2019 Nutshells, Holidays

The over-the-top Christmas gift-giving guide

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If you’re like me, you’re terrified by the calendar. Aware that we are already deep into December, but have few, if any, holiday gifts for people under the tree. Forget the tree! You don’t even have IDEAS, and time is running short. Worse still, all the Christmas gift-giving lists you read have nothing but practical, realistic and affordable gifts that lack the wow factor that you’re really gunning for. I hear you.

Christmas should be about what’s most important: Impressing family and friends with trendy presents that scream, “I’m hip and you’re not!” You know, the Christmas spirit. So, I’m here to offer you my 2019 “I’m-Hipper-Than-You” Christmas Gift Guide with the best things to buy:

• Anything with the word “Smart” in front of it. You can’t go wrong here. Just get on Amazon, type it in the search window and buy everything that comes up. Smart watches. Smart home devices. Smart fitness gear. Smart kitchen gadgets.

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2019 Nutshells, Childhood, Family, Holidays, Parenthood and Children

Christmas gifting meets the teen years

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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 I’m not sure what they’ve been replaced by.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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2019 Nutshells

The sleeper sofa, tie-down accident premonition

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I don’t believe in “premonitions.” They’re like déjà vu. Science has very rational explanations for them involving nothing more than people being able to see the future or having lived previous lives … no wait … that isn’t it.

Anyway, I don’t believe in premonitions. But if you’re going to have one, my feeling is it should be announced before it happens. Not in the moment.

Like when my wife and I went to IKEA to purchase a sleeper sofa for a loft where we sometimes watch TV, as well as stow visiting family who need to be cordoned off from the normal folk.

This meant a ride up to Jacksonville to get a box that would test the dimensions of our Toyota RAV4. With its pop-up hatchback, it seems like it can haul lots of stuff, but can barely hold a 6-pack of beer.

There are a couple of things in life that make me totally uneasy: poisonous snakes, conversations where you run out of things to say, dental appointments when you just know a cave system has developed in a molar and any transporting of objects too big for my vehicle. (Oddly enough, this doesn’t stop me from TRYING to transport such objects … I just feel anxious about it.)

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2019 Nutshells, Family, Travel

The forgotten suitcase at the top of the stairs

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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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2019 Nutshells, Technology

Streaming my way to an empty bank account

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I just did it. I have lost the battle. I have given up. I tried not to do it. With all my might. As much as my poor, frail, meek body could. Not to be a sucker. Not to give into temptation. Not to be a glutton for endless entertainment, and all the offers out there. To say no to technology and mass media and things I don’t need.

By golly, I tried. I even sat down, swore it off and read a book.

But I failed.

I signed up for Disney+. Another streaming service. Because I want Star Wars. And a new Star Wars show called “The Mandalorian.” I would love to blame it on children. Or demons. Or … I don’t know … capitalism! But that’s all a lie. It’s me. I wanted it. I had to have it. I needed to drop more money on … another service.

So, now I am directing that my paycheck continue to feed my addiction. I’m the worst (or if you’re an entertainment provider, the best!) kind of customer. I still have my old-fashioned, old-timey cable that comes down from the hills in one of them yesteryear copper wires that the whipper-snapper hipsters snicker at because it’s old-school and, like, totally dates me as a … I don’t know … would they say “fuddy-duddy?” Or just dummy?

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2019 Nutshells, Travel

When trips open up a can of crazy

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It was like the trip that opened up the can of crazy. Ever have one of those? Not bad. Not dangerous. Not even majorly delayed or overly disrupted. Flights eventually got where they were supposed to go, and there was never any loss of life or limb (or baggage.) Yet, nothing about it seemed particularly normal, and I spent the entire time wondering what would go wrong – or crazy! – next.

It was a trip to Washington D.C. for a college media conference. The college newspaper I advise at Flagler College was a finalist for a national award for online publications and I was taking a student editor to collect the plaque. Yippee!

But it all started with a canceled flight that wasn’t canceled. My phone blurted at me in the middle of the night to tell me the airline had scratched the early morning flight because of “severe weather” and re-booked us to late evening.

There are few things worse than a frantic, beleaguered and futile middle-of-the-night airline cancellation quandary. When you desperately want answers, solutions and some remedy to your carefully choreographed trip, but can’t muster much in a bleary-eyed, early-morning stupor. Exhausted and finally resigned to doom, I went back to sleep, planning to wake up late and mope around all day. Only, when I did wake up, I came to find that the flight was miraculously back on and I had better hustle if I was gonna’ make it. Thanks, phantom cancellation!

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2019 Nutshells, Animals, Houses, yards and projects

The suddenly indoor cat

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I swore I would never have one in my house. Never again. Not after what I went through as a kid. All the allergy problems. All the sinus problems. The itchy, watery eyes. The sneezing. The constant runny nose and general feeling of breathing sand spurs.

Cats! I swore I would never have one, and if for some unexplainable reason I did, I would definitely never have one IN my house.

I’m allergic to cats, and yet as a kid grew up with several indoor critters who made sure that heavy, red bags hung beneath my eyes. Teachers used to ask if I had been sniffing industrial strength solvents.

When I went off to college, and the haze of the world seemed to clear up, I figured I was done with cats, especially indoors

And I made it almost 25 years … until last week.

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2019 Nutshells, Florida

The joys of driving in a touristy town

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This past summer I took my family to Ireland where I attempted to drive a rental car in what turned out to be scarier than an evil Leprechaun on roller skates. The roads were impossibly narrow, everyone inexplicably drove on the wrong side of the road, the speed limit clearly was only a posted suggestion and just when you thought you finally had gotten the hang of it, a dopy sheep would wander nonchalantly out into the road and fry your last frayed nerve. I never thought I would experience anything as challenging or mentally draining as that.

But it occurred to me the other day as I was driving around downtown St. Augustine, with its narrow streets and tourists who wander nonchalantly out into the road, just how similar my hometown is to the white knuckle driving of the Emerald Isle.

So I’ve begun identifying the types of drivers I encounter downtown, making our roads such a wild ride. See if you can recognize any:

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

Scary movies just don’t scare like they used to

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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.

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2019 Nutshells, Florida, Weather

Missing those hurricane freakout sessions

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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.

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