Category Archives: Holiday Hijinks

Happy Valentine’s Day from the clogged lint screen

My wife thinks I’m not as romantic as I used to be.

To this, I agree.

Also, our 15-year-old clothes dryer doesn’t dry clothes as fast as it used to.

Maybe we are both clogged with lint. Or maybe our heating elements are burning out.

After 19 Valentine’s Days, 19 of her birthdays, 19 Christmases, 16 wedding anniversaries, and 15 Mothers’ Days, it can become challenging to come up with fresh bursts of romance. 

Lately, it has taken lots of time and effort to keep that old dryer limping along. It’s had its triumphs and failures. It makes more noise now than it should. So do I.

We both wore out our belts.

Cards have sure changed since my youthful days of flaming romance.

I prepared to buy a new dryer, but my wife said no. She said these new computerized dryers have too many sophisticated parts that could break down and be expensive to fix.

Sure, they look flashy and seem full of promises, but they would most likely be unreliable.

She would rather stick with the dryer she understands—the one she knows where to kick when it acts up.

The one I can keep running, imperfectly, but consistently.

She gets annoyed at the old dryer’s many flaws, but she knows eventually the clothes will come out warm and dry, and comfortable.

We both get annoyed, but we are the only two who know all the old jokes, and understand why they are still funny. We couldn’t laugh so hard at anything else.

Even after all these years of hit or miss holidays, my wife is still a very attractive woman. I have little doubt she could have much more than a new dryer if she wished.

But I have even less doubt that she cherishes warm and comfortable things that she knows exactly where to kick.

I may have slowed down, but I never moved the target.

There must be something romantic in that.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all the young lovers, young and old alike.

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Have yourself a merry little air fryer holiday

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains a spoiler in the first sentence. Read at your own risk.

You’re getting an air fryer for Christmas.

Maybe more than one.

And that’s okay.

I have two air fryers, and I use them often. If, like me, you love fries, chicken wings, or battered fish, and you want those things to kill you fractionally more slowly than they normally would, you will love the air fryer(s) coming your way.

So, rejoice!

How do I know you’re getting an air fryer?

That’s a complicated mathematical equation involving the abundance of air fryers on the store shelves in ratio to the lack of most everything else. Air fryers have spread from the kitchen section to various undersupplied areas of the store.

The stores have found a way to prevent you from being disappointed at seeing empty electronics cases this year. You won’t see the empty cases at all; they are hidden behind a mountain of air fryers. Who needs distracting electronics anyhow? Let’s all go back to simpler time, when we sat around the house and actually talked to each other, with nothing more pressing to do than wait for the beeping noise that told us the fried chicken was ready to be turned.

Fryer mania

Fighting inflation with air fryer deals. Note: this is not even the kitchen section of the store.

I recall reading news stories in which the executives at major retailers downplayed the supply chain crisis, assuring us they had millions of dollars’ worth of extra inventory in their warehouses this year. It is now becoming clear what those millions of dollars were tied up in.

Don’t be discouraged if you can’t find those special somethings your loved ones wanted this year, and you must settle on giving air fryers. Just think: by eliminating the need for all those unhealthy cooking oils, you may be adding upwards of two or three days onto their lives. And when you get the air fryers they’re giving you, you can join the rest of the family in exchanging creative and pseudo-healthy recipes.

So let’s all get psyched for the air fryers in our futures! Also, the other item that seems in ample supply is the novelty waffle maker. You may find one of those in your Christmas stocking, so making Minnie Mouse face waffles is also something to look forward to. Your kids will clamor to eat the heads of the world’s most beloved cartoon characters.

I have faith that you will all enjoy your new air fryers. A happy holiday season is assured. Knowing this, I feel it is only right to wish you a crispy, golden brown New Year.

Countless tiny fortunes

There is a white squirrel that plays in our back yard from time to time. We have scads of black squirrels and a sprinkling of grey squirrels, but this is the first white squirrel we’ve seen. 

We like to watch him whenever he shows himself. The last time I saw him, I called for my wife to look out her office window. “That means good fortune is headed our way,” she said when she spotted him.

“I could sure use some good fortune about now,” I replied. I think that’s a common sentiment these days, but I immediately regretted saying it. As a parent who chides his children for whining, I felt like a hypocrite.

I had fallen into the trap of thinking of good fortune in terms of big, milestone events: winning a lottery, getting a big promotion, or landing a book contract from a major publisher. 

True, none of those things have happened, and they aren’t on the horizon. It would be great if they did happen but expecting them will lead me into a lot of self-defeating whining.

Think he’ll let me rub his tummy for luck?

I’m not a person who finds himself in the right place at the right time. In that sense, I’m not lucky.

But in a more important sense, I am lucky. I’m not a person who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Sometimes the most fortunate events are the ones that miss us – the things that don’t happen.

I have the people and things I need to be happy. Maybe fate has not answered my dreams, but it has also not burdened me with unsurmountable nightmares. 

The last two years have been a time of suffering around the world. I have suffered less than most. I did not lose my job. I did not lose any family members. My children have had to adjust to a new way of being children, but they have adjusted more easily than many others.

A lot of us could use some good fortune about now. Many of us already have it, often in the things we take for granted because they are not huge, lifechanging events.

A little, white squirrel made me consider all my subtle, good fortunes. How odd that he came to visit during our Thanksgiving Holiday.

Counting life by tens

When it’s a new year, we look forward. When it’s a new year, especially one that ends in zero, some of us look back. I’m a backward gazer.

January 1970

I was a toddler, about a year away from starting my first job. It’s possible farm kids enter the workforce sooner. My first job entailed sitting on a rock and calling the cows down from the pasture at milking time. I did such a good job of it, I was promoted to jobs with more responsibility. I regretted that none of these higher jobs involved sitting down.

toy tractor

1970: Already working with tractors.

January 1980

I was in 7th grade. My father died in 1976, so we no longer operated the farm. I was excited for the 1980 Winter Olympic in Lake Placid. It was a big deal having the Olympics in our state. On weekends, they showed Nordic events on TV. Afterward, I would put on my skis to race around the perimeter of the cornfield. I wore my watch so I could try to beat my best time.

Becoming an Olympic biathlete was my sports dream, but it never had a shot. We didn’t have any ski clubs and there was no Internet to help find such things. I just skied around the field, enjoying the dream for what it was.

January 1990

I had graduated college the spring before and moved to Los Angeles. I quickly discovered that my freshly printed degree in Video Production was an express ticket to working retail sales in that town. I worked in the Glendale Galleria, selling personalized mugs and engraving glass and metal. Beginning at minimum wage, I was bumped up to $6/hour when I became a competent engraver.

I was at a drive-through ATM one day when my car began to shake. The ATM screen promised me I had no money for repairs, but after a minute the car calmed down. I drove home fearing a breakdown, but the car behaved. Turning on the TV, I breathed relief at learning it was only an earthquake.

It was around New Year’s, 1990, when my mother called to tell me she had cancer. She played it down and assured me everything would be all right. I believed her, because when your mom says it will be all right, you make yourself believe her. You make yourself believe her for as long as you can.

Lost cause

1990: My Los Angeles office/dining room.

January 2000

We survived Y2K; that was good. California and a few other sojourns were long past. I was already working the same job I have now; a fact that gives me pause. I was single and living in a tiny loft apartment. I wouldn’t meet my wife for two more years.

After years of fits and starts, I started to take writing more seriously. I submitted a novel to POD company, not realizing how immature the writing of a 32-year-old could be. I don’t know if blogs existed yet. I certainly hadn’t heard of them.

January 2010

I had a kid! I owned a house! Not to mention the whole marriage thing. After years of assuming I would grow old in my little apartment with a growing pile of unpublished manuscripts (my version of cats), I had people around me to help me grow old. (I mean that in a good, easing sort of way – mostly).

I’d worked for the same employer for 10 years, which felt kind of odd. Who does that? But there was more waiting for me at home than edits and rewrites, so things were good. I would start this blog within the next two years.

Florida vacation

2010: Father of one. Since children 2 and 3, I don’t get to sit so comfortably anymore.

January 2020

I have three kids now – still only one wife. I have published three more books, all so much better than that first one. This blog is eight years old. I hope it has a few more years in it. Tonight, I will coach 6th grade basketball practice, which is just one of the many cherished privileges my children have offered me.

And now you’re all caught up.

P.S. Almost forgot. I have a cell phone now. I held out for decades, but you know how we young fellows are susceptible to peer pressure.