I win, chicken. I WIN!!! Or at least, I think I do. I hope so. I can’t be sure. She’s beat me before. Many times. Many months. Shoot, who am I kidding. It’s been a year of trying to coop her up. To keep Phoebe – the Houdini of Hens – in her little chicken yard. This great escape artist. The hen who couldn’t be penned. But I think I’ve got her. I think I’ve done it. I think I’ve won. Hoorah! A year back I nicknamed Phoebe the Bomb Crater Chicken because she had a knack for jumping the picket fence to her area, rooting around in my nicely manicured backyard and digging holes like a B-52 had made a bombing run. Pine needles would be strewn about. Plants devoured. And I risked breaking an ankle as I ran about trying to corral her while yelling, “Come back here you dang-blasted Bomb Crater Chicken!” It was quite a sight to see, and some tourist trains considered adding this spectacle to their itinerary.
Thou shalt: The code to parenting an athlete
My daughter finished up her first season of middle school tennis last week. She’s played sports before, but never on a team like this. And even though she will probably let all the air out of my tires for saying it … I’m so squeakin’ proud of her! It was awesome as a parent to go watch and cheer her on. But, I’m also learning there are a whole lot of ins and outs to being the parent of a kid playing a sport. So this week I’ve written the Code of Athlete Parenting: • Thou shalt not blurt out “Doh!” loud enough for your child to hear if he or she misses a shot, or sends a ball into lower Earth orbit. The next shot might be aimed at your head. • Thou shalt not blurt out loud enough for everyone to hear, “Yeah! That’s right! Eat it, punk!” when your child brilliantly tucks a ball in an un-returnable corner. And if you do happen to do this and people turn around to glare at you, just blame “medication” and start drooling. That will buy you at least a pass or two.
Get ready for heat, Florida: It’s coming back
I haven’t seen any warnings from the Health Department, but I expect it won’t be long. It’s been too nice, this never-ending spring. Here it is May, and we still have these delirious temperatures, barely reaching the 80s during the day, and at night, requiring many of us multi-generational Floridians to wear light jackets. It’s chilly out there, people! And it just seems to go on forever, like the blooming jasmine will never wilt and fade. Like we can keep wearing flannel pajamas and fur-lined slippers to get the morning newspaper. Like summer might never come. Almost like … we don’t live in Florida! Oh my gosh … have we been transported to another dimension … called New Hampshire?
A child’s epic, audacious Disney World plan
There is just no way to describe the pride and joy that I felt as I watched the Powerpoint presentation. Of course, I have always loved my daughter. But now here was a moment I felt we had transcended space and time, melding minds on some ethereal plane. My wife and I had been summoned to a presentation in the study. It was led off by a promotional video for Disney World, and then the Powerpoint came up. I once tried to chew my leg off to get out of a Powerpoint, but now I was riveted to the screen. It ran through our planned itinerary — no, a master strategy! — for not just arriving at the Magic Kingdom when the park opened, but actually making it there half an hour early to ensure we beat the usual 90-minute wait for the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. How audacious! Tears flowed down my face as the slides detailed specific times to wake up, how to eat breakfast while running at full sprint and where to drive cross country through a swamp in order to shave 3 minutes off the Google maps route.
Tropical weather predictions and emergency stroganoff
The Colorado State University Tropical Meteorology Project recently issued its 2018 hurricane season forecast. They are calling for 14 named storms, seven hurricanes and a whopping three major churners this season. (“Major churner” is meteorological lingo for “Watch out ‘cus your hindquarters might wash away!”) Colorado State’s latest prediction prompted all of the tropical world to ask: Why are a bunch of ski bums out West talking to us about hurricanes?!? They’ve never been in the cone of uncertainty! We don’t go and make blizzard predictions for them! Why do they have to ruin our otherwise peaceful spring? Or at least, can’t they use more comforting language. They could have said: “Expect a slightly above-average chance of wind ripping your roof off. Oh, and maybe look into what a truck-load of canned meat costs.” Would that be so hard? Anyway, after two years of storms wreaking havoc on St. Augustine, and with all this talk of hurricane season coming, it has gotten me thinking more seriously about storm planning.
Tax return shams and dreams of a mongoose
It’s the letter from the IRS that everybody dreams about. It said this: “We changed your 2017 Form 1040 to match our record of your estimated tax payments, credits applied from another tax year, and/or payments received with an extension to file. As a result, you are due a refund of …” and here there were literally the words “Drumroll please” typed into the rather official-looking document with this figure: $8,216.00. Holy …!!! Can this be right?!? I’m rich!!! In my mind, I had already spent it. I would buy a 4K TV to put on the wall behind the sofa, in case I ever turned around or stretched or just grew tired of facing north. I would buy some kind of exotic animal, like maybe a mongoose with a gold earring, and name him Eric the Wise. I would buy my dog an automatic dog feeder so she’ll stop bugging me when I’m trying to write this column … like she is right now … AND FOR THE LAST TIME … IT’S TOO EARLY FOR BREAKFAST!!! Nowhere in my mind — my conscious, somewhat coherent, wait-just-a-friggin’ minute mind — did the obvious scream out: Uh, doesn’t it concern you that this seems a little too good to be true … especially considering the fact you haven’t even filed this year’s Form 1040 yet? Who cares … I’m coming Eric the Wise!!!
The socially-conscious summer airline ticket
On my desk at home are the strewn makings of a summer vacation — scraps of paper and Post-It Notes. Legal pads and torn slips marked with lots of stars indicating I’ve hit gold. Pay dirt. A bullseye. The traveler’s Holy Grail. Maybe it’s the perfect flight with the perfect departure time, or a not-so-long duration, or a price that won’t make me question whether I really need my second kidney. I love these starred scraps of paper. They sing to me when it’s vacation planning time. They sit on the top of the stack and as I walk by, I marvel at them and say things like, “Did it again, Boss. You rock!” Until … BOOM! Scandal rocks my perfect slip of paper: A dog has perished on an airplane flight. My family is enraged. They have blacklisted the airline. The very same airline on my precious scrap of paper. My plans go down with the dog. “NO!!!” I’m told. “No, no, no, no, NO. We are not flying that airline. They kill dogs!”
Beware the DIY dude on YouTube … or should you?
Washing machine un-level again … wife perturbed … must … resist … temptation … to Google it. Must … resist … temptation … to watch … rubes … on YouTube … who … know … less … than … strained … carrots … AHHHH! Can’t do it! Me: Google, find me morons who know why washing machine goes un-level. Google: I have just the moron for you! And so it goes … I hate appliances. I used to think the problem with appliances is you can’t buy cheap. So, I started buying more expensive ones. It was then that I realized something very important: Expensive appliances are just higher-priced cheap ones. They break the same amount, but the repairs cost more. That’s when the DIY-er in me comes out. The urge. The pull. The tractor beam that calls me to the light. Or the Dark Side. Or whatever the heck makes very dumb people with questionable repair skills think there must be a cheap and easy solution within our grasp. It’s called: YouTube! Have you heard of this fairy tale land? It’s where the desperate and the deranged go to find solutions to their problems. It’s a place where any so-and-so can record a video and proclaim their expertise at being expertly stupid.
Now, for a few words of affirmation on a big anniversary
“We’ve had 20 years to plan our 20th wedding anniversary! TWENTY years!!! It’s a week away! We have NOTHING!!!” It was one of those moments when you try to sneak out of the room. My wife seemed just as upset with herself as with me, and since she clearly had this under control … I … would … just … quietly … tip-toe … out … of … the … “Where are you going?!?” So close. “You’re complicit in this, too, buddy. We’re complete anniversary failures.” “Yeah, I know. I’M SO MAD AT MYSELF! What were we thinking? Oh, well … I guess we’ll just make it up on our 30th. Want to take one of those airplanes that lands on water?” She looked like she might kill me.
Discovering (already-known) family history in my DNA
The results are in and big surprise … I’M HUMAN! Just as I suspected. Some suggested I was part water bug, or had traces of wild dingo. But the DNA doesn’t lie. Turns out I’m still just a boring, slightly-graying man whose family history is exactly what we thought it was: unspectacular. WOOHOO! Thank you saliva-scraping family origin DNA kit. You have determined the obvious. But my mother was beside herself at the results. Always prone to audacious, grandiose statements, she declared over the phone: “This is incredible. Our family is the history of the world!” Well, that was a bit of a stretch. If anything, all it had told us was we were true American mutts, which we already knew. It wasn’t like we were a lost people searching for our family roots. My grandmother on my mother’s side was born in Cuba, and her family had moved there from Spain. Documented fact. My grandfather was born in Tampa, but his family had immigrated from Sicily. Documented fact. My father had been born in a steamer trunk, in Louisville, Ky. He had researched his family, and they were of European and British descent. Documented and fact.