less important, too. There's a lot more of a difference between, say a 10- and 12-year-old daughter than there is between a 26- and 28-year-old.

I think the same way about myself. I'll be 55 in 10 days. To me, 55 is pretty much as the same as 51, 52, 53 and 54 were, and probably essentially identical to 56, 57, 58 and 59.

Of course, by the time I get to 60, I'll probably start forgetting the kids' ages entirely, no matter what time of year it is. At that point, family birthday season won't mean much.

But for now? It's a life saver.

(And happy birthday to Dr. Chloe Edmonds!)

Family parties: Fun? Yes. Bone tiring? Also yes.

Once our youngest, Jack, finished high school, I figured Terry and I had thrown our last graduation party.

Then our daughter Chloe got her PhD and we (very happily) hosted a celebration for her with 70+ guests.

That's when I was reminded how much work goes into making one of these little soirees happen.

Most of the burden falls on my hero of a wife, who plans these things, does the cooking, directs set-up and clean-up, and basically makes the whole event fun for everyone involved.

I'm usually working to pay for the whole thing in the days leading up to these parties, but on P-Day, I go hard.

There are chairs and tables to carry outside. Garbage and recyclables to collect and throw away. Party supplies to bring down from above the garage and set up.

And dishes to wash. Lots and lots of dishes to wash.

Since I don't cook, it's mostly my job to ensure every pot, pan, plate, spoon and Tupperware container is washed, dried and put away.

This is fine in the hours leading up to the party as Terry preps the food, because I have energy then.

It's exhausting when the party is over and the sink is overflowing with items that need to be handwashed.

"Just leave them until the next day," you might say.

I can't. I just can't.

I cannot go to bed with dishes sitting in the sink. I'm simply incapable.

The price to be paid for this compulsion is having to scrub sauce-encrusted slow cookers and bowls of sticky, cold noodles when all I want is to take a shower and crawl into bed.

The menu for Chloe's party featured various pastas, sauces and meatballs. Terry had bleached our kitchen sink a sparkly white a few days before, but by the time my late-night handwashing spree was over, that sink was stained tomato red.

That's not to mention all of the garbage we collected and bagged after the guests had left, and the dozens of cans and bottles destined for the recycling truck that had to be rounded up and taken out.

The next day, Terry, Jack and I finished clean-up by bringing in the folding chairs and tables and emptying out the beverage coolers...all in the middle of an unusually hot and humid mid-September afternoon.

We were beat.

The thing is, though, for all the effort we put in before and after, the party itself was so much fun. It was great connecting with family and friends and meeting some of Chloe's grad school buddies.

We built a fire and roasted marshmallows. Our cornhole set got plenty of use. People clearly enjoyed coming together and celebrating my little Dr. Chloe Edmonds.

Speaking of whom, Chloe now plans to attend medical school. Once she graduates, I might suggest we bring everyone together to celebrate at the local Chuck E. Cheese.

Chuck and his animatronic band can do the cooking and cleaning for that party, as far as I'm concerned.