Little Christmas traditions, even through BLANGITY sickness

She really should have been in bed. After spending the day throwing up in dramatic fashion – you know, like all over the car after getting picked up early from school – she should have been tucked under the covers. Resting. Trying to sleep.

“I threw up nine times today, dad,” she told me at one point. Whether it was a cry for sympathy or a badge of honor, I wasn’t quite sure.

But I did know she needed to be in bed, and I had told her this about 94 times that evening. In about 94 different ways, all escalating in seriousness and frustration and meanness. “GO … TO … BED, BLINGITY-BLANGIN’-BLANGIT!”

And on the 94th try, I thought I had done it. She trudged off to her room.

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Christmas gifting meets the teen years

What do you buy a nearly 14-year-old daughter for Christmas? Does anyone know the answer to this question? That is the dilemma my wife and I are facing this December. Because it doesn’t appear there’s an easy answer.

The landscape has changed dramatically in just a year or two, and it seems all of the old standbys and easy go-tos have withered away. I’m not sure what they’ve been replaced by.

“What do you think we should get her?” my wife asked at lunch the other day.

“Get her?!?” I replied. “Shoot, I’m not even sure who ‘her’ is anymore!”

Any ideas?!? I don’t have any. Zero! I asked a colleague with older daughters what he does and he told me, “gift cards and cash, dude. Just go with gift cards and cash. Anything else and you’re ASKING for trouble.”

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The forgotten suitcase at the top of the stairs

So here’s what you don’t do: When you are about to go on a trip for several days to the mountains of North Carolina, which just happens to be at least eight hours away, and your wife says, “My suitcase is at the top of the stairs, can you bring it down?” When she says this, and you say, “The suitcase? Bring it down? No problem! I’ll take care of it,” make sure you don’t do one thing: Forget to take care of it.

Because what you don’t want to do – what would be incredibly irresponsible and dumb and possibly criminal, depending on the jurisdiction and the judge – is drive all the way to the mountains of North Carolina, which just happens to be at least eight hours away, and find you don’t have the suitcase.

Especially not after you told your wife, “No problem! I’ll take care of it.” Because that would now be a lie. And worse, the suitcase would still be at the top of the stairs … at least eight hours away.

Because when you carry everything into the North Carolina house you rented and your wife goes to unpack her suitcase and then looks around and says, “Hey, wait a minute, where’s MY suitcase?” you will have to gasp.

It will be an epic gasp. It will literally suck all the oxygen out of the house. If there is a fire lit in the fireplace, it will literally kill the fire. Because you’ll realize at that moment that the suitcase isn’t there. And of course it isn’t. You can go out and check the car (better do that anyway,) but it will be futile. Because it won’t be there, either. You know where it is. You know EXACTLY where it is!

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The back-to-school and back-to-fall checklist

Wave farewell to summer, everyone. It will be in the rearview mirror before you know it. And that means school is back, and fall is on its way. So I’m here to remind some of you procrastinators about important back-to-school and fall checklist items that you may have forgotten, and surely need to look into:
• Get your middle school daughter a scientific calculator – What’s a scientific calculator? I have no earthly idea. It is both futuristic and old timey, like a Buck Rogers toy, or an abacus. It doesn’t have a touchscreen, but instead buttons. This will mean you have to explain it to your child, as she will try to “swipe” to make it work and then complain it’s broken. When she asks about some of the symbols on it (for instance the “cosine” symbol) you will have to pretend you are smart and say that her young ears aren’t ready for the truth (and horror) about that. (She should ask her teacher!)

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As the school year starts, signs your parenting skills aren’t up to snuff

All across America kids are returning to school. Meanwhile, parents everywhere can be heard collectively screaming, “You’re only NOW telling me none of your underwear fit?!?” It’s the age-old truth: The more experience we have, the worse we actually get at it.

That’s parenting, huh? In our house, my daughter just started 8th grade. But the more I think I have this all figured out, the more I realize I’m one step away from the child suing me for parental mismanagement and crippling oaf-ishness.

You feeling it, too? You recognize any of the signs of the great back-to-school parent-fail? Here are just a few first week of school missteps I’m guilty of:

• You think any clothes that were outgrown in the summer – now violating school dress codes for showing too much skin – can be fixed with duct tape and some extra pieces of fabric. This goes over especially well with your daughter, who threatens to give all of your Internet passwords to Russian hackers.

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Two brothers, two ideas of ‘cool’ at an old timey village

“Man, I got to make a real brass candleholder,” my brother said, plunging the little craft high into the air. “Isn’t it cool?”

It was tiny. If a mouse cared a lick about candlelight, he would be hard-pressed to put this puny holder to work.

“Wait, is that from the place where you pay $5 to turn a candlestick yourself?” I said. “You actually spent money on that? Hahahaha! We saw that and thought only suckers would go in there.”

We were in Michigan to see my younger sister in the Michigan Shakespeare festival. My daughter had traveled with me, and on this morning, we had been talked into going to visit nearby Greenfield Village, created by Henry Ford in the late 1920s as a re-created town to show off working technology from sawmills to living farms. It was my brother’s idea, and he had already sold my father on it.

Now he just needed two more suckers.

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Integers, eighth graders and scary new realms in young adulthood

August. It means a lot of things. The end of summer. The kind of Florida heat that makes lava look like Laffy Taffy. When the tropics fire up and start shooting storms at us like a baseball pitching machine.

Most of all, August means it’s time to start thinking about kids going back to school.

As a parent, I’ve found that some years the return to the academic realm feels routine and unremarkable. I just have to remember where my daughter’s school is (I don’t), that I need to start waking up earlier again (I can’t) and that I need to resurrect that wonderful routine of screaming like a drill sergeant, “GET OUT OF BED NOW, CHILD!!! YOU ONLY HAVE THREE MINUTES UNTIL FIRST BELL!!!”

No problem.

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All the highs and lows of a week off at home

Take a week off in the summer, but don’t go anywhere and you will experience a rainbow of highs and lows. Sometimes there’s nothing better than bumming around the house, hanging with the family, getting little projects done and doing some of the things that bring thousands of people here to the Nation’s Oldest City. Those are the highs. But a week at home – bumming around the house, hanging with the family, getting little projects done – can also come with some … lesser moments.

High: You can get up early each morning and go to the beach with your family before its gets too hot or the tourist hordes descend, snagging the best spots and soaking up all the seawater.

Low: Your family couldn’t get up and moving early if there was an earthquake rattling them out the door. Shoot, your idea of early differs from their idea of early by about 5 hours.

High: You can finally re-paint your daughter’s room, like you’ve been promising, which will bring great joy and a resounding sense of accomplishment and pride. Good job!

Low: You hate painting! I mean, you HATE it!!! Remember that time you stubbed your toe on a sofa and it tore your big toenail 3/4s of the way off? That was like a pleasure cruise in comparison. After you stopped screaming and finally regained consciousness, it slowly got better. But how can a little painting leave you sore in parts of your body you didn’t even know you had?!?

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The father-daughter epic superhero bonding experience

The rest of the audience in the crowded theater had already moved on. “Spiderman: Far From Home” was over. The credits started rolling. A mid-credits scene came and went. Ooh-ahh. And then they headed for the exits as more credits streamed by.

“Hold on,” I told my 13-year-old daughter who started getting up. I used my “super spy” voice, which actually sounds kind of creepy. “There’s another post-credits scene at the very end. After ALL the credits. Like 30 minutes of credits. And I already know what it is. It’s probably not even worth it. You want to stay to see it?”

“Sure,” was her answer.

SCORE!!!

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Don’t get blown-up by legal fireworks … the world will laugh

Here’s a life lesson – one of those, “Listen up, children, and you’ll grow up to be old and gray:” Never set off fireworks under a grapevine arbor. Not the kind of high-powered, military-grade types that will bring down drones in mid-flight. BUT ALSO not the low-powered kind you get at convenience stores and have cute, little drawings of smiling kitties and daisies.

I hope you all followed the rule this year. Last year we didn’t, and learned it leads to another lesson: Don’t get blown-up by legal fireworks … the world will laugh.

As I write this, I have no idea what is in store for me this year’s Fourth of July. My deadline was early in the week. So all I know as I write this is my mother bought a bunch of fireworks for the big shindig she hosts on Independence Day. Lined up in her garage were quite a selection of goodies: A duck that laid eggs (no idea who thinks these up, or how that one will go.) A truck that drives and launches mortars from its payload. A couple of rockets on red sticks that look capable of bringing down a drone in mid-flight.

“I bought them for the kids,” she said. “They’re all legal and safe and perfectly age-appropriate.”

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