Monday morning I was getting ready to get the kids out the door and in the middle of the kitchen putting the kids snacks in their back pack, suddenly something went running across the floor.  I immediately started thinking about how horrific it is to have a mouse run across your floor in front of you as you’re minding your own business.  This isn’t the first mouse encounter I have had at our house, last winter as I was watching TV there was a mouse scurrying about and distracting me from my television viewing.  The ultimate question is: “what’s worse? having mice or having a cat?”   My children know my stance on cats, I dislike them and have had a number of negative encounters with cats over my lifetime.  Unfortunately, Parker is bound and determined to have a cat.  Last spring he found a flyer for a coupon for kitty litter and told his mom “we should save this for when dad dies and we get a cat.”  Due to my incessant yelling (actually just talking to my kids in a stern voice) my kids can’t wait until the door is opened for them to get a cat.

All four of you who read this blog are cognizant of the fact that my kids still come in to my bedroom and sleep next to Shirley’s side of the bed on the floor.  It use to be that they would come in between midnight and three am, but recently we have actually come in to go to bed only to find Aiden sound asleep in his sleeping bag next to Shirley’s bed (yes, there are two sleeping bags and two pillows waiting for the kids, we are partially to blame for the debacle our nights have become). Regardless of the percentages of blame to go around (I feel that Shirley takes all of the parental blame on this one since I have insisted that we put our foot down on this matter but have deferred to her because they sleep on her side of the bedroom).  While Aiden being asleep prior to us retiring for the night is problematic for one primary reason, one other issue is that I am a bit of a light sleeper, good sleeper I can fall asleep in 15 seconds and could sleep in a closet if necessary, but I do wake rather easily.  Aiden gets up from the floor every night around 3am to use the bathroom and always turns on the light even though we have a night light that illuminates our bathroom as if it were a street lamp over an urban street.  This wakes me up every night and this week I finally decided it was time to put this to an end.

There are many other reasons to put this to a stop but one big one is that we are going on spring break and sharing a house with another family.  The house will be entirely unfamiliar to the kids and there is a chance if this habit were to continue they could mistakenly end up in our friends bedroom.  However, if we just had the kids sleep with us from the get go and only utilize one bedroom an argument could be made for a reduced payment rate by the Jansma’s.  Regardless, the mouse and my children’s desire to have a kitten seemed to be an opening to incentivize the children remaining in their beds.  I told the kids yesterday morning that we could get a kitten but it hinged on their behavior.  They volunteered a number of services they were willing to provide so they could get a kitten and I responded by telling them the only way they were getting a kitten is if they remained in their beds moving into the weekend.  My kids had two different reactions to this news.  Parker was confident that he could do it and that we would be shopping for a kitten this weekend.  Aiden went the opposite direction and immediately started crying.  Parker told him to shut up so he could talk to me about the ground rules for acquiring a feline pet.  This led to Aiden scratching Parker and an overall unenjoyable ride to school.

It’s quite remarkable how different siblings can be.  Aiden was certain that there was no way he could ever remain in his own room but Parker believed in himself and was confident he could achieve the task.  Furthermore, on Monday when I picked the kids up I had Cheetos for them (don’t judge me).  After eating three Cheetos Aiden had “cheese” all over his pants, fingers, face and shirt.  Parker, after eating all of his allotted Cheetos was spotless.  No matter what they eat Aiden looks like he has been in an eating contest with his hands tied behind his back and Parker looks like the only thing he is allowed to eat is Kale.

Through out the day I was dreading last night, knowing that it was going to harken us back to the days of having infants.   Seven years as Aiden’s parent made me realize there was no way he wasn’t going to repeatedly attempt to come in our room and sleep next to Shirley.  As I was putting them to bed last night they were informed that their sleeping bags and pillows had been put away and that there was no bedding on the floor in our room to utilize.  This didn’t phase Aiden, probably because his resolve to sleep in our room didn’t require bedding on the floor, but Parker started crying and wanted to know where his sleeping bag was.  This was a 180 from his stance that morning so I did some quick thinking and showed them youtube videos of cats on catnip doing crazy things.  The first video I clicked on was of a women with four cats, feedings them all catnip as she talked to them like they were her very own offspring.  Made me think there is a market for a dating website called crazycatpeople.com.  That video was incredibly boring, and even my kids were losing interest, and they watch a Youtube channel called Ryan’s toy reveal where all the kid does is open toys.  (His parents make millions of dollars off this, just wanted to give my readers one more reason to be angry today) We switched to a compilation video of cats dong crazy things and this took Parker’s  mind off his sleeping bag and he went to sleep with little resistance.   I actually laughed at a number of the things the cats did,  but quickly realized the cat we get will do none of those things and likely try to kill me in my sleep.

As planned, Aiden came into our room and insisted on sleeping in our room, he was returned to his bed by Shirley but continued to protest eventually falling back asleep.  However, pretty much every hour after that he came back to our room and insisted that the hall light remain on as well as our bedroom door remain open.  So, at 2am I was wide awake and unable to go back to sleep because I need darkness to fall asleep.  Not only was Aiden disturbing us but he was also causing issues for Parker causing him to say “Aiden, I need my sleep!”  Eventually I made my way to the guest bedroom so that I could have pitch black conditions to continue to sleep.  As I retreated to the guest bedroom I had little confidence that Aiden would remain in his bed.  Sure enough, Parker came into the guest room a little after 6 and said to me “I thought you were going to put us back in our beds if we tried to sleep in your room?”  I responded “is Aiden not in your bed?” already knowing the answer to my question.

On the way to school Parker was allowed to watch my phone with ear buds in so that Aiden couldn’t see or hear it.  Additionally, the kids are getting no electronics if they come into our room.  Will this stop Aiden form coming in our room?  Probably not, he was willing to bust open his piggy bank last week and pay his mom to cuddle with him prior to going to bed when she said she was going to skip cuddle time and go down stairs and watch TV.  I imagine the next few days being magical for Parker as he remains in his bed, new toys, limitless access to electronics, all you can eat ice cream while Aiden eats bread and water and his only source of entertainment is little house on the prairie books (I can’t believe I actually enjoyed reading those books as a kid).

The reality is that I have painted myself into a corner somewhat, I don’t want a cat, I hate cats, they are disgusting creatures who climb on your counter with poop filled kitty litter marred paws, getting hair all over everything in their path, on top of that they would eat your corpse if you died and no one found you, a dog won’t do that that’s a fact.  On top of that, I know who is going to get stuck cleaning the litter box and feeding the damn thing. Now, in my haste to write this blog I haven’t researched “animatronic cats that catch mice and can fool a five year old into thinking its a real cat” but they have to be out there right?  I’d pay thousands of dollars for that.  My only fall back is hoping that Aiden doesn’t hold up his end of the bargain, but is it worth being woken up twelve times a night and my marriage slowly unraveling to avoid owning a cat?  Probably, but I do believe before it even gets to that Parker will duct tape Aiden to his bed so that he can finally accomplish his dream.

The URL to my blog is an attempted homage to Seinfeld, possibly one of the best shows ever produced, (the actual serenity now insanity later.com had already been taken so I had to throw in an extra .com).  It still stands the test of time other than the clothing choices made by its cast.  One of my favorite episodes involves Jerry and his decision to finally get married, Kramer has a heart to heart with him where he explains the potential pitfalls of tying the knot:

 

 

I’m not going to sit here and write that Kramer is 100% dead on in his diatribe about how awful marriage is, but there is some truth behind what he is saying, particularly the part about sitting down and talking about your day with your spouse.  This nugget of truth hit home for me just a couple nights ago.  Shirley was on the phone with her sister discussing her day at work, and in my foolishness I mentioned to her that her sister probably didn’t want to hear about her day at work.  This was partially due to the fact that my wife indicated that she doesn’t get to talk to her sister who lives in Phoenix all that often.  If I had thought things through I would have realized that all women have to talk about is work and their kids and if they are stay at home moms, all they have is their kids.  Regardless, the second I said it I thought to myself “oh shit!”.  My statement incensed Shirley and she relayed it to her sister who assured her that she was delighted to hear about Shirley’s day at work, which was complete and utter bullshit.

Later that night after the kids had gone to bed I was watching the Pistons game, I went upstairs to see if Shirley was still awake because I was hoping for some business time, she was still awake.  Later I went back up to start working my magic only to meet this response “what are you doing?”  Which is code for there is absolutely now way you are getting some tonight.  This lead to a conversation about how I don’t care about her job and never want to hear about it, and the only thing that matters to me is the income she derives form her position and the benefit it brings to our family.  The reality is I don’t want to hear about her job, nor do I want to hear about anyone else’s job unless they are in the adult entertainment industry.  Why would anyone want to talk about work, it’s work, were talking about work man, come on work?  Why we talking about work?

Go ahead and replace practice with work, and that’s how I feel when someone brings up their job and wants to tell me about it.  To be honest I would rather hear someone talk about their kids, at least I can throw in a few stories about something hilarious and often times somewhat troubling that my kids did,  because not even I would start talking about my job in response to someone else doing the same.  In the marriage vows they need to throw something in like this “until death do us part, or you start talking too much about work”.

This is a point I have made before but needs mentioning once again and I can use personal experience to prove my point.  I went on an “ice fishing” weekend a couple weekends ago with five other guys.  Guess how often we talked about work or our kids?  That’s right, none of us even thought about our kids or work, we were too busy “ice fishing” aka drinking, playing bags, and busting one another’s balls.  It was a fun time until I woke up the next morning and death seemed to be a better alternative to continuing to live based upon my prior day’s alcohol consumption.  However, I really struggle to fathom what women discuss when they get together.  Shirley and I were just discussing a trip that she was taking to California to attend her friend’s wedding, a friend she sees one maybe two times a year and speaks to even less frequently.  Her justification for attending was because all of her “friends” were going as well I responded that she only sees these women about as often as she sees her friend who lives in California.  She lamented that fact, indicating she wished she saw these women more frequently.  Why?  So you can drink wine and talk about jobs and kids?  To a degree I understand, it is probably fun getting a little tipsy and complaining about husbands, but that too has to get old after a while.

The fortunate thing is that Shirley is, as of at least this moment,  going to play in a golf league.  In the past I have received complaints from her that I am always going on golf trips, Vegas trips, and “ice fishing” trips, while she rarely goes away with just the girls.  You know why that is?  Because guys are fun and girls aren’t, so going away with a bunch of women is not going to be the most efficient use of vacation and resources, unless it ultimately breaks out into a panty wearing pillow fight that ends up being recorded and placed on YOU Tube only to go viral resulting in millions of views.  The funny thing is, a while back Shirley had an iPad hooked up to her text messages and left it out while her friends were texting back and forth about a girls night.  I jumped in under the guise I was Shirley and sent the following text “you know what would be really cool to do tonight? if we got into our underwear and had a pillow fight that we recorded and sent to our husbands” it was the only interesting text in the string.   Now that she is in a golf league she at least has something to counter balance all of my activities.

As far as marriage goes, I am not as down on it as Kramer, it serves a purpose for the most part.  On top of that, I out kicked the coverage and am married to someone who is far superior to me, unfortunately even though I am aware of this, and she is likely aware of this, I am still unwilling to listen to her work stories.  Furthermore, I see the alternative first hand.  I have a buddy who is recently divorced and he gets more ass than a bicycle seat.  Am I jealous?  Of course not, how could I be?  Could he say the wrong thing to the women he is courting and get rejected?  Probably not, these chicks are pre-qualified and regardless of what he says or does they are lathered up and ready to go, what fun is a sure thing?  Furthermore, there is some peace of mind in knowing that you are going to get some on your birthday and various other sexidays.  We have a contract!  It’s my birthday!  Seriously, if you are to the point where your not at least getting some on your birthday what are you still married for?

Obviously most of this is in jest, but there is part of me that wonders what life would be like had I not met the woman of my dreams or even if I had still met the woman of my dreams and we had decided that having kids and spending most of our time and financial resources on them was not a prudent decision?  I frequently have dreams where either I am not married to my wife, I’m in my forties and can’t find a suitable partner to marry and have a family with, or she has finally come to her senses and kicked me to the curb, leaving me lonely and in a state of utter panic.  When I wake up from these dreams I am truly grateful for the fact it was only a dream.  Maybe prison isn’t so bad after all.

Before I dive into the rest of the story I need to address something that makes little sense to me.

Blue jean baby, L.A. lady, seamstress for the band
Pretty eyed, pirate smile, you’ll marry a music man
Ballerina, you must have seen her dancing in the sand
And now she’s in me, always with me, tiny dancer in my hand

Jesus freaks out on the street
Handing tickets out for God
Turning back she just laughs
The boulevard is not that bad

Piano man he makes his stand
In the auditorium
Looking on she sings the songs
The words she knows the tune she hums

But oh how it feels so real
Lying here with no one near
Only you and you can hear me
When I say softly slowly

Hold me closer tiny dancer
Count the headlights on the highway
Lay me down in sheets of linen
You had a busy day today

I may have referenced the fact that for a significant portion of my life I thought it was “hold me close I’m tired of dancing” instead of “hold me close I’m tiny dancer”.  Why am I bringing this up now?  Because I have Sirius radio and they played this song and it made me think of how my version of the song makes way more sense.  I am so exhausted (intoxicated to the point that I am actually dancing, those who know me well realize this is one of the first warning signs that my alter ego Steve is about to come out) from dancing that I need assistance if I am to continue dancing (what I do on a dance floor, or should I say what Steve does, isn’t exactly dancing but it’s close).  Makes complete sense right?  What the hell does hold me close I’m tiny dancer?  How did Elton John get away with this terrible writing that makes no sense?  How did this song become so popular?  Is he referring to a midget?  Is her referring to a child?

The Tuesday Shirley and I were leaving for Florida I had two court hearings that I had to cover.  They were at 9 and 9:30 downtown.  No sweat, our flight didn’t leave until 12:30.  However, Shirley is a firm believer that you should arrive three hours prior to the time of departure and had her parents drop her at the airport.   I thought she was going to wait for me to get back from court but when she called to see where I was and revealed that she had already been dropped off at the airport it was quite a relief.  Shirley and pretty much everyone in her family has flight anxiety.  They start to perseverate at least 24 hours prior to every flight they take, worrying that they will be barred from their upcoming flight.  Now, I will admit, I am the opposite, I try to utilize every minute I have before embarking to the airport.  Why?  Because I hate the airport, it entails doing something that drives me crazy, waiting around.

First you wait in a line to check in and check your bags, then you wait in a line to go through security, then you wait to get into a line in which you wait in a  line to board the plane.  It’s mentally exhausting.  Furthermore, why are people in such a rush to get on the plane? There is nothing to do on a plane!  I can’t wait to get on that plane and breathe the contaminated air and sit next to some complete stranger. Granted, it’s always fun to try and figure out who farted, was it the person next to you? Behind you?  In front of you?  Possibly the stewardess as she passed your seat?   Wether you are the first to board or the last to board you are going to get to your destination the same time as everyone else.

I’ll admit, I have missed a flight, and boarded a flight 30 seconds before it was set to depart, having to sprint through the Jacksonville airport to get to my plane.  But that’s the risk I am willing to take for those extra few minutes of not waiting around.  So, when I arrived to check in at the airport flying solo it was amazing.  No kids to look after, no Shirley in a state of complete panic frustrated that I am stress free and show no concern about the upcoming flight.  Guess what?  There was no line, I walked up and checked my ski, and they didn’t even charge me for it.  I strolled through security and the cherry on the sundae was that Shirley and I were one of the last people on the plane.

In hindsight I wish I would have booked a separate flight from Shirley for the trip home. We ended up stopping at her aunt and uncle’s on the way to the Clearwater airport (an airport roughly the size of Gerald R. Ford).  Their condo has a nice pool so I decided to go down and catch some sun figuring we had a couple hours to burn.  Our flight left at 2:48 and I was leisurely hanging by the pool when at 12:06 I received “better come up now”

My response “I’ll head up at 12:15. Flight doesn’t leave until 2:48”. I just can’t bring myself to feed into Shirley’s flight anxiety, I realize happy wife happy life, but hey, I was only going to be stuck next to her on a plane for 2 hours and 45 minutes what’s the worst that could happen?  Besides there was lots of business time on vacation so what reason did I have to be nice to her?  It was quite obvious there was going to be a large gap between my next business trip regardless of the way I treated my wife.

Her response “ok, but it sure would be nice to visit with Pat and Stan a bit, we are on the porch”

“Jumping in the pool real quick and then I will head up”. (I’m such an asshole)

Now of note is the fact that we were just with Pat and Stan the previous day, so nothing new transpired between our time with them and our return visit prior to the airport so I didn’t see the need to “visit”.  This, in Shirley’s mind confirmed what she has known for quite some time, I’m a selfish asshole.  On top of that, I’m not sure why she felt the need to text me that they were on the porch, they live in a high rise condo, pretty sure I would have found them sooner or later.

To Shirley’s credit she didn’t get on me for being a selfish asshole until we were in the car and on our way to the airport.  We left the condo at 12:30 and Shirley immediately started checking traffic and indicated there were traffic issues on the way to the airport.  I am quite certain I broke the record for fastest trip from Bradenton to Clearwater Airport by at least ten minutes, not because I was worried we were going to miss our flight, but so I could prove Shirley wrong by arriving with a large window of time prior to our flight leaving.  We pulled into the vicinity of the airport at just a hair past one and tried to eat at Chick Filla, but it was Sunday so we had to settle for Wendys.  I should have just hit the drive thru but we went inside, only to find a huge line, the theme from mission impossible started playing in my head and I could see that fuse quickly burning and closing in on igniting the stick of dynamite.  “Lets just go through the drive thru” I hastily said to Shirley.

This is where things could have gone way wrong, and I would have had to hear it from Shirley repeatedly for the rest of my life, probably even in our golden years when we couldn’t stand the sight of one another but also couldn’t stand the thought of being alone.  “Remember that time when we missed our flight from Clearwater because you are a selfish asshole?”  I would likely respond “which time?” Now, it is important to note, the place I got the car from advertised a Toyota Camry (or similar model) with a picture of a brand new Toyota Camry.  Sounded good to me, they are the ugly cousin of a number of Lexus models, I can live with that.  Unfortunately, what we ended up with was a 2014 Hyundai Sonata (I think Sonata is latin for death trap). The thing was a pile of shit, and in the moment when we needed it the most, the key wouldn’t turn in the ignition.  I could see the stick of Dynamite igniting and only having memories of vacation sex to rely on to satisfy my libido.  I was just waiting for Shirley to tell me “this is exactly why we need to leave for the airport four hours ahead of time” but she didn’t and I was able to get the key to turn after 90 of the longest seconds of my life.  We made our way through the drive thru, grabbed some gas, and dropped the car at the offsite rental place.  Unfortunately, the rental place only had one shuttle van and it was operated by the little old lady from Pasadena.  She took her sweet old time getting to the airport, I discovered that everyone in Florida seems to take their sweet old time because the only place they have to go is the after life.

We ended up making it to the airport at roughly 1:45 and made our way to check our luggage.  You would think at this point, having made it to the actual airport the stress level would deescalate, but it only intensified, as if we were in the eye of a hurricane.  Every statement had an air of panic to it, every gesture and action was done with the understanding that when we did miss the plane, which was inevitable, it would be entirely my fault.  There was a check in line that was fast and there was one that was slow.  We jumped in the fast line but were redirected to the slow line because I had brought my water ski and it needed to be checked through the other line.  As we waited in line the panic grew and Shirley became incensed as she attempted to pay for my ski through allegiant’s website (we had already prepaid for our suitcase).  Now what every experienced traveler should realize at this point is that once you have checked in via the allegiant app, which we had, you are getting on the plane, regardless of how long it takes to get your luggage checked.  This was of no significance to Shirley but I remained calm as I typically due in the face of adversity.  Sure enough, “Is there anyone going to Grand Rapids?”  Shirley raised her hand before they even completely enunciated Grand.  We checked our bags and headed to security.   Once again we were one of the last passengers to board the plane and as we approached our assigned seats we were greeted by a really fat guy sitting in the aisle seat, I said to Shirley “You can sit by the window if you want”

“No, you take it, it’s fine.”

What a gal!

 

“Hey dad, who is going to be our new president?”  asked Aiden on our way back home after he and Parker had spent an entire day at Colt Care due to the kids being on winter break.  Parker was slumped over on the arm rest that divided the two of them, sound asleep.

“New president, what do you mean new president?”  I thought he might be wondering who was going to unseat Donald Trump in three years, which seemed a bit advanced for a seven year old.

“Don’t we get a new president, it’s presidents day today.  Is it going to be that women that mom likes?”

“You mean Hillary Clinton?  Don’t go telling your Grandma Jansma that, she is liable to never speak to your mom again.  Unfortunately, your mom was one of the few people who actually liked her which explains why she lost to Donald Trump.  I don’t think she can be president buddy.”

“What about Abraham Lincoln can he be the new president?”

“He’s dead so probably not, but if they exhumed his corpse I am sure he would do a lot better job than our sitting president.”

“Who is going to be the new president then?”

“President’s Day is to celebrate all of our former presidents but at this point is not a platform to put a new president in to office.  Also, on the list of holidays, it falls right between Arbor Day and Columbus Day in terms of significance.”

I’m not entirely sure how my seven year old even found out it was presidents day, and I have no idea why he thought it meant we were going to get a new president, maybe it was wishful thinking on his part, or maybe he just thought you get new shit on Christmas maybe you get a new president on President’s Day.

I mentioned winter break, and Shirley and I had a winter break of our own that was relaxing for the most part, but did have it’s moments of stress, at least for Shirley, and displeasure for myself.  I actually booked our trip to the Tampa area as a postlude to Shirley’s 40th birthday.  What I forgot about Florida is that even I, as I quickly approach the ripe old age of 44 (this Friday) feel like a spring chicken once I enter the state.  While it is great to feel young again, it is utterly depressing to go out to eat and be the youngest couple there by thirty years.  However,  if you go to dinner past 6pm there isn’t much of wait, so I guess we had that going for us.

Of importance is the fact that my kids did not accompany us on this trip, I have been to Florida the past two years with my wife and kids and have never fully appreciated that the average age of a Florida resident is somewhere north of death, I believe this was due largely in part to the gigantic distraction my children can be anytime, but especially on vacation.  I had some grand plans for my Florida trip, hit the driving range, maybe even golf, water ski a couple times, business time a couple times a day.  However, once I realized how nice it was to just hang out by the pool, read a book, and not have to pay attention to anyone, not even my wife because she was immersed in the Harry Potter series, I found it difficult to justify doing any structured activity.

My kids were with my in-laws and we called them a few times as well as face timed them, they showed about as much interest in us as Shirley had in business time twice a day.  Did it make me feel bad?  Hell no, I didn’t miss them either.  I could have easily made it another seven to ten years not seeing them, screw them!  There are a number of reasons my kids didn’t miss me, the primary one being they never hear the word no when they are with my in-laws.  To be honest, I wouldn’t have it any other way, I don’t remember my grandparents saying no to me either, (My grandpa Rozema never said anything to me, which was likely more traumatic than him actually saying no to me).  It is a blessing to have someone that we can leave the kids with and know they are in good hands, will it take weeks of deprogramming to get them to the point that they are tolerable?  Of course it will, but that’s a trade off I am willing to make to get away from them.

There was one thing we did on the trip that is a guilty pleasure of mine (it didn’t involve answering a Craig’s list ad and meeting up with another couple with similar “interests”) It was even more shameful than engaging in that type of activity, we went to the Cheesecake Factory. Man do I love that place.  People who live in cities where they have Cheesecake Factories act so damn superior to those who don’t, pretending like the Cheesecake Factory is beneath them because they could eat there 365 days a year (is it open on Christmas?  Well, at least 364 days a year) “I guess we can go to the Cheesecake Factory, if you really want to”  You know deep down they regret making fun of the Cheesecake Factory and are dying to go eat there but can’t because they drew a line in the sand and crossing it, while being quite gratifying, would also be humiliating if any of their friends and relatives who don’t have year round access to the most amazing chain restaurant known to man, found out they ate at such a trivial eating establishment.  And I’ll be honest, I could eat there 365 days a year, there are that many menu options, I guarantee you that no other restaurant has that diverse of a menu.  Mexican, Italian, Asian (without the fear of eating cat disguised as chicken) all under one roof.  I had their meatloaf once and I couldn’t eat it all, not because it wasn’t amazing, because there was so much and it was so filling.  You know how hard it is for a Dutch person not to eat all of their food at a restaurant?  I waddled down Michigan avenue back to my hotel that night in complete and utter regret because I ate too much but didn’t eat enough.

I am convinced that if a Cheesecake factory was to come to West Michigan it would be one of the few that didn’t need to rely on tourists as the primary source of revenue.  Dutch people wouldn’t be able to get enough of the factory, reasonable prices, large portions, incredibly tacky decor.  Love it!  After we hit the Factory we toured the mall that it was attached to and were awe struck.  Let me start out by saying this, it had a Tesla dealership in it.  That right there sent off a warning that pretty much any store in that mall was likely out of my price range.  I have learned that its best not to go into stores in these high end malls if you have little to no familiarity with their product.  This is especially true if there is no one in that store.  Why?  Because, at least in my case, if I go in a store, look at a price tag and it’s ten times the highest price I have ever paid for an item of clothing I have a hard time remaining calm, and usually run out of the store, or at the very least, break into a light jog.  (Not sure why this embarrasses me, because I will never see that retail clerk again, but it does).

They had a Robert Graham store:

This is a Robert Graham shirt I pulled off the internet.  It’s currently for sale at Nordstrom’s for $348.  Now when I went into their store, which admittedly I shouldn’t have, I had an inkling that their shit was expensive but had no idea their clothing cost more than a fun filled night at a high end gentleman’s club, I guess at least you have something tangible when you shop at a Robert Graham store, but that shirt can’t elevate your self esteem as effectively as a high class stripper.  Furthermore, Shirley was with me, and I knew there was no way she would green light a Robert Graham purchase, even if it was on a deep discount.  She had no idea what price range the shirts would fall in and pointed to a shirt she thought was snazzy, as did I.  I fumbled with the shirt and pulled out the price tag only to discover it was going for a reasonable $198.  I made a joke about it to Shirley since we weren’t the only ones shopping in the store as we quickly proceeded to exit the store.  Upon leaving the store Shirley wanted me to assure her that I wouldn’t go and buy a Robert Graham shirt from Nordstrom’s rack just so I could have a Robert Graham shirt.  She constantly tells me there is a reason stuff finds its way to the Rack, and that reason is because no one in their right mind would wear it.  However, to my credit, I have made some amazing finds there, also some mistakes, but the keepers outweigh the items I have never worn prior to donating them to Goodwill.

There was one store I knew wouldn’t be out of my price range, Banana Republic, plus everything in the store was 40% off.  (makes me wonder how much of a profit margin they have on their regularly priced clothing).  I managed to find a pair of pants originally priced at $170 marked down to $82.99 with another 40% to be taken off at the register.  I am no math whizz, but I am pretty sure the price of the pants would get me maybe one of the sleeves on that hideous Robert Graham shirt pictured above.  Furthermore, it was about time my go to Banana Republic slacks (that seems like something my wife’s grandma would say) were supplanted and these were just the pair of pants to do it.  When I was checking out I mentioned to the clerk what a screaming deal the pants were, and in the back of my mind I was wanting to ask her for the names and phone numbers of all the people who paid full price for those pants, so that I could call them and gloat.  Seriously, who pays full price for anything?  Typically when I enter a real store (not TJ Maxx, Marshals, or The Rack) I immediately head for the sale racks without even bothering to look at the the clothes that are not discounted.

While finding such a deal on pants as well as 40% off on three shirts was extremely gratifying, those deals coupled with the stuff Shirley bought at the outlet mall we also visited resulted in our one suitcase being over the specified weight limit by tens of pounds.  The overpacked suitcase, my slalom ski, and Shirley’s desire to be at the airport three hours prior to boarding was hurling us towards  a sequence of potentially catastrophic events………(To Be Continued)

 

 

Last Sunday I was invited to an annual poker game where among other things, I ran up against quad tens when I was initially dealt A/k (aka Big Slick).  I either hit a king or an ace on the flop and was firing at the pot completely oblivious to the monster hand that was about to kick my teeth in.  The party went much longer than I planned on staying because I needed to get home for some business time.  Similar to not wanting to see myself engage in pretty much any activity, I have never taken video of business time, heck I don’t even like how my voice sounds on a recording, can’t imagine getting footage of myself doing the deed.  Regardless, I am pretty sure the idea I have in my head of how it appears is completely inaccurate, and it is akin to this video.  Unfortunately, Aiden managed to interrupt business time before business time could be completed by pounding on our door and when we didn’t answer it in three seconds, he began crying.  I managed to get up in a somewhat timely fashion and escort him back to his bed, but he was beside himself.   Apparently earlier that evening his bed broke and he woke up and the first thing that popped into his head was an irrational fear that he was going to fall out of his bed.  I have no patience to begin with, but under these particular circumstances I knew there was no way I was going to calm him down so I turned things over to Shirley.  I wasn’t real sure why he was so concerned about the functionality of his bed since we were about twenty minutes from him and his brother coming in to sleep on our floor.  Not sure if I have shared this fact, but the sleeping bags the kids received for Christmas work much better than the comforter that we originally turned into a make shift bed for them next to Shirley’s side of the bed.

Eventually the tables will be turned when my kids reach middle school and we find them doing what every teenage boy does at that age.  (wish I would have known this fact when I was a teenager, the needless guilt I went through multiple times a day).  However, until that happens the children I somewhat willingly brought into my life will continue to interrupt business time.  The Monday after the business time incident, Shirley attended an event at the kid’s school that was aimed at prepping parents for what’s lurking on the internet that our kids shouldn’t see.   Back in the day when kids wanted porn they had to get it the old fashioned way, they had to stumble upon it.  One of my first exposures to porn was discovering five Penthouse magazines in one of the outbuildings on my parents property.  Jackpot, right?  Looking back, it probably was a little more than a fourth grader should have been seeing at the time.  Sneaking the JC Penney or Sears catalogue  to look at the underwear section (women’s I don’t even think they had a men’s underwear section) was completely harmless, but seeing what a vajayjay actually looked like was horrifying.  On top of that, we are talking about Penthouse magazines that were from the eighties, the hair around the naughty parts resembled the hairstyles of that day, you would have needed a weedwacker to trim up some of those bushes.  Eventually guilt and a fear of being caught with our magazines led my friends and I to secretly dispose of them when my dad was burning brush and other things that were combustible.  However, as I grew older there were plenty of occasions to stumble upon naked women either in still photography or in VHS format.

The amount of pornography kids were exposed to back in the good ole days seems appropriate when looking back.  Also, unless you had some really sick and twisted relatives, it wasn’t the type of detestable material you can stumble upon with a simple Google search.  It’s my understanding through what people tell me, and not via personal experience, that anything can be had on the internet and that the majority of the inappropriate content is free and little can be done to assure that an age appropriate person is viewing the material.  So, what is a parent to do?  We already have allowed our kids on to our phones to pacify them at restaurants or in the car.  Those very same phones have access to pretty much anything you can imagine, it’s a smorgasbord of raunchy material for anyone who knows how to perform the right search, and even for someone who doesn’t.  When I was growing up there wasn’t an internet or cell phones.  The only way you were able to access dirty material was if it was tangible.  What if parents banded together and kept phones and internet away from their kids until they reached a certain age?  Somewhat unrealistic I realize, my kids already claim to be bored when they ride in the car for more than 30 seconds without an electronic device to keep their attention.  What I wouldn’t give for my kids to have to go through the torturous road trips to Colorado, Florida, and Maine that I endured as a kid with nothing to do but play the sign game where you had to complete the entire alphabet using the first letter on road signs, or look out the window hoping for the apocalypse.  Can you imagine the current generation of children and teenagers being forced into finding pay phones to make phone calls?  Granted, I realize there are about three functioning pay phones other than those in jails, in the entire Untied States but if there were a sudden demand for pay phones businesses would accommodate that demand.

Is it possible to child proof devices so that our children are unable to be exposed to raunchy material no matter how hard they try?  Some thing tells me kids will find a way around such safeguards and what if you as a parent are similar to the car salesman my brother in law ran across a few years back.  The salesman claimed that the sunroof in the model they were taking for a test drive was child proof and wouldn’t close on his hands.  A demonstration was in order, and the sun roof closed on his hands causing him to scream “Open it up! Open it up!” or something similar to that, I wasn’t there.  First of all, why would anyone even think to create a sun roof that won’t close on someone’s appendages or head?  Is this an epidemic I was unaware of?  Who sticks their head or hands out of a sun roof?

(This may be disturbing if you love cats, but fantastic if you feel as I do about cats)

This is the only video I could find of a living creature having a run in with a sun roof other than some kid in china whose dad shut the sun roof on his head, but that video wasn’t nearly as entertaining as this one.  Seriously, was the car salesman thinking to himself “you know what will really close this deal, if I mention the safety feature no one will ever care about, the child proof sun roof.”  My brother in law would respond accordingly “you know I was leaning towards the Infiniti but unlike the Lexus, they don’t have a model with a child proof sun roof, which is a definite must in my book, my wife likes to get real drunk and stick her head out the sunroof, I can’t even count how many times I have almost decapitated her.”

Imagine if as a parent you are similar to the car salesman, you think you have sufficiently child proofed your phone, but due to your inability to navigate technology, you have actually done nothing and your kids are free to wonder about the internet looking any assortment of disturbing images on line, the most troubling being this:

It would take years and years of therapy to get my kids through the trauma created by stumbling upon this video.  While I am pretty sure they wouldn’t ever google “Stinky gross vaginas of  fat unfunny comedians” you never know.  While I have mostly poo pooed the fuss over content on the internet and have thought to myself on numerous occasions “how damaging could the things they see on the internet actually be?” stumbling upon this video really opened my eyes to what a land mine of filth and moral decay the internet could be, not to mention the irreversible damage my children would likely suffer if given unfettered access to the world wide web.  Just one more thing to worry about as a parent, Damn you Al Gore!  If you hadn’t come along and invented the internet life would be a whole easier.

The other day I went over to my parents to watch the Michigan game, yes the Michigan game. (not the Michigan State Game) They were playing Michigan State and I was expecting them to take more of a beating than Roy Moore.  However, as luck would have it, the Wolverines prevailed and it was the rare occasion where Michigan fans could hold their heads high.  I guess Michigan is a basketball school after all.  Jim who?   Anyway, while I was watching the game with my dad a commercial for Opdivo came on, I believe it is Latin for worst drug ever.  What caught my attention was the following statement “Can cause your immune system to attack normal organs and tissues in your body which may become serious and lead to death.”  A list of the other side effects stated in the commercial are as follows:

• chest pains
• Severe Stomach Pain
• Swollen ankles
• Constipation
• Shortness of breath
• excessive thirst or urine
• Diarrhea

Sign me up for that, what’s the co-pay?  I’m totally in especially if it somehow causes me to have diarrhea and constipation at the same time.  The truly troubling thing is that at the end of the commercial it said “these are not all the possible side effects of Optiva.”  If they put all of those in, what did they leave out?  Can yo imagine putting this commercial together and deciding what to include in the copy for the advertisement?  Ok the organs being attacked by your immune system isn’t great but it is not nearly as bad as what we discovered in our clinical test, test subjects actually had their sphincters fall out when they were taking a dump, but we paid them a nominal amount of money and the waiver they all signed is air tight, air tight I tell you.  Hold on, you didn’t tell me about that, that actually happened?  Yeah, a lot.  Well, FDA rules only allow us to keep one major side effect out of the advertisements so I guess we are going to have to leave the possibility of death in our commercial.

Granted, facing death will cause people to endure almost anything, but I would imagine having your liver, heart, and lungs attacked by your immune system can’t be worth the extra six months of time you buy on this earth.  What’s somewhat unique about this advertisement is it actually tells you what it is meant to treat.  Many of the pharmaceutical commercials out there don’t even mention what the purpose of the drug is.  Obviously, there are some drugs that don’t even need to tell you what they are there to cure.  If only attractive people who are in their late forties to early fifties comprise the commercial it’s a boner drug.  You know what would solve most of the ED in America?  If guys got to shag the chicks in the boner commercials.  If you actually believed the commercials, ugly people don’t have sex.  However, that can’t be the case because 75% of the population is undatable.

I have watched a lot of tv in my time and seen a lot of commercials peddling prescription drugs.  Most of them leave the consumer completely clueless as to what the advertised drug is for and if they may actually need it.  Hey Doc, I saw this really cool commercial the other day for a prescription drug and everyone in the commercial looked really happy and healthy, can you get me some of that?  What’s the name of the drug?  Amberen, it looks like a real game changer Doc!  Last time I checked you weren’t a 50-70 year old women going through menopause, so I am going to have to deny your request.  There is an old saying that curiosity killed the cat, I can tell you what actually has killed a lot of cats, being a cat, but is this the creed that drug advertisers are going by when they create their commercial?  I have got a terrific idea, lets do an advertisement with a lot of people in a field full of daisies basking in sunshine as we describe our drug and list the side effects.  Shouldn’t we tell the consumer what the drug’s purpose is?  No, why would we do that?  We cast a lot bigger net if we attract every single person who is in need of a prescription drug, let them find out if they need it or not by doing their homework and contacting their doctor.

It may seem strange to some that I am devoting a blog to prescription drugs until you find out my back story.  Prior to attending law school I stumbled upon an Advertisement in the Grand Rapids Press looking for subjects for a drug study at Upjohn, I don’t remember if I signed anything precluding me from writing or speaking about the experience but here goes anyway.  I called the number listed (this was before Craig’s List and when people actually used the newspaper to attract attention, not just light campfires).  Ultimately I made the cut and ended up staying at Upjohn for a clinical trial that lasted 11 days.  During that 11 days we were not allowed to leave the building and had to eat the food they provided us. I smuggled in pop tarts and some other tasty treats knowing I was going to be eating hospital food which would likely be unpalatable.  We were housed in a four story building but we were relegated to one floor.  The building had a rooftop deck that we called the cage because it was fenced in entirely, it even had a wire fence roof.  They let us go up to the cage once a day and the only way we could get exercise was by walking the halls.  Each room had four people staying in it, and most of the participants were college students, although there were a small contingent of people who were rumored to do this for a living.  One of the guys I was bunking with claimed that one of these so called professional human gunna pigs was caught on a previous study washing his ass in the sink, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense since we had showers, until you met the guy, then it made complete sense.

I managed to make it through the entire 11 days with my sanity and cashed in for I want to say $1100, which in todays money would be at least $1150.  It doesn’t seem like a lot, but when you are stuck on the floor of a hospital for 11 days eating smuggled in pop tarts you don’t spend a lot of money.  Did I take my money and run?  Hell no, I signed up for another study that was 45 days and paid $3800.  However, the problem with this study was the fact that we were now approaching spring time and being confined to what surmounted to a hospital floor for an extended period of time was going to be torture.  There was a lot of outpatient stuff that had to be done, but there was also a four day stay and then to conclude the study we had to stay 11 days.  The drug we were testing was an HIV drug, this was when HIV still morphed into AIDS and killed people.  (I actually had someone ask me if I had AIDS when I told them about the study). I think there were almost 40 participants to start the study, but they started dropping like flies as the study progressed.  Looking back it’s a bit troubling that the people were being taken out of the study because their ticket to getting out of the study was irregular liver levels.  One of my buddies who was in the study with me got the heave ho midway through the final 11 days, lucky bastard, he still received all of his money.  Unfortunately for me, due to a lot of practical use of my liver, my readings never sky rocketed and I made it all the way to the end of the study.  On the plus side, they did give me a bonus check for having such a kick ass liver. Ultimately, I think there were only five or six of us who made were able to proudly cross the finish line.  Yeah Me!

One would think that that was the end of drug studies for me, little did I know that the entire economy would take a dump upon my graduation from law school due to the Dotcom bubble bursting and I would have to lease my body to science a couple more times to make ends meet as a I scrounged for one of those highly sought after lawyering jobs.  In the fall prior to receiving my bar results I was in a drug study testing a Parkinson’s drug.  It may have been that study or another study where they had to do hourly blood draws one of the nights, this required them to wake you up on the hour every hour to take your blood.  Guess what, they don’t get the best nurses for the night shift blood draws.  The particular nurse assigned to that night shift was north of 75 and her hands were about as steady as the value of bit coin.  Pretty much every nurse I had during these studies commented about how great my veins were and how easy they were to find (on my arm, this may be hard to believe but I never used this as an opportunity to make inappropriate comments about my penis).   For some reason Florence Nightwatch had a hell of a time finding my veins, I’m blaming it on her cataracts.  Not sure if it was Florence Nightwatch, the deplorable conditions, the threat of walking in on someone washing their ass, or all of the above that may have caused me to snap, but at some point I was removed from the study, it had nothing to do with the state of my health and everything to do with my attitude.  I think they actually paid me in full but moving forward I was blacklisted and would never take another experimental drug, at least one that needed FDA approval, ever again.  Being kicked out was bittersweet, I never like failing at anything, but in hind sight what I regret the most is that I didn’t have the where with all to eat a pop tart on my way out the door.

I have to get my kids but have some thoughts percolating after a big weekend that started with tragedy Friday morning.  Can lightning strike twice in the same spot?  Apparently it can at the Jansma Household.  Nature called Friday morning and in an attempt to make Shirley’s life as stress free as possible I headed to the kids bathroom to drop a deuce.  Shirley had warned me that their toilet had been acting up so I was ready to close the water valve at the first sign of any plug-age, sure enough, the water was heading the wrong way so I went down to shut the water source off behind the toilet but the water seemed to flow even faster.  Some one who plans ahead would have had the plunger at their side, but we all know I do very little planning ahead so I was forced to sprint to our bathroom and grab the industrial strength plunger to eradicate the clog.  By the time I got back it was the fecal version of  Niagara Falls in my bathroom and sticking the plunger in the toilet only exacerbated the problem.  The turd filled water was making a run for the hallway carpet so I threw a bunch of towels down as a blockade, had it made it to the carpet we would have been putting the house up for sale that day.   (I asked my brother in law who has a real estate background if that is something that would have had to go in the disclosure statement and he said no).  After what seemed like minutes but was probably ten to fifteen seconds, the clog went down and I was left to clean up the natural disaster that had sprung upon the bathroom floor.  Unlike the previous toilet clog, it was my shit I was cleaning up, but it was still shit none the less.

(This was the least disgusting picture I could find, and doesn’t accurately reflect what I went through, I had chicken wings the night before)

After cleaning up the mess I had to get my kids ready for school, I told them to go watch tv while I was mopping up toilet water and they were still in their pajamas when I went down stairs.  So, I had to fish clothes for them out of the laundry room (they were clean just not folded, and lying on the laundry room floor in the dryer and in front of the dryer a sign that it was clean, had it been in front of the washing machine there would only be a 50/50 chance it was clean) and then I had to make them lunches and get them out the door.  When I realized that the only ingredient suitable, if you want to call it that, for a sandwich we had in the house was pepperoni, I realized I was at a fork in the road.  I could continue living life as if I was still in college and financially and emotionally incapable of getting my shit together, or I could make some changes.  It is actually a blessing that schools hate peanuts and I was unable to go with the traditional PBnJ as a lunch option, (we always have peanut butter) because if I had been able to do that I don’t think I would have come to this revelation.  “Hey, Parker, do you want cheese on your pepperoni sandwich?”
“No, dad, just pepperoni.”

The problem with getting my shit together, is I can only get my shit together, I can’t make anyone else get their shit together.  An additional problem is where do you start getting your shit together when none of your shit is together?  I was going to take the kids to the Y after daycare but called an audible and made them dinner and then let them watch tv while I  attempted to begin to get my shit together.  I went through Aiden’s drawers and pulled out all the clothes he doesn’t wear and organized the remaining clothes, which were in piles in his drawer, into folded organized rows.  I then went downstairs and threw out all the left overs and other things we were never going to eat that are in the fridge, not sure why we even bother keeping left overs, they just sit in our fridge until I throw them a way, typically in a state that leaves you wondering what it actually was originally.  The same thing was done to Parker’s clothing as well and I took all of the pots and pans, storage containers, and other odds and ends out of the cupboard so that Shirley could dispose of them as she saw fit.  I had organized the pantry a week before, as well as thrown out all the chips and other snack food in the cupboard above the fridge that  we were never going to eat.  Pita chips are my primary enemy when it comes to doing this, for some reason Shirley feels a need to have four bags of opened pita chips in our house at all times just in case she gets a serious hankering for humus.

Everything is fairly organized at this point, other than my sock drawer which is a job I will tackle next week.  I have at least 12 to 16 socks that don’t have a partner in that drawer and I think it’s time to say goodbye to them.  Will things stay organized? No, not a chance, I am fighting an up hill battle against Shirley and my kids.  I knew this going in to my organizational efforts.  The reason I did it is for my sanity.   When it all goes to shit again, likely in 48 to 72 hours, I can say to myself “I tried” and then I can say “fuck it!”

On a more exciting note than trying to get your shit together, I went to the Y to run on the indoor track yesterday and there was a women who insisted on running in the fast lane even though she may have had polio as a child.  There is a sign telling people to stay to the right and let faster moving traffic use the left lanes.  Just because you are running in the fast lane doesn’t mean you are fast, just like the idiots who drive in the left lane of the highway at speeds not exceeding 65mph.  What did I want to do to this women? I wanted to throw a body block in to her that would have sent her sprawling into the wall, but all I could do is scowl the 18 times I ran by her, and she probably just thought I was trying real hard.  Not to be outdone by the lady with polio, there was an entire family carrying weights around the track, had Zombies been trying to eat them these poor bastards would have made it three feet tops.  Needless to say, it was clogging the track up even worse than the deuce I dropped on Friday clogged my toilet.  Way to go, a family that exercises together bugs the shit out of everyone!

Prior to getting ready to run I thought to myself, can I use the family locker room?  I have a family, they aren’t here, but does that allow me to utilize the family locker rooms?  MVP locker rooms are terrible, but the Y takes it to a whole new level.  The lockers are smaller, the floor is tile (MVP has carpet) and there’s no tv to watch naked on pleather furniture.  What are the parameters for a family locker room, and what are the parameters for a handicap stall in a public bathroom?  I always hit the handicap stall when it is available, you can really sprawl out in there and a lot of times the toilet is higher, giving you the feeling of pooping on a throne.  I don’t think I have ever had a handicap person waiting for me when I exit the stall after doing my business.  However, it would be quite awkward if that did happen.  Would they have a right to be mad?  Also, I have another question, is it littering if you throw an apple core or banana peel out the window of your car?  I feel like that doesn’t count because it occurs naturally and will just biodegrade or be eaten by a homeless person.

On my way out of the Y  I ended up in traffic behind a familiar car.  My sister in law drives a Subaru Outback wagon, not because she is a lesbian, but because they have a five star rating in every single safety category.  So, they are extremely safe, and good in the snow.  However, just to make this all wheel drive even safer (she also always drives 10 mph under the speed limit) it has snow tires on it with no hubcaps, it’s a great look, but I guess if you drive an outback wagon you don’t give a shit about looks.  My point isn’t to speak out about my sister in laws obsession with safety, because that is primarily the result of her husband (their the vegetarians) but to ask another question that came to mind.  My sister in law was driving which is normal if it was just her, or just her and her four year old daughter, but her husband was riding shotgun.  Now, I like to think of myself as fairly progressive, my wife is capable of a lot of things and can fix things and put things together way better than I can.  However, I drive when we are together 99% of the time.  The only time I don’t drive is if I am drunk or I want to text and I don’t want her yelling at me about it.  We went to a Pistons game Saturday night and I drove both ways, and it was just assumed that’s how it was going to be, plus it made it a lot easier to fake she had a headache on the way home.  (the kids were gone for an overnight I should have seen that one coming).   Am I old fashioned?  Or was it right of me to view my sister in law driving her husband around (which I think happens all the time) as an oddity akin to a Dutch person picking up the check at a dinner with friends?

 

When I went off to college I encountered an entirely different strain of Dutch.  The only Dutch I was accustom to was the West Michigan Dutch.  However, there are pockets of Dutch communities in other parts of the country such as South Chicago and Northwest Indiana, parts of California, Montana, and New Jersey.  My exposure to the Chicago land Dutch opened my eyes and made me cognizant of the fact that not all Dutch people are the same.  This was discovered when I was talking to my girlfriend who hailed from Lansing Illinois and I told her about how we only heated a couple rooms in our house.  She actually laughed at this practice and thought my family was crazy, she was right, but there were a number of other reasons we were crazy beyond our desire to only heat 400 square feet of our house.  The refusal to heat the entire house made existence a struggle during the winter months.  My siblings and I all had electric blankets.  For those of you who haven’t had to depend on electric blankets for survival they are similar to a heating pad, but they cover your entire bed.  In order to make the transition from frozen bedroom to bed one would have to plan ahead and turn the electric blanket on roughly ten minutes prior to bed, similar to heating up your car before you drive away.  Sometimes we would leave our electric blankets on all day either because we forgot to turn them off or we didn’t want to forget to not turn them on prior to bed.  Either way, if our parents discovered this we wouldn’t hear the end of it.

I’m not certain if my parents chose to heat our bathroom, but even if they did, the heating vent was the size of pocket comb and wouldn’t be able to warm up a dollhouse let alone an entire bathroom.  This was problematic for a couple of reasons.  One problem was that it was a bitch getting into the shower and the second issue was that you never wanted to get out of the shower.  My parents would also turn the heat down to about 32 degrees at night so that in the morning the entire house, not just our bedrooms, was an ice box.  I will always remember getting out of bed and sitting in front of the heat register trying to keep from suffering hypothermia.  Obviously, it went the exact other way in the summer,  we didn’t have air and had to rely on window fans to stay cool.  Guess what? blowing hot air from outdoors to the indoors isn’t an effective way to battle the oppressive summer heat.

Temperate comfort wasn’t the only thing I was deprived of as a kid, my parents refused to spend money on suitable transportation.  My dad had a chevy citation for a significant portion of my formative years.  It was a stick shift that was rusted out to the point that it had holes in the floor board and water would come into the car when you went over puddles.  Monza, Grenada, Caprice Classic station wagon, these were all vehicles owned by my parents.  When they rolled up in these clunkers my first inclination was to pretend like I didn’t know them.  Additionally as self esteem deflating was how frugal my mom was when it came to clothes.  First of all she had no fashion sense, that combined with significant budgetary constraints, resulted in a serious blow to my self confidence.  I distinctly recall when frosted jeans came out, man did I want a pair of those.  One of my best friends had multiple pairs and they attracted chicks like bears to honey, or so I thought.  The only problem was a pair would set you back at least $30, which is roughly $800 when you factor in inflation and how incredibly Dutch my parents were (100%).  In order to fashionably dress I was forced to get a paper route and then secure a job working on a celery farm when I reached the appropriate age.   As stated previously, I was the triple threat back in the day, zits, mullet, and braces.  The only way to overcome these multiple afflictions, or at the very least compensate, was to dress fashionably.

(My preference was for Levi’s but I probably would have taken a pair of Lees)

As a parent I feel I deal with this one question time and time again, what do I spare my children from that I had to suffer through as a kid and what do I force them to endure that I was forced to also endure growing up?  If it were up to me, my answer would be everything, well almost everything, but due to the over protective nature of their mother I am fairly limited as to what, if any, adversity is thrown their way.  This morning I was getting Parker ready, Aiden had already dressed ahead of Parker, possibly the first time this has ever happened, and Parker was being so particular I would have thought he was attending the academy awards.  He had a zip up under armor shirt and nike athletic pants but needed something under his zip up.  He thumbed his nose at six different shirts until I finally was able to coax him into wearing one that he claimed matched. He was insistent that the under shirt either be Nike or Under Armor.  On top of that he is now out of the gold toe sock phase and insists on socks that go all the way up.  When we were heading out the door he asked if I could buy him a bunch of Nike shirts before school starts, meanwhile Aiden was playing away on his tablet completely oblivious to the fact that nothing he had on matched or looked good together.

On the way to school they wanted to hear a Chucky Chuckerson story so I told them about the time Chucky’s mom signed him up for youth basketball.  Chucky’s mom didn’t have any fashion sense and only bought MTA Pro (Meijer Thrifty Acre Pro, I think they still manufacture this shit today) athletic apparel for Chucky.  When Chucky showed up for practice he was ridiculed for his attire and went home and complained to his mom.  Did he get a paper route so he could buy his own clothes? No! did his mom cave and give him an ensemble of Air Jordan from head to toe? No!  She forced him to suck it up and things continued to spiral.  Eventually, Chuckie’s mom caved and bought him head to toe Air Jordan apparel and suddenly Chucky went from the worst player on the team to decent.  Parker asked me mid way through the story if Chucky was good looking (Parker isn’t even five yet). His desire to be fashionable and fascination with important things such as looks and appearance couldn’t make me more proud.  Ultimately Chucky ended up hitting the game winning basket in the final game of the season, which just so happened to be his first basket of the season.  I followed up the story with the question “does that make you want to play basketball?”  They both responded “No!”.

So, what am I to do?  Do I give all of their name brand apparel to Goodwill and replace it with Champion and MTA Pro gear?  (I would have actually been satisfied with Champion when I was growing up, but I sense it is now on par with the gear Fed Meijer churns out). I really can’t do that to my kids, the scarring inflicted upon me today is still fairly evident.  I play a lot of pick up basketball and everything has to match and most of it needs to be Nike, specifically Air Jordan.   Curtailing the toys would probably be my best way to inflict a childhood upon them that was similar to mine but for Shirley.  Four days after Christmas she decided she wanted to get the kids legos, funny she didn’t just purchase them as Christmas gifts.  When she arrived at the store she determined they were too expensive, however the kids had been promised legos so she felt obligated to purchase them a substitute toy.  I mentioned to her when I got home and discovered the purchase that we just had Christmas, she received my statement as if I had been speaking in Latin.

The harsh reality is that my only true option to inflict emotional distress and emulate my upbringing would be to buy a $500 car and use it as the only thing I transport them with when they are with friends when they reach the age where something like this matters to them.  I could show up on a lawn tractor to pick them up now, and as long as I let them play on my phone it wouldn’t phase them.    Granted, driving a $500 car will be a bit of a struggle at first, but it will make me appreciate my car all the much more.

(this is an exact replica of the citation my parents had but it is missing all the rust, however the color did mask the rust fairly well)

Dear Friends and Family,

It’s been a crazy 2017 and as we close it out the Jansmas would like to extend holiday wishes to everyone.  I know traditionally people send a Christmas card via USPS first class mail, we even did a Christmas card a couple years ago, which was the last time both of our kids were able to successfully pose for a photo at the same time.  In my mind the family Christmas card is the holiday version of Facebook with the only difference being I feel compelled to look at the Christmas cards that are mailed to me, possibly due to the effort put into taking the photo, printing the card, and mailing it to of all people, me.  So many questions regarding the protocol for a family Christmas card.  First of all, how do you decide if you go entire family, just kids, or just kids and the family pets?

In all honesty, there are people sending me Christmas cards who I haven’t seen in years sending me cards that only have their kids on them.  The troubling thing is I have never met their kids and could care less what they look like, I want to know how their parents have turned out twenty years after graduating from college. Do they still have hair?  Is their wife still hot?  Are they in better shape than me?  Also, when do you stop producing the family Christmas card?  If you send out a Christmas card aren’t you kind of locking yourself in to making it an annual occurrence?  (unless your the Jansmas, who decided there was no way to outdo the masterpiece of the 2014 Holiday season and decided to call it a mic drop, never to send out another Holiday card again).  What’s problematic is that if you traditionally send out a holiday card and suddenly decide not to do it it’s going to leave a lot of people scratching their heads as to why they were left off the mailing list, when in all reality everyone was left off the mailing list.

What may have led to our families decision to be a one and done when it comes to Holiday cards is the fact that our kids are only a few years away from being truly awkward.  You want to make a kid going through puberty pose for a holiday card? Also, do you want to stake claim to ownership of said kid by sending a card with your name on  it depicting everything that could go wrong genetically with your blood line?  Acne, braces, a nose twice the size of the rest of the face it is attached to.  Mother Nature is a cruel bitch and there is no sense of commemorating that fact with a Christmas card that can be pulled out of the archives at a moment’s notice.  I actually took my kids to JC Penney (It’s the only place that has an actual photo studio from what I could tell from my internet research) to get some photos as a Christmas present for Shirley.  The person taking the photos could have just as easily been operating the cash register at Speedway and was asking me of all people  for ideas as far as poses.  Once we were done with the shoot they uploaded the photos and there wasn’t a keeper in the bunch.  I narrowed down my choices for prints not by picking out the best but by eliminating the worst, there were no bests.  My kids are moderately cute and I had chosen nice outfits for them to wear, but there is something that happens to a kid when you throw them in front of a camera and tell them to pose, it’s the same thing that happens to me only I have a shiny head with no hair on it that makes my photos even more frightening and awkward.

Getting back to the year that was in 2017, a year where something that has almost no actual value is the rage of the financial world, somehow bit coin has taken the world by storm even though there is nothing backing it and to my knowledge only one bank that will accept it in return for a legitimate currency.  I suppose this shouldn’t surprise me though, Amy Schumer has no actual talent and still seems to be making movies and touring the country talking about her stinky vagina.  The Jansmas had a pretty remarkable 2017 with Parker learning the nuances of what it takes to create a Dutch Oven.  “Dad, I just gave my self a Dutch oven!”

“Parker, it’s not unnatural to enjoy the smell of your own farts, but you need to give that gift to other people particularly your brother, don’t be so selfish, what you need to do is let one go under the covers when he’s in bed with you (they sleep in the same bed until they move to the floor next to Shirley between midnight and 3am, then they sleep on the same floor together) and then pull the covers over his head but not yours.   Someday you will have the pleasure of leaving one behind in your own car and upon your return hours later the smell will still be there to greet you, that is the ultimate farting accomplishment.”

While Parker was a quick learn on the Dutch Oven front, he outdid himself one morning when he was completely naked on our bed for some unknown reason.  He decided to rub his ass all over my pillow and said to me “I’m rubbing my butt on your pillow dad!”  I would like to think he will excel at sports some day and become a successful athlete, but if he doesn’t this may end up being my proudest moment as his father.

My hopes for Aiden are a bit tempered, at least on the athletic front, I asked him earlier this year if he wanted to play basketball and he said no dad, I want to take piano lessons. In theory that’s a perfectly fine response, but I have a vague notion of what it takes to be good at playing an instrument, practice, and my fear was that it would be a constant struggle to get Aiden to work towards becoming his generation’s Mozart was well founded.  He has practiced piano a grand total of 17 minutes since he started taking lesson in October. On a positive front, Shirley purchased a Nintendo Switch this fall and Aiden has really taken to that, I’m pretty sure that spending hours honing your video game abilities is a template for success in adult hood.

Shirley has had a productive 2017 as well, this summer she spent an entire Saturday trying to negotiate the purchase of a travel trailer, which she decided she was going to buy that day, only to have the deal fall completely apart after the salesperson tried to throw on a $200 transactional fee.  As far as compulsive purchases go, that one would have been even more catastrophic than the Wave Runner whose purchase was pondered and finalized all in one Saturday morning.  Shirley has driven it five times in the two years we have owned it, and I winterized it this fall the afternoon before temperatures were to hit the low 20’s putting the functionality of the PWC in serious jeopardy, not that Shirley would have noticed, I could have just put it in the shore station at Green Lake for the summer and pretended like it was fine without her realizing the engine block was cracked. The holidays are when Shirley truly shines though, just this week she called me frantic because she arrived at the kid’s school with only enough gifts for Parker and Aiden’s teachers and their assistants as well as all ten of the girls who help out with Colt Care (the after school child care for kids whose parents prefer to spend as little time with them as possible) and nothing for all of the women who work in the office.  She wanted me to run out and get them something, a notion I scoffed at immediately.

In closing I am still waiting for this trend of Christmas cards to go electronic, it would be much easier and more simple to send an E Christmas card if the Jansmas decided to jump back into the Christmas card game, than having to go through the trouble of mailing them out the conventional way.  Additionally, the tangible version of the holiday card has a tendency to hang around way longer than necessary, if it came electronically the deletion of the card would be much easier.

Merry Christmas,

The Jansmas

This holiday season we have a special visitor at the Jansma house.  His name is Bo and he may be one of the most annoying creatures on the planet.  Last week we had Shirley’s Christmas party at our house and her Aunt had mentioned that they were going to have to put Bo in a kennel.  They even went so far as to tell us how they had driven by the kennel and it looked like a concentration camp for dogs.   I am pretty sure on their way from Fremont to our house there was a conversation that involved them saying lets pretend like we don’t want them to have Bo stay at their house for TEN days because we need to act like that would be asking too much but knowing them, well Shirley, they will continue to insist and let’s pretend like they wore us down and eventually give in to their demand.  If they didn’t want this scenario to play out they wouldn’t have gone into how they were keeping Bo at doggie Auschwitz.  Do I like dogs?  Of course I do, but dogs are like kids, you only like them if they are yours.  And Bo isn’t mine.  Furthermore, Bo is being raised by two empty nesters and gets way more attention than even a human should receive.  Apparently he is allowed on furniture at his house because he has already made our couch is own day bed.  Furthermore, he was dropped off yesterday at 4 and when I got home he had gotten into a box of instant oatmeal packs and discarded their contents all over our floor.  To even further endear himself to me he took a dump in the kids bedroom.  The dog has struck out more times than I do in a typical week with my wife.  One my think, he just needs to get acclimated to his new environment and everything will be fine, that’s what Shirley thinks, but there is one more troubling thing Bo does that usurps everything I just listed, he wakes up at 6:30, 5:30 this morning and runs around like a raging lunatic until you feed him.   Why do I know he is never going to acclimate appropriately, because Bo still has his testicles, and there is no way he will ever behave when you combine that fact with the non existent discipline that he has faced his entire life.

Everything the dog does is cute, I am sure if Cara’s aunt had been here when he took a dump in the kids room she would have laughed it off and said “that’s just Bo being Bo”.(I know a thing or two about shitty parenting by the way, I have a PHD in it)  I will admit, I had a weak moment when I agreed to this, and her aunt and uncle have done a lot for us, including helping us move while Cara was 10 months pregnant and I was playing basketball instead of getting the moving truck, how was I suppose to know it had to be picked up by noon?   I’d like to think I would never make that mistake again, but I have multiple times just in different shapes and forms.  My response to the request to house Bo should have been “he’s a dog, he will be fine at a kennel”. Unfortunately, I anthropomorphize animals, and thought he actually had feelings not just testicles.  On top of that I didn’t want her aunt and uncle to be troubled by the fact that their fourth child was in a kennel, but who am I kidding? Once they got to Florida and saw their two grandkids they would have completely forgotten about Bo.

Will I survive the ten days with Bo, probably, will our house ever smell the same?  Probably not, it already smells like wet dog.   However, that isn’t the only impediment I have faced to holiday bliss.  This past week was the last week the kids had school and Parker is in two distinct classes so he had Christmas parties on back to back days.  For some reason the school, particularly the teachers, think parents should attend functions during the school day with their kids.  Fortunately, winter is a bit of an off season for me and I don’t have golf and water skiing consuming my time, the only thing I am juggling is work and pick up basketball.  (I have a place to play hoops twice a day every day of the week, sometimes three times, as well as a weekend landing spot each day, I am 43 years old but walk like Yoda, especially traversing stairs). Aiden also had a party this week which I will get into after discussing the back to back parties.  The Monday party was also attended by my father in law, a fact that allowed me to pop in and make an appearance but not have to endure the entire party.  I was there for approximately seven minutes which was about five minutes longer than I had hoped for.  Ultimately, Parker asked me to go to his party the following day, and it was on the way back to my office after my lunch basketball run so I figured why not.  The problematic thing about these parties for me is that once I get there I am continually looking for an excuse to leave.  Both parties involved craft stations where the kids make a Christmas ornament that you would never hang on your tree or some other conglomeration  of paper, glue, and glitter that will ultimately end up in the recycling bin.  I spend plenty of time with my kids on the weekends, ok, spend is probably over stating it, I occupy the same space as my kids a whole lot on the weekends and feel it unnecessary to see them during the school day.

Aiden’s party was on Thursday and he had no one other than me to attend the party on his behalf. Obviously he would have preferred Shirley or anyone else on her side of the family, but I was all he had and he seemed like he genuinely wanted me to attend.  I asked Shirley what time the party was and she said from 1 to 3.  Perfect I can hit it on my way back from hoops around 1:30.  I rolled into the school and everyone was looking at me at bit funny.  Once I got to his class room I realized something was amiss, there were no parents, only kids and a teacher.  Aiden was up in the loft with another kid and his teacher didn’t seem at all surprised to see me even thought the party was at 10am.  Obviously I had missed the party but his teacher told me I could read with Aiden.  Why would I want to do that, I was mentally prepared for a Christmas party, not for reading to my kid.  Besides, the firm Christmas party was at Clique lanes and I was hoping to get a few practice rolls in before we started bowling for real.  I went and talked to Aiden, and some kid with an even bigger head than his was in the loft with him.  I asked Aiden if there were a lot of parents at the party and bigger head said “all of them were here”. I wanted to call him out on it because my buddy has a kid in Aiden’s class and I know he wasn’t there.  However, I just smiled and laughed.  Besides cross examination 101 tells you to never ask a question when you aren’t certain what the answer will be.

No holiday season wold be complete without me upsetting my wife.  Last Friday the kids went for an overnight with the grandparents they like (not my parents) so I was planning on a date night.  However, Shirley and I rarely talk during the week, the less time you spend with a spouse or talking to a spouse the higher likelihood your marriage will survive (I think there is an algorithm that proves this) so I sprung my idea on her at 3pm on Friday.  I actually asked her if she wanted to meet up with couple friends of ours for a drink or two and then go hit dinner.  “hell no!  I’m already at home and I’m wrapping presents all night!”  So, I ended up meeting up with the couple flying solo, which was probably better, when Shirley isn’t around it’s like taking the governor off a go-kart, I can say pretty much whatever I want, making me much more funny as well as offensive.  After a few drinks with the couple friends I called Shirley and we decided I would pick up some take out on the way home.  When I arrived she was hard at work wrapping presents and I headed to our TV room to watch the Pistons.  As she continued to wrap I could hear her shouting instructions at me as to what she wanted me to do with all the boxes filled with wrapped gifts but I didn’t budge and ultimately fell asleep in my recliner.  When I awoke I was planning on going to bed and getting some sexy time but my failure to assist Shirley resulted in the Heisman.  With sex off the table I decided I may as well lay it out on the table.  I went off on how Shirley spent an entire weekend making candy covered oreos for her co-workers, how our kids have way too much shit already, and how ridiculous it is that we have to buy gifts for every single one of her cousins kids even though most of them live thousands of miles away.  All my points were valid by the way, but the proper approach if I had hoped to take full advantage of a kidless night would have been to say “honey, I really appreciate all that you do, Christmas is such a wonderful time of the year.  I can’t wait to face time with your cousins and their kids and watch them open their gifts, face time is great by itself but when you throw unnecessary gifts into the equation that brings it up to an entirely new level.  I love you, oh and I will do all the things you want me to do in the morning because I routinely wake up way too early so no need to be upset about the perceived lack of effort on my part.”  (I did get up early that Saturday and cleaned the kitchen, took care of the gift boxes, and went to Meijer to get everything we needed for HER families Christmas party at our house later that day).   December 26 can’t get here fast enough.