There is only one thing worse than an injured dog wearing a plastic cone around her neck: An injured dog wearing a baby sock on her foot. If you have ever had to do it, you know what I mean. It’s unnatural. It’s silly looking. And it’s more impossible than solving a Rubik’s Cube blindfolded. My dog , Lily — who must have a think-tank constantly working on new ways to get sick or injured — somehow wounded the bottom of her front paw. She then proceeded to lick and chew it until it was raw, swollen and the color of a plum. That’s when the UPS man showed up. Now, if the Mongol Hordes come to the house, my dog will surely serve them tea. But the UPS man signals a declaration of war. Maybe she thinks he is leaving a box of cats. He causes her to fly into a rage of ferociousness, charging the door and slamming her outstretched front paws against the frame with such force that the house shudders. This is not usually a problem … unless one of those paws is licked raw, swollen and the color of a plum. Now you can add bleeding to the list.
The great Grandma Evie armadillo hunt
“Oh, darn it,” said my daughter. “I have my armadillo meeting tomorrow and I haven’t done my papers!” “You … um …” I stuttered. “OK, what?” “My armadillo meeting! With Grandma Evie!” Jeez, dad! Don’t you remember anything. You know, Grandma Evie? Your mom? The woman who has been calling here every day for the past week because she says there’s an armadillo in her yard. Digging holes. Eating all the worms. In downtown St. Augustine. Which is more improbable than, say, green alien squirrels mining gold in the Castillo. But there it is. The agricultural extension lady came out, looked at at the holes and said that’s what it was. Or it’s where the alien squirrel mother ship landed. Only at Gandma Evie’s house! “So what’s this meeting you’re having?” I asked. Another dumb question. Eight year olds are a tough crowd. “Seriously?!?” she said. “I’m part of the armadillo staff. I have to do research. I have to look up what armadillos eat. I have to design traps. I have a meeting tomorrow with Grandma Evie. We need to look around the neighborhood. We have to measure the holes in the yard. We have to see if there’s an armadillo under the house. We have to build a trap. That’s a lot of pressure, you know.” “Yes, yes it is,” I said. “Did you say ‘under the house?’ Your grandmother’s not going to make you crawl under there, is she?” “Dad, you don’t honestly think SHE’S going to […]
Back to school nervousness, excitement … and forgetting of names
“Are you excited or nervous?” I asked my daughter. Of course it was a dumb question. Dads are legendary for dumb questions. Obvious ones. And no matter how many blank stares we get. No matter how many burning laser beams we get, we keep asking them. It was the first day of school. Second grade. The BIG time! On a whole new hall. In a big kid classroom. The seats are taller. When I sit in them, my back doesn’t creak and my knee caps don’t burst out of my legs. We were walking up the sidewalk to school. Parents all around smiled and said, “Welcome back! Just in time, huh? One more day of summer and I was selling little Johnnie to the gypsies!” You know, good stuff like that.
A final goodbye to my geriatric paper maps
I threw away car maps the other day. Maps! Threw them away. It took great strength and effort to do it. But they’re gone. They were buried deep down in the glove compartment. I had been searching for an air pressure gauge. Instead I found a year’s supply of fast food straws. Enough crumpled napkins to sop up Lake Erie. And maps. Lots of maps. Maps of St. Augustine. Maps of Florida. Maps of the southeast. Maps of the Civil War and of the Lewis and Clark expeditions. Maps of Kenya and the original map Columbus used on his way to the New World. It had a doodle of a sinking ship and a seagull with this note: “Hoping this wasn’t bad idea. Pickup milk on the way home.” Frustrated when I didn’t find the air gauge, I started stuffing everything back in. Including the faded, crumpled maps. Then I paused.
Oh yes, it gets hot down in Florida, too
I almost forgot what it’s like to be a Floridian. What it means to be a Floridian. How brutal our summers can get. When the heat turns on, coating the land and sticking to everything. A mild spring will do that to you. It will make you forget you’re a Floridian and that you live in a super-charged microwave. It will lull you into a Northern vibe. You know, the kind that makes you think pleasant weather and late-in-the-year cold fronts and light jackets are common. But they’re not. This is Florida. The land where citrus pasteurizes itself on the tree. It gets hot. Scald your hindquarters hot!
Building the (almost) perfect Leprechaun trap
The letter from my daughter’s first grade teacher said: “We will be celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with a special project. Each student will be asked to build a ‘Leprechaun Trap!’” A Leprechaun Trap! Hot diggidy dog! It’s supposed to encourage her imagination and ability to write about a sequence of steps. But I don’t know why it kept talking about her. I GET TO BUILD A LEPRECHAUN TRAP!!! WOOHOO!
On a quest to become a hopeless romantic … by Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day is in February. I had to be told. I had to be told by my wife. That’s not good. “You mean it’s not in May?!?” I said. “I thought for sure it was in May! Did they move it this year?” “No … um … it’s kind of always in February,” she said. “That’s awfully close to Christmas,” I told her. “Someone should look into that.”
Never make a deal with a college student
Never make a deal with a college student. It comes with too many conditions. Too many clauses. You give in to one thing and then they want another. It never ends well. You find yourself in some unknown territory, like cross-country, bare-handed turkey hunting. Or in this case, writing a column about my Opinion Writing class. What was I thinking?
Famous figures in my food?! Count me rich
It is time for me to get rich. Long enough have I wallowed about, toeing the line of abject poverty when I could be tap dancing into the lap of luxury. Why shouldn’t I be rich? I look nice in good clothes, have expensive tastes in shoes, and how else will I afford gas for my stretch Hummer? Lucky for me I’ve finally figured out how to do it. Not by working hard. Not by playing the lottery. Not even by trying to convince Nigerian email scammers that I am an American prince who has been overthrown by his people and now needs to transfer $32 million from a seed bank in Kansas to my newly adopted home in Botswana. (That one had real potential!)
Focus. Run. Keep training … must … resist … beer!
Must stay focused. Must keep running. Must stay on schedule. Keep the pace up. Not slack. Not … give … in … to … the … tempta … Oh, the heck with it. I want a beer and some pretzels. So goes my on-again, off-again training regimen for the upcoming 15K River Run in Jacksonville. Mostly it’s on-again. I’m on an overly ambitious quest to get back down to the times I was running in college. At 39, that’s no easy feat. Even more remarkably, I might just be on track. “Might” is the key word, and only if I STAY on track.