family

Feeling Lucky

A couple weeks ago we were tasked with dog sitting Shirley’s sister’s dog Lucky. Shirley’s sister and husband are vegetarians. We made BLT’s for dinner one night and gave Lucky some bacon, it was the closest thing to watching someone smoke crack for the first time you could experience without watching someone smoke crack for the first time. (their daughter accidentally had a corn dog at school once and she can’t stop talking about corn dogs) We probably ruined Lucky by giving him a taste of the forbidden. Unlike other people’s kids, I actually like most dogs, but Lucky is incredibly annoying, he’s some kind of doodle and I’m not sure who decided to combine every possible dog breed with poodles but it was a terrible idea. On top of barking at all hours of the night for no reason and waking me up, Lucky also has a perpetual red rocket, his scheeth isn’t long enough to contain his penis, it’s pretty gross, and likely a product of breeding another breed with a poodle. Along the lines of my wife’s side of the family, my mother in law is really good at sabotaging weekends or vacations with really dumb ideas. Earlier this summer she decided to rent her child hood home that is now a VRBO. It’s in Fremont which is enough to indicate it was a terrible idea, but on top of that, it’s also on a glorified swamp and there is very little to do there. Of course, everyone claims it was a great time, but I know better.

Labor Day weekend is usually the last real weekend to enjoy Green Lake but Shirley’s mom decided to book hotel rooms in Whitehall. Instead of making a real big deal about going up there (I wasn’t even consulted about it) I put up a minor fuss and ended up taking our boat up there to bring out to Lake Michigan. It ended up being an ok day but the Thursday night before Labor Day weekend my mother in law texted wondering what we were doing Friday night. ESPN has prognostications as games go on as to the percentage likelihood that a particular team will win the game as it is being played. I wish there was an app that did the same thing for sex. In the morning when I wake up the percentage around 3% and stays there until Shirley gets home from work and then likely dips to around 1%. Taking away my hope by having it go to 0 would actually be a good thing because hope is a dangerous thing. That being said, when I lost my shit about Shirley’s mom not only hijacking Sunday and Monday of Labor Day weekend, but also Friday night, the app would have dipped below zero. I keep trying to tell my wife that spending that much time with your family isn’t normal, but because she spends so much time with her family she doesn’t really have an unbiased third party to give her some perspective.

As far as sex goes, on Sunday morning I came back from Starbucks somewhat ready for business time but began talking to Shirley about how depressing it is that summer just flew by once again. I went into discussing when we should take the boat, boat lift, and walk out docks out of the water. All of the talk caused a mild case of ED, which had never happened to me before. It was quite emasculating but not as nearly as emasculating as someone who lets their wife drive. I see men in the passenger seat with their wife at the wheel and can’t help but think “that guy is a giant pussy” (My vegetarian brother in law lets his wife drive all the time). I don’t consider myself a misogynist unless the topic of discussion is the WNBA, but the old fashioned part of me believes that men should be driving their families around unless they are either drunk or dead.

Speaking of driving, Aiden is now in the process of obtaining his learner’s permit. He only has one more class to take and has done all of his driving. I’m confident that after about ten hours behind the wheel he will be a more competent driver than Shirley. I have noticed that there are now bumper stickers that can be placed on a vehicle warning other driver’s that you have a student driver at the wheel. I am tempted to get one of these after Aiden is done acquiring his driving hours so I can drive like an idiot and not have people get mad at me. It’s similar to when you see someone with a handicap license plate and they drive as if they have no business being on the road, you see the handicap emblem on their license plate and instead of anger you question the decision of the Secretary of State to allow handicap people to operate a motor vehicle, their fucking handicap, shouldn’t that preclude them from driving a car? (I do realize there are a portion of fat fucks who aren’t really handicap but get handicap plates to they park their fat asses closer to the entrance of McDonalds, and they shouldn’t be driving either, these are the same people who use a mart cart to grocery shopping)

Get to the Point

In late April or early May my kids began to hound me about going to Cedar Point. I have fond memories of Cedar Point and after having gone there again, have no idea why. After over a month of harassment I finally caved and committed to a date to go and it morphed into an overnight trip where they each took a friend. This worked out because Shirley and I were able to justify our own room, now that my kids are older it’s super weird sleeping in the same room with everyone, which led to some sexy time before our second day in the park. Our plan was to leave around 1 on Tuesday and spend an evening in the park as well as the following day. Prior to leaving I stopped by the river to ski. I stated we would be leaving around 1 because I knew I would want to ski before we left. Aiden texted me around 11:30 informing me he was ready to go. I did not respond. Shirley texted me while I was skiing and I texted her when I was done that I would be home in 5 minutes. Initially, my gut told me to put my suit back on so that they would think I had been working. I didn’t and as I drove down the road right by our house I decided to pull over and put it on because I had to do a Zoom court hearing from the car on the way to Cedar Point. When I arrived home Shirley asked why I put my suit back on since I had just been at the river. I forgot that she can track where I am through the find my friends app, fortunately she rarely does this because she is typically too busy to keep tabs on me, and for the most part she doesn’t really care what I am up to.

The ride to cedar point was fairly uneventful and I was grateful that the Zoom sentencing I had kept me from noticing how Shirley was driving. I typically don’t ride with her so it is terrifying when I do. After my zoom was done I took over and we made it unscathed. That evening Shirley and I rode the gatekeeper, Ragnorok (sp?), and Millennium Force. I felt like I was going to have a stroke on all of them. Shirley and I ate in the park and also had a couple beers, each round for the two of us was roughly $40, seems like they would make a larger profit by lowering the price and having people buy more, with the added benefit of having more drunk people riding roller coasters, what could go wrong? However, the kids were too enveloped in riding as many coasters as possible so they did not eat. On the way out I was reminded that one of the kids (obviously not mine) was Vegan and that we needed to go to Burger King for an impossible burger. I should have made the kid eat some gravel in the parking lot so that we didn’t have to make multiple stops. My kids were insisting on Raising Canes because they think it’s amazing even though it’s just as over rated in my book, as Chick-Fil-A. We managed to talk all the kids into Burger King and then headed back to the hotel. Vegans are like no one else in America, everyone I know devotes most of their consciousness to thinking about food. But when the food you eat sucks, you don’t look forward to it, and you don’t think about it all that often. Probably similar with most women as to why they don’t seem to really be all that in to sex. My wife’s family typically will discuss lunch plans about 3 minutes after breakfast is concluded and after lunch they are typically on to dinner ideas before I can even start my afternoon nap.

Day 2 we were going to go out for pancakes but pancakes apparently aren’t vegan friendly either. Shirley wanted to create this magical memory of going out for pancakes before we went into the park and she also thought that this was going to be some magical family trip. I told her if she had planned on hanging out with the kids for more than five minutes on this trip she shouldn’t have allowed them to invite friends. We opted for McDonalds and the Vegan kid had a hash brown and may have licked some dust off the floor for additional sustenance. All of the kids were given fast passes and they were off. Shirley and I headed to the back of the park to ride steel vengeance only to discover it was temporarily out of commission. We decided to just wait for it to start back up and after an hour and a half our decision paid off. We jumped back in line to ride it again and after that we noticed that the skies looked ominous. The kids were not answering their phones, turns out their phones were in lockers as they waited to ride top thrill dragster 2. Shirley ended up going into the top thrill line to retrieve them just before the flood gates opened so we left the park to get lunch. Jersey Mikes was thought to be a suitable vegan option since they have a sub that is called a vegan sub but it was a no go. So, realizing there was a chipotle across the street after Shirley and I had put our orders in, Shirley did a mobile order for the vegan kid. Our kids ended up getting Raising Kanes right before we headed back to the park. The kids lucked out and rode Top Thrill 2 twice along with a few other rides. Shirley was on the fence about TT2 but I talked her into it and we went to get in line only to discover that the ride, and all other rides, were closed due to weather. Apparently, if there is a lightning strike within five miles they shut everything down and keep it closed for a half hour and if there is another strike the clock starts all over.

As we were leaving the park there was a set up similar to the 3 point contest in the all star game. It was $12 to try and get in the record books (high score according to the guy was 18 out of a possible 20). I envisioned myself getting at least 19 but didn’t account for the jankity rim, shitty balls, and pressure of the 6 spectators watching me (my wife, two kids, their friends, and the guy running the game). I hit a couple corner 3’s to start only to score 5 points. A crew of guys rolled up after I got done with my first round and they easily could have had some type of affiliation with OPEC, one of them, wearing an Aaron Donald jersey, managed to hit the back board on corner 3’s not once, but twice, I wanted to say to the guy, it’s not as easy as I make it look, but I kept my mouth shut and was going to let my next round speak for itself, but my next round was equally as abysmal as my first, and I notched another 5 points. I was tempted to go for round 3, but the Hollander in me didn’t want to blow another $12 so instead, I used that and more to hit the Dairy Queen outside of the park on our way back to Michigan.

We’re in the Club

When I was growing up I was an avid NBA fan. I remembering watching the All Star game and also recording a tribute that CBS did to the 1986 finals between the Celtics and Lakers even though I hated both of those teams, that’s how much I enjoyed the NBA. My parents realized this and we ended up going to a game when the Pistons played the Atlanta Hawks. I thought it was super cool even though we sat at the very top of the Palace in Auburn Hills. I can’t imagine those tickets were much more than $20 a piece, stretching my parent’s monthly entertainment budget to its max. No money was spent on frivolous things at the game such as food or a beverage, and I wasn’t getting any merchandise in the fan shop. Saturday night was an opportunity to allow my kids to get the full NBA experience, we had gone last year to watch the Pistons play the Warriors, but it was a last minute deal. This trip had been discussed at least two days prior to it actually happening. When it was determined that the trip was a go, sometime on Friday, my kids told Shirley they didn’t want her to come along. Did I want her to come along? I was indifferent, I knew that her presence would result in quite a few questions, mostly related to her complete lack of knowledge about basketball, but after fifteen plus years of marriage, I’m accustom to dumb questions from her about sports.

Shirley tried to act like this didn’t bother her, and it is possible it didn’t, my kids managed to land my asshole gene, and it is exacerbated by the fact that one of them is a teenager and the other one is close to being one. She somewhat understood that it really wasn’t about her, and even if she was a cool mom (that doesn’t really exist, there is such a thing as a cool wife, that’s the type fo wife that likes to bang at least twice a month, but that doesn’t have any thing to do with being a cool mom), the kids probably would still prefer that she sit this trip out. There is a dynamic between sons and moms that does not exist between sons and dads. Earlier this winter Parker had done something on Snap chat that garnered the attention of the principle of his school when other parents saw it. He posted a photo of a girl with Down Syndrome and it appeared that he was jerking off to the photo. He wasn’t, that wasn’t what he was going for, but just the fact that he was posting the photo was enough to cause a stir. We determined his punishment was to have his phone taken away for a week. Well, not his phone, but his access to social media and the internet, he could still have his phone to listen to music on the bus, after all he didn’t kill someone, didn’t need to throw him in the kid’s equivalent of the Gulag by taking his phone physically away from him. The reason I am not involved in taking away access to social media and the internet is because I don’t know how to set their time limits or even how most of social media even works. Turns out Parker had a 180 day snap streak going, he was the Lou Gehrig of Snap and wanted to keep his streak alive but it was now in jeopardy due to the draconian nature of his punishment. Shirley ended up relenting and allowed him to continue to post on snap ensuring that he will be a first ballot hall of fame entrant when he is eligible to enter the Social Media Holy of Holies.

So, there you have it, that is insight into why my kids walk all over my wife. I don’t give a shit about much, but they aren’t pulling that kind of stuff on me because they know I will go scorched earth on them if they try. Which leads me to this, and my kids tire of this, but it has to be brought up now more than ever. When I was a kid if I treated my mom like they treat Shirley, my mom would have slapped me, she did slap me for much less, and my did would have beaten the shit out of me, which he did do for much less. On top of all that, well you know my childhood pistons experience, well we didn’t sit at the top row of LCA Saturday night. We were at half court 21 rows up and had access to the club that allowed for all you can eat food and drink. Looking back, I should have bought a club seat for myself and put them at the top of the arena. I purchased the actual tickets off of a ticket app the morning of the game and was quite satisfied with the price considering the prime location and the all you can eat food option. The Pistons game attracts all shapes and sizes, but mainly the overweight/obese size, if you are in to BBW’s, especially the black kind, LCA is the place to be. Regardless, there are quite a few people who attend the games who are energetic Pistons fans and LCA is a place to be seen and to see the people who are looking to be seen. The attire black men and women can pull off is truly remarkable. However, there was one troubling fashion trend taking place at LCA, and probably across every other NBA venue, white men wearing basketball jersey’s, one white guy had was wearing his Cade jersey bareback, the only ting that could have made him more awkwardly white is if he had tried to dance.

The game itself featured SGA at his best, he is the top candidate for MVP and was pretty much unstoppable. On top of it the refs routinely allowed him to take an extra step after stopping and to push off on just about every shot he took. Even more infuriating was the fact that the Thunder were roughing up the Pistons on the perimeter the entire game while the Pistons were called for a number of ticky tack fouls. By the third quarter, after the dipshit refs called for a replay to determine if there was a hostile act by Beef Stew (who in their defense is just a second away from fighting even his own mom if it would help the Pistons win), when what actually happened was that the thunder player tripped over his own guy and landed awkwardly. After the replay revealed there was no hostile act, the refs went to give the Thunder player who was fouled originally on a loose ball foul, two shots. It was loose ball foul, it should have been side out so Cade told the refs they didn’t know what the fuck they were doing, which they didn’t, and was T’d up not once, but twice. I’m confident the ref who did this was just trying to overshadow the crews token lesbian ref and take some heat off of her for the terrible calls she had made and was about to make. For some reason the NBA thinks that women should ref men’s basketball, isn’t that what the WNBA is for? well, that and feeding the insatiable thirst for terrible basketball that is almost unwatchable. Funny thing, the WNBA lost 40 million dollars last year and it is coming back for another season. How have we been so into women’s empowerment that no one is willing to state how ridiculous this is? I think women are doing pretty good and don’t need a sports league that loses money to keep trending forward.

Back to my kids and how good they have it. Me telling them how good they have it and how shitty my childhood was isn’t really getting the message across, causing them to be thankful for what they have. My kids go to camp every summer, it’s an awesome experience that they love. Instead of sending them away to an enjoyable camp, wouldn’t it be great if you could send your kids to spend a week living your childhood? I’d pay four times what the price of what fun camp costs, and how awesome would it be if they thought they were going to fun camp but instead wound up at shitty camp that emulated your childhood?

  • For those of you worried about Shirley, she had an amazing night at home by herself and was up when we rolled in at 12:30, doing a puzzle or crafting, I wasn’t sure which one because I was too exhausted to tell, but whichever it was it had her so preoccupied she hadn’t put clean sheets on the bed in response to me stripping it and throwing the sheets in the wash earlier that day. Maybe my kids do have some valid reasons for the way they treat their mother.

Time Share

The Jansma’s, after spending the past two spring breaks driving (I did the lion’s share of the driving) down to Destin Florida to get away, decided to change it up and stay at the Iberostar in Riviera Maya. I was in charge of booking flights and initially looked to grab something on Spirit knowing they had direct flights from Detroit to Cancun. Due to the fact that Spirit charges you for everything, even a la carte for the oxygen in the cabin, I scrapped that idea and booked on American Airlines since I have a credit card and am accumulating airline miles. I put almost all of my monthly expenses on my card and am routinely shocked when I go to pay my statement and find out what I have spent. With that in mind, I figured I had enough miles to get us to Australia but in reality would have had a tough time flying from Detroit to Cleveland with the miles I had accrued. (Made me feel quite foolish thinking I’d be able to fly the entire family to Europe this summer on my miles). Our flight left at 12:59 out of Detroit on Saturday. This gave me a chance to play tennis prior to leaving. The unfortunate thing is my kids don’t take after me in most things, but especially when it comes to traveling. They are anxious travelers just like their mom and Shirley called me when I was only midway through my first set. My plan was to leave around 9 or a little after 9, Shirley wanted us on the road no later than 8:30. I cut my tennis short knowing we would have plenty of time, but since turning 50 I have realized life isn’t all about me, just mostly. To everyone’s surprise but me, we arrived at the airport in plenty of time. Two things I don’t understand, why people want to arrive at the airport hours prior to their flight and why they insist on getting on the plane right away when there is assigned seating.

We landed around 7 and it took us roughly 3 hours to get our bags, ground transportation, and arrive at the resort. We made it just in time to eat at one of the buffets at the resort prior to it being shut down. While I was the epitome of a weary traveler from being around my family for an entire day, I was able to rally when I discovered there was a Starbucks walking distance from our resort. I have become addicted to cold brews, I gave up energy drinks years ago in favor of what I believe to be a healthier way to imbibe caffeine. (I may be entirely wrong about that, but ignorance is bliss) Whenever I go on a trip I need to get some type of routine going, unfortunately, my routine was unlikely to involve much, if any sex, due to all of us sleeping in the same room. One of my routines was going to Starbucks in the morning and midway through the week I took my kids with me. That increased the bill substantially but that particular time it was well worth it. We had eaten at the authentic Mexican restaurant at the all inclusive the night before, I had taken two shits already, but I was still a bit concerned about the quarter mile walk to Starbucks. After placing our order, I headed to the second floor to go for deuce number 3, which normally I would call a good morning, actually a good day. I made a rookie mistake, after dropping the kids off at the pool I looked over to discover an empty toilet paper roll. The Starbucks had a main floor and then it was open air with a second floor veranda that had some seating and the bathroom. I pinched my cheeks together, pulled up my shorts and waddled out of the bathroom. I informed my kids that one of them needed to bring me some napkins because there was no toilet paper in the restroom. If it was me being summoned to do that for my dad, a dad who routinely called me pizza face and bean pole, I would have told him to fuck off. However, Aiden, came up with a fistful of napkins. The good news is that it is customary in Mexico to throw your butt wipings into the trash so it wasn’t a problem to wipe my ass with napkins, other than the fact that I had taken two previous dumps, and my anus was more vulnerable than Taylor Swift after her relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal.

Back in the day we went on a family vacation to Colorado and my parents went to the bank (or somewhere else) prior to our trip and secured a bunch of traveler’s checks. Looking back, traveler’s checks seem almost as practical as owning a phone book. Similarly, it used to be customary to exchange dollars for pesos, or whatever the currency in the foreign country may be. However, with the prevalence of credit cards, and the ability of everyone to take them, and the willingness of non business people to accept dollars (cab drivers, wait staff, prostitutes) exchanging currency was completely unnecessary. While part of my morning routine was Starbucks, part of my afternoon routine included Starbucks and a trip to Seven Eleven to get snacks. It took me until late Wednesday to determine what the actual exchange rate was. I may have gone the entire trip without knowing, but Parker and I stumbled upon a cool hat store in the same shopping plaza as the Starbucks and 7-11. I found a hat with a rooster on it and was going to buy it for my buddy I play pickle ball with because his nickname is the rooster for the way he struts around when he’s about to lose trying to intimidate his opponents. The hat was 890 pesos, could be $5 or could be $50. Turns out it was closer to $50, much closer. For every dollar you get 16.5 pesos. We were dropping close to 200 hundred pesos on bags of lays chips and munchers. A king size Cadbury chocolate bar was nearly ten dollars. Doing the math the next morning at Starbucks, I was dropping nearly $40 when my assistant butt wipers accompanied me.

The reality of what we had actually spent on frivolous things, when coupled with what we spent on the actual vacation, is the only reason I let Shirley talk me into doing a presentation to potentially join the Iberostar “Vacation Club”. When Shirley had scheduled one of our excursions they told her that if she did a tour with a salesperson we could get $150. Since she had already paid for the excursion they indicated it could be cold hard cash. She scheduled the 90 minute meeting for Friday, our last day there. We met them at the resort spa where we were first introduced to a women who obtained our information (which I am pretty sure they already had) in turn the women introduced us to our guide who we ate breakfast with. He then took us on a tour of the resort that involved the beach area that was sequestered off for the benefit of the vacation club members. The only real selling point was they served middle shelf liquor at this area instead of the kind that makes you shit your pants and never want to drink again if you manage to imbibe enough to get remotely intoxicated. After the tour he bought us back to the sales office where he told us we were going to meet his sales manager, I could barely contain myself I was so excited. The sales manager looked like someone you would encounter at one of the used car lots on south division or 28th street. They had a touch point presentation showing their various resorts after the introduction. We then sat down to crunch some numbers. At no point had they alluded to the cost of this but I told them early on, I am a bottom line guy, what does it cost. The sales guy said “don’t you want to know all of the benefits before you hear the price?” I should have said no, but I Just mumbled something intelligible.

They sat us down in a cubicle and the manger took a piece of scratch paper and a big calculator, the kind that dumb kids use in their Math 099 class in college, and started doing some pretty fuzzy math. There are three different levels you could buy into. The black, blue, and silver. Silver was ten years, blue, fifteen, and black 30. Similar to what they do at a car lot, they gave us the black sales spiel first. Here is the Navigator Black label, it’s $130,000. You take it for a ride and all you can think about is pulling up to the Chick-Fil-A drive thru in it. If you get past the fact of how ridiculous it is to pay that much for a vehicle, when they take you for a ride in the Aviator and tell you it’s 70k, it seems like a deal. If you are the type of person who wants to be seen in the Navigator ordering your Oreo shake and at all of your kids sporting events, it worked out either way for them, but probably not you when you drive your Navigator off the lot and it is immediately worth $109,000. I understood the math, I realized that if what they were saying was true, and I knew it wasn’t, there would be value in the vacation club depending on the price. On top of it all, they promised a buy back program in the upper two levels where you would get $500 per airline ticket for up to two tickets for your flights when you stayed at a resort. However, Shirley who once told the kids as they were watching Umi Zoomi (it’s a counting and math show for kids) on PBS that 3 times 0 is 3, was really struggling with all the basic math that was being thrown out and when the sales person said the upper level was $95,000, almost what your Lincoln Navigator depreciates to when you drive it off the lot, she told them she needed to leave to go take her Adderall.

Obviously, they don’t want you to leave, and when I told them that even if you get your 95k back at the end of the 30 years (I’d be 80) I could have done a lot more with it in the market than just getting that amount back. The guy realized we weren’t going black. So, they started working on the blue level. When they realized that wasn’t happening they decided to sweeten up the lowest level by adding five years to the membership at no additional cost and some hybrid form of the airline buy back program. Shirley indicated she wanted to take the contract with her and read it and the sales guy responded by saying the contract was copyrighted and he couldn’t allow her to do that. They already knew we were both attorneys so I am not sure why he thought that would be believable, a contract isn’t intellectual property that need to be protected. Seeing the sale going sideways, similar to when a husband has his wife in the sweet spot of intoxication at a gathering, knowing he is going to score, only to watch her get sloppy drunk, destroying any hopes of some moderately good sex after the party, the sales team brought in another guy who offered us some trial membership. Initially it was indicated to us that if we walked away the opportunity was gone. The sales team changed that to a noon deadline. The new guy told us a year.

Obviously, Shirley and I got up and walked away, like anyone with at least 3 functioning brain cells would do. However, and I knew this was a problem. The sales guy was as obtuse about the $150 when we were at breakfast, as his cohort was with the numbers he was using to make it seem like we would be making money by joining the time share, I mean vacation club. Since Shirley had gotten us into the mess I made her go to the lobby to retrieve our payment after we had eaten lunch. When she came back she was fired up, they had initially told her that the sales people were gone and she wasn’t going to get the $150. When that didn’t work they tried to come back and pay her in Iberostar bucks, nope, finally they relented to get the crazy white lady out of the lobby, and handed her $150. In hindsight I should have told them I’d sign up for the club if they added one perk. I needed a conjugal visit room to access at anytime I see fit (Which wouldn’t be a lot because Shirley would also need to be on board) so that I could have sex while staying at the resort. On the third day of the trip when we were at the pool I told Shirley we need to get the kids out of the room so we could have sex, surprisingly she agreed. I told the kids when I got back to the room a little ahead of Shirley that they were going to have to leave. The didn’t take it well but ultimately complied.

The week went by unsurprisingly fast and the Saturday after we arrived we had to wake up at 4 to get our ride to the airport. Again, we arrived with plenty of time to spare, allowing me to browse the duty free store. As Jerry Seinfeld would say “what’s the deal with Duty Free?” My kids have been on this kick obsessing about John Paul Gaultier cologne. Apparently it has gained quite a bit of steam because of the uniqueness of the bottle, which looks like a statute with no arms, legs, or head. I had a bottle of it 20 years ago and really liked it. So, when I found it at Nordstrom Rack for $30, I bought some more. It was $140 at duty free. The prices are worse than you would pay for the stuff under normal circumstances and it’s a pain in the ass to tote the stuff you buy there along with you on the rest of your journey. And as far as toting stuff along with you. We had to go through customs as well as your usual TSA check. I have no idea how people who have 7 balloons of heroin shoved up their ass can act all calm, cool, and collected. I have a t-shirt I bought and forget to declare with Customs and I’m sweating bullets worried I’m going to spend 3 to 5 years in a Mexican prison. I’m really glad I didn’t buy that rooster hat.

One Year

Last Saturday Shirley told me that she heard something that made her quite sad. She said that once your kids turn 13, or some arbitrary age around that number of years, you as a parent spend one year with them. I feel like my Mother-in-law is a complete outlier when it comes this alleged statistic. It feels like we have spent at least a decade of our almost fifteen years of marriage with her parents. One year, 365 days, seems like quite a bit of time to have left to spend with your kids upon them turning into teenagers. Obviously Shirley felt that amount of time was insufficient where as I felt like it was more than enough. Are there any children out there that when their parents get old and weird say “hey, we should really spend more time with our parents”? Probably not, especially if the parents live in a shitty place like Michigan. I get it if your parents live in Hawaii or Sandusky Ohio, but other than using your parents to get some nice weather, what’s the point? I guess there is an additional reason to want to see your parents when they get old and weird, to drop your kids off with them. Let’s be honest, willingly spending time with old and weird parents is something that is done more out of obligation and a result of guilt, not because it is an enjoyable experience.

Here is the bad news for Shirley. I am already weird and once the old part kicks in, our kids are not going to want to be spending much time with me. I guess that doesn’t really impact her all that much since I am not really around that much anyway. However, if she thinks I am helping out with the grandkids if we are around for them, she has another thing coming. I don’t get what the big fuss is about grandkids? While on the subject of how much of an inconvenience kids are, Shirley had to go to Indianapolis for a work related endeavor on Tuesday afternoon, she told me about this roughly around Tuesday afternoon. When our kids were younger this was a bit more problematic, in that it curtailed my ability to engage in my early morning activities. However, my kids are old enough now that I don’t have to be around early in the morning. Ok, let me restate that, I shouldn’t have to be around. Unfortunately, Shirley has basically ruined our kids, as most parents these days do, by coddling them. The bus stop is about a quarter of a mile from our house, that is one time around a standard size track for those of you who have no concept of distance. Every single morning up until this morning, the kids, who get on the bus at 6:25am, have been driven by one of us up to the bus stop. Yesterday morning the plan was to have them go on their own to the bust stop but they called an audible as they were going to bed and asked me to take them in. I agreed to this so I could play basketball but did have to leave ten minutes early to make sure they weren’t late for school.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are tennis days and it is nearly impossible to get tennis in in the morning and chauffeur the kids to school before it starts. So, I told the kids they were walking up to the bus stop this morning. While the pack of wolves, pit of snakes, and moat filled with crocodiles on the way to the bus stop make it a risky proposition, I figured they could handle it. However, I did half expect a call at 6:30 from them, while I was warming up for tennis, informing me that they had missed the bus. (no such call came in and when I arrived back home only Max and Murphy were waiting for me). The reason Shirley is down in Indianapolis is to engage in some executive coaching. Last night as I was leaving pickle ball I received the following text “will you and the kids text me some things you think I am good at?” Talk about putting your husband and kids on the spot. I didn’t respond promptly for a number of reasons, one being the hope that she would forget the request and I wouldn’t have to do it. Another reason is that she doesn’t really do a lot of stuff most wives do, I do pretty much all fo the cooking, a lot of the laundry, (although she is an incredible folder due to her stint working at Abercrombie & Fitch prior to law school) and a myriad of other things that a traditional wife would do if she was a stay at home mom and her husband actually worked a lot.

Shirley sent out the following text “Hi everyone. I am in Indy with my executive coach (humble brag) for work. She asked me to poll my family about what I am good at. My family (Jason and kids) are not responding. Would you mind please sharing what you think I am good at.Please just text me directly so no pile-on or sarcasm….Appreciate and love you!!!” What Shirley should know after almost 15 years of somewhat wedded bliss with me, is that I am not good at telling people what they are good at. Telling people what they are good at is similar to complimenting someone and I was raised in a Dutch CRC family where compliments were almost as much of a no no as premarital sex. As I prepared dinner I thought about how I should respond and finally texted this: “You are good at: Staying calm, not over reacting, thinking things through, analyzing problems and finding solutions.”

“Are you serious about staying calm? That is something I said I need to work on”

“Yes, you do a good job of that. I don’t count how you deal with the kids, no one should count that.” (if someone is calm dealign with their kids I figure they are either autistic or a serial killer)

“Well, I almost never feel calm”

“I do a lot of dumb shit and you seem to handle it well”

Mid way through grilling smash burgers I received a face time call from Shirley, I was on the fence about answering it but did, she wasn’t crying so I took that as a a sign that she appreciated what the kids had to say or that it was at the very least somewhat benign. She went into how she watched a reality show about some people dating without actually seeing what the other person looked like and when they met in person the chick picked apart the guy. She said she talked about how she picks me apart with her “executive coach” and feels bad about it. Not bad enough to stop it obviously as evidenced by the “are you serious about staying calm?” She was picking apart my list of things she is good at for crap’s sake! She does pick at me but one of the things I am good at is not listening to people or really giving a shit what they have to say when I am actually listening. The other thing I am really good at, which doesn’t have much practical value, possibly none what so ever, is getting extremely angry and acting irrationally when I lose at something.

I do think the best response, obviously as a joke, to her question about what she is good at would have been “not blow jobs, due to their infrequency” which leads me as I close to something that transpired on the Florida trip that I left out of my last blog, at least I think I did, that last blog was way too long for me to read again to see if I had already mentioned this. One of my buddies had texted me about borrowing our corn hole set right after we landed in Florida. I texted him back and we were in an exchange most of the afternoon. Upon leaving lunch I gave Shirley my phone to get directions to our beach resort, upon doing so my buddy texted “are you guy’s banging yet?” She actually took it in stride and thought it was funny. That being said, one thing she is really good at is being married to me, because it sure takes a certain acumen to put up with this guy for as long as she has.