NOTEBOOK
Commentary, experiments, failures (more often than not) and experiences in the field.
Pocket Intruders
Disclosure: This post is brought to you by LifeLock, a leader in identity theft protection. I’ve had my wallet stolen over 100 times. I know that sounds like a lot, but maybe you’re forgetting I have kids. BUT! I’ve been pickpocketed a couple of times “for realsies.” The First Time In my teens, I journeyed […]
Overreaction Toast (True Story)
Sometimes my wife overreacts in ways that freak me out. False alarms. While they turn out to be false, they really really really seem like legit alarms when they’re going off. Hypothetically, I’ll be driving us along and she’ll grab my arm in a near bone-shattering grip and shout “LOOK!!!” Later, when we retell the […]
Wrong 101 (Kid Responses to Accusation)
On the journey to teach kids the difference between Right and Wrong, they seem to learn something else you didn’t necessarily intend along the way. All on their own, without any flashcards or kidstructional videos. Wrong 101. They learn the wide and varied rainbow of responses to any accusation or confrontation of Wrongness. Kids learn […]
Remembering
My sons, Cody and Max at a war memorial, 10 and 8 years old, 2008. At first I thought they were making fun or at least making dumb. Sometimes it’s hard to tell with kids. Let me explain. We’d just moved and I was using the pools of green on the navigation system’s map to […]
The Language of Parents
Talking is such an important milestone in raising kids. But having kids, for whatever reason, apparently comes with a cost: your own ability to speak properly. Maybe it’s just my wife and me (I’m only saying that to be generous and polite). I know from conversing with plenty other parents that it’s not just our […]
Horribly DESPERATE Ways to Nudge Your Lover (The Last of the 50)
WARNING: Use these desperate measures with extreme caution! They’ve got more likelihood of bad side-effects and total backfire than any of the previous suggestions and are used at your own risk. You’ve tried nearly everything to drop an entire bag of clues on your special someone that you need lovies. NEARLY everything. This is […]
The Teething War Is Over
Yeah. So that just happened. For almost two years. Teething. The war is over now. I finally realized it. It just suddenly hit me. And it took a flashback to get me there. My flashback didn’t consist of the sickly sweet smell of napalm or the sound of Jimi Hendrix sawing a guitar in half, […]
Toys Make You a Singing Psycho
♫ The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round! The wheels on the bus go round and round, aaaaall throoough the toooown! ♫ I think this is the song my wife will be muttering quietly, over and over to herself when they discover her, smoking gun in hand, […]
50 Ways to Nudge Your Lover (Part 4 of 5)
WARNING: I’m back at it again. People still want to have sex and that’s not my fault. Kids wake up or the daily grind gets in the way. Don’t be mad at me because I’m offering sex advice or because I’m dumb. I had a school desk dropped on my head when I was young. […]
I AM A TEXT-ACTIVATED ROBOT
If someone looked at my wife’s texts to me, they could easily look like a bunch of messages to a personal assistant. Knowing that these were back-and-forths between husband and wife, someone might say, “Yeeeeeah. There’s a loveless marriage, right there!” But it’s not loveless!!! It’s child-FULL. We’re parents. Sometimes parenthood has to roll up […]
