So there I was in the kitchen, busily covering my entire body with insect repellant, the “Pshhhhh” of the can covering me in protection.
I am one of the most delicious people on the planet to mosquitoes, and if I so much as think about going outside, enormous welts will pop all over my body on the mere thought of providing the blood sucking buffet for my neighborhood menaces.
It’s the age-old debate – is it OK to lie to your children?
Let’s settle the debate right now – it absolutely is, and it’s actually rather necessary to survive being a parent.
This point was driven home as I was at dinner with my family recently. In a nearby booth was a young girl, maybe three. It was evident that she is close to being potty trained, based on her repeated attempts to go use the restroom. After the 37th attempt to climb out of the booth and go potty, I heard her dad say, “No, we can’t. Remember – the potty is broken here.”
As a parent, you rather quickly develop a sensor that gauges the severity of your child’s peril. For example, you can quickly tell if wails of anguish are a result of an argument over possession of the remote control and the screams of horror are mainly an attempt to get a little brother in trouble. But you can also tell when it’s something real. And I knew it was something real.
So recently, we had some friends stay at our house for a couple of days. They were relocating from Ft. Lauderdale to upstate New York, and we were one of the ports along the way as they transplanted their entire world from the bottom of the country to the top.
The game officially ended in a tie. But I walked away without a limp, so in my book, it was a huge win.
Yes, I have successfully endured a soccer game, having competed in the kids vs. adults game at my daughter’s school.
Typical phrase you might hear in my house: “Can someone go upstairs and tell Yoda to be quiet?”
Don’t get me wrong. I would love to have the actual Yoda just chilling around the house being part of our everyday life, saying things like, “Dinner ready, it is” and “Walk dogs, I will.” But this particular Yoda only speaks in high-pitched beeps. Mainly because he is an alarm clock.
It was just your routine Christmas Eve church service for my family. In April. On a movie set. With Robin Williams.
Yes, we recently celebrated about 30 Christmas Eve services – or at least parts of them – in a single evening, as my family spent a day as extras on a movie being filmed in Atlanta.
When I was little, I was a master fort builder. We had woods behind my parents’ house, and at the time it was the most sprawling expansion of woods the world has ever known. Lewis and Clark would have found it daunting.
It’s like getting top-secret clearance.
You don’t just let someone waltz into the Pentagon or Fort Knox. You have strict guidelines on who can enter. You check their credentials. You check their background. And you certainly check their stick sharpening skills.