2019 Nutshells – Page 2 – Nutshellcity.com

2019 Nutshells, Getting old ... er ... older, Parenthood and Children

Scary movies just don’t scare like they used to

October 16, 2019 No Comments

Maybe this isn’t a good idea. I remember thinking this as we sat down on the sofa and flipped on the TV.

And when I recall thinking this in the past, it DEFINITELY was NOT good.

There was the time when my daughter was just a wee-little snap and I showed her a scene from the movie, “Beetlejuice.” She was 4 years old and I played the part where two ghosts are trying to run new owners out of their house by making them dance around the dinner table to Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O.”

It’s a really funny scene and super-catchy for kids … right up until the moment that the dinner party collapses into their seats while the shrimp cocktails jump up like hands and grab their faces.

SHRIMP … GRAB … THEIR … FACES!!!

My daughter quietly turned away from the screen muttering, “Why did hands come out of the table?” … along with something about the phone number for Child Services.

2019 Nutshells, Florida, Weather

Missing those hurricane freakout sessions

October 11, 2019 No Comments

Can somebody please tell me what to do with my time now that the tropics have quieted down and I don’t need to spend every waking hour freaking out about potential hurricanes?

And yes, I know: Hurricane season isn’t over. I shouldn’t jinx it. I should stay vigilant and aware and ready because you never know when a tropical bugger spins up in the Gulf and runs us over like a soggy dump truck. I get that. I still have my guard up. Even while I’m watching the clock and counting down the days until we’re free of hurricane season.

But it certainly has grown quiet in the tropics. Or quieter. Not what it was just a couple of weeks ago, when it seemed any slight sneeze off the coast of Africa would turn into a Category 4 monster raging out in the open Atlantic.

I had gone hurricane insane. Tropical OCD. It was all I thought about, constantly checking the National Hurricane Center. Checking crazy hurricane tracking sites. The kind where people go because they think staring endlessly at the same hurricane tracking charts will uncover some kind of hidden information or even supernatural message.

2019 Nutshells

Unsolved Mysteries of the Common Man

October 3, 2019 No Comments

I’m mesmerized by TV shows uncovering lost cities, solving age-old mysteries, looking into abandoned properties and generally giving me one more excuse to lounge on the couch instead of writing this column.

It’s all big stuff: How the universe works. Why ancient civilizations disappeared. Whether rich people in the olden days had gold toilets like they do today.

But I want something that solves the mysteries of the common man and the everyday Joe. You know, the around-the-house stuff and the matter-of-fact mysteries that we all deal with. These may not be great and complex, but they are just as confounding and worth solving. I would like to see a show that looks at:

• Why are stickers impossible to remove? Have you noticed this? How awful they’ve become? I bought a hanging plastic basket to put a porch fern in and spent more time trying to get the sticker off the outside than actually planting the fern. The irony was the sticker proclaimed that this was a “decorative basket,” which would have been true if not for the huge, un-decorative gob of glue and torn paper left in plain view. It now plainly reads “… rat bask … ,” which sounds like a heavy metal band or something I shouldn’t be allowed to print in a family newspaper.

2019 Nutshells, Technology

Fear, and the art of pressure-cooking

September 26, 2019 No Comments

Speed. Convenience. Death. OK, maybe I’m exaggerating. It’s just I’ve had a bad experience in the past with pressure-cooking. I didn’t almost die. No, it’s more like I almost had my face burned off. A typhoon of hot, scalding water leaped at my noggin in an attempt to maliciously deface me. I had the good sense to leap back, run and never return. I left the pressure cooker, the house, the car, everything. I never went back.

I don’t know where I went wrong. This was years ago. I had been gifted a used pressure cooker and attempted to cook something in there. All was going according to plan … until I put it on the burner. At that point the cooker built up pressure (I thought it was supposed to!), burst out its steam release valve and sent what looked like Old Faithful across my kitchen.

It took three years and a lot of therapy before I could even bring myself to scramble an egg.

2019 Nutshells, Childhood, Weather

A new generation discovers MREs

September 18, 2019 No Comments

“What is it?” my daughter asked.

Well, trying to answer that question is a bit like trying to answer: What’s the meaning of life? Why are we here? Are we alone in the universe? What’s at the center of a black hole? How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?

“Of all the great mysteries,” I replied, taking the tone of a wise, old philosopher, “this is the one man will go to his grave trying to answer.”

She stood staring at the brown, metallic-y pouches with the cryptic black writing.

“Yeah … but … it says ‘Meal, Ready To Eat.’ So, is it like food or something?”

“Yes, my dear. You nailed it: ‘Or something,’ and no one quite knows for sure what that ‘something’ is.”

By now I was cradling it, the precious MRE. Military-style rations.

2019 Nutshells, Animals, Houses, yards and projects

Peace-less mornings with the porch cats

September 11, 2019 No Comments

Mornings used to be so peaceful. I would leisurely get up, stretch a little bit, joyfully stub my toed on the edge of the bed, make some coffee, sip it in total relaxation while reading the paper.

My mornings were glorious.

Then I came down with a case of the porch cats. An affliction known to the scientific community as porchcatitis, with symptoms that can be as serious as pulling out your hair, general screaming, uncontrollable twitching, the urge to gnaw on pressure-treated wood, and most definitely, ruining your morning.

Mornings are no longer peaceful.

Because porch cats, like all cats, are finnicky and fussy. These two have already forgotten they were practically homeless just a couple months ago when we unofficially adopted them. Gave them land rights to our porch.

2019 Nutshells, Florida, Houses, yards and projects, Weather

In Florida, reflecting on a week with Hurricane Dorian

September 5, 2019 No Comments

It certainly feels like we dodged a bullet. Actually, a glimpse at how Hurricane Dorian left the Bahamas and we know it wasn’t a bullet. More like a tropical bomb. One that had been headed right for Florida. It only stopped at our doorstep and reconsidered because a timely weather system swooped down and gently nudged the hurricane on a neat, narrow path around the state.

For that, we are grateful. Dorian comes a day earlier, or that trough arrives a little late, and this is a different column. This is probably a different state. Look at the Bahamas, if you don’t believe me.

But it took so long for it all to unfold. What was it? Almost a week?

What did you do with all that time? Waiting on the world’s slowest hurricane to galumph its way up the Florida coast? Sloth-like in its calculated, slow-motion crawl. So close to St. Augustine that it was agonizing and terrifying. Yet, just far enough away that some incredibly powerful computers, and the meteorologists who call them friends, said it would keep the winds and waters out.

2019 Nutshells, Getting old ... er ... older, Parenthood and Children

Lessons from lugging boxes at college move-in day

August 29, 2019 No Comments

Just like all across the country, this past weekend was move-in day at Flagler College. It’s where I work, and also where I graduated oh-so many moons ago. So with a little bit of nostalgia, and a whole lot of masochism, I like to go back each move-in to help new college freshmen carry all their possessions – which must include numerous granite boulders – up to their dorm rooms. You learn quite a few things about the world, and yourself, when you undertake such physical exertion under the blazing August Florida heat. Important things, such as:

• You’re not as strong as you look. Actually, I don’t even look strong. Pretty scrawny, actually. So I don’t know why I try to be a hero and carry all the big boxes. I should stick to comforters, or boxes of tissues. But not me! I had to act super-strong and say things like, “Shoot, that shoe bin weighs more than twice my weight? Pshaw! No problem. Just strap it to my back with these ratchet tie-downs and don’t worry when you hear a snapping sound. That’s just my spinal cord rupturing.”

• You will feel such excruciating pain in the muscles on the insides of your elbows for days afterward. It will make you wonder if little aliens are about to pop out. I don’t know what those muscles are, or why after carrying boxes they hurt so much. But I would surmise by the awful pain that they have never been used before in my life.

2019 Nutshells, Family, Parenthood and Children

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

August 21, 2019 No Comments

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!)

2019 Nutshells, Family, Parenthood and Children

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

August 14, 2019 No Comments

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.