Category: Life in these United States

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Dad Blogs Family Life in these United States

In just a few years, I will be neither young, nor hip

Old pantsThere comes a time in every man’s life when, either by his own acknowledgment or by the subtle musings of his spouse, he realizes that perhaps it’s time to refresh the old wardrobe. This is not an easy thing for men, for we often labor under the belief that while our bodies may have changed over the years, styles have not.

I came to this conclusion while ironing some pants the other day for work. I had just flipped them over and was pressing the crap out of the iron in a vain attempt at trying to press out a previous crease. You know what I’m talking about…it’s nearly impossible to crease your pants in the same place every time. Anyway, I noticed that each of the “old creases” was now a permanently shiny line in the fabric that was quite visible to the naked eye.

Oh, this will just not do. I mean, I’m not the most fashion-wise man on the block, but I’ve always prided myself on dressing fairly well and I do buy new clothes from time to time. Still, I wasn’t quite sure how this had happened. I thought I was more diligent than this.

Getting a tad apprehensive, I went into my closet and with a critical eye, looked over my options and realized, “Hmmm, this isn’t good.” Not only were my slacks in bad shape, but there were very few nice button-downs left. Mostly, I had golf shirts and jeans.

See, in my industry–high tech and IT stuff–the peons don’t get dressed up. Oh, people like myself are a fashionable step above the guys who write the code and design the products, but still; we don’t meet with customers and on any given day, nobody cares whether we have on jeans or slacks. So, the only times I really get dressed up are for church, Christmas parties, weddings, and the like.

As CareerMom and I were deciding where to go and what to do for our big 9th Anniversary night out, I mentioned my needing new clothes. You should have seen her eyes light up; which got me to wondering how much worse was the situation than even I suspected?

After dinner at a really nice sushi/seafood/steak restaurant called “Goldfish“, we walked over to the mall heading towards Macy’s. As we neared the entrance, CareerMom asked, “Have you ever tried on any pants from Banana Republic?”

I started to guffaw something about metrosexuals but then caught myself and instead said, “Nope, wanna look?”

The excitement on her face said it all, so inside we went.

Now, I generally avoid trendy clothing stores like Banana Republic and Gap, because A) I think they are way overpriced, B) They are geared towards men much…um…leaner and less muscled than I and C) Because they tend to sell flat front pants and I’m a “pleat” kinda guy. I’ve seen too many overweight fellas trying to pull off the flat front pant look and it’s just not pretty. Not that I’m overweight, but I’m no Ryan Reynolds (did you see his physique in Blade 3?) so I didn’t wanna be that guy.

Anyway, CareerMom pulled out several pants for me to try on and I must admit, despite the flatness of the front of the pant and all, with a nice button-down, I looked pretty good. And because she was so excited and liked the way it looked, I “let” her buy me a pair.

And then I went over to Macy’s and bought some with pleats. Hey, what can I say?

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Life in these United States

Real Men Don’t Need Kits

Carving pumpkins is not easy, unless you’re Bob Ross, who I imagine could carve a pumpkin in his sleep while dreaming of “happy places” with tree lined streams and snowy mountains.

We never carved pumpkins when I was a kid, so I don’t have a high water mark set by my father that I have to try and top when it comes to carving pumpkins. But with all the hype around it, and with the plethora of pumpkin carving utensils on the market, you’d think that any schmuck (can I use that word if I’m not Jewish?) could carve a decent pumpkin, thereby reaching new heights of hero worship with his kids.

“Not so!” says the wise man whose wife has been outta town for five days now…

When I was at Old Tyme Pottery earlier this season, I happened upon a pumpkin carving kit, complete with little pinhole saws for cutting those intricate corners, a scoopy thing to pull out the punkin guts, and some paper templates and glue to guide you on your way to punkin carving greatness! Now, I’ve never used a kit before, but I’ve always wanted to. In my mind, after using this kit, I’d be able to turn out one of those Award Winning Pumpkins like you see on TV.

So I bought it and I have been waiting impatiently for the day when I could whip them out and bust a move on a wary punkin; but alas, it was not to be.

See, what I didn’t reckon on, was that the tools that came with the kit, were made of microscopically thin pieces of sheet metal that snap at the slightest pressure. The very act of trying to cut horizontally, completely broke off both of the pinhole saws that came with the kit:

Pumpkin carving kit

And that little scoop thing…was made for little hands and not for the adults who will actually be carving the pumpkin!

So…after snapping off the second saw, while trying to talk on the phone with CareerMom to catch her up on all the cutesie things the boys have done this week, AND while trying to throw the ball for the dogs to give them some exercise, while ALSO trying to keep MLE from stomping in the bowl of pumpkin guts, I finally had to just put everything down and STEP AWAY from the pumpkin!

When I was finally able to again focus on the task at hand, I realized that sometimes, a man has just got to be a man. With that, I ordered the boys (and dogs) to stay put, while I went to the basement and got out the old standby pumpkin carving tool:

Real Man Saw

If you look closely, you can still see pieces of pumpkin on the blade.

In addition to being just “the bomb” for carving holes in pumpkins, it’s also wicked looking, which gives me additional “cool” points with my kids!

It’s not so good for detail work though, which means that all I was able to do last night was the regular pumpkin face.

For the really cool pumpkin design we have planned, I might have to bring out the big gun:

Jigsaw

Don’t laugh till you’ve tried it. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of a saw shredding through the soft flesh of a pumpkin at high RPMs!

That sounded kinda creepy…

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

 

 

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Life in these United States

Who you gonna call?

halloween I didn’t do anything overtly mean when I was a kid, but like all kids, I did my share of tricks. One of our perennial favorites was knocking on people’s doors and then running away. I don’t know what was so funny about it, but we sure laughed our butts off when the homeowner would come look outside and get mad.

Last night, we had just finished dinner, I had cleaned up the dishes and I had just gotten the boys rounded up and naked for bathtime, when I looked out our front window and saw someone on the front porch. It was an adult woman with blonde hair. My first thought was that it was my adopted mom. She frequently travels back and forth through Atlanta without bothering to stop by, and I figured she might be coming through and leaving something for the boys. But, the vehicle at the top of the driveway was a red SUV, which I know she doesn’t have.

I sort of hovered out of sight to see what this person was doing on my front porch and then watched as she rang the doorbell and then took off running. She hopped in her car and took off.

I was like, “What the hell?”

After telling the naked boys to sit tight, I went down and opened the door to find a trick or treat bucket of goodies on the front porch.

Apparently, we’d been “Ghosted.” This was our first experience with it, but if you have older kids then you’re probably ahead of me. Basically, it’s a combination of a Blog Meme, A Random Act of Kindness, and a childhood prank, all rolled into one.

What you get when you’re ghosted:

  • A paper picture of a Ghost. You can print it off the Internet here
  • Some Halloween candy, in a trick or treat bucket, or any other kind of container; it’s your choice
  • A poem thingy and instructions for carrying on with the “Ghosting”

The rules are as follows:

  • You have to post, somewhere on your house, the printed Ghost. This supposedly keeps other “Ghosts” away from your home (and I suspect it keeps others from Ghosting you again).
  • You have to give the same “Ghosting” to two others that you know
  • You are supposed to sneak up to their house and carry out the ghosting without being seen

It’s pretty simple, and apparently pretty exciting since MLI told everyone he saw this morning about it.

But I’m wondering, how is someone with small children supposed to pull this off? I mean, it’s impossible to quickly run from someone’s house, get the kids strapped back into the car and drive off without being seen. Which I suppose, is exactly why the person I saw, was an adult doing this without her kids! HA!

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Dad Blogs DIY Family Life in these United States

Cuz, losing a 2nd cousin this past week wasn’t enough

grand canyon I really just want to cry. I want to curl up in bed and watch old re-runs of Family Ties until all my troubles go away. I want to drink really vile manly drinks with names like Rusty Nail and Beer Buster until I can’t think straight. I want to try some safe new drug that doesn’t jack me up, but rather knocks me out until my savings account has reached some astronomically large amount to where what’s bugging me, doesn’t bug me anymore because I’ll have the means to fix it.

What’s that?

Oh. Sorry…a little history for those of you at home. Basically, I’m losing my backyard to erosion.

And we’re not talking about a little erosion here, we’re talking about foundation exposing, trees falling off the side of the cliff erosion. All to the tune of $25 thousand to fix erosion. That’s what I’m stressing over.

When we bought this house two years ago, a tornado had just finished ripping through the backyard. And while everyone else left their downed trees to be reclaimed by nature, the previous owner of our house opted to clean it all up.

It looked great. It gave us a bit of a backyard down at the bottom where it leveled out; we’ll take it! SOLD!
Unfortunately, it also took away all the trees and mulch that were holding the hill in place. And now I am left with the REAL aftermath.

I’ve had three “experts” in to qualify the problem and propose a fix. And even in “this economy,” where you’d think you could catch a break on labor costs, here’s what I’ve gotten:

Option #1

  • “You need a retaining wall about “head high.”  A retaining wall “head high” means one about 7′ tall and about 100′ wide. The materials alone come out to around $8 grand, and then you add on the labor costs and you’re hitting about $15K.

Option #2

  • “For the money, unless you just want to spend $16K, I would just come in here with a drip irrigation system and plant the shit out of it. I mean, plants all over it.”  This would run me about $9K

Now, “if money weren’t an object” the optimum solution would be a two-tier retaining wall system with the plants, but since money IS an object, I have NO FRIGGIN IDEA WHAT TO DO!

But do you see my quandry? What if I spend $9K on plants and it doesn’t fix the problem? I mean, that’s a butt-load of money to put on something that “might” work. The contractor is pretty confident it will, but…I don’t share his optimism.

I keep thinking, “OK, you put up a 7′ retaining wall and you’ve at least got SOMETHING. I mean, if I suddenly fell off the hill, at least the wall would catch me right? Has a Juniper bush  ever stopped a person from falling off a hill? I don’t think so.”

Oh, also part of the problem is that we don’t HAVE the money to do this, but we don’t really have a choice. We HAVE to do this. Only, which one do you do? Do you go the less expensive route and hope it works, or do you go the more expensive route and hope it works? Or, do you bite the bullet and do them both figuring, “Hey, if one is good, then two should be even better?”

Seriously, where’s the booze, cuz I could really use something stronger than my reality right now!