Last Friday was a winter break day off from school for most kids in West Michigan but Caledonia intermediate school system was scheduled for another day of school until they decided to call in a snow day. Knowing that my kids would be on devices for at least twelve hours if I didn’t intervene, I offered to take them and the neighbor kids to Craig’s Cruisers. The neighbor kids came prepared with their own Craig’s Cruisers socks (they don’t let you wear Skyzone socks, Altitude socks, or any other trampoline park footwear). The neighbor kid’s mom had left $50 to cover her kids expenses. Having taken them last summer (and gone to the driving range while they were partaking of the rides and games) I knew the $50 wasn’t going to cover it. We arrived just before the place was opening and when I made my way up to pay the girl asked if I had waivers filled out for the kids, I confidently said “yes” only to find out that for some reason there were only waivers for Aiden and I even though I had to fill them out for everyone last summer. I started getting pissed but quickly realized there was no way to get around redoing the waivers and the sooner I did that the sooner I could get to Craig Cruiser’s world famous buffet. I made my way back into the line and was faced with a decision, do I go with the wristband that includes the lunch buffet for the kids or do I just make them wait until they get home to eat lunch (at 3pm)? I splurged and bought all of them wristbands that included the buffet and felt good about it due to the fact that they drank and wasted enough Soda and ate and wasted enough food to make the $5 extra per wristband worth it. The grand total for the 4 kids wrist band package and my buffet was $161. If you take my buffet off it and my kids socks it still comes out to $22 that I had to pay to get the other two kids in the door. Sadly, I can’t tell their mom “hey you owe me another $22.” I shouldn’t say I can’t but it would create an awkwardness beyond the usual awkwardness anyone has interacting with me. We arrived at noon and left at 2, leaving an hours worth of jump time unused due to the fact that I had to play pickle ball at 3. I’m willing to not go into the office to keep my kids off devices but I’m not willing to forego with the fastest growing sport in America.

The following morning Parker had a basketball game at 8am. The opposing team had a player who made two of my players cry as well as the neighbor kid tell me “coach don’t ever do that to me again” when he had to guard the Charles Oakley of CYL basketball. At one point I told the other coach he had to get the kid under control, he made no attempt to do so and high fived the little fucker when the kid came back to the huddle. On top of that, the opposing starting point guard was talking trash to my point guard and really got into his head causing him to come completely unhinged. As a coach its tough when your players come back to the bench crying do you tell them to stop being a bunch of pussies or do you pretend like you care about their well being? To make matters worse the head of CYL basketball was reffing our game and he came up to me and the other coach and said “Coaches there will be no trash talking by the players” like I had something to do with it. At what was suppose to be halftime I talked the head of the league into foregoing half time and just going right into the third quarter (I had to play pickle ball at 9 and didn’t need coaching to get in the way of a timely arrival), besides halftime is a complete waste of time where the kids loose focus (if they have any to loose) and the parents get restless. I couldn’t tell if the trash talk stopped, but the goon on the other team continued on with his aggressive play. Had he not taken the biggest kid on our team out I would have instructed the kid to send him a message, unfortunately, everyone on the team seemed to be deathly afraid of the kid. With less than a minute to go we found ourselves down by 4 but there was no way I was calling a time out, on top of it causing me to be late for pickle ball, I tried to run a play in practice and it was about as successful as the Biden Administration has been decreasing the federal deficit. We managed to tie the game up with just a few seconds left and the other team wasn’t even able to get off an attempt at a game winner. It felt like a win. Rumor is that the Caledonia AD will be reaching out to me soon to fill out the varsity coaching staff based upon how masterfully I handled the final 50 seconds of the game.

(this is what the enforcer on the other team looked like, minus the braces and coon skin cap, but a lot chubbier)

That night I had a poker game to attend but made dinner before leaving. As I was on my way out I went in the basement to say goodbye and found the two kids and Shirley playing a Harry Potter game on the X box. When I returned from the poker game I found them to still be playing on the X box and the next night Shirley logged another two hours playing the game. Still trying to figure out where my kids get their attraction to electronics and video games since I had and have very little interest in video gaming. The bright side is, while Shirley is somewhat of a gamer, she also enjoys playing board games. We were able to force our kids to play code names with us last week and it was mostly an enjoyable experience, at least the first couple of times, but Shirley pulled the plug on code names after Parker and I dominated her and Aiden.

While having the kids around at the age they are at is mostly an enjoyable experience in light of what it was like when they were much younger, it is nice to have a break from them every once in a while. The weekend prior to last the stars aligned, my sister took our kids and we managed to arrange a night out in downtown Grand Rapids with some other couples. Due to the late notice my buddy booked a table at a Hibachi place, at least I blame it on the late notice, I can’t knowingly be friends with someone who actually likes Hibachi. When we walked into the place my spidy senses were up, I said to my buddy “they don’t serve booze here!” He didn’t think that could be possible, but sure enough they didn’t serve booze. Being of a vocation that typically requires problem solving I ended up going to a liquor store located under Z’s and bought some beer and wine along with a pint of Crown for everyone to imbibe at dinner and also make the Hibachi somewhat edible. (I did risk my life to get our party of 8 adult beverages, had the homeless people congregating around the liquor store known I was carrying $80 worth of booze they would have torn me limb from limb to get at it) When the bill came it was a lot less than what I was use to compared to when Shirley and I eat at a place where you can also drink, so maybe bringing your own booze isn’t such a bad thing. After dinner we made our way reeking of cooking oil, cheap meat, and booze but still smelling better than most of the patrons of the BOB. The guy who arranged our dinner reservation tried to smuggle the Crown into the Bob but was caught red handed.

I had checked out the comedian online to see if she was funny, my initial inclination was that she wouldn’t be because women comedians typically aren’t. My stance on women not being funny has nothing to do with me being a misogynist, it’s entirely based upon experience. One specific example is Amy Schumer. Shirley somehow talked me into watching her sketch show on Comedy Central. She lured me in with her only funny skit and I thought to myself “maybe I was wrong about women not being funny” only to discover that every other sketch we endured grew increasingly unfunny. The comedian we saw wasn’t much better and her act was not relatable to me and a lot of the other people at the show. Being a single women in her late 20’s from California, her act didn’t exactly resonate with me. Both her and her opening act dove into online dating head first. I have no reference point for the current online dating climate, I have been married for 13 years and began dating my wife in 2006. That’s why I really appreciate the sophisticated humor of comedians who focus on the difficulty married men have getting sex from their wives, that is something 50% fo the married population can relate to as well as the hilarity of bodily functions, which even women can find the humor in.

I may have mentioned this before but in order to secure a spot for Parker in the CYL (Caledonia Youth Basketball League) I was forced to coach. Our first game was Saturday and while I had a problem with the refs, I had to cut them some slack because they had no idea what they were doing. The refs are players on the Caledonia team and seem to have no awareness of when to call what. Sadly I had even more of a problem with the mother who insisted on a snack rotation (I’ll get to that soon) I get it, there are at least seven traveling violations, twelve double dribbles, and eighteen fouls that could be called every possession. However, I am pretty sure they gave the other team points we scored and they missed a crucial traveling call on a made basket (I get not calling traveling or anything else when it doesn’t result in a positive play) which there were only 9 of the entire game between both teams.

The day before the game I received an email from a parent about starting a snack rotation. I ignored it. She also claimed she played high school basketball and if I needed help to let her know. Granted her kid is one of two players who can actually handle the ball, but I’m not bringing anyone on as an assistant coach. If you want to take over as head coach I will gladly step away, but I’m not taking on an assistant. What do you know, she started the snack rotation without my approval and brought doughnuts for the kids. The doughnuts did make sense in theory since our game was at 8 am, but doughnuts after the kids played basketball? Most of the kids on the team are already terrible, doughnuts are not going to help them get better. When I was a kid we didn’t get snacks after every game and my parents rarely showed up to any of my games, frankly I’m surprised they even signed me up for anything. To be honest, I had to beg and plead to get my mom to sign me up for 4th grade rec league b-ball and when she did she made me wear Sunday socks instead of the white striped tube socks everyone else wore. I was ridiculed by all the kids in the league, my moms reasoning was that Sunday (dress) socks aren’t hard to keep white because they aren’t white, but tube socks are because they are white at one point but eventually become the hue of jizz when my mom is the one laundering them. It was tough being made fun of for my socks but I should thank my mom for making me wear them, that along with my dad calling me pizza face and bean pole are the primary reasons for it being almost impossible to hurt my feelings. You should hear the shit my kids say to me, if they are saying stuff like that to me I don’t want to know what they say to kids at school, no idea where they get that from.

I do remember going out for ice cream after games as a reward. The problem is one year I was on such a terrible team we went out for ice cream after a tie because our coach knew it was probably our only opportunity of the season not to lose, I actually threw out a runner at home to preserve the tie, probably the greatest achievement other than winning the 6th grade rec league shootout, in my entire athletic career (although I am in a pickle ball ladder league currently so it is possible that I didn’t peak in 6th grade) However, why do kids need snacks after a sporting event? Not only do the kids not need them, the parents don’t need the hassle. She created an online snack schedule and sent out an email that there are two spots still available like it is something that is sought after. We have five games left and that means only three parents have volunteered. The end of the games are like church in my mind, I want to get out of there as fast as I can, I don’t make eye contact with anyone after church out of fear they will try to engage me, and I have the same policy when my coaching duties are completed. I am half tempted to sign up for snack detail and bring celery sticks and raisins for the snack with yoo hoo to wash it down, I want to throw up just thinking about that trifecta of awfulness.

Having Parker play basketball has required that he buy an additional pair of shoes, at least in his mind, so he can preserve the Giannis shoes I bought him a couple months ago for purposes of basketball. Knowing I had to wear Sunday socks to hoop in as a child, my shoes obviously weren’t much better. Parker has no idea how good he has it nor does his brother. Granted, most of it is under my control, ok some of it, the privileged life they live does have a lot to do with Shirley, but I also want them to experience things I didn’t have growing up, like joy. That being said, I did have an idea, that if it could be fashioned into an actual thing, would be a multi million dollar idea and possibly a way to save upcoming generations. Create a camp that recreates the parent’s childhood and send your kids there. It would be difficult to completely replicate my childhood, not sure you can create a camp where a kid has to wear Sunday socks to play sports while all the other kids where tube socks, but I’m sure there is room to really have an impact on kids and show them how awful life was when their parents were kids, if the creators of the camp are creative enough. Forcing the teenage boys who attend the camp to find actual porn instead of just surfing for it online would put them through some true adversity and likely be a character builder.

We ended up heading to the Dick’s sporting goods on our side of town to look for shoes. Aiden tagged along and decided he wanted to get in on the purchasing, requesting that I buy him a bright blue pair of crocs. While attending a camp that creates a parents childhood for their children is next level in putting a kid through the wringer, wearing crocs can also mold a child or turn them into a serial killer, depending on which fork in the road they decide to take. Did I do Aiden a disservice buying the crocs for him? They are extremely comfortable as well as practical, but I also need to protect him to a degree. On the other hand, I did my fatherly duty when it came to Parker, he wanted to settle for some Nike high tops that were not nearly as cool as ones he could get at the Rivertown Dick’s, when I suggested we wait until tomorrow and go there the sales associate even agreed with me. While we were standing in line to purchase the Crocs I continued to crop dust Dick’s, Aiden yelled out “Dad you just farted!” While I had some reservations about purchasing the Crocs there was no turning back after he outed me for breaking wind.

One of the reasons I was out and about besides looking for frivolous shoes and crocs for my kids was that my dad needed a refill on depends. I don’t think he would care that I mention that, not much seems to bother him, but he is bound to a wheelchair and doesn’t always have an easy time making it to the bathroom. Costco has the best deal on depends, granted you have to buy a years supply at a time, but it’s the go to place for adult diapers. I had just hit Costco the previous day so I only needed depends but also purchased Vanilla and something else but don’t remember what, it wasn’t a kayak though. As I was walking through Costco with enough depends to allow someone to shit their pants for the entirety of March and April, I realized there are certain items you should probably buy online, depends being one of them. Basically I was announcing to the store that I shit or piss my pants, possibly both. Similarly, when you buy condoms from the store you are announcing to everyone you come across that you don’t trust your partner (nobody uses them for birth control do they?) Tampons, while being purchased by a female don’t say much other than “hey I still get my period” but when a man purchases them it says “I can’t tell my girlfriend no” (if it’s a married man it’s a whole different story, married men have lost any reason to live and would buy whatever their wife tells them to as long as it gets them off their back). What was truly remarkable to me is how happy the people look on the depends package. These people are grinning from ear to ear, how happy can someone be when they routinely shit and piss themselves? On top of it they are depicted wearing a T-shirt and a pair of depends, how humiliating. “Hey Carl, I know it’s been a while since I’ve gotten you any work but I just landed a big one for you, you’re going to be the new face of Depends!”

I had left the kids in the car to spare them the humiliation of being the kids whose dad shits and pisses himself. When I got back to the car I put some notes in my phone. Parker asked me what I was doing and I told him it was notes for blog topics. He did not realize I had a blog and wanted to know how to access it. Obviously, I did not tell him but did explain that the two of them are frequent topics along with Shirley and max. Do I pull the plug on the blog on the off chance they find it on the inter web? probably not, most of the stuff is stuff I would say to their face and there are some valuable life lessons buried in this thing. I just hope the kids don’t try reading it to Shirley some day.

A week ago Wednesday Shirley and I left out of Detroit for Cancun. Our flight departed at 6:30 am so we rented a hotel by the airport. I think I recounted an experience I had last year on this blog when I made the mistake of staying at a Howard Johnson by the Atlanta airport, to this day I still don’t know how I wasn’t murdered. While this hotel didn’t have bullet proof glass at the check in, it did have the general air of being a complete shit hole. When we got to the hotel I suggested we get our sexcation off on the right foot, granted on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being a women who has been married for more than two weeks and 10 being a male teenager on prom night, I was probably an 8 when it comes to being horny, but you could wake me up at 3 in the morning and I’d be at least a 7.5. Needless to say we played cribbage and went to bed. We ended up flying out on Spirit and you have to pay for everything, even the privilege to fart not the plane, when you fly Spirit. I decided since I have trouble with leg pain even when I am driving into my office that I should try to upgrade to the exit row. The suggested bid for an exit seat was $36, I was awfully tempted to just put one bid in but that would have gotten our sexcation off on an even worse foot than staying in a hotel teaming with other peoples jizz and asbestos. Unfortunately my bid was not accepted but then the day before we flew out I received incredible news, they must have resubmitted my bid and Shirley and I landed in the exit row.

We were separated and sat on different sides of the plane. Shirley sent me a text to be sure to put my phone on airplane mode, often times I feel like Shirley views me as her fourth child and the one she loves the least, it would probably go Max, Parker and Aiden would be tied and then I would finish last. Now, for those of you who have not had the honor of sitting in the exit row it comes with a lot of responsibility, if the plane goes down ( we would all be fucked if that happened, even if the Rock and John McClain were occupying the exit row) you have to help people off the plane prior to vacating the plane. You are also expected to know where the life rafts are and the proper procedure for off boarding people who are completely losing their shit (I am assuming you are expected to not be losing your shit). The two people sharing my row with me were a combined 212 years old and needed help getting out of their seats to go to the bathroom, quite the rigorous screening procedure for placing people in the exit row. Not only did I splurge on the exit row I also purchased Wifi. However, looking back on it I could have just purchased it for myself, Shirley would have had no idea that I had Wifi, and as it turns out even though I told Shirley we had it, she didn’t use it. Also, had I known logging on to Spirit’s wife was almost as hard as breaking into the main frame computer at the pentagon I probably wouldn’t have purchased it. (On the flight home I finally swallowed my pride about an hour out of Detroit and asked for Shirley’s assistance in logging on to the wifi, that’s how bad I wanted to watch the third episode of The Last of Us, had I know what it was about beforehand I wouldn’t have bothered).

The one good thing about flying on Spirit is that it is a direct flight from Detroit to Cancun. We landed around 10:30 and the bonus was that Cancun is in the same time zone we are. We deplaned and headed out to find transportation to the resort. I had booked an inclusive called Secrets Vine. Normally I am quite a bargain hunters when it comes to almost everything but I just wanted to get to the resort so I paid $85 for Shirley and I to ride in a Nissan Sentra to the resort. (we paid $40 for the return trip to the airport). We checked in at the resort but were unable to get into our room until 3pm. Turns out we had $200 in what I would call shop credit that we could use towards various things that would likely have had us spend double that if we actually utilized our shop credit. After fending off a sales pitch to join a vacation club (time share) we decided to have lunch and ended up being seated next to a couple from West Michigan. I though we really clicked and that they would end up being our BVFF (best vacation friend’s forever) but I only saw them again one time.

After lunch we changed and headed to the pool. I was really into a book so I let Shirley get us into the room. I booked an ocean facing honeymoon suite for the trip and boy did it pay off. Shirley mentioned something about a guy bitching about being Ocean facing after we had made up for staying in the other people’s splooge suite at the Detroit Airport Comfort Inn. What would make someone think Ocean view is going to be on the Ocean? I will tell you this, going on a trip without kids makes you wonder why you had kids in the first place. You mean I could go on vacation, drink whenever I want, do whatever I want, and not have to worry about kids cock blocking me? Sign me up for that. Granted, there are a lot of other things that make me question having kids, but the five days in Cancun really made me wonder. Fortunately, Shirley and I realized if we weren’t called upon to do our exit row duties on the way back to Detroit we would be reunited with our kids so we made the most of the trip by hitting the pool, enjoying the leisure an all-inclusive provided as well as the alcohol. However, I had a suspicion that the alcohol was significantly watered down, a suspicion I was able to prove on Sunday night when we went out to eat because we were sick of the resort food. I was knocking back doubles of Jamison, Jim Beam, and Jack Daniels like my kids go through Prime. (It’s a drink that Jake Paul came up with, like that guy needs more money) The restaurant we went to was just across from our resort and their bourbon of choice was Wild Turkey. I decided to stay on the doubles train and took a double to start off the meal. I also ordered the Lobster as big as a small human, that’s not what it was actually called, but due to the Wild Turkey doubles (which I also lost track of) I can’t remember the name of the lobster. (It actually was a lobster with another lobster attached to it)

It was difficult to depart Mexico knowing the weather that awaited us back in Michigan, but we were both ready to get home so we could see Max. On the flight back I did manage to catch most of the third episode of the Last of Us which is a post apocalyptic series on HBO that my brother in law is also watching. We have been communicating about the show and it is probably the one thing that we really have in common. He doesn’t seem all that into sports and he has basically stopped drinking and has devoted most of his life to being the world’s best dad (what a loser) so the world of streaming is what brings us together. The third episode of the show centered around Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) and the compound he created that allowed him to weather out the apocalypse and life after it. His character had little to do with the main story line but it did allow HBO to go gay, he ends up trapping a guy in one of his pits and ultimately falls madly in love with him. I looked at it as a filler episode, my brother in law loved it. I don’t care if you’re a dude and you love a dude, or you love a real doll, or even a women, however unconventional that seems to be now days. But what I don’t need to see is two dudes with post apocalyptic beards rolling into bed together and going at it, there’s gay porn for that. I don’t want to see an unsightly heterosexual couple getting it on either. (I’d be down with two hot lesbians though, but I don’t know that they will fair well in a post apocalyptic world)

In November I signed Parker up to play basketball in the CYL (Caledonia Youth League). I circled back in late December and discovered he had been put on the wait list and the only way he could get a spot was if I coached. I hate coaching and I am pretty sure kids hate being coached by me. However, I agreed to coach so Parker could have a spot. I also managed to get the neighbor kid on the team because a kid dropped off our roster. I’d like to say I’m selfless, but I”m not and I wanted the neighbor kid on the team so his dad could help coach and fill in for me, particularly this past Monday when I was coming back from Mexico. Unfortunately, deplaning, getting through customs, and driving back from Detroit didn’t take as long as I had hoped it would and I ended up running our practice. I did get my proposed fill in to lend a hand and whenever we split up I let him take the good kids and I took the kids on the team who would have a tough time qualifying for the special olympics. On the way home I was talking to Parker and I told him there are maybe two or three kids who are good on the team, he asked if he was one of them and I immediately said no. That’s why I had kids.