No Kids at Home Improvement

All our kids are gone! All our kids are gone!

I’ll probably shout the same thing when the third one finally ships off to:

A) College

B) Boot Camp

C) Taco Bell New Employee Orientation Day

(Complete toss-up at this point)

This happy occasion, however, is the result of church camp. All three boys are gone for the whole week, so my wife and I are doing what every healthy, loving, happily married couple does when they finally get the house to themselves – home improvement.

We dropped the boys off on Monday afternoon and immediately raced to dinner, followed by a romantic trip to Home Depot to browse the aisles in peace and quiet.

Then we headed home to get some more ice and Advil. My wife seems to be doing a little better than me after our week of chiseling off our old hardwood floors. I’m still nursing a few sore muscles and joints, pretty much everywhere on my body that I have a muscle and/or a joint. Back when we were first married, we could renovate all day long, but now we need to take it a little slower.

Our first full day without kids was spent hanging out with Jason, Paul, and Larry – the three gentlemen who are installing our beautiful new fake hardwood floors. Thankfully, the new floors do not get glued down, because after last week, if anyone ever tries to glue anything else down to my concrete slab, there is going to be a fight.

The first thing the guys did was remove half the downstairs baseboards, so we were immediately able to start our kid-free week off right – by sanding and repainting our old baseboards. They look amazing!

Today we had breakfast with Paul and Larry and then retired to the pool area to sand and paint. Around noon, we were able to get away for an intimate lunch at the hotdog shack in front of Home Depot when we made a run for more paint and rollers.

When we were finally finished with the morning’s allotment of baseboards, my wife had an amazing idea. She whispered it in my ear. It seemed like the perfect time, so we snuck off to the guest bedroom.

And started to paint it!

If you need us the rest of the week, we’ll be here, in the throes of renovation.

We might even paint the living room!

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!

46 at 46

I am turning 46 years old tomorrow, which is hard for my brain to accept, since it regularly tells my body I’m still 25. My elbow, my knees, and my right Achilles tendon, however, agree with the calendar.

They say with age, comes wisdom. I wish that were more true. Nonetheless, in honor of living through another trip around the sun, I have added to my list of thoughts, observations, and acquired “wisdom.”

Here it is - one for each year. You’re welcome, America.

1.  There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who prefer the toilet paper to come off the top of the roll, and those who prefer the bottom. The people who like it to come off the bottom of the roll are wrong.

2.  If beds were advertised the same way as tents, a queen-size mattress would “sleep nine adults comfortably.”

3.  The three-second rule has almost infinite extensions depending on how much you like the food that dropped.

4.  You never fully appreciate how crazy your family is until you have to explain all of them to your fiancé.

5.  I don’t understand why disappointed is not the opposite of appointed.

6.  Pi and the circumference of a circle have a similar relationship to pie and the circumference of a person.

7.  Here’s the main difference between men and women: Men can look at an ad for women's underwear and get excited. Not women in underwear, just the underwear itself. Women do not get excited looking at pictures of boxer shorts.

8.  You are wholeheartedly fooling yourself if you think the government is efficient at anything except taking your money.

9.  The clearest evidence that capitalism beats communism is that the Red Bull beverage company put a man in space. Take that, North Korea. Anheuser-Busch can probably shoot down your nukes.

10.  If you give enough money to the right charities, you will never have to buy address labels again.

11.  I am far past the electronic tipping point. I would much rather lose my wallet than my phone.

12.  You cannot use the phrase, “To be honest with you...”  without giving the listener the impression you aren’t always being honest.

13.  Life without beer, wine, and cheese would be horrible, but life without bacon would simply be pointless.

14.  When packing thirteen suitcases into the car for your wife, is it impossible to have ten of them be “on top” so she can get to them easily.

15.  Never get a woman personalized license plates like "HOT QT" or something like that, because eventually you, the boyfriend or husband, will have to drive the car and you will be mercilessly ridiculed by the rest of us.

16.  You can ask someone to do something, or you can tell them how you want it done, but you cannot do both.

17.  A good indicator of where you are in life is this: Does the advertisement of free food still affect your decision making?

18.  Fabric softener sheets go in the dryer, not the washer. Just FYI. I’m not saying I didn’t know that.

19.  There is no “t” or “t” sound in the word across. There is no “b” or “b” sound in the word supposedly. Please pronounce accordingly.

20.  Men are far more likely to clean things with spit than women are.

21.  Money and toilet paper have something in common – They’re both easy to take for granted until you run out. Also, in totally opposite, but equally dire situations, they can be substituted for each other.

22.  Everyone should drive while driving. Always.

23.  If you ask any guy to tell you a story about a time he almost died, he will have four stories just off the top of his head, and one will be from this year. If you ask women the same question, most of them will look at you like you’re crazy.

24.  One sure sign of getting old – When you start sitting down to put on your pants.

25.  Children and ceiling fans are simply incompatible. It’s science.

26.  In life, it is very important to remember where you are and why you're there. That way, when your podiatrist tells you to drop your shorts, you’ll ask some questions first.

27.  The hotel alarm clock - You can either take the time to figure out how it works before you go to bed, or you can figure it out in the dark at 4:30 A.M. when it unexpectedly goes off. Your choice.

28.  One of the funniest things ever written is this: “We’ve upped our contribution. Up yours!”

29.  People who don’t use their cruise control on the freeway should be pulled over and water-boarded.

30.  There are 21 words in the English language that need to be used more. They are: bailiwick, hootenanny, skullduggery, scofflaw, ballyhoo, shenanigans, donnybrook, catawampus, chicanery, cajoled, hullabaloo, besmirch, boondoggle, haberdashery, melee, befuddled, flummoxed, hoosegow, wiseacre, tomfoolery, and kerfuffle. Please begin immediately.

31.  Nothing is more interesting to a small child than what you are doing, provided that what you are doing is easier without small children involved.

32.  You cannot claim to be a grown woman, fully capable of taking care of yourself, and also claim that you do not know how to operate a toilet seat.

33.  We, as humans, all share a universal reaction – the automatic flinch when the driver hits the button and starts rolling up the car window under your arm.

34.  A carsick child and a blender without a lid or an off button have a lot in common.

35.  To be or not to be is not the question. The real question is, which towel in the guest bathroom am I allowed to use to dry my hands?

36.  Give a boy enough time with any object, whether it be a stale Cheerio, a bouncy ball, a doll, or a book, and he will eventually turn it into a weapon.

37.  "The only difference between men and boys is the price of their toys" is a pretty accurate saying, but it leaves out the other major difference: the speed at which they heal when they fall off those toys.

38.  New parents - The best thing to do when your infant cries at night is to set a timer for ten minutes. If the timer runs out before the baby stops crying, then you may get up and reset the timer.

39.  The yahoos who wear their pants down below their butts and have to waddle with their legs spread to keep their pants from simply falling to the ground are also the yahoos who are most likely to try to run from the police at some point. That is hilarious to me.

40.  As I get older, I find myself dividing the world into two categories: People I would let watch my kids for five minutes, and people I wouldn’t.

41.  The person who invented the hotel shower curtain rod that curves out away from the tub so the shower curtain doesn’t stick to your arm should receive the Nobel prize.

42.  If you want a good example of unbridled optimism, look at your smoke alarm. They all have "test weekly" printed on them. Yes, smoke alarm company, I’ll get right on that.

43.  Guys, do you ever have trouble figuring out if you’ve had too much to drink? Here’s a handy guideline:

“There is no way I can scratch that itch on my ankle while I’m standing here peeing, so I will not try.” – You’re still OK

“I can totally do it without peeing on myself.” – You are drunk

44.  A kid’s definition of “pool toy” is different than an adult’s. We think of pool toys as something designed to be played with in a pool. They define “pool toy” as anything they own, if it happens to be brought into the pool. Like a bike or a sandwich.

45.  No matter who you are, no matter where you're from, there is one shared experience that binds us all together as one people: The sheer horror of the ketchup or mustard water falling from the unshaken bottle and contaminating your food forever. I feel your pain.

46.  If you have to choose, it makes more sense to become a strong swimmer than a strong runner. You don’t automatically die when you stop running.

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!

Valentine's Day Part I and II - Reposts

You get a two-fer this Valentine’s Day. These words are as true today as when I wrote them oh, so many years ago. And unfortunately, I know even less about women now, so I have nothing new to add. Enjoy, and have the best Valentine’s Day you can possibly have, given the fact that it’s impossible to fully enjoy. Cheers!

“Valentine’s Day”

Originally posted February 14, 2012

I am coming up on ten years of marriage, so I thought, this Valentine’s Day, I would help all you guys out by imparting to you all of my knowledge about women. This should be pretty quick.

All you guys out there who have been married longer than ten years can refute this entire article, since marriage is an ever-changing, dynamic situation. All those of you out there who have been married less than ten years, treat this advice like the gospel itself. I know what I’m talking about!

All my vastly limited knowledge about women boils down to what I have learned about “quality time.”

In the beginnings of marriage, usually, unless you did things in the reverse order from the standard procedure, you don’t have any kids. You both work, and other than that, you have no responsibilities whatsoever. It’s awesome. You come home from work, and spend the entire evening together. You go out to dinner all the time, and you have more money than you know what to do with, even though, at the time, you think you’re poor. Boy, were you wrong.

Then the kids come and you find out the true definition of poor. When the kids are newborns, you foolishly think that you have no free time, but again, you are wrong. It is only when they grow up and start going to school and playing sports, and karate, and piano that you truly have no free time.

As your married life progresses and the kids get older and stop staying where you put them, your couple’s together time gets less and less. After almost ten years of marriage and three children, hypothetically seven, five, and three years old, you and your wife see each other for about twenty minutes a day.

As with anything in life, when you start running out of time, you invariably are forced to concentrate only on what is critical. For example, if you were only given five minutes per day to eat, you would not spend any of that five minutes chatting or doing the dishes. You would be stuffing your face with anything that was even remotely edible within arm’s reach for the entire five-minute period.

I think, as a general rule, guys tend to be much more pragmatic in those squeeze-play situations than women do. For instance, if a guy is on a boat and the captain suddenly starts shouting orders at him in an excited voice, most guys will tend to just grab the winch handle and start cranking it clockwise like they were told to do. It is more of a female trait to pause for a moment and wonder if the captain doesn’t think they can follow orders without being yelled at, or if they did something earlier in the day to make him angry with them.

When the couple’s together time gets squeezed down to twenty minutes per day, both parties naturally agree that they’d better make that time count, and make sure it’s all “quality time.” This is where the differences between men and women come into play. Both parties yearn for “quality time” with each other, but unfortunately, both parties have different definitions of “quality time.”

Now, like it or not, us men are pretty simple animals. Our “quality time” standard is universal, and does not involve clothing. Enough said.

Women, on the other hand, are very complex and complicated creatures. Their definition of “quality time” is a fast-moving target, based on a multitude of different factors that may or may not include the weather, the rude clerk at the department store, the temperature inside the house, their awesome boss, the cable company, their idiot boss, the smokin’ deal on spaghetti sauce in the paper, the kids’ reaction to dinner, the tone of your voice, the cost of living, the note from the teacher, the situation in the Middle-East, your cute text this afternoon, your son’s snotty attitude, the neighbor’s stupid dog, and any number of other things that you cannot possibly know about, but have a heavyweight bearing on the situation.

Nine times out of ten, your wife’s definition of quality time that day involves you doing a lot of listening, and cuddling on the couch, usually fully clothed. When that is the case, guess what you’ll be doing?

If you thought that you would be receiving some incredible nugget of wisdom or some sage-like advice at this point, you were dead wrong. I’ve got nothing. I don’t know any more about women than I did ten years ago. In fact, all told, I know a lot less.

All I really do know is that you’d better get on board with her definition of quality time if you ever hope to have her get on board with yours.

Happy Valentine’s Day, and good luck out there, men!

See you soon,

-Smidge

“Valentine’s Day, Part II”

Originally posted February 13, 2013

Valentine’s Day is a confounding “holiday.” The number of people around the world who actually enjoy Valentine’s Day is very, very small. Most women will probably tell you that they enjoy the day, but they’re lying. They’re only saying that because they don’t want to be seen as “anti-romance.” Truth be told, Valentine’s Day is very stressful for most people, men or women.

Let’s try to figure out who really likes Valentine’s Day. No man in the history of the world has ever liked it, so take out roughly half the population of the earth. Sure, it’s a day dedicated to romance, so if a guy plays his cards (and flowers) right, he might get rewarded for his efforts. However, this is a day where he is expected to be romantic, no matter what. If he happens to forget and go about his business as usual, he will be in deep trouble. Birthdays and anniversaries are one thing, but Valentine’s Day is the one day of the year where every guy in the world can simultaneously get into a special, life-long, still-bringing-it-up-twenty-five-years-later kind of trouble, just for doing the same thing we did the day before. By the mere act of being yourself, you can be branded for life as an uncaring idiot, if you happen to forget the 14th of February. Who needs that?

By my (incredibly limited) experience, cards and flowers have a much more positive impact on her emotions (and on your love life) if they are given when she is not expecting them. A specific day of the year when they are mandatory?  Far too much pressure. And speaking of pressure, it is entirely one-sided. There has never been a man in the history of the world who’s has had his feelings hurt when his wife or girlfriend didn’t get him a card on Valentine’s Day. The onus is all on the men. Heaven forbid you screw it up, boys. If you do, Valentine’s Night will be pretty lonely. It’ll just be you and your onus.

As I said at the beginning, no man has ever liked Valentine’s Day, but that doesn’t mean they all dislike it. Single men who are not dating have no particular feelings towards it one way or the other. They could care less about it. Single women who are not dating, however, hate Valentine’s Day. This is due to the fact that men and women are polar opposites when it comes to feelings about anything other than food and shelter being good things. Valentine’s Day for the single female is a myriad of emotions, all of them probably serving some sort of anthropological function, but none of them that you want to get anywhere within forty feet of. Most of these emotions will be doused with wine, which can either have a suppressive effect, much like throwing a bucket of gasoline on a single match, or in most cases, an accelerant effect, much like throwing a bucket of gasoline on a campfire. Either way, it is best to observe the forty-foot perimeter.

Valentine’s Day for the single male means a shorter wait at the pizza place.

For women who are dating or married, Valentine’s Day is stressful. Not as stressful as it is for their men, but some amount of the man’s stress is transferred to the woman. That’s because the women know that we won’t get it right, no matter how hard we try, so they spend the weeks before Valentine’s Day worrying about what we’ll get wrong. Will he screw it completely up like I think he will, or will he surprise me and get it almost right? Never mind perfect. That ain’t happening.

Women who are dating someone casually worry that their significant other will go overboard and try too hard, making Valentine’s Day awkward instead if nice. Women who are dating someone seriously worry about the marriage proposal. If she feels that the proposal is imminent or overdue, she will worry that he won’t ask her to marry him. If she feels like it isn’t proposal time just yet, she will worry that he will ask.

In my estimation, women who are already engaged to be married are the only ones who truly enjoy a stress-free Valentine’s Day. If a lady’s fiancé has a track record of forgetting Valentine’s Day, she probably wouldn’t be engaged to him in the first place, so there is much less of a chance that she’s worried he will forget. (Naïvely, she thinks he will always remember the day once they are married. Boy, is she wrong!) There is no proposal pressure or worry, since that already happened, and since both parties are in constant communication about romantic stuff like wedding plans, chances are the guy will have a pretty good idea of what to do for the gift. Jewelry, flowers, chocolates, just a simple card… He is about as locked in as he’s ever going to be on what she wants. He will never know for sure, however, because reading a woman’s mind is a lot like reading Sanskrit in the dark. You’re never going to get it exactly right.

So, of all the people currently on the planet, the only ones who enjoy a truly worry-free and relaxing Valentine’s Day are most of the engaged women, and a handful of female newlyweds.  That probably works out to be far less than one percent of the population.

This leads me to the question of why we still have Valentine’s Day in the first place.

I don’t buy the argument that it’s just a day created by the greeting card, flower, and chocolate industries. It goes deeper than that. We all feel like we have to participate, because the men don’t want to be seen as the Scrooge of February, and the women don’t want to be left out. Truth be told, everyone would be a lot happier and less stressed if the day just went away, but stopping Valentine’s Day is an all or nothing deal. If there is one single solitary guy left on the earth still buying flowers for his fiancé on the 14th of February, the rest of us are going to hear about it.

Until those engaged guys can stand up and say no, we’re all going to have to keep going with it. Those engaged guys are weak. They are scared to screw anything up, and rightfully so. They don’t know what they’re getting into, and they know they don’t know. They are yes men, just trying to survive. They will never help us.

So, we’re stuck with it. Do your best, and hope for the best. That’s all we can do.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go see if they have any Valentine’s cards left at the gas station mini-mart. My wife loves those cards. I think.

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!

Alaska, Part II

My wife and I are back from Alaska, and someone seems to have sabotaged our house while we were away. Everything is swaying back and forth. My parents stayed with our boys for the week while we were away on our amazing adventure at a floating fishing lodge. When we returned I tried to ask my folks if they felt the swaying also, but they were too busy running out the door to listen to me, yelling over their shoulders something about being tricked and never spending an entire week with all three of our boys ever again. Hmm… they looked tired.

I just assumed our boys would behave better for their grandparents than they do for us. I guess I was wrong. I had all sorts of assumptions about our Alaska trip before we left, and they all turned out to be wrong, too. For instance, the fishing lodge we went to had very strict luggage limitations, complete with a pre-printed packing list. I had assumed that the reason they were only allowing me to bring two pairs of pants had something to do with weight limits on the float plane. I was wrong. I now understand that the lodge sets clothing limits because they are helpful and kind. They want to help minimize the amount of your wardrobe you will lose when you inevitably set fire to your luggage once you’re home.

Burning your clothes is the only proven method to eliminate the stench infused in them after five days of salmon fishing in an 18-foot boat. You see, fishing on the ocean in Alaska is brutal and messy. I assumed our once-in-a-lifetime trip would be a lot more like a relaxing vacation, but I was wrong. Our days were filled with slipping, slamming, flopping, cutting, bruising, stabbing, and bleeding. And that was just trying to get the bait on the hook. You should have seen what happened once a fish was actually in the boat!

I had also assumed, based on all the talk about how many fish we were sure to catch, that catching said fish would be easy. I was wrong. Before arriving, I just figured you would put the line in the water, move the boat forward, and fish from all over the surrounding ocean would come to you. Not so. It turns out you are supposed to know where they are, using something called “local knowledge,” and you have to actually take the boat to them, and you are supposed to know what they are thinking based on a whole host of considerations.

Factors that affect where the fish are and how and why they might eat your bait include, but are not limited to: tides, currents, water depth contours, kelp, lure color, spinning lure accessories, spinning lure accessory color, spinning lure accessory spin rate, bait freshness, whale activity, boat speed relative to current speed, and direction of boat travel. We were also told later in the week that it was important to make sure your bait and lures were actually underwater, down where the fish are, and not skipping across the top of the water while you eat a sandwich, drink a beer, and look for whales. So many technical considerations.

All the other people who were staying at the lodge seemed to know all this beforehand, but I was the fishing equivalent of a hunter all decked out in camouflage with a deer rifle, wandering around the inside of a Macy's department store wondering why he’s not seeing any big bucks.

After re-watching the lodge’s orientation video a few times, my wife and I finally figured it out and started catching a lot of salmon. (Unfortunately, it was on the last day of our trip.) Apart from salmon tips, the video also explained how to operate the harpoon when landing a halibut. I had assumed I would not need to harpoon anything while in Alaska, but again, I was wrong. Sort of. You see, I am male, so naturally I have wanted to harpoon something since I first heard the word harpoon as a small child. My interest in harpooning something grew exponentially when I found out what a harpoon actually was. However, since I didn’t grow up in a family of 16^th century Dutch whalers, I never had too many opportunities. I did try to harpoon my older sister once with a full-sized shovel when I was five, but I only hit her in the thumb, and I forgot to attach a rope, so she got away.

On day three, exhausted from hearing everyone else’s amazing salmon catching stories, my wife and I tried halibut fishing. This required an entirely new set of considerations, mostly revolving around how to keep the boat over the same spot on the bottom while being pushed and blown all over the place by the tide and the wind up on top. Fortunately, the boat was equipped with about $10,000 worth of navigation and sonar equipment that proved to be absolutely no help with this task. We finally decided that the only way it would work was if I just drove the boat in reverse while she fished. I was fine with that though, because I knew if she did catch a halibut, I would be the one to get to harpoon it.

After about forty-five minutes of my wife questioning me on why I was unable to keep the boat in one place, and me trying to explain to her why the earth/moon azimuths were working against me, not to mention the severe tidal friction, she finally hooked into the big one. Two hundred feet straight down, Moby Halibut was on the other end of her line. She fought and reeled for what seemed like hours as I scrambled around the deck readying the harpoon. The harpoon’s detachable razor-sharp steel tip was attached to a sturdy rope, tied on the other end to an orange float buoy, in case the monster got away from you once harpooned, he wouldn’t be able to swim too far, just like when they attached the barrels to Jaws.

Up came the denizen from the deep, and in went the harpoon, just behind the pectoral fin, just as the video had shown. He thrashed and flipped and gnashed, but he was no match for the mighty seagoing duo of Mr. and Mrs. Alaska Tourism Board. We finally wrestled him into the boat, and after ten minutes or so of figuring out where we were, we raced back to the lodge to offload the beast. Back at the dock I was beaming with pride.

Me - “Did you see where I harpooned it? Just like the video, right? Nailed it!”

Johnny the deck hand – “Yeah. Good placement, but… uh… why did you harpoon it?”

Me – “I thought you were supposed to.”

Johnny – “No, not really. I mean, it’s fine, we just really only use the harpoon for the big ones.”

Me – “This isn’t a big one?”

(Sound of the entire Alaskan fishing lodge crew laughing)

Apparently, Moby Halibut was only seventeen pounds. A “harpoon-worthy” halibut in Alaska is closer to one hundred pounds. Basically, I harpooned a Fillet-O-Fish sandwich.

I don’t care. It was awesome.

Another assumption I had made was a long-standing one, and not related to the trip specifically. I had always assumed that my wife was a nice, kind-hearted person. No so. At least, not under certain circumstances in Alaska. When we were catching big Coho salmon, many fish were lost due to poorly set hooks. They fight and thrash like crazy, so getting them into the boat can be challenging, and given the high skill level required to actually find them and hook them in the first place, losing them was more than mildly defeating.

So there I was, happily living my life one sunny morning, smiling under the assumption that I knew my wife, until I accidentally missed netting one of her salmon, sending him jumping and thrashing away from the boat. He was still hooked, but my beautiful wife began swearing at me like an angry, drunken longshoreman. I tried to calm her down by pointing out that he was still hooked and we hadn’t lost him yet, and I even reminded her of how well I had harpooned the halibut, but she just told me to shut my #@!&* and %$#!@ and net her $@!#& fish this time. Alaska is no place for the tame. (Or for children, if you happen to miss netting one of my wife’s fish.)

Hmm… I really liked it up there, but I’m glad to be back on dry land, even if it is still moving around a little. My wife hardly ever swears at me here at home. Any assumptions I may have made about her being sweet, I surely had made the reverse assumptions when envisioning the staff of an Alaskan fishing lodge. Before arriving I had imagined a team of gruff, surly, smelly seadogs, barking orders and generally being salty, since all Alaskan fishermen are obviously like the crabbers on Deadliest Catch. I was wrong yet again.

The folks at the Sea Otter Sound Lodge are some of the nicest people on planet Earth.

At least I think they are. I never accidentally missed netting one of their fish. Who knows what they might be like then?

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!

Whole-House Fan Fan

Two weeks ago I wrote about how I failed to fix our broken air conditioner, but on the plus side, managed NOT to barbeque myself with giant exposed electrical cables while doing some amateur and ill-advised work in our electrical panel. All good news aside, I am sad to report that our air conditioner is still broken.

I’m not going to lie to you. It has been rough here. Tensions are high. Nerves are frayed. Wits are at their end.

It is hot inside our house.

We have been without A/C for almost three weeks now, and unfortunately for us, those three weeks have been some of the hottest on record here in Northern California. Other places might have been hot as well, but I don’t know, and frankly, I don’t care. I am afraid to turn on the TV for fear that it will either heat up the house even more or explode.

All I can tell you is our family would not do well in an equatorial country. Last Friday it was 109 degrees outside. Through the miracle of sagging and worn R40 insulation, it was only 94 degrees in our bedroom when we went to bed. Actually, I should say when I went to bed. My wife was sleeping downstairs where it was only 89 degrees. On Saturday morning she threatened to leave me and the kids and go stay at a friend’s house. She had a crazy look in her eyes. “You guys can’t come. There’s only room for me.”

I guess information, whether good or bad, is always handy to have. I now know that our cohesive family bond snaps like a dry twig around day four or five above 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and we move into an every-man-for-himself scenario. Live and learn.

There are only two things keeping us from going to a full-scale Lord of the Flies situation at this point: Cold showers and our whole-house fan.

The whole-house fan is really the eighth wonder of the modern world. There are two main types of whole-house fans to choose from. The first is the ducted variety. These have a fan or fans mounted inside your attic, with ductwork that draws the air from the interior of the home. They are very quiet. We do not have that kind.

The second kind is the ceiling-mounted variety. These are basically a slightly smaller version of a Bell Jet Ranger helicopter mounted to the ceiling of your hallway. These are incredibly loud. This is the kind we have.

Deafening prop wash noise aside, all whole-house fans work in the same manner. “The fan creates a ‘positive pressure’ in the attic and a ‘negative pressure’ inside the house, consequently drawing the cooler outside air in through open windows.”

I have not been up in the attic to experience what “positive pressure” feels like, but in the case of our home at least, “negative pressure” can be described better as “a howling 40-knot gale.” Our fan has two speed settings, and if you turn it on high, you have to make sure the children are tethered down.

The loudness and ferocity of the unit might be attributable to its size. We have the biggest model available in the free world. We were smart when we bought it a few years ago, shopping for it in the whole-house fan off-season. Because we purchased it in November we saved at least seven dollars, and were able to parlay that savings into an upgrade. The salesman sold us on the big one, presumably to best fit the size of our house, or possibly because the conversation went something like this:

Me: “Ooh, I want the big one!”

Salesman: “OK. Sign here quick.”

The key point in the operational description of the fan is really the term “cooler outside air.” This is critical, and in the case of our current three-week-long survival experiment, “cooler outside air” didn’t usually manifest itself until around midnight. This put us into a strange schedule of going to bed around one A.M. and sleeping until nine o’clock in the morning. By the time we get moving in the sluggish torpor of our deliciously cool 84-degree house, we are eating breakfast around eleven A.M. and having lunch at four o’clock. Basically, we’re now Italian.

Still, we can’t blame the whole-house fan for the lack of cool outside air. It can only do what it can do with the air it’s provided. On the plus side, even if it is not cooling us off as much as we might want, it is still cooling us down. Also, it provides a nice white noise while we sleep. It’s a lot like sleeping up inside the mechanical housing on an industrial wind turbine.

I love our whole-house fan. Not only for its economical cooling during normal summer weather, but for the safety it has provided us recently. I can say without hesitation that we would be dead without it. It is impossible to say whether we would have perished from heat stroke or from the wrath of mom, but one of them was definitely going to happen.

Thankfully, there was a break in the weather the other day and my wife decided begrudgingly to stay at home with us, and refrain from killing anyone. The A/C is scheduled to be actually fixed today, so our fingers are all crossed. It might just be the heat, but after three weeks of disappointment, I remain skeptical.

One thing is for sure, when the A/C actually does get fixed, we are going to have to ease ourselves back into the cooler temperatures. At this point 85 degrees inside the house actually feels comfortable. We went out to dinner the other night and our teeth were chattering inside the restaurant. I took the boys to the grocery store yesterday and they almost went hypothermic in the refrigerated aisle.

Still, having A/C back is going to be safer for everyone. My wife informs me that there is another heat wave coming, and she looks ready to snap any minute.

If you don’t hear from me next week, send someone to check on us.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2014 Marc Schmatjen

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

The Golf Ball Car Stop

Our house is pretty good-sized, at two stories and over three thousand square feet. We need that much space to raise our three boys. Actually, three thousand square feet is the bare minimum space in which my wife and I are willing to attempt to contain our three little tornados of joy. Three thousand square feet per kid would be a lot better, but no one wants to clean that much house. We have fantasized about building a barn in the backyard to keep them in, but it turns out the county frowns upon that sort of thing, not only from a zoning perspective, but also from a child welfare point of view. Go figure.

Even if we were allowed to build a barn, we wouldn’t have the room to do it. Our three thousand-plus square foot house is built on a lot that is roughly two hundred square feet. In order to accommodate the house and still have a backyard at least large enough to turn around in, the builder conveniently made the “three-car” garage just big enough to comfortably fit one mid-sized sedan, if you angle it in. So, naturally, we park the giant SUV in the garage.

After I sanded the first few layers of paint from the top of the garage door wood trim, and deflated the tires a little, we were able to squeeze the Ford Expedition into the garage. When the front bumper was within thirteen inches of the back wall of the garage, the garage door was able to close, missing the rear bumper by about three inches on its way down. It was clear that we would need some sort of indicator for my wife to be able to know when she was far enough in, but not too far in. To make things easy, I got out my big cordless drill and drilled a hole through my finger. After I stopped the bleeding with toilet paper and electrical tape, I managed to also drill a hole through a golf ball, which was actually my original goal. I hung it on a string from the ceiling, so it would contact the windshield directly in front of the driver’s face. Drive in until the golf ball touches the glass, and you’re there. What could be simpler?

Well, if you are my wife, I guess a lot of things might be simpler, because the golf ball was obviously not a good solution. I knew right away that we might be in trouble with the concept when my mother-in-law saw me installing the golf ball and asked, “What the hell did you do to your finger?” Then she added, “Aren’t you worried that the golf ball will crack the windshield?”

Hmm… Well, when the ball touches the windshield, the front bumper of the three-ton SUV is about a foot from the living room wall, so if she’s coming into the garage fast enough to crack the windshield with the stationary hanging golf ball, I think we’re going to have bigger problems than minor glass repair…

“Shouldn’t be a problem.”

It turns out that I really didn’t have to worry about that problem at all, because unbeknownst to me at the time, my wife was never planning on actually hitting the golf ball at all. She likes to drive up close to it, but not actually touch the windshield to it.

When I questioned this method she said, “Well, I get close enough to it.”

“Well, maybe, but when the ball is touching the windshield, the rear bumper is only three inches from the door, so if you’re more than three inches from it, the door is going to come down on the car.”

“Well, I get closer than that.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

Do you know how you could know for sure? HIT THE BALL!!

“I’m just worried that if you don’t hit the ball, you might be too far away.”

“Oh, relax. The door has never hit the car.”

That may very well be the case, but I have gone out into the garage and seen the ball inches away from the windshield, and gone to the back of the car to see the door so close to the back bumper that you couldn’t have slipped a playing card between them. How does she do that? Why does she do that?

Well, I still have no idea, but my wife and I switched cars a while back, and now I am finally in charge of parking the Expedition correctly in the walk-in closet cleverly disguised as our garage. It was going great for a while. I would drive in, snuggle the windshield right up to the ball, and get out of the car, happy in the knowledge that the door would come down ridiculously close to the rear bumper, but at least not on it.

Until yesterday. Yesterday something went horribly wrong. Yesterday the Expedition was parked safely in the shoe box garage. The golf ball was resting exactly where it should have been; on the windshield, directly in front of my face. I loaded up the boys, hopped into the driver’s seat, smiled at the golf ball, and turned the key in the ignition. Now, nothing bad happened with the garage door or the rear bumper, but it turns out that at some point between parking the car and getting back in to leave again, one or more of the boys had been sitting in the driver’s seat, playing with the switches and knobs.

As soon as the car sprang to life, all sorts of new things were happening. The radio was blaring a Spanish channel, we were signaling for a left turn, the high beams were on, and much to my dismay, the windshield wipers came sweeping across the glass. The main wiper blade teed off on the golf ball like a three iron, but instead of heading for the green, the string from the ceiling sent the ball in a wide circular trajectory, coming right back around to bounce off the windshield high on the passenger side. It was spinning its way back for a second ricochet off the glass as the wiper blades were coming back down to their home position. I frantically grabbed for the wiper controls on the turn signal lever, but it was down lower than it should have been because we were also turning left in this imaginary midnight Tijuana rainstorm. I fumbled for the controls as I watched the string get caught by the passenger-side wiper blade, and as I accidentally wrenched the wiper speed control knob all the way in the wrong direction, I saw my golf ball get unceremoniously torn off its ceiling mount, string and all, by my wiper blades which were now slamming back and forth across the glass on the highest setting. The boys were hooting and hollering in the back seat as I sat quietly and watched my golf ball get whipped back and forth across the windshield at 800 MPH.

Hmm…

Maybe my wife had a point. Is it possible that she too was once subjected to the old Mexican Hurricane gag? Did she hold out on me about her reasons for never quite reaching the golf ball?

Hmm…

Probably not. But I can tell you this: When I put the new golf ball up, it was three inches closer to the living room wall, and now I just drive up close to it.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2014 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

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

A Salt-Free Valentine's Day

Son Number Three had surgery on Valentine’s Day last year. It was only ear tubes and adenoid removal, but it was enough to get me off the hook. I initially thought the doctor was making up the word “adenoid” just to help my cause, but he assured me later that they are a real thing. Anyway, my wife was so focused on making sure her little baby boy was doing OK that I was able to slide on all things Valentine’s Day related. Thanks, little man!

Our pediatrician sounded a little annoyed yesterday when I called to inquire about available surgery openings for this coming Friday. He started out caring and concerned when I mentioned surgery, but the conversation kind of fell apart after I told him I didn’t really have anything specific in mind, since all three boys are perfectly healthy at the moment. I explained that last year worked out so well for me, Valentine’s Day-wise, I was hoping he could come up with some kind of elective surgery for one of the boys. I told him it obviously didn’t have to be anything major.

He had the nerve to hang up on me, and I think we might need to find a new pediatrician. Geez, man, take it easy. A simple “No” would have been fine.

Since it seems that children’s medical visits won’t be helping me avoid Valentine’s Day this year, I am going to turn my attention to a global crisis instead.

Here’s my story: I was going to get my wife chocolates this year, but with the looming sea salt crisis, I just can’t in good conscience contribute to the problem any longer.

Sure, salted caramels are yummy, and the perfect Valentine’s Day gift, but what am I, a monster? Why don’t I just get her a coat made out of baby seal fur with a sea turtle shell purse?

Have you ever seen a salted caramel advertised with regular salt? Of course not. Everything is made with “sea salt” now. This must end. For goodness sake, my discount tortilla chips now advertise “made with sea salt” on the side of the 30-pound bag. Do you have any idea how much sea salt is required to properly salt 30 pounds of tortilla chips? I don’t either, but it must be a lot.

Our love of sea salt has gotten completely out of hand. I’m sure the world’s oceans are being desalinized at alarming rates, all in the name of nachos and chocolate, and it’s only a matter of time before the effects will be seen on our sea life. While it is true that humans cannot live without nachos and chocolate, we can source the salt more responsibly.

I’m sure there is some two-bit environmental activist group somewhere already hard at work trying to educate the public on this, but they are likely having trouble getting their message out because they spent their advertising budget on pot and Cheetos. It’s time for this disturbing issue to receive the kind of worldwide exposure that only Just a Smidge can bring.

World ocean de-salting must end! I don’t care if Valentine’s Day has to suffer. So be it. Our precious marine ecosystems deserve better than this!

Global oceanic catastrophes aside, let’s also not forget the human side of this. No one ever considers all the regular salt miners who are out of work. It’s not as if our demand for salt increased. We simply became enamored with sea salt. In the rush for our oceans’ salty booty, no one stopped to think about all the families that would be affected inland. Besides the obvious layoffs and associated lack of income, hundreds of thousands of people are being deprived of even saying, “Well, I guess it’s back to the salt mines.” That is tragic.

Let’s all work together this year to keep Valentine’s Day simple. No more expensive chocolates! Think of the fish. Think of the families. Think of the children. Think of the children of the fish. Tragic.

Roses? Sure, you could buy her some overpriced flowers if you don’t mind not breathing after we’ve cut down all the world’s vegetation in the name of love.

A $10 Hallmark card? Don’t even get me started on the trees!

A simple kiss on the cheek and an “I love you” should suffice for any couple truly in love. Don’t selfishly destroy the planet just to make me look bad!

And remember, if my wife asks, my objection to Valentine’s Day is an ecological one, not economic.

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!

Valentine's Day

I am coming up on ten years of marriage, so I thought, this Valentine’s Day, I would help all you guys out by imparting to you all of my knowledge about women. This should be pretty quick.

All you guys out there who have been married longer than ten years can refute this entire article, since marriage is an ever-changing, dynamic situation. All those of you out there who have been married less than ten years, treat this advice like the gospel itself. I know what I’m talking about!

All my vastly limited knowledge about women boils down to what I have learned about “quality time.”

In the beginnings of marriage, usually, unless you did things in the reverse order from the standard procedure, you don’t have any kids. You both work, and other than that, you have no responsibilities whatsoever. It’s awesome. You come home from work, and spend the entire evening together. You go out to dinner all the time, and you have more money than you know what to do with, even though, at the time, you think you’re poor. Boy, were you wrong.

Then the kids come and you find out the true definition of poor. When the kids are newborns, you foolishly think that you have no free time, but again, you are wrong. It is only when they grow up and start going to school and playing sports, and karate, and piano that you truly have no free time.

As your married life progresses and the kids get older and stop staying where you put them, your couple’s together time gets less and less. After almost ten years of marriage and three children, hypothetically 7, 5, and 3 years old, you and your wife see each other for about 20 minutes a day.

As with anything in life, when you start running out of time, you invariably are forced to concentrate only on what is critical. For example, if you were only given five minutes per day to eat, you would not spend any of that five minutes chatting or doing the dishes. You would be stuffing your face with anything that was even remotely edible within arm’s reach for the entire five minute period.

I think, as a general rule, guys tend to be much more pragmatic in those squeeze-play situations than women do. For instance, if a guy is on a boat and the captain suddenly starts shouting orders at him in an excited voice, most guys will tend to just grab the winch handle and start cranking it clockwise like they were told to do. It is more of a female trait to pause for a moment and wonder if the captain doesn’t think they can follow orders without being yelled at, or if they did something earlier in the day to make him angry with them.

When the couple’s together time gets squeezed down to 20 minutes per day, both parties naturally agree that they’d better make that time count, and make sure it’s all “quality time.” This is where the differences between men and women come into play. Both parties yearn for “quality time” with each other, but unfortunately, both parties have different definitions of “quality time.”

Now, like it or not, us men are pretty simple animals. Our “quality time” standard is universal, and does not involve clothing. Enough said.

Women, on the other hand, are very complex and complicated creatures. Their definition of “quality time” is a fast-moving target, based on a multitude of different factors that may or may not include the weather, the rude clerk at the department store, the temperature inside the house, their awesome boss, the cable company, their idiot boss, the smokin’ deal on spaghetti sauce in the paper, the kids’ reaction to dinner, the tone of your voice, the cost of living, the note from the teacher, the situation in the Middle-East, your cute text this afternoon, your son’s snotty attitude, the neighbor’s stupid dog, and any number of other things that you cannot possibly know about, but have a heavyweight bearing on the situation.

Nine times out of ten, your wife’s definition of quality time that day involves you doing a lot of listening, and cuddling on the couch, usually fully clothed. When that is the case, guess what you’ll be doing?

If you thought that you would be receiving some incredible nugget of wisdom or some sage-like advice at this point, you were dead wrong. I’ve got nothing. I don’t know any more about women than I did ten years ago. In fact, all told, I know a lot less.

All I really do know is that you’d better get on board with her definition of quality time if you ever hope to have her get on board with yours.

Happy Valentine’s Day, and good luck out there, men!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 Marc Schmatjen

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