You know you’re getting old when you go to Joann Fabric to buy special glue to repair the bottom of decade-old slippers. That feeling sinks in deeper when you can clearly remember the day you bought said slippers from Alabama Outdoors, and how they were a half-size too small, but they were on sale. They were the slippers I wore when we were in the hospital when Franklin was born because they’re machine washable. Then again almost six years later when Vera was born. Maybe it’s because as I type this my 40th birthday is closer than the expiration date on our milk, but I’ve been getting hit with ..read more

I hate printers. I’ve hated printers for decades. They are the failed alchemist of the office. They work busily spitting and sputtering with tiny copper coils and beakers to turn your documents from ones and zeros to something you can hold in your hand. Like the medieval alchemists before them, they generally produce disappointment. Most office windows don’t open to prevent people inside from hurling printers from tall buildings. If there is a domestic equivalent to the dreaded printer, it is the ice maker. Those of you who have been with me for a while may recall my previous battles with our ..read more

Timehop is an amazing little app, but I sometimes wonder if the ability to have all our pictures at our fingertips doesn’t cheapen things a little. Especially when we’re constantly reminded by what we were doing x number of years ago. I’ve gotten where I don’t check it daily so I can build some surprises for future years. There are still several days that I’ll check it just to see the memories I know happened on those days, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, kids’ birthdays, etc.  Time is a crazy thing. This weekend I carted off some empty keg shells to the curb while cleaning out the sh ..read more

Few things result in the instant and continuing periodic profanity in an otherwise family household more than a power outage. There is the initial expletive offered in response to the surprise of finding yourself completing whatever task you were in the middle of in darkness. Then, comes the expletive offered upon the realization that you can no longer do the next three simple tasks you attempt with the lights out. Every normal task requires three extra steps and answering four extra questions.  As if they may somehow act as sonar the sudden exclamations of profanity continue. The evening ..read more

It’s been a long few months. That may be the one constant in this entire COVID-19 situation, whether you are staying at home, or working more than ever, or something in between, it’s been a long few months. I am finally at home more, though that is not always all that it is cracked up to be. A few days ago, Franklin looked up at me and said, “Papa, you have two chins!” I gave him a look and he corrected himself, “No, three!”  I guess it’s not just my belt that has noticed my COVID-10. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but an hour or so later I got an alert on my phone telling me I was at the ..read more

We have developed a new routine for when I get home since I have to leave to go into work every day. I remove my shoes in the garage and leave both them and my lunchbox outside. Then I strip down in the laundry room, put my clothes in the washing machine, hope I remembered to shut the garage door, and head off to take a shower before interacting with the family. This has generally worked well, though if Vera sees me she wants me to pick her up and hug on her. I have learned to be quiet and sneak from the laundry room to the bedroom, but she has occasionally busted me and is extremely pitiful a ..read more

I was a picky eater as a child, and am still not a big fan of vegetables that are not in the starch family. Franklin takes that further by not really caring for any foods not in the starch family. If we let him, he’d eat a tortilla, Pringle’s, some crackers, and some plain pasta for dinner and be perfectly content. The real difficulty comes in the fact that he is picky within the subcategory of things he likes. For instance as we move toward wartime type rationing here I’ve bought blocks of Cheddar cheese for us to shred rather than the preshredded bags we often buy, tonight we learned that un ..read more

Strange days are upon us At least they’re pretty ones? I imagine this holds true for most professions, but I think lawyers, in particular, find themselves frequently marveling as they do things they never envisioned to be part of  ”practicing law.” I found myself in that situation today while I stood in Publix sending a text message to a local judge that simply said, “Your pickles are on the cheese aisle.”  We’re now well into this new reality, but I wouldn’t say many of us have completely adjusted. My first two cars were older cars, and while not unreliable, the fact that they would ..read more

Working from home Well, here we are. I was hoping to avoid spending any real time talking about COVID-19 (which sounds more appropriately dystopian to me than Novel Coronavirus), but here we are. I wanted to avoid it because I didn’t want to make light of something so serious, and I also didn’t want to turn my “humor” blog into a bummer. But this has been thrust upon us all, so I hope that in your time of solitude you can find my own trivial misfortunes amusing. Everyone likes watching someone fall down, as long as they’re ok. It’s funny, you can admit it.  I’ve been working long hours st ..read more

A peak behind the curtain When I started this blog two months ago, it was in the final days of my wife’s work trip to Hawaii. At that time it seemed as though I was walking through my dad-life finding every rake to step on, and it seems there’s nothing people enjoy more than watching someone consistently stumble through the basic tasks of life as long as they keep smiling. While my wife was gone my minor misfortunes continually mounted and it was easy to write a daily update. When she returned I was curious if I could keep it going, and knew it wouldn’t be a daily update thing. A surprise to n ..read more