I have a teenage daughter in high school. Yes, thank you for your condolences. With a teenage girl around there are a lot of crazy emotions bouncing off the walls of my house at all times. Having a young lady as a resident of the household has made being a parent suddenly quite difficult. Not […]
It’s time for me to admit it: I have a terrible addiction, and it’s destroying my life. No, it isn’t alcohol. I know how to moderate my intake of booze just fine. I drink only small amounts of tequila on Fridays and Saturdays (and on the occasional Thursday, Wednesday, Tuesday, or Monday). My addiction is […]
My wife has an iPhone. This little miracle of technology can accomplish about a thousand different things and still fit in your pocket. But my wife’s particular iPhone, it isn’t used for a thousand things. It isn’t even used for 10 things. It actually only exists to do two things. Its most important job is […]
The other day my family was about to leave the house. Most of us had recognized we needed to be somewhere so we were ready to roll. However, one component of our family somehow didn’t get the message. In reality, leaving the house is not a very difficult task. First put on pants, then shoes, […]
Remember that song from Sesame Street that went, “one of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn’t belong”? The skit usually had four things on the screen and one of them didn’t match the other three. As a kid I always liked that part of the show. It had […]
Both of my kids are teenagers in high school, which means it takes a fair amount of patience on my part not to end their lives on a daily basis. I find this awkward point in my children’s development sort of ironic because I worked so hard during the first part of their lives to […]
As a father, I have tried to provide good advice to my children. Over the years I have kept them safe by teaching them not to touch hot stoves, not to talk to strangers, and not to wear Ed Hardy T-shirts. As my kids have gotten older, I’ve also tried to teach them financial responsibility. […]
People have fears. It is natural to be scared of stuff. Fear is important because it keeps us alive. We need to be afraid of things like great white sharks, because if we don’t fear sharks, we could become great white shark food. Being on any species’ diet plan is not good for your thighs—just […]
I would like to take a quick poll here. How many people take a shower while wearing glasses? Absolutely no one? That’s what I thought. So why do hotels put two tiny identical bottles of shampoo and conditioner in the shower and then use impossible-to-read three-point micro font to label the bottles? I can’t be […]
For trips to the lake, runs to Pick-and-Pull for racecar parts, or back and forth from Orchard Supply Hardware to deliver landscaping bricks, I drive a Dodge Ram 1500 two-wheel drive P.O.S. pickup truck. There’s nothing fancy about it. I don’t have it jacked up on big tires; it doesn’t have cool custom wheels or […]
The great state of California has deemed that my son is capable and responsible enough to pilot a 3,000-pound car at 70 miles an hour pretty much wherever he feels like. You have all been officially warned. I am doing everything I can to ensure nobody’s dog ends up underneath my son’s car and, more […]
There is an ugly war going on at my house—a war I am personally losing. This is a very technical and delicate battle. Right now the odds are not in my favor, with the score three against one. My wife and kids are on one side (the fruity side), and I am on the opposing […]
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