We Have Ways of Making You Squirm

I had my first pedicure on Sunday. My wonderful wife, who was completely out of ideas for what to get me for Father’s Day, decided to roll the dice and go for a fun first experience kinda thing.

She had no idea what to get me, because when she asked me what I wanted I gave her no help at all and just did the “I dunno” shrug, because I completely forgot that I need a new firepit poker. I also need a pool pump that doesn’t leak, but that’s a little out of range for Father’s Day gifts.

With no help at all from me, she got the pedicure idea and put a mystery event on the calendar for after church. When we left the house, she pretended she wanted to stop at the 7-Eleven for a Diet Coke, but when we pulled in and parked, she said, “We’re actually here.”

“I know. I just parked.”

“No,” she said, “I mean we’re here, for your surprise gift.”

I’m pretty low maintenance, so I figured she meant I was getting one of those 7-Eleven bacon-wrapped hotdogs or something, and I was momentarily pleased. Then she pointed at her nail place, which is right next to 7-Eleven.

“I’m not getting my nails done,” I told her.

“Not your nails, you idiot. We’re getting pedicures!”

“We’re doing what, now?”

I’m almost positive that stepping through the door to Lucky’s Hair and Nail was the first time I’ve ever actually been inside a nail salon. I’ve seen them in movies and TV shows, but I really had very little idea of what to expect.

The line of gigantic leather massage chairs with attached foot baths was pretty impressive. My wife and I each had our own foot technician lady. My wife had her regular nail lady, and I had an older woman, who looked pleasant enough.

We sat down in the chairs and my lady asked about my water. All I heard was “hot” and I didn’t understand the question. My wife told me she was asking how hot I wanted it. She was already filling up my tub, and even when I knew the question being asked, I had no idea how to answer. I don’t have a specific Fahrenheit that I like my foot bath water to be.

I do, however, know that I like my foot bath water to be far less Fahrenheits than what my lady chose for me. Holy wow! I guess the first step in the pedicure process is scalding. Probably makes it easier to remove all the skin off your feet.

The second step is to clip the toenails. That part was welcomed, because I have a hard time breathing while I clip my own toenails. I could breathe just fine while she did it. About that time, I noticed my chair came with a remote control panel.

There were a lot of confusing pictures on the buttons, and almost no words, so I chose the button that just said “Auto,” and immediately regretted it. The seemingly pleasant leather recliner chair was harboring a secret compartment of what I’m guessing was rebar, and it unceremoniously jammed it all into my back, right between my shoulder blades.

I scared both our ladies a little when I flinched dramatically and screamed in pain, but they are pros, so no damage came to my pinkie toe she was operating on at the time. I finally found the off button, and the rebar retracted into the devious backrest.

My lady then picked up a pair of pliers and began to be very unfriendly with my big toenails, both of which have a history of becoming ingrown. I tried to be brave and winced a smile at her, and she smiled sweetly back at me.

The next twenty minutes gave me the impression that prior to working at Lucky’s Hair and Nail – conveniently adjacent to the 7-Eleven - perhaps my lady had had another life as a master CIA interrogator.

I’ve seen those movies where the interrogator swaps back and forth between brutally torturing the captive and pretending to be their best friend. My pedicure was exactly like that.

She started by plunging my feet in boiling water.

Then she cheerily clipped my toenails.

Then she took the pliers to my big toes.

Then she rubbed pleasantly-scented oil on my feet.

Sandpaper heel torture.

Wonderful calf massage.

Stuff my foot in a plastic bag filled with molten wax.

Massage the other calf.

Molten wax the other foot.

Delightfully ticklish wax peel with toenail buffing.

I was a roller coaster of emotions. Does she love me? Does she hate me? The chair is so comfortable now, but is it plotting to kill me?

It was diabolical. I would have given her any information I had, but she never asked me a single question.

I left the building on edge, but with very clean, tingly feet. That being said, I’m almost positive I had my last pedicure on Sunday, as well as my first.

I just can’t take the psychological torture. I’m going to go start a written gift wish list.

1) New firepit poker

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

Supply Chain Salvation

Well, you’ve done it again, haven’t you? Christmas is right around the corner, and once again you’ve procrastinated your shopping list. In normal years, you’d be screwed, as usual. But not this year! This year you can blame the evil “global supply chain problems” with absolute impunity.

To help you out, I have created a letter you can use. (I will, in no way, be using this ploy myself for my lack of planning with regard to my wife’s gift). Just come up with a great gift idea and fill in the appropriate blanks. Bing, bang, boom.

  

Dear __________,

We regret to inform you that we see no way to get you the __________ you so thoughtfully ordered many, many months ago, before the Christmas rush.

We know from your previous earnest communications that this incredibly expensive and rare __________ is a gift for your __________. While we regret not being able to help you fulfill that amazing act of Christmas generosity and thoughtfulness, we hope that your __________ can take some solace in the fact that you are probably one of the greatest and most selfless people we’ve ever had the pleasure to encounter.

As you know from our previous correspondence, your __________ is still aboard the Hapag-Lloyd container vessel Mauritania, in Wan Hai container number WHLU0473956. Also, as you know, the Mauritania has been anchored off the Port of Long Beach for two months now, is still thirteenth in line, and has no estimated time for docking.

We want to commend you on your valiant effort three weeks ago of chartering that yacht and personally sailing out to the Mauritania. We were so sorry to hear that the Coast Guard wouldn’t let you board. We were also very sorry to hear about the ensuing kerfuffle, the sinking of your chartered yacht by the Coast Guard patrol boat, and the resulting short stint in the brig at the U.S. Coast Guard Base Los Angeles.

On the bright side, the captain of the Mauritania said he really appreciated the EXPENSIVE bottle of scotch you brought him, even though he couldn’t help. He also said that he and the crew were pulling for you during the whole chase.

Sadly, we can’t offer you a refund, since your __________ is technically “in transit,” still being on the ship and all. Unfortunately, if the Mauritania gives up and sails back for her home port of Panama, as we suspect she will, that could delay things for many more months or even years.

Our sincerest apologies for the inconvenience this global supply chain catastrophe has caused you. Again, your ___________ is very lucky to have such an unprecedentedly amazing gift giver as you in their life.

Best wishes for the happiest of holidays,

Edwin R. Straithmoore III

Director of Global Logistics

__________ Corporation

 

There you go, folks. Just fill in the blanks and include this letter with the five-dollar Starbucks gift card you’ll pick up for them later, and you’re all set.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2021 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite T-shirt is at SmidgeTees

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A Slightly Modified Christmas

We all know that 2020 has been a little funky, both in terms of COVID completely turning our lives upside down and also in terms of how your house smells since your kids have been going to school from your living room for nine months.

Well, Christmas 2020 isn’t going to be any less funky, so buckle up, buckaroos. We’re about to have Christmas COVID style. Here’s a short rundown on how it’s going to work this year.

For starters, many of you have been putting off your family Christmas pictures due to the obvious outbreak of COVID hair. You and your spouse are almost unrecognizable to each other at this point, and your children look like the end result of a drunken hookup between Cousin It and a yeti.

You’re going to need to bite the bullet and just do it. That cutesy holiday snapshot of your family isn’t going to get any prettier, and chances are, one of your kids is pretty good with Photoshop, so there’s some hope.

Christmas cookies are going to need to be contactless this year. You can still attempt to bake tasty treats for your friends and neighbors, but it will be challenging to say the least. Since we apparently know nothing about how COVID works, we must assume that it can survive 350 degrees for 20 minutes. That means you cannot come within six feet of any of the ingredients without being in a full hazmat suit.

Extra-long mixing spoons aside, your shopping cart was probably within six feet of you, another shopper, or a clerk during the ingredient purchasing process, so you’re really finished before you even started.

Best to just bake all the treats you would have normally made as gifts, then eat them all yourself with an eggnog chaser in front of a Hallmark Christmas movie marathon.

Santa will still be at the mall, but he will be inside a large plastic bubble, so your kids won’t get to sit on his lap. Also, the mall will be closed, so the best we can do is have you drive by with the kids and wave to him through the glass doors while he’s in his plastic bubble. Also, the glass doors will be covered with plywood to prevent looting.

Santa’s North Pole workshop is still open, being deemed an essential service, however the elves now have to work in cohorts of ten, on a rotating hybrid schedule to be able to maintain a six-elf-length spacing around the work benches. If one elf tests positive for COVID, the entire cohort, and any cohorts working in an adjacent workshop area, will need to quarantine until 2021. This has the potential to affect toy production, but the good news is Amazon seems to have ramped up to fill the gaps. We should be OK.

Speaking of elves, the Elves on the Shelves are no longer allowed to return to the North Pole each night, or at all, actually, due to the cohort quarantine shelter-in-place lockdown distance learning travel restriction slow the spread flatten the curve rules. This means they will now stay in your house 24/7, which presents a problem. Homesick elves will drink heavily to mask the pain, and a drunk elf is an unpredictable elf. Hide the peppermint schnapps and the spiced rum or you will be in for some very odd and distasteful elf pranks. Let’s just say you won’t be able to trust any of the chocolates in that See’s Candy sampler, if you know what I mean.

Since the reindeer naturally quarantine in a cohort of nine, they will be ready to go on Christmas Eve. Nothing drastic has changed about Santa’s delivery method this year since he is the original social distancer. He will enter and exit your home as usual, but your Santa treats will obviously need to be modified. In lieu of a plate of cookies and a glass of milk this year, you need to leave him an unopened school lunch milk and a sealed snack-size bag of Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies, both floating in a bucket of hand sanitizer.

Speaking of hand sanitizer, that brings up the one change in Santa’s gift-giving procedures. Naturally, Santa will social distance, but even with the fur-lined winter gloves, Santa is unable to deliver your gifts in a truly contactless manner. As such, all your presents will be completely covered in hand sanitizer this year. Also, all your presents ARE hand sanitizer.

Of course, all Christmas Eve caroling will need to be done via Zoom this year. This could present a never-before-seen issue for you and your Charles Dickens-clad choir group. People on Zoom will now be able to virtually do what they always wanted to physically do in the past, but were too polite – shut the door on you. Expect a lot of black screens and audio connection “problems.” Sorry, and best of luck to you crazy kids!

And lastly, popcorn strings will not be strung on the Christmas tree this year. All homemade popcorn strings have been deemed essential emergency supplies by the federal government and therefore cannot be wasted on the tree. They will instead need to be stored in the bathroom to be used as a last alternative in the event of a catastrophic nationwide holiday toilet paper shortage.

Good luck with that, and happy holidays!

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite T-shirt is at SmidgeTees

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

The Weight of Christmas

Christmas used to be simpler. And harder.

It’s complicated.

One thing’s for sure, Christmas definitely used to be lighter.

When the boys were younger, there was a lot more to the Christmas prep. We had to be careful what we said. We had to make sure we visited Santa Claus somewhere at least once before Christmas Eve, ideally nowhere near a mall.

We had to “mail” letters to the North Pole, which really meant we had to make sure we read the letters without anyone finding out, then I was in charge of making the letters disappear. And make no mistake, that was probably the most life-and-death job I’ve ever had as a parent. The world would have come down around our heads if one of the boys had ever seen me shredding their Santa letters and hand-decorated envelopes. Thank the good Lord they never insisted on walking them down to the mailbox themselves!

We had to put out carrots and milk and cookies for Santa, and I had to eat the cookies and drink the milk. That job was tolerable. But I also had to chew up the carrots and spit them onto the lawn, and collect dirt and freezing cold hose water to make mud in order to manufacture reindeer “hoofprints” on our front walkway at midnight. That job was cold and messy and tasted like carrots, which are not nearly as good as cookies.

Basically, we had to lie a lot and stay up late. But at least the gifts were smaller.

I mean, sure, I spent my fair share of Christmas Eves assembling new bikes and Fisher-Price scoot-around cars, or whatever, but they were all manageable one-man jobs. The boys are older now, and the big gifts have grown with them.

This year was almost too much for me to handle. Son Number Two and Three got an eight-foot-tall lacrosse bounce-back from us this year. The UPS guy could barely get the box up our driveway. He and I managed to get it stored in the garage out of sight, but last night I had to put it together. It’s basically a trampoline the size of a large coffee table, sitting vertically up on a tube steel frame. It has various places where it folds up for storage, but God help you if you fold it all out, stretching all the springs tight, before you thoroughly read the safety precautions section of the manual.

There are two places that require safety bolts to be placed through the hinges before you move on to assembling the rest of the very heavy framework. If you don’t put the safety bolts in, it’s possible for the whole thing to fold in half very rapidly as the springs collapse, beating the holy hell out of your right foot that happened to be standing on one side of the frame. That situation is also very sudden and very loud, which causes your heart to stop for three to four full seconds, which can’t be good for you.

The problem was the giant upright trampoline turned out to be the light, easy gift to assemble. Son Number One wanted a weight bench. I bought it at a local sporting good store, and between me and the five-foot-two-inch female store manager, we managed to get it into the back of our SUV. Just imagine a full-size wight bench with all the weights and everything, tucked into a reinforced cardboard box the size of a standard filing cabinet.

I had to keep it in the box in order to hide it in the garage. Ironically, Son Number One would have been an excellent choice to help me move it there from the back of the car. His brothers couldn’t be trusted to keep the secret safe, so I handled it myself. Luckily, that was about a month before Christmas, so I had time to recover from the hernia surgery before I had to assemble it last night.

It was all actually going pretty well, taking locking plate #24 and using two #37 bolts plus two #78 washers and #45 nuts to secure crossbar #17 to main beam #12. That was fine. It was the un-numbered items that gave me a little trouble. Specifically, the twenty-five-pound plastic-coated weight that slipped out of my tired fingers around midnight and bounced across my already spring-loaded right foot.

That kind of thing never happened with the Fisher-Price stuff. Like I said, Christmas used to be lighter.

On the upside, the boys didn’t wake us up at 4:30 this morning like they used to.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to continue to ice my foot.

I hope you all have a very merry Christmas!

Until next year,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

The Smash Gift of the Year

What do you get the person who has everything? That age-old question is actually easily answered this time of year. You get them the gift of life, of course, in the form of the Emergency Car Escape Hammer and Seatbelt Cutter.

You would never give someone one of these for their birthday, but for some reason it seems to be a perfectly logical gift at Christmas. What says “I love you” at Christmastime better than a tool that cuts through your seatbelt and breaks tempered auto glass so you can escape through your driver-side window after you’ve driven your car off a cliff into the frigid water below?

Obviously, nothing. And there are so many options these days. They all have the standard pointed hammer and safety-recessed seatbelt cutter blade, but there are new upgrades coming out every year.

Some of them glow in the dark now, because, let’s face it, most of your unscheduled cliff diving happens at night, am I right?

Mine not only has a light, but also an electronic tire gauge that will tell me my tire pressure in PSI and also in kilopascals, which will be handy if I ever drive my car off a cliff in Italy.

Mine is standard blue, but many of the new models are coming out in a variety of fashion colors, including pink, making it much easier to accessorize.

There’s even one available called the Car Cane, that doubles as a convenient handle to help you get out of your car through the door during normal circumstances. You simply slip the hammer end into the steel U-shaped latch receiver on your car’s door frame, and, presumably, scratch the holy hell out of your paint as you use the rubber-grip handle to support your weight getting out of the vehicle. I might argue that if you need a crutch to get out of your car in the Target parking lot, you might not be able to Dukes of Hazzard your way out of your driver window while the car is upside down and underwater, but who knows? Adrenaline is an amazing thing.

I found one that doubles as a phone charger, plugging into your cigarette lighter. It has a light on the end that includes LED low beam, high beam, and red strobe light. Unfortunately, the light points toward the driver when plugged into the dashboard, so the only possible scenario would be the red strobe getting activated by a childish passenger, causing the driver to become blinded and resulting in them swerving off a cliff. At least they would then have the tool that they needed to save themselves handy and easily locatable, but one could argue that the tool might not be the best gift if it causes the accidents in the first place.

They have models where the entire handle is actually a large strobe light, for those times when you drive your car off a cliff into the middle of the ocean. Just activate the strobe light and the Navy helicopters will be able to pinpoint exactly where to drop the rescue divers. I assume it also has a dye pack, for daytime ocean emergencies.

There’s even one that has solar panels in the handle, so you can use the sun to charge your phone. That’s handy when you drive off the road, need to extract yourself from the vehicle, then live next to your car for the next six to eight weeks.

These emergency tools are great and all, but here’s the thing - when you are trapped in your vehicle, you have to find this thing in your glove box or center console. But if you need to cut your seatbelt in order to get free of it, I’m going to guess you won’t be able to reach the glove box too easily. And if you keep the knife/hammer in your center console, you might as well just keep it in Cleveland. You can’t find anything in your center console when you are sitting in your driveway. What makes you think you’ll be able to locate your escape tool when you are sitting at a forty-five degree angle with water rising through the floorboards and a deployed airbag in your face?

Maybe this holiday season it’s time for a slightly more useful automotive gift, like a lesson on how to properly use a turn signal.

Or how to merge onto a freeway.

Or how to make a left turn at a four-way stop sign.

Or how to pull forward and not get out of your car in the school drop off lane.

Just some thoughts off the top of my head. If you do want to go the traditional Emergency Car Escape Hammer and Seatbelt Cutter route, just remember - this tool is completely ineffective if the gift recipient is too large to fit out of their car’s window. If that is the case, a better gift might be a personal trainer, or a car with larger windows.

Happy holidays!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Be Best Life! - Repost

I remember it like it was yesterday – that wonderful Christmas in 2016 when I received the best Christmas gift of all time. Unfortunately, the last two Christmases were – and I fear, all future ones will be – marked by the sad reality that no gift will ever compare to the joy I received that day from Son of Wang. At least my family and I will always have his words of wisdom, and I want to share them again with you.

So, I urge you, dear reader – no matter howvexed your nonutility be, if your food has become depraved or you need to have protection against the tide, have no fear. The Supersealer will not help in any way, but the box will make you laugh until it hurts.

 “The simplicity is comfortable.”

Enjoy!

I got the best Christmas gift EVER this year. It’s a crappy ninety-nine-cent as-seen-on-TV plastic bag sealer that is really hard to operate and works poorly. I could care less about the bag sealer. I am in love with the little cardboard box it came in.

The WORKWONDER SUPERSEALER is made in China by a Chinese company that obviously has two copywriters. One of these people has some background in using the English language. We’ll call him Bob. The other has to be the owner’s son, and after disappointing performances in many different departments, copywriter was the least harmful position his dad could think of to stick him. We’ll assume the owner’s name is Mr. Wang. Mr. Wang doesn’t know any English either. Bob is obviously terrified of Mr. Wang and won’t tell him that Son of Wang partied continuously for four years at the international university in Beijing and knows no English whatsoever.

In a few places on the box, Bob invites me to Just slide SUPERSEALER across bags to seal in freshness!

Son of Wang tells me, Relaxed onepulls, guarantees quality to retain freshness. Based on what we get from Son of Wang in his main paragraph, I guarantee Bob helped him with the last half of that sentence.

Here’s Bob’s effort on selling us on the amazing benefits of the SUPERSEALER:

Finally an inexpensive and easy way to perfectly reseal unused poutions of food. This amazing new SUPERSealer creates an airtight seal that locks in freshness.

You simply slids SUPERSealer along the edge of any bag and it’s sealed airtight. It’s that easy. You’ll not only save on storage bags, but you can save even more buying bulk at warehouse clubs. Just use your SUPERSealer to reseal any unused portions over and over again!

I never claimed that Bob was great. I just said he has some background in English. He’s not the best speller, but I do have to give him credit for using American sayings like, “locks in freshness,” and “it’s that easy.” That would suggest that he has a better than average grasp on American English than your standard WORKWONDER employee.

Here’s what Son of Wang had to offer us. I swear, I am not making any of this up, and keep in mind, folks, this is written on the SAME BOX as Bob’s paragraph.

Have sometimes been able to affect your state of mindbecause of a lot of situation such as damp , becomingmildewed , depraved , water leaking from in the dailylife, have used you feel very vexed , good under this , have had the convenient plastic bag of new model seal implement , have all have made stable , no matter howvexed your nonutility be. Collection such as all food , clothing and other articales of daily use , postage stamp, you have put plastic bag lining inside as long as with them , seal machine has taken form lightly with convenient adheaive tape of new model as soon as the fault , one have protection against the tide , mould proof, the herm etic sealing bag retaining freshness. Such is simple , the simplicity is comfortable, be best life!

After reading the box about a hundred times (and laughing out loud every single time), I have to assume this conversation took place at the WORKWONDERS office prior to printing the box:

“My dad wants you to proofread my copy, Bob. What do you think?”

“This is the most unintelligible thing anyone has ever written. What the hell, Wang?”

“My dad is the owner. I’ll have you fired.”

“Looks great. Let’s print that box!”

Thank you, Son of Wang, for giving my family our new motto:

Be best life!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Be Best Life! - Repost

It has been 364 days since I posted the column below about my favorite Christmas gift of all time, and to this day, my family and I are still quoting Son of Wang.

“The simplicity is comfortable.” Enjoy!

I got the best Christmas gift EVER this year. It’s a crappy ninety-nine-cent as-seen-on-TV plastic bag sealer that is really hard to operate and works poorly. I could care less about the bag sealer. I am in love with the little cardboard box it came in.

The WORKWONDER SUPERSEALER is made in China by a Chinese company that obviously has two copywriters. One of these people has some background in using the English language. We’ll call him Bob. The other has to be the owner’s son, and after disappointing performances in many different departments, copywriter was the least harmful position his dad could think of to stick him. We’ll assume the owner’s name is Mr. Wang. Mr. Wang doesn’t know any English either. Bob is obviously terrified of Mr. Wang and won’t tell him that Son of Wang partied continuously for four years at the international university in Beijing and knows no English whatsoever.

In a few places on the box, Bob invites me to Just slide SUPERSEALER across bags to seal in freshness!

Son of Wang tells me, Relaxed onepulls, guarantees quality to retain freshness. Based on what we get from Son of Wang in his main paragraph, I guarantee Bob helped him with the last half of that sentence.

Here’s Bob’s effort on selling us on the amazing benefits of the SUPERSEALER:

Finally an inexpensive and easy way to perfectly reseal unused poutions of food. This amazing new SUPERSealer creates an airtight seal that locks in freshness.

You simply slids SUPERSealer along the edge of any bag and it’s sealed airtight. It’s that easy. You’ll not only save on storage bags, but you can save even more buying bulk at warehouse clubs. Just use your SUPERSealer to reseal any unused portions over and over again!

I never claimed that Bob was great. I just said he has some background in English. He’s not the best speller, but I do have to give him credit for using American sayings like, “locks in freshness,” and “it’s that easy.” That would suggest that he has a better than average grasp on American English than your standard WORKWONDER employee.

Here’s what Son of Wang had to offer us. I swear, I am not making any of this up, and keep in mind, folks, this is written on the SAME BOX as Bob’s paragraph.

Have sometimes been able to affect your state of mindbecause of a lot of situation such as damp , becomingmildewed , depraved , water leaking from in the dailylife, have used you feel very vexed , good under this , have had the convenient plastic bag of new model seal implement , have all have made stable , no matter howvexed your nonutility be. Collection such as all food , clothing and other articales of daily use , postage stamp, you have put plastic bag lining inside as long as with them , seal machine has taken form lightly with convenient adheaive tape of new model as soon as the fault , one have protection against the tide , mould proof, the herm etic sealing bag retaining freshness. Such is simple , the simplicity is comfortable, be best life!

After reading the box about a hundred times (and laughing out loud every single time), I have to assume this conversation took place at the WORKWONDERS office prior to printing the box:

“My dad wants you to proofread my copy, Bob. What do you think?”

“This is the most unintelligible thing anyone has ever written. What the hell, Wang?”

“My dad is the owner. I’ll have you fired.”

“Looks great. Let’s print that box!”

Thank you, Son of Wang, for giving my family our new motto for 2017.

Be best life!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2017 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

The Gift of Life - Repost

This year for Christmas I got my wife new non-stick cookware that I will personally use almost one hundred percent more than she will. For some reason, that made me think of Christmas three years ago when I gave my wife a new shower mirror for me.

Here’s the explanation. Enjoy!

December 25, 2013

Of all the modern-day Christmas miracles out there, the one that stands out the most to me is the female of the species. Sure, there are many miraculous things about women - childbirth, ability to multi-task, speed of emotional state changes, willingness to ask directions, and the list goes on and on. But I’m talking about a very specific skillset that women have, that gets highlighted during the holidays - The ability to wrap gifts.

Sure, anyone with opposable thumbs can wrap a box up with paper, but women possess the unique ability to do it without having it end up looking like it was done by a drugged chimpanzee with an unnatural love for Scotch tape.

I am a reasonably smart guy, insofar as I can brush my own teeth and dress myself. I can drive a car, heat up canned food without burning the house down (knock on wood), and even do algebra problems with less than two variables. I was trained by a world-class university in California to be an engineer, and they even gave me a diploma. (Although it was never signed... When I asked them about that, they said, “Just take it and go!”)

Legitimate college diploma or not, you would think that a man who can set his own alarm clock would be able to get better at gift wrapping as the years went on. Sadly, that is not the case. I seem to be getting worse, actually. I don’t even bother trying to put bows on gifts anymore. The bow was meant to increase a gift’s appeal – adding to its beauty. My attempts at bows have the exact opposite effect, making the gift look even more like it was attacked by wolverines prior to ending up under the Christmas tree.

I apparently lack every skill necessary to make a present look attractive, because I can’t even use gift bags correctly. When they first became popular I thought gift bags were my salvation, until my wife informed me that you must put tissue paper on top of the gift, and have some of it stick out of the top of the bag. Sounds simple enough, and she makes it look so easy, but try as I might I cannot even put a simple piece of tissue paper in a bag and have it protrude properly. It always ends up looking like I am giving you an unwanted bag of used tissue paper instead of an enticing and mysterious gift.

There is an upside to my total lack of skill with wrapping paper, however. I am never asked to help with the Santa gifts. We want Christmas to remain magical for as long as possible with our boys, and even my five-year-old would know something was amiss when he saw my ridiculously lopsided end folds.

I only had to wrap one present this year. I took my time, concentrated, started over a few times, and it still looks like I wrapped it with my feet. I am just never going to be good at it. While I may be horrible with the wrapping paper, I must say, I am a genius when it comes to the gift itself. This year I got my wife the gift of life. My life.

What better gift for a spouse than a gift that helps ensure her partner will be around for many more years to walk through this crazy world with her, hand in hand? What magical gift is this, you may ask? The answer is simple. I bought my wife a new shower mirror for me.

Confused? So was she. Go figure.

It’s really quite simple. We have a mirror in our shower that I use to shave. It’s a 6-inch round plastic-framed mirror that is attached to the shower wall at my face level with a suction cup. The suction cup is getting old. Twice in the last few months, the suction cup has failed to do its job of sucking, and the mirror has fallen off the wall and loudly down onto the floor of the shower. Both times this happened it was the middle of the night. When the shower mirror bangs around at the bottom of the shower in the middle of the night, the glass shower walls have an amplifying effect that makes it sound as if a truck has just driven through the wall of the bathroom and completely destroyed the shower.

When I hear a truck drive through the wall of our house and obliterate our shower in the middle of the night, I sit bolt upright in bed with my heart going approximately five thousand beats per minute. Over the roar of the blood jack-hammering in my ears I hear my wife mumble, “It’s just your shower mirror,” as she casually rolls over to go back to sleep. I have no idea how she stays so calm, but I am positive that my heart cannot take a third shower mirror suction cup failure.

So, to ensure that my wife has a live husband going forward, I bought her a new shower mirror. This time with a more permanent wall attachment than a suction cup.

Thoughtful? I thought so. All she said was, “Oh look. You gave yourself a new mirror. What a great gift for me.”

I assumed that she would have immediately understood the underlying implications of a long and happy marriage that will be given to us by this simple new mirror, but her tone of voice seemed more than a little sarcastic. Hmm…

Well, it might not have been the most well-received gift ever, but at least the wrapping job sucked.

Merry Christmas, baby.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

I'm Having a Fitbit

I bought my wife a Fitbit for Christmas, so I’m wearing it now. Apparently, buying my wife a fitness and activity tracker as a gift said to her, “I, as your husband, want to trick you into wearing a device that will allow me to track your fitness and activity levels.” She didn’t like that very much.

I am constantly amazed at how much credit my wife gives me for being clever, or devious, or caring. We have been married for almost fourteen years now and she still hasn’t figured out that all the space in my brain is being taken up by five major categories: Sports, song lyrics, random movie quotes, Snapple lid trivia, and thinking about pizza. My brain activity surrounding most everything else is pretty much at a flat line - especially gift giving.

Here’s what my thought process was regarding the purchase of a Fitbit for my wife:

“Crap, it’s almost Christmas. What does Amazon Prime have that could be here in two days? Hey, look at that ad that just popped up on my Amazon page for a Fitbit. Her mom has one of those. And it’s just expensive enough that it can be my one gift to her, but still affordable. Add to cart.”

Like I said, she gives me waaaay too much credit.

So now I have a Fitbit. I have been wearing it for a grand total of three days now, and it has already completely taken over my life. It’s like some kind of brain chip implant from a sci-fi movie that controls my feelings. I have never once cared about how many steps I’ve taken in a day, but now I am utterly obsessed with it.

I went downstairs yesterday after showering and realized that I forgot to put it back on my wrist. I took the shortest route possible back to the bottom of the stairs and yelled up for someone to please go get my Fitbit off the bathroom counter and bring it down to me. Why? Because I didn’t want to waste the trip back up the stairs if I wasn’t going to get credit for it.

I found out after the first day that the Fitbit was not going to work as a watch replacement, however, so I have to wear it on my right arm. I tried it in place of my watch, but I kept having to flick my wrist to get it to come alive and tell me the time without pushing any buttons. I felt like an idiot whipping my hand up to my face more than once if it didn’t work the first time. Plus, I realized I think about time in terms of the face of my analog watch. I can see the space between the hands, representing how long it is until my next scheduled time to do something. Without hour and minute hands to look at, I just have to do too much math. Digital time confuses me and makes me late... Like I said, pretty much a flat line...

So I wear it on my right arm, and luckily on the Fitbit app on my phone, there is a setting to tell it that I’m wearing it on my dominant hand. It is so smart, it accounts for that. I guess so you don’t get credit for running when you’re actually just brushing your teeth.

They haven’t figured out vacuuming yet, though, because yesterday I “traveled” about two and a half miles in twenty minutes behind my Dyson. I’ll take it. If the Fitbit says it happened, that’s good enough for me.

I’m so obsessed with getting my ten thousand steps in every day that I almost hung up on my friend this morning. I answered his call on my walk back from taking the boys to school, and after saying hello, I came to the soul-crushing realization that I was holding the phone up to my ear with my right hand, and therefore not swinging my Fitbit arm, and therefore probably not getting credit for walking! I seriously considered stopping or hanging up on him, because I can’t use the phone with my left ear. It’s like trying to get dressed by putting the other leg into the pants first. It just doesn’t work.

And it even monitors my sleep. Once again, I have never given a second thought to sleep patterns, or sleep quality, or restlessness, but now that my Fitbit shows all that to me on my phone every morning, I’m obsessed. I can show you on my sleeping timeline the red line that indicates the exact time during the night that I got up to pee. I love America!

But now, not only am I obsessed with how many steps I’ve taken, I’m also concerned with all the light blue lines on my sleep timeline. Why was I so restless at 1:32 A.M. and then again at 3:27 A.M.?

I asked my wife about it, but she just mumbled something about “the #*%’ing Fitbit” and rolled over and went back to sleep. I guess maybe I should have waited until morning to ask her.

Oh, well. I’m not sure what I can do about the periods of restless sleep, but there is one huge question that needs to be answered. Namely, if I’m restless during the night, am I at least getting credit for it?

Rolling over in bed has to count for at least a few steps, right?

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen

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Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Mother's Day Exile

Exile Log, May 11, 2014, Day 1:

I found out that today was Mother’s Day. Shortly afterward, my wife kicked me out of the house. I have made several attempts to get back in and have been met with heavy resistance. I have taken refuge in the backyard play structure. More to come…

Exile Log, Day 2:

Things aren’t looking good. I tried to get into the house again this morning, but my wife still looked angry. She glared at me through the back window, so I retreated yet again. I don’t think she’s any happier than she was yesterday.

Things in the play structure aren’t as comfortable as you might think. Sure, it’s a big play structure, and it has a roof, but it still has drafty open sides and a limited amount of floor space.

I am sore from sleeping in a curled-up position. I tried sleeping with my legs hanging down the slide, but I kept ending up in a heap on the ground. I just want to go in and take a shower and maybe have a sandwich, but she doesn’t look ready.

I was able to establish a decent network connection today from the neighbor’s Wi-Fi after he took pity on me and gave me the password. His wife had instructed him not to speak to me, but The Man Code won out. Unfortunately, The Man Code has its limitations, and I had to promise to mow his lawn for the whole summer. In exchange, he’s snaked an extension cord over the fence for me and has given me a few beers and some pop tarts when he could. Things could be worse, I guess. 

Exile Log, Day 3:

It was cold last night. I have redwood splinters in my butt. I’m sore from sleeping with my head on a soccer ball. She’s still not ready to let me in, but I think she is softening. She threw a bottle of water and a bar of soap out the back door this morning after she saw me trying to drink from the lawn sprinkler. I’m not sure if I am supposed to bathe in the sprinkler and drink from the water bottle, or vice versa, but it’s at least a glimmer of hope. I wish we had a pool.

I’ve had a lot of time to think in the play structure. I am beginning to think this has something to do with Mother’s Day. It was this past Sunday, or so she told me, which happens to be the day she threw me out. I think those two things are connected.

The boys have been no help whatsoever. Not only did they fail to remind me that Sunday was Mother’s Day, but they haven’t visited me once out here since she kicked me out. She is keeping them inside, and as far as I can tell, they have made no effort to sneak out and help me in any way. I have done a poor job of teaching them The Man Code.

If she leaves the house today I am going to attempt to break in. I need clean underwear.

Exile Log, Day 4:

After another fitful night of sleep interrupted by the horrifying sounds of either two cats mating or a raccoon molesting a set of bagpipes, I have come to the conclusion that this whole thing must be about Mother’s Day. I managed to get into the house for a short time yesterday when she left to pick the boys up from school. The Salad Spinner we bought her is still in its box on the kitchen counter.

I have replayed the events of Sunday over and over in my head. I am fairly certain that she was upset by the fact that the boys and I didn’t know it was Mother’s Day when we woke up. I am also pretty sure that she didn’t like the fact that she was the one who had to tell us what day it was, after she had made her own breakfast.

What I can’t understand is why she was still upset enough to throw me out of the house after we totally redeemed ourselves. Sure, we might have forgotten all about Mother’s Day, but when she reminded us we promptly jumped in the car and headed to Walmart.

Not more than a half-hour later we returned with possibly the best Mother’s Day gift ever. I mean, who doesn’t love the Salad Spinner? Right?

Plus it was a really timely gift. I had accidentally broken her old Salad Spinner a few days earlier when I was using it to get the sweat out of my gym socks so I could get another day out of them. I mean, it’s a great gift in the first place, plus she needed a new one. That’s a win-win. That can’t possibly be the reason she’s mad.

Maybe it was because I bought it with the $10 Walmart gift card I got her for our anniversary? No telling, I guess. I’ll just have to stay out here and wait until she cools off.

Maybe next time she goes out I can retrieve the new Salad Spinner and use it really quick. I figure if I’m going to be out here for a few more days I can probably rinse my underwear in the sprinklers, and that Salad Spinner should do the trick to dry them off.

Don’t worry, I’ve learned from the socks incident. I bought the heavy duty model this time.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2014 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

The Gift of Life

Of all the modern-day Christmas miracles out there, the one that stands out the most to me is the female of the species. Sure, there are many miraculous things about women; pregnancy, childbirth, ability to multi-task, willingness to ask for directions, and the list goes on and on. But I am talking about a very specific skillset that only women have, that gets highlighted during the holidays: The ability to wrap gifts.

Sure, anyone with opposable thumbs can wrap a box up with paper, but women possess the unique ability to do it without having it end up looking like it was done by a drugged chimpanzee with an unnatural love for Scotch tape.

I am a reasonably smart guy, insofar as I can brush my own teeth and dress myself. I can drive a car, heat up canned food without burning the house down (knock on wood), and even do algebra problems with less than two variables. I was trained by a world-class university in California to be an engineer, and they even gave me a diploma. (Although it was never signed... When I asked them about that, they said, “Just take it and go!”)

Legitimate college diploma or not, you would think that a man who can set his own alarm clock would be able to get better at gift wrapping as the years went on, but sadly, that is not the case. I seem to be getting worse, actually. I don’t even bother trying to put bows on gifts anymore. The bow was meant to increase a gift’s appeal – adding to its beauty. My attempts at bows have the exact opposite effect, making the gift look even more like it was attacked by wolverines prior to ending up under the Christmas tree.

I apparently lack every skill necessary to make a present look attractive, because I can’t even use gift bags correctly. When they first became popular I thought gift bags were my salvation, until my wife informed me that you must put tissue paper on top of the gift, and have some of it stick out of the top of the bag. Sounds simple enough, and she makes it look so easy, but try as I might I cannot even put a simple piece of tissue paper in a bag and have it protrude properly. It always ends up looking like I am giving you an unappealing bag of used tissue paper instead of an enticing and mysterious gift.

There is an upside to my total lack of skill with wrapping paper, however. I am never asked to help with the Santa gifts. We want Christmas to remain magical for as long as possible with our boys, and even my five-year-old would know something was amiss when he saw my ridiculously lopsided end folds.

I only had to wrap one present this year. I took my time, concentrated, started over a few times, and it still looks like I wrapped it with my feet. I am just never going to be good at it. While I may be horrible with the wrapping paper, I must say, I am a genius when it comes to the gift itself. This year I got my wife the gift of life. My life.

What better gift for a spouse than a gift that helps ensure her partner will be around for many more years to walk through this crazy world with her, hand in hand? What magical gift is this, you may ask? The answer is simple. I bought my wife a new shower mirror for me.

Confused? So was she. Go figure.

It’s really quite simple. We have a mirror in our shower that I use to shave. It’s a 6-inch round plastic-framed mirror that is attached to the shower wall at my face level with a suction cup. The suction cup is getting old. Twice in the last few months, the suction cup has failed to do its job of sucking, and the mirror has fallen loudly off the wall and down onto the floor of the shower. Both times this happened it was the middle of the night. When the shower mirror bangs around at the bottom of the shower in the middle of the night, the glass shower walls have an amplifying effect that makes it sound as if a truck has just driven through the wall of the bathroom and completely destroyed the shower. When I hear a truck drive through a wall of our house in the middle of the night, I sit bolt upright in bed with my heart going approximately 5000 beats/minute. Over the roar of the blood jack-hammering in my ears I hear my wife mumble, “It’s just your shower mirror,” as she casually rolls over to go back to sleep. I have no idea how she stays so calm, but I am positive that my heart cannot take a third shower mirror suction cup failure.

So, to ensure that my wife has a live husband going forward, I bought her a new shower mirror. This time with a more permanent wall attachment than a suction cup.

Thoughtful? I thought so. All she said was, “Oh look. You gave yourself a new mirror. What a great gift for me.”

I assumed that she would have immediately understood the underlying implications of a long and happy marriage that will be given to us by this simple new mirror, but her tone of voice seemed more than a little sarcastic. Hmm…

Well, it might not have been the most well-received gift ever, but at least the wrapping job sucked.

Merry Christmas, baby.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2013 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Mrs. Claus

I must admit something to you. I’m not Santa. I know, I know… This comes as quite a shock to a lot of you, but I can’t live a lie. I’m not him. My wife is.

Around our house, my wife makes it all happen. With most holidays, but especially around Christmas, she is on top of the preparations and planning way in advance while I am barely aware that the holiday is occurring even while I’m in the middle of celebrating it.

It’s not that I’m apathetic about the holidays. On the contrary, I love them. It’s just that I’m really, really busy. I have approximately eight minutes of free time each day, which leaves precious little time for me to sit down and think about holiday planning.

Also, since we’ve had the kids around the house, my brain has gotten quite a bit smaller. At least, it feels like it has. I used to plan out an entire week’s worth of activities in advance, keep it all in my head, and never forget a thing. I’d go to Home Depot with a 30-item shopping list in my head, and leave 10 minutes later with absolutely everything I needed for my project. Nowadays, I forget why I was going downstairs by the time I’m on the fourth step. I need to write everything down, no matter how small the list. If I take our three boys with me to a store, I have to write down where I parked the car, so we don’t spend an extra 15 minutes in the parking lot on the way out, and it takes the better part of an hour to buy two nails and a paint brush.

Also, any space remaining in my new, reduced-capacity brain that used to store information has been usurped by a rapid-fire question processing function. When my sons are around I am constantly fielding a torrent of questions like:
“How come Superman can fly, but the Roadrunner can’t?”
“How come there are so many different kinds of hammers?”
“How do they make ceilings?”
“Why are lights bright?”
“Where’s that one Lego? You know… the one with the thing on it.”
“Why doesn’t water go sour?”
“What’s in your ‘adult drink’?”
“How can you hear me with ear plugs in?”

So, with my lack of free time and my severely reduced brain capacity, I have had to whittle down my holiday planning involvement to the bare bones. At this point, I am really only in charge of the car.

You see, most of our holidays involve travel, but we used to fly everywhere. Now since the airlines have started to crack down on what really constitutes a “lap child,” we have been forced to look into other alternatives. I mean, really! Since when is a six-year-old too big to share a seat with me? Come on! He’s only four and a half feet tall. Anyway, apparently now they want us to buy five tickets! Who am I, John Rockefeller? I think not. In light of that unfortunate fact, we are spending quite a bit more time in the car these days. And since I like to enjoy my holidays, I try to keep the car in good operating condition.

My wife will say, “4th of July,” and all I will think about is coolant and Freon levels. My wife says New Years, and all that comes to my mind is windshield wiper fluid and snow chains. Memorial Day… trailer lights. Labor Day… shocks and struts. Thanksgiving… wiper blades and tire pressure.

So, unless the pre-holiday task involves automobile maintenance, it usually falls to my wife. Luckily, I married Mrs. Claus.

If it was left up to me, the Christmas tree would go up at about 9:00 pm on December 24th. Again, please don’t misunderstand. It’s not because I’m scroogish, that’s just when I would get around to it. As it happens, she has me scheduled to drag our majestic pre-lit 8-foot faux Douglas fir out of the storage shed the day after Thanksgiving. I usually balk at that schedule on principle, but still always end up doing it while the calendar is still on November.

She then schedules me to put up the exterior Christmas lights. She knows better than to ask me to do this until it is at least December. You all know how I feel about that task.

In the mean time she has decorated the tree with the kids, baked 2000 cookies and made enough homemade almond roca to fill a mid-sized car from floorboard to roof. She makes cute Christmas ornaments and knick-knacks for friends and family, and assembles treat trays for all the neighbors. Our house has something Christmassy in every single room, including little Christmas bears hanging from the ceiling fan pull-chains. There is no spot in our house where you do not have direct line-of-sight on at least four snowman figurines. It’s an indoor winter wonderland! She organizes excursions to see Christmas lights, and every morning in December the boys get a small gift from a 6-foot by 3-foot “advent calendar” quilt hanging on our wall that she made herself. She truly is Mrs. Claus.

Speaking of gifts, she is in charge of that task for a whole host of different reasons. I like to think it’s just because I’m busy and she has more time to shop, but when I’m really honest with myself, that’s only one of the many, many good reasons. She probably took stock of some of the more notable gifts I’d surprised her with over the years and decided that there was really no way a man with such poor taste and judgment should be allowed to ruin Christmas for everyone. We have small children, after all. We want them to look back on their upbringing fondly. We can’t have their childhood memories of Christmas be filled with depressing scenes of unwrapping hand-me-down socks and sticks of beef jerky.

As far as the boys go, she has brilliantly figured out the Gift Answer Averaging System. Since children between the ages of two and six are wildly unpredictable with their answers about what they want, she has devised a clever way to decipher their desires. Over the course of many months, she repeatedly asks each one of them what they would like Santa to bring them for Christmas. She starts the questioning in the early spring. At first, I thought that was a little early, but after watching the process work, I am convinced she’s on to something. A three-year-old will almost always answer with the name of the toy or object that they played with last.

“What do you want Santa to bring you this year?”
“A squirt gun.”
(Ten minutes later)
“What do you want Santa to bring you this year?”
“A flower pot.”

Every once in a while, though, they have a moment of clarity, and will actually tell you what they really want. The trick is knowing which answer to use. By asking them so many times during the course of the year, she is able to compile a data set that she can then scan for repeat answers. Mrs. Claus happens to have a Masters in Statistics, and she uses it. She’s a genius.

I am only in charge of one gift at Christmastime. It is my job to take the boys shopping to get their mommy a present. My wife has either enough stubborn pride or misguided faith in me that she does not remind me of this task. Consequently, since it does not involve car maintenance and is not on any of my spouse-provided to-do lists, I usually forget and end up frantically pulling the kids out of bed late in the evening, two days before Christmas, to go shopping. For some reason, they’re pretty grumpy when we shop.

That reminds me – it’s pretty late and we haven’t bought her gift yet! I’d better go wake up the kids and get going. If the stores are closed, we can always go to the casino gift shop. Either that or the all-night auto parts place. I still need to buy new wiper blades, too. Hey, wait a second…

Do I hear two birds getting hit with one stone?

Merry Christmas, Mrs. Claus!

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2010 Marc Schmatjen


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