Are You People In-Seine?

The Paris Olympics are in full swing, and many of us have mostly gotten over the opening ceremonies by now.

If you missed the torrential regatta, you were one of the lucky ones. Here’s a brief recap:

Paris apparently cut off all communications early with the International Olympic Committee regarding the opening ceremony plans. Then they assembled a planning and project management committee consisting of the Parks and Rec department, the maritime academy, and a homeless guy named Pierre.

“Why have the opening ceremonies where the athletes can all be together and the people of the world can clearly see them, in a comfortable environment such a giant Olympic stadium of some sort?” they asked. “That’s so sensible and traditional. We have a river.”

So, the athletes arrived to nowhere on boats. They just motored on the Seine in what can only be described as a hurricane without as much wind. I know France cannot be blamed for the rain, but somehow, it’s still their fault.

While the athletes got to mingle with no one except whomever was also on their boat, other people along a three-mile (or 67-kilometer) route got to experience live music and dancing, and people up on poles, swinging in the wind. They did not get to see the athletes, however, since the Olympic games are not about them.

Then the big finale began. A floating rock came up the river with a flaming piano and a seasick singer belting out “Imagine” and later, most of her dinner.

Then a silver, caped, Olympic antihero rode up the Seine on a weird chrome mechanical horse on top of a submarine. Her cape was the Olympic flag, and she was charged with bringing it approximately seven miles along the three-mile route.

After an hour of riding on top of a very visible invisible submarine, the rider got on a real horse and rode under the Eiffel Tower. Then she got off that horse and walked, ever so slowly, up a 2000-kilometer stage, shaped like the Eiffel Tower.

The tower shot lasers. The slowest rider/walker on Earth delivered the flag to some people who did not have the Olympic flame. Where was the flame? Was it extinguished by the rain?

No! Hats off to the Olympic torch designers, because that thing apparently can’t be put out by mere monsoons. We catch up with the flame back on a boat! Another damn boat? Yes, and it’s going the wrong way, opposite the athletes, who are still waiting to see Lady Gaga and have no idea any of this is happening.

Everyone who is not on a boat is under the Eiffel Tower wondering who the weird flag lady is and getting hyped for a Celine Dion concert. The athletes are not invited.

Neither is the flame. It goes on a boat to where no one is.

When they finally dock the flame at a city park of some kind, it gets carried approximately two and a half feet each by 600 people before it reaches a 100-year-old French cyclist, now on four wheels, in a wheelchair. He rolls it to two other people, but at this point, no one has the capacity to care who they are or why they are qualified to be there.

The unnamed duo walks the flame across a gangplank to a balloon and together hold the flame up to the cheers of tens of people.

Then they light the Olympic cauldron, and the cauldron lifts off and brings a massive flame high above the city. Any living French person over 85 years old, including our cyclist, has a PSTD-induced heart attack.

Far away from the flame or any of the athletes, whose boats were last seen entering the English Channel, Celine Dion sings in French, as if she had been speaking French her whole life. The crowd of non-athletes and non-flame-bearers goes insane.

Everyone, including the broadcasters, are confused about whether it's over, until an unfortunate gust from the storm breaks the flaming balloon’s tether. It is last seen heading toward the North Sea over Belgium.

Meanwhile, the surfing competition concludes in Tahiti, because they are thirteen days ahead of Paris time.

France publicly apologizes to Lebron James, and finally ends the opening ceremonies by formally surrendering to the athletes from the Trinidad and Tobago ski boat, the only country to make landfall on French soil from the Seine flotilla.

Thankfully, the English Navy was able to rescue a majority of the remaining athletes, and the rest of the games are under way!

Go ‘Merica!

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Whole-House Fan Fan - Repost

Our air conditioner is going strong.

*sound of me knocking on every piece of wood in a six-block radius*

It has been running continuously for four weeks straight – and I mean the 24/7 kind of continuously – minus a four-day period when we were able to turn it off to go out of town. I’m not going to lie – I was a little afraid to hit the off switch. I thought about just leaving it on and eating an insanely unnecessary electric bill for fear of upsetting any delicate balance that may be going on inside the old unit.

By the grace of God it came back on and we remain cool here inside our house that seems to be located on the surface of the sun at the moment. In order to appreciate how blessed we are right now, I decided to re-read what I wrote about almost exactly ten years ago, when we weren’t so fortuitous.

I thought you might want to read it too, so here it is. And if you happen to be currently going through the same thing we were ten years ago, I sincerely hope that you

a) have a whole-house fan, and

b) don’t get murdered by your significant other.

Stay cool, and enjoy.

 

August 6, 2014

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 © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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The Real Last Day of School - Repost

Son Number Two is graduating from high school tomorrow, and last Friday we got to go back to his elementary school so the seniors could visit all the kids in their caps and gowns. (The seniors were in the caps and gowns, not the kids.)

It was a fun reminder of the elementary days. Fun for us parents and the seniors. And probably for the kids. But I gotta tell you, those elementary teachers looked tired. They looked worn down. They looked ready to be done. That’s when I remembered what the last two weeks of elementary school are like – a complete waste of time.

It’s a slightly more productive two weeks now that they’re in high school, because at least they have a few finals, but it’s still a lot of wasted hours.

Here's what I had to say on the subject back in 2015 when we were in the thick of it:

 

We are down to the last two weeks of school, and frankly, everyone has quit trying. I say two weeks, but really it’s eight school days. Seven if you don’t count the last day, which is on Thursday next week. We can’t even make it all the way to Friday.

Next Thursday is officially the last day of school, but the real last day of school was the Friday before the Memorial Day weekend. That was when the last bit of actual learning took place for this school year. Homework has stopped. Spelling and math tests have stopped. Everything educational has stopped. This week and next are just movies and cupcakes and field trips.

And when I say field trips, I don’t mean a trip to a museum or a historical monument. I mean walking to the movie theater and walking to the park. Why walking? Because it takes up more time than riding the bus. They’re just looking for activities to fill the time at this point.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticizing. I’m not concerned about this at all. I don’t blame the teachers for un-educational time-fillers. I empathize. I feel their pain. And I totally understand the logic behind it.

You have to have the useless weeks at the end.

Here’s the real-world scenario they’re dealing with: Imagine the office where Bob has come down to his last week before retirement. The last five days at a job before he will never go there again. Now imagine you’re Bob’s manager or coworker.

“Hey Bob, can you handle the really annoying and overtime-filled Jenkins account for the last five days you’re here, until you’re gone forever?”

“Sure, I’ll handle it,” says Bob, with a smile on his face.

Bob is still smiling later that morning as he hands the Jenkins file to the janitor and heads out for lunch.

It’s just like that for the teachers, except they have twenty-five little Bobs.

Bob’s last week is filled with sleeping in, leaving early, extended lunches with his favorite clients, spider solitaire, and Facebook and Twitter updates (#FourDaysTillPermanentVacationEqualsFourMartiniLunch, #DontBeJealous, #ImOuttaHere, #9to5OnTheGolfCourse).

Ending a long-term endeavor like a job or a school year is a paradox. It goes like this:

What are we here to do?

Be productive.

Can we really be productive on the last day?

No.

Then should we have the last day?

No.

OK, we’ll get rid of the last day. Now the second to last day is the last day.

Can we really be productive on the last day?

No.

Then should we have the last day?

No.

You see the problem. If we eliminate the useless last two weeks of school, then we have a new end date, which will naturally be preceded by two weeks of uselessness. So, we get rid of those two weeks and move it back again.

You have to have the two useless last weeks or pretty soon we just show up for the first day of school and they say, “Great job. See you next year.”

So here we are. In the eight-day window of time-fillers.

Classroom pajama parties – Maybe if we tell them to wear their pajamas and bring pillows they’ll actually lay on the floor instead of climbing the walls. It’s worth a shot.

Walking trip to the water park – Sounded like a good idea, but in drought-stricken California at the moment, the water park consists of colored pipes sticking out of the ground with no water coming out of them. Whatever, let’s go anyway. It’ll burn a day.

The talent show – School-wide time-filler consisting of 473 acts. The acts have a 100% bravery ratio but, sadly, only a 9% talent ratio. Gets us out of the classroom, so let’s do it.

Walking trip to the movie theater – What’s playing? Who cares?

Day on the green – Put them all out on the soccer field. Activities? They’ll probably figure something out. Just lock the doors so they don’t come back in. Teachers can take turns rotating to their classrooms to sit in the quiet.

And finally…

The last day of school – It’s a minimum day. School ends at 12:20. Why do we even go through the charade of keeping them here for four hours? We’re not going to actually do anything. Shouldn’t we just show up in the morning, check them out on the clipboard, gather up the stuff from their desk and hand them off to the parents?

Come to think of it, why can’t we just check them out when they get picked up on Wednesday afternoon?

That’s a good idea. Next year we’ll just eliminate this useless last day.

Have a great summer, Bob.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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I'm on a Boat!

We are on a cruise ship right now. I mean, if everything went as planned, we’re on a cruise ship right now. I purposely didn’t bring my laptop on the cruise, due to obvious moisture concerns (many of our cruise group spill their drinks regularly), so I wrote this column before we left.

We should be in the Caribbean by now, and rest assured, I am disappointed if we haven’t seen pirates yet. I will report on my findings when I retrieve my laptop from the desk at Miami International Gate J15, where I left it for safekeeping. I’ll just grab it on my way back through later this week.

This is my first cruise, so I was on a steep learning curve as far as preparations went. There was a lot to learn. Since it’s cruise season (they tell me), I want to impart some of the knowledge I’ve gleaned in this process so any other rookie cruisers can benefit from my experience.

There are some things you’ll need ahead of time.

First and foremost is a cool cruise group name. Chances are, you’ll be cruising with friends, and apparently you can’t show up to the ship without a group name. Prior to sailing, we hadn’t picked a winner, but our tentative list of choices was:

Feeling Nauti

On Cruise Control

All Hands On Derek (This one really only works for us since one of our cruise group is named Derek. Otherwise, you’d have to find a Derek in Miami, and that can get dicey.)

Tropic Like It’s Hot

I’d Sailor

The Prostates of the Caribbean

Nauti Beaches

I Like Big Boats and I Cannot Lie

The Caribbean Wine Mixer (Only funny to Step Brothers fans. So, obviously, really funny!)

We Shore Did

Oh, Ship!

and

Vitamin Sea

You can all vote for your favorite and I’ll let you know what we landed on later when I get back to Gate J15 and the nice man who offered to watch my computer for me.

The second important thing you’ll need to bring is all of your money. You’ll spend most of it up front, of course, but you’ll need to bring the rest for tips and “incidentals.” Incidentals are defined as half the things to do or eat on the boat that conveniently are not included in the exorbitant base price.

The third thing you’ll need, about a month before departure, is an Amazon account, a full tank of gas in your wife’s car, and a clear path to the Amazon returns counter at Kohl’s. I wasn’t aware of this, but apparently, it’s illegal for women to bring any previously worn or even previously owned clothes onto a cruise ship. This law resulted in Amazon corporate deciding to just dedicate one driver solely to our home address. His name is Steve. Great guy. I’m his kids’ godfather now.

The fourth thing you’re going to want for your cruise is non-hurricane-y weather. As I write this, Tropical Storm Bret is making its way through the Caribbean, with Tropical Storm Cindy right behind it, preparing to wreak havoc on our cruising path. Now, it will be what it will be, and I’m sure we’ll have a fun time no matter what, but news reports about tropical storms can lead your wife, as it did mine, to some late panic shopping on Amazon.

Panic shopping isn’t good for anyone. Especially Steve. He looked tired when he dropped us off at the airport in his Amazon van.

Ahoy,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2023 Marc Schmatjen

 

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The Dumbest Rule I've Ever HOA'd of

Smack dab in the middle of our summer of endless road trips, bookended by two very long drives, we had a magical week of not getting in the car very much when we stayed at a rental house in Sunriver, Oregon. If you have never been to Sunriver, you should really go. And if you have been to Sunriver, chances are you’re still trapped there, because it is an insane maze of roundabouts and bike paths that looks like the planner’s three-year-old just scribbled all over the blueprints five minutes before the deadline.

It is a wonderful place to visit, nestled alongside the Deschutes River, with golf courses, waterfalls, hiking, biking, and some of the world’s finest microbreweries just down the road in Bend (if you can find your way out to get there).

All that being said, I don’t think I’d ever want to actually live in Sunriver. It has nothing to do with the area. Like I said, it’s fantastic, and I’m sure I would eventually figure out the road system. It’s just that I don’t think I would get along with the homeowner’s association very well.

If you have an HOA where you live, chances are Sunriver’s HOA makes yours look like a Libertarian convention. You are allowed to walk or ride a bike on the Sunriver paths, but never ever should you even think about riding a scooter or a pair of rollerblades. You can keep your overpowered e-bike in the garage and don’t even get me started if you think you’ll be riding a skateboard anywhere around here.

If you think you are going to have an RV or a boat, you’d better start planning your fully-enclosed structure in which to hold it now. And when you are done planning that structure, you can just shoot those plans over to the design committee, where we will completely change them to our liking. And don’t even thing about trying to build that structure yourself. All contractors must be registered with the HOA. None of those “outside” bozos.

Thinking of trimming your tree? Think again. You need a permit for that. Did one of your trees fall down? Don’t touch it until you talk to us and we see fit to grant you a permit to do so.

If you are planning to have firewood, you had damned well better stack it in a rectangular fashion. No linear stacking! This is not a third-world nation.

Paint color. Exterior light diffusing. How long the refrigerator repair guy can park at your house (four hours max). The list goes on and on.

Like I said, it’s a great spot to vacation, but if you’re going to try to fine me for cutting a branch off my own tree near my linearly-stacked firewood, we’re not going to be friends.

My absolute favorite of all the Sunriver HOA rules, however, came to light when we planned our patriotic three-hour Fourth of July tube float down the Deschutes. Our rental house was close to the river, and I scouted out (on my traditionally leg-powered bicycle) the perfect spot to get out of the river and walk about forty yards down the path back to our house.

When I went down to inspect the perfect little disembarking beach, it had a sign that said No River Float Take-Out Here. The sign went on to helpfully explain that no one on a tube is allowed to get out of the river anywhere in Sunriver, except at the marina (which is a private, members-only club and therefore off limits to you) and a public canoe take-out area four river miles further down.

You are more than welcome to enter the river here and swim, and then get out of the river here. You are welcome to enter the river here with a tube, and splash around right here, and then get out here. You are forbidden, however, from floating down river from anywhere else on a tube and getting out here.

Hmm… that’s pretty funny. I think we’ll just get out here.

Of all the crazy HOA rules – or just rules in general – that I’ve ever heard of, this one seems to be the least enforceable. This could actually be the world’s most unenforceable rule.

“You aren’t allowed to get out of the moving river.”

That is so stupid it’s humorous. I’m having real trouble trying to imagine anything as asinine as someone standing on the shore of a lake, river, or the ocean, and trying to tell someone else that they aren’t allowed to get out of the water.

We went ahead with our delightful float and got out of the river where we wanted to, because we’re logical American humans. I was actually hoping some HOA-loving homeowner, or better yet, a member of the board, would be there when we got out of the river next to their nice sign. I was really looking forward to someone trying to explain to me how attempted murder was one of their sacred bylaws. But alas, our river extrication was uneventful.

One of my goals in life is to never be involved in a lawsuit, but if someone tried to sue me because my family got out of a river, it would totally be worth it. I would have the time of my life tearfully explaining how my emotional support river otter (that I met that fateful day) can’t even curb the nightmares from the PTSD of my wife and children almost drowning at the hands of an evil HOA.

The only problem would be that I’d end up owning one or more Sunriver houses in the court settlement and then I’d have to follow all their other crazy rules.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2021 Marc Schmatjen

 

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An Open Letter to the Chevrolet Engineering Group

Dear Chevrolet Engineering Group,

I am in the middle of a series of very, very long family road trips this summer. I just spent eighteen days in our Chevrolet Suburban with my wife, mother-in-law, and three teenage sons. We traveled over 4000 miles across the southwestern United States in just under 600,000 hours.

We’re back on the road again now for the second trip of the summer. Yesterday a wildfire had forced the closure of our highway, which added two hours to what would have already been an eight-hour drive. We had to take a few “scenic byways,” one of which was getting restriped, so six hours into the drive we got to spend a half hour driving exactly eight miles an hour behind a paint truck. Did I mention the whole family was in the car?

Situations like that can cause a man to start thinking. Deep thinking about a number of different subjects. Like whether or not your life insurance policy would still be payable to your family if you faked your own death successfully. And how best to go about faking your own death while on a road trip. And car design.

This brings us to the reason for today’s letter. I have a few ideas for improving the Suburban.

I’m sure when you all designed the interior of the eight-passenger SUV, you were mostly concerned about leg room, cup holders, seat belts, etc. That’s all well and good, but let’s dive a little deeper. You gave us eight seats, but who’s in those seats? Answering that question opens a lot more possibilities for design improvements and add-ons.

For instance, in my case, three of the back seats are being occupied by my teenage sons. This is where a targeted individual seat Taser system would come in very handy. After the first zap or two, I suspect all I would need to do is hover my finger over the Taser control panel to get one of them to remove his hand from the other’s throat.

And why is everyone in the car so close to me? The Suburban is long, and that's great, but can we make it longer? I'm talking six, maybe even seven or eight rows. I’m talking long enough that an intercom system would be required. I don’t care about parking. We can gas up at truck stops.

How about an individual seat belt locking system, accessed with a password, to go along with the Taser control panel? I would like the option to lock one, two, or all of the seatbelts so I can get out of the car and no one can follow me, in case I need some alone time.

And how about one of those glass limousine partitions behind my driver seat? The only controls for it would be up front, of course, and it would obviously need to be soundproof. The option for clear glass as well as blackout glass would be great.

Come to think of it, that glass partition needs to be airtight as well as soundproof. This would solve some obvious problems and also open us up to a bunch of new ideas.

Teenage boys smell, so just closing it would be beneficial in many cases, but what if we added an aggressive air freshener option? Close the partition and nuke the back with a Febreze bomb! That’s what we need.

And as long as we’re exploring gas deploying technology, why not a menu setting for choosing a mild sleeping gas? Nothing major. Just enough to knock out four to six adults for a few hours. Quiet time for the driver at the push of a button.

I think that would be a top selling option on the new and improved Extended Length Family Road Trip Edition Suburban.

We just need to make sure that partition is really airtight. Eight miles an hour is already enough to make you want to nod off.

Thanks for your attention. I look forward to seeing the new improvements.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2021 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Google Maps Timeline Alert

From: Google Maps Timeline

Date: May 8^th, 2020

Re: Your April 2020 Update

This Timeline email is an automated summary of places you’ve been, which may be fewer this month due to the COVID-19 response in your area.

Here’s your new Timeline update!

You visited (1) city and visited (17) places

You traveled (110) miles, totaling (8) hours

Hmm, looks like you’re staying close to home and following COVID quarantine guidelines. Thanks for doing your part. We’ll all get through this together. Stay safe!

 

 

 

From: Google Maps Timeline

Date: May 8^th, 2021

Re: Your April 2021 Update

This Timeline email is an automated summary of places you’ve been, which may be fewer this month due to the COVID-19 response in your area.

Here’s your new Timeline update!

You visited (4) cities and visited (37) places

You traveled (460) miles, totaling (26) hours

Well, it’s been a year and it looks like you are getting out a little more. That’s great, but let’s all remember that we are still being advised to limit our travel to only the necessary trips. Take care!

 

 

 

 

From: Google Maps Timeline

Date: June 6^th, 2021

Re: Your May 2021 Update

This Timeline email is an automated summary of places you’ve been, which may be fewer this month due to the COVID-19 response in your area.

Here’s your new Timeline update!

You visited (6) cities and visited (56) places

You traveled (800) miles, totaling (54) hours

OK, let’s all remember that we’re not out of the woods yet. We still need to get a lot of people vaccinated before we can put this thing behind us, and you seem to be getting out quite a bit more. Looks like it’s mostly carpool type stuff between school and home, but we see you’re taking more trips out of town as well. Be aware that we all haven’t been advised that unnecessary travel is OK yet. Take care!

 

 

 

From: Google Maps Timeline

Date: June 23^rd, 2021

Re: Emergency June 2021 Intervention

This Timeline email is an automated summary of places you’ve been, which may be fewer this month due to the COVID-19 response in your area.

Emergency June Timeline update!

You visited (54) cities and visited (232) places, a lot of which we’re not even sure were actual places.

You traveled (4385) miles in just the last 18 days, totaling more hours than we could count, even with our giant supercomputers.

We really need to check in with you! You seem to have gone crazy. We have record of you being at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, so “bat guano crazy” might be a real possibility for you.

Look, man, Carlsbad is so hell-and-gone in the corner of New Mexico that there is no way you can convince us that was necessary. And speaking of unnecessary – the Roswell, New Mexico International UFO Museum? Really, bro?

You also stopped in a place called Cuba, New Mexico. Not sure what business you could have had there, but we have record of a post from your wife, laughing about “peeing in Cuba,” so it doesn’t seem like it was a work-related visit.

Speaking of peeing, we also have record of a post about your whole family peeing “on the middle of Hoover Dam.” We certainly hope there was a restroom involved.

Capital Reef National Park in Utah? How could that have been essential? According to our maps, there is no actual way to even get there from anywhere. We don’t even know what that place is. A reef in the middle of Utah? Sure, pal!

And what the hell is Dead Horse Point State Park? That sounds cheery. Looks like it is near Canyonlands National Park in Utah, but who has ever even heard of that place. Why, man? Why?

And then there were a bunch of places we thought you had just accidentally dropped your phone until we realized you were staying there.

Taft, California?

Glendale, Utah?

Primm, Nevada?

Dolores, Colorado?

I mean, what could possibly be in a place called Dolores, Colorado that you needed to go to? A cattle ranch? An alfalfa field? Besides being close-ish to Mesa Verde National Park, those seem to be the only two things happening in Dolores, according to our satellites.

Look, we’re glad you’re home safe and sound, but you need to settle down. Based on your phone movement, it doesn’t look like you’ve even left your living room today, so that’s a step in the right direction.

We also want to take this opportunity to introduce a new feature of Google Maps Timeline – the Family Factor Adjusted Equivalent Milage Calculator. Your actual map milage in the last three weeks was over 4300 miles, but based on the fact that your wife, children, and mother-in-law were in the car with you, that is the equivalent of driving across the United States, coast-to-coast, 78 times.

Congratulations on a record year!

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2021 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

Can You Desert a Road Trip?

We are on a road trip. For many, many days, spanning many, many miles.

Many.

I don't want you to be jealous, but our first leg was over five hours and we ended up in Taft, California. What's that? You haven't heard of Taft, California? That's not really much of a surprise.

You don’t go through Taft unless you are going there on purpose, so no one ever goes there. It's the kind of town where you stay at THE hotel and eat at THE restaurant.

We stopped at the Taft hardware store to buy some duct tape and when the woman at the register asked me how I was doing, I said, "Living the dream."

She laughed out loud and said, "Yeah, right. In Taft?"

Why Taft, you might be asking, like the lady at the hardware store apparently asks herself every day? Taft exists solely because of oil. When you drive into and out of Taft, you drive past forests of oil derricks on both sides of the road. Some are pumping. Some are still. All of them are stained dark brown. The whole town is the same hue – crude oil brown.

My wife's grandfather worked the oil fields in Taft as a young married man, and my mother-in-law lived there when she was little. She wanted to see the town again.

Oh, did I not mention that my mother-in-law is with us on this long, long, long road trip? Like I said, I don't want you to be jealous.

We stopped in Taft for an overnight and went to the West Kern Oil Museum. Again, please attempt to curb your jealousy. Does the West Kern Oil Museum have an exact life size rebuilt replica of the Old Jameson #17 wooden derrick, you ask? You can bet your sweet ass it does! What color is that derrick, you ask? Crude oil brown, of course. It is located in Taft, California, after all.

I was kidding about the only one restaurant thing, though. There are actually two. We ate dinner at the other one – the Black Gold Brewing Company. They serve their own brewed beers, cook burgers, steaks, and Thai food, and sell guns and ammo. I am not making that up.

Speaking of places that are both crazy and all brown, after we’d had so much fun in Taft we couldn’t stand it anymore, we drove another five hours through the God-forsaken Mojave desert to the depression in the Nevada desert where they keep Las Vegas, for some reason.

Las Vegas happens to be on the way to all the Southwestern national parks that are the actual reason for this road trip, and when my wife was planning the route, she thought it would be cool if we took the boys to see Matt Franco, a magician that they all liked from America’s Got Talent, season 217.

So, she booked us for two nights in Vegas, but when it later came time to get the Matt Franco tickets, it turned out that we would have to choose financially between having two and a half of us go see the show and then live out the rest of our lives in Taft, or do the whole road trip and see all the parks.

So, instead of a magic show, we saw an acrobatic gymnast act and two juggling plate spinners for free at the Circus Circus midway. Both acts were really solid, but just to make sure our boys got the full flavor of Vegas, we spent an entire morning walking the length of the strip to show them why staying in school and not doing drugs is important.

I’m not sure if it was the two fights on the sidewalk, or the homeless woman bathing in a fountain at the Venetian that did it, but they all promised to stay clean and get a good education. I’ll bet Franco doesn’t offer that kind of impact from his little magic show!

We escaped Vegas with our lives and most of our dignity and drove through – you guessed it – more God-forsaken desert. But we made it to Zion National Park yesterday, and as you enter the park the landscape changes almost instantly from hellish desert to red rock canyons and rivers, like nothing you’ve ever seen. The scenery is so breathtaking it can almost make you forget you ever stayed in Taft or saw a homeless fountain bather on the strip.

Almost.

The next two weeks promise to be a whirlwind of long car rides and more amazing sites, and I’ll give you another update or two if I live through it all.

Until then, stay in school and stay off the drugs, kids.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2021 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

COVID-19 Shutdown Forced Homeschool Parent Log – Day 82

Forced Homeschool Parent Log – Day 82

Summer starts tomorrow. The school district said the last day of “school” was actually last Friday, but that’s a load of crap.

The original last day of school was on the calendar for tomorrow, June 4^th, and I’ll be damned if I’m letting my kids off the hook. Since the schools stopped giving them work, I had to make up my own for this week.

We are having a Home Economics class, involving studying the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook and making us dinners. I’m teaching an engineering course on Fluid Dynamics, involving studying all the owner’s manuals for our pool equipment and also skimming the leaves out of the pool. And we’re hosting a work/study program on Urban Housing and Development, which consists mostly of cleaning out our garage.

Tomorrow is our official last day of homeschool, and we will probably just abandon any attempts at learning and eat cupcakes and sign yearbooks. “Yearbooks” in this case will probably just be Post-it notes, since we don’t have their actual yearbooks yet and they don’t want their brothers writing “YOU SUCK!” in them anyway.

We will be teaching one last class tomorrow if any of our boys decide to partake in the time-honored tradition of taking their binders apart and flinging their paperwork all around the homeschool. In that case, their last elective of the homeschool year will be the Janitorial Arts.

The last day of school is always a minimum day, so at noon we will officially mark the end of this ridiculous, idiotic distance learning catastrophe, and we will begin our summer. After 83 days of forced homeschooling three teenage boys, if someone tries to tell us we can’t go on summer vacation, they are going to be invited to a PE class where my three testosterone-y boys introduce them to street tackle dodgeball sumo fistfight, or as it’s more commonly known around here, afternoon.

We are getting in the car and leaving for summer vacation on Friday. I don’t know where we’re going and I don’t care. We might just drive until we run out of gas and camp in a ditch. That sounds amazing.

And I swear on my life, or more to the point, on my children’s lives since they will not live through another homeschooling adventure, if our administrators try to tell us we’re not going back to normal next year, I’m bringing a street tackle dodgeball sumo fistfight game to the district office.

All of your teenagers are invited to join.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

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Teaching Me Happiness

School started today.

Actually, let me write that the way it feels. SCHOOL STARTED TODAY!!!!

That doesn’t do it justice. How about 28-point font and some old-school emojis?

SCHOOL STARTED TODAY!!! :-) :-) :-) WOOT, WOOT!!! (Clinking champagne glasses)

I like summer as much as the next person, but when you work from home, summer can get fairly crowded and loud when three ever-growing boys are around the house all day. Or trapped inside the car with you on a three-week road trip. Always fighting. Just so much fighting.

But everything is better today. Today they went to school. Today, they are not at home with me. They may be fighting, but I can’t hear them, and if the school calls, I’m probably not going to answer. Not today, anyway.

Do you know what it sounds like inside my house right now? It sounds like a yellow Lab snoring. I imagine the angels singing in Heaven sound just like a sleeping Lab.

I woke up this morning, and like every morning in the past month or two, my feet hurt when I got out of bed. I think I have plantar fasciitis. It hurts. Today, however, I don’t care, because school has started.

Running hurts now, due to the probable fasciitis situation, so I’m actually gaining weight instead of losing some like I wanted to do. Bring it on. I don’t care. Not today, anyway, because school has started.

I forgot to put the trash bin out this morning and missed the truck. Now I will spiral into the nightmare of trash hoarding for the next three to six weeks as I slowly work myself out of the collection deficit. Doesn’t bother me a bit today, however, because school has started.

My old Ford Expedition’s driver window switch broke again, and the window is stuck halfway down. Do I care? Not today. School has started.

A couple of weeks ago, our new Suburban’s A/C stopped blowing cold air when a rock punctured the condenser, which apparently, is vitally important to making cold air. It cost $1300 that I didn’t have to get it fixed. It had to be fixed, however, since it’s going to be 105 degrees today. Am I worried about any of that? Nope. School has started.

And speaking of money I don’t have, besides the looming abyss of college costs, our boys are going to start driving soon, which means my insurance rates are about to double with the first boy, triple with the second one, and then the policy will probably just be canceled altogether when Son Number Three gets his license. Doesn’t even faze me today. School has started.

And to top it all off, I had a stiff neck this morning when I woke up, because my wife stole one of my two pillows last night. My neck is still a little sore, but I don’t care, because school has started.

There was no way I was going to try to steal that pillow back and risk waking her up. She’s a teacher. They need all the sleep they can get, because school has started.

Thank you, teachers. We love you. You can have all the pillows you want.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 Marc Schmatjen

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Clash of Siblings

My wife and I caved. We caved hard.

Well, to be fair, since she’s going to read this and I don’t want to get into more trouble than I’m already in, it was probably me who did most of the caving.

OK, all of it.

She already went back to school. That’s essentially the problem. She left me here all alone with the three boys. We had a fun summer, and together we played fairly effective man-down zone defense. But now she’s off enjoying the peace and quiet of teaching high school math, and I’m stranded here, a week before the boys go back to school, hopelessly outnumbered three to one.

There was nothing I could do. They got on my last nerve. I was out of options. I snapped.

Sure, I tried movies. We watched them all. We watched the Batman movies. Everything from Lego Batman to Keaton, Clooney, all the way through Christian Bale, and into the who-paid-to-have-this-guy-cast-as-batman Ben Affleck debacle.

We watched Planet of the Apes, Rise of Planet of the Apes, and Dawn of Planet of the Apes. I have no idea why.

We watched Paul Blart, Mall Cop 2. Twice. You heard me.

When we passed through Ocean’s Eleven and got all the way to Captain Ron, I finally said enough is enough. I was considering calling Child Protective Services on myself.

“Get away from the TV! Go find something to do.”

The things they found to do were argue, yell at each other, get into fights, and cry.

“Go get in the pool!”

In the pool, they forgot to swim. Instead they decided to argue, yell at each other, get into fights, and cry.

“OK, fine. If you can’t get along, we’ll do chores! How do you like them apples?”

We cleaned the house. We cleaned the backyard. We trimmed trees. We cut grass. We weeded vast expanses of lawn. We washed cars. And during it all they decided to argue, yell at each other, get into fights, and cry.

I simply couldn’t take it anymore. Like I said, I snapped.

We have always had a “no video games” rule in our house. In general, my wife and I believe that video games warp their tiny brains and turn them into moody, obsessed, psychotic little blobs of pasty-white flesh.

I still believe that, but I just don’t care anymore.

“Here’s an iPad. Why don’t you get that Clash Royale game you heard about?”

“What? Dad, are you feeling OK?”

“Shut up and get the game.”

They have all since graduated to something called Clash of Clans, and they are officially obsessed. They have learned an entirely new language in just a few short days. The people at Rosetta Stone should look into this technology for language acquisition.

Here’s a sample conversation I just heard when I was able to pry them away from the screens long enough to eat lunch:

“Bro, what if you put your dark elixir in front of your magic archer, with a dragon queen and a scarmy behind them?”

“Dude, then you could totally balloon a city hall with your pekka. But your barracks would be completely hard-pushed.”

“Not if your wall breakers were in front of a barbarian king or an archer queen. Then your goblins could balloon a hog rider, with a lava bowler hound golem….”

I tuned out after that.

We don’t have normal conversations anymore. It’s all they can talk about, 24/7, but I don’t care. Because they are talking, not yelling.

For now, I will take it. I will pull the plug the minute school starts and go back to being a responsible parent who cares about their mental health.

“How much longer can we play?”

“Shut up and play the game. Don’t ask questions.”

Right now, we’re dealing with my mental health.

School cannot start soon enough.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 Marc Schmatjen

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

Psychic Travel Log, Volume IV

We leave tomorrow on a two-week family vacation. We are taking a road trip halfway across the United States to Yellowstone National Park to see hot smelly water shoot out of the ground at inexplicably regular intervals.

I’m really not sure what we were thinking. I mean, Yellowstone sounds amazing, but we have to get there first. And we have to get home. And we’ll all be in the same car. Together.

We’ve been home, all together, for the past couple weeks, ever since the schools were rude enough to tell us not to send our kids there anymore. Our house is over three thousand square feet in size, not including the garage and backyard, and yet our children cannot seem to find enough space to stay off each other’s nerves. Or ours.

They are, quite simply, really annoying. Two of them are teenagers, which means they are permanently in a bad mood. The other one is a teenager catalyst. Son Number Three is the vinegar to their teenage baking soda. It’s a burbling mess when they are together.

So, in a moment of complete stupidity, we have decided to reduce their available square footage from three thousand down to roughly ten. That should go smoothly.

Since I will probably be a sobbing mess, or heavily medicated, during the non-driving hours, I anticipate being unable to keep an accurate travel log. Instead, I have once again channeled my psychic powers of clairvoyance to envision exactly what the trip will be like, in order to write the travel log beforehand…

Day 1 – Rocklin to Winnemucca, Nevada – We threatened the children with their very lives seven times before we even reached I-80 (six blocks). We stopped the car in Reno and made the kids run laps around the Atlantis Casino while my wife and I went inside and ro-sham-bo’d to see which one of us got cocktails. I lost. Nevada is hell. Winnemucca is every bit as magical as it sounds.

Day 2 – Winnemucca, Nevada to Salt Lake City, Utah – Correction: Nevada is worse than hell. The boys are taking turns to keep up a continuous stream of complaints and everything is ugly and brown. During a lunch disagreement I was hit in the back of the head with a flying turkey and cheese sandwich. Eventually the three boys got into a full-on fist fight in the car and we just let it go, because it was our only hope to break up the soul-crushing monotonous boredom of I-80.

In an unforeseen turn of events, Utah is even worse than Nevada because the road is completely straight. There is literally nothing to do - not even steer. I set a Chevrolet Suburban land speed record while everyone was asleep after the melee. An hour later, I fell asleep for fifteen minutes and it didn’t matter. The road is that straight. Boring is no longer an adequate word. After approximately three months of driving we made it to Salt Lake City. Mormons everywhere. We fit right in in our Suburban.

Day 3 – Salt Lake City, Utah to West Yellowstone, Montana – We have left I-80. We are now on I-15. That is the single most exciting thing that has happened on this trip so far. My wife bought a blackout sleeping mask and $8,000 noise-cancelling headphones from a Best Buy in Salt Lake City and has completely checked out of the vacation. I do not blame her. It’s every man for themselves now. We made it to West Yellowstone by making two of the three boys ride on the roof rack for the last seventy-five miles. It was the only way.

Day 4 – Yellowstone National Park – We drove directly to Old Faithful, which only took eight hours, since our line of six thousand cars drove three and a half miles an hour in between bison traffic jams. The boys complained that the buffalo weren’t exciting enough. We took a picture of an elk. Everyone fought over the camera. The camera broke. We missed Old Faithful by three minutes and had to wait sixty-one minutes to see it again. Those were the nicest sixty-one minutes of the trip, because we were all waiting one hundred yards apart around the perimeter of the geyser.

Old Faithful was amazing. Then we had to get back in the car. Two million buffalo later we were back at the hotel. My wife and I had a long talk that lasted thirty-five seconds, and we decided that we had definitely seen all the good stuff already.

Day 5 – Yellowstone National Park to Idaho Falls, Idaho – After a drive that I have permanently blocked out of my memory, we sold the Suburban for well below market value in Idaho Falls and purchased plane tickets home, with all five seats in different rows.

The boys are home now, and my wife and I are at an undisclosed hotel where they can’t find us.

Happy summer travels, everyone!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 Marc Schmatjen

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Summer Cell-cation

On the surface, summer seemed like a good idea. No more school meant no more lunches, homework, carpool, crying parents, etc. But what we didn’t factor in was that the boys would be here. In the house. All. The. Time.

That wouldn’t be so much of an issue if they didn’t seem to hate each other. On second thought, “hate” might be unfair. Loath is probably more accurate.

Since the last school bell rang, they have fought continuously. UFC fighters should come here to get a lesson on stamina. Yelling, screaming, tears, wrestling, punches… and that’s just first thing in the morning about who gets to use the bathroom.

There are three of them. We have three bathrooms…

You should see what happens when they get to the toaster. We only have one toaster. Blood has been shed over toast, my friends.

My wife and I want to leave, but the amount of time we have in mind would be considered an act of criminal negligence.

Our home phone, on the other hand, decided it had had enough. It went on vacation without us. I mean, the actual body of the phone is still here on the kitchen counter, but apparently all its internal virtual phone-ness has left. It has moved to Huasna, CA.

We have one of our old cell phones as a home phone for the boys, because we try very hard not to appear criminally negligent. Right there on the home screen, reporting a much nicer day, weather-wise, than we are having, our phone inexplicably thinks it’s in someplace called Huasna. (Since I have no idea how to pronounce that, I am going with “Wah-snah,” but you are free to pronounce it “Who-as-nay,” or “Fresno,” or however else you see fit.)

I don’t know exactly what happened. I’m not sure if our phone got as tired of the boys’ constant fighting as we did, or if it just needed a break from the big city hustle and bustle here in Rocklin. Either way, it picked a place where no one would ever find it.

I looked up Huasna, CA on Google maps, and let me tell you, the middle of nowhere is Times Square compared to Huasna. I’m not sure how my phone decided to go there, since I have never been within a hundred miles of downtown Huasna. And when I say “downtown,” I mean the intersection of Huasna Road and Huasna Townsite Road, where there is nothing.

If my phone has been there more than a week, I’m assuming it’s already the mayor of Huasna. I think it will be a fair and just leader of the Huasnians. It has been a reliable and trustworthy phone, and it has all the answers, since it has a Google search bar on the home screen.

I have to assume that the Huasnians have no electricity or running water, so they might never have seen a cell phone before. For all I know, they are worshipping our home phone as a god. I hope the power doesn’t go to its head.

Speaking of power, I also have to assume it will be home soon, since it will have no way to charge itself in the rolling hills of the Huasna countryside. And I’m guessing it hasn’t called to check in because the Huasnians have never heard of cell signals or wifi. Someone will probably bring it home in a month or two in a cart pulled by donkeys or oxen.

No matter, though. Even if it gets back soon, we don’t need a home phone for a while. In a few days we’re going to all get into a car together and drive across the country.

Together.

Sitting right next to each other with our knees touching. What could possibly go wrong?

Maybe they could drop me off in Huasna to visit the phone?

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 Marc Schmatjen

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

The Fourth in the Forty-Ninth

We are currently on vacation up north, spending the Fourth of July in the great state of Alaska, which we are told is actually part of the United States. Go America! We are having a great time and learning all sorts of interesting things in the 49^th state. We started in Fairbanks, where we learned that despite what Santa might have you believe, reindeer are just a slower, dumber version of caribou.

We also learned that Alaska’s state bird is not the eagle or the goose, as you might expect. It’s the mosquito, which sucks.

We then learned all about the Alaska highway system as we drove down to Denali National Park. It turns out, unfortunately, the state has not had an actively working road maintenance crew since 1911. Some of the potholes are pretty bad, but thankfully the larger ones are filled with unlucky cars and pickup trucks, so you just rattle right over the top of them.

Once we made it to Denali we learned about all the majestic animals that live in the park, and what a suckfest it is to be a caribou. The winters are bad enough, with forty-below temperatures and having to dig through snow drifts to chew lichen off rocks, all the while being pursued by wolves, but the summer and spring for the caribou are worse. That’s because in the summer, there is something called a nostril fly, and it does exactly what it sounds like. It flies up the caribou’s nose.

But wait, it gets worse.

They fly up the caribou’s nose to lay their eggs. The fly larvae winter in the caribou’s throat, and then the caribou coughs them out in the spring. There is simply no way around it - it just sucks to be a caribou.

There was nothing we could do for the poor beasts, so we jumped on a train and headed for Anchorage.

We learned that Anchorage has about 300,000 people, which is almost half of the population of the entire state. And all 300,000 residents have fireworks that they shoot off, beginning around 11:59 P.M. on July 3^rd and going well into the morning of the 4^th. I’m not sure why, though. You can’t see them.

That’s because, from a sunlight perspective, there seems to be very little discernable difference between midnight and noon here. Alaska is the weirdest place on earth in the summer. On our first night in Fairbanks, we accidentally let the kids stay up until midnight, because we all thought it was still five or six in the evening. Around 3 A.M., we realized that the sun had no intention of actually going down. It just sort of made a lazy circling pass near the horizon, then headed back up.

Consequently, we learned that Alaska has some of the crankiest, most sleep-deprived young tourists in the world, and also the best summertime vegetable growing conditions in all of America. No one understands this better than a gardening madman from Palmer, Alaska by the name of Scott Robb. (I mean he understands vegetables. I don’t know if he knows how cranky our kids are.)

We learned that Scott is the Alaska State Fair Giant Vegetable Champion in not one, not two, but nine different types of vegetables and melons, seven of which are world records.

Scott has grown (and somehow transported to the fair, presumably with help) a 138-pound cabbage, a 65-pound cantaloupe, a 63-pound celery stalk, a 106-pound kale plant, a 97-pound kohlrabi, an 83-pound rutabaga, and a 39-pound turnip, all of which are world records.

The amazing enormity of these vegetables leads to so many questions, not the least of which is, what the hell is a kohlrabi?

Scott also holds the state fair records for cauliflower (36 pounds) and watermelon (169 pounds), but those are not world records. That means at some point, somewhere in the world, some super gardener’s poor kids were forced to eat over 37 pounds of cauliflower before they could leave the table. The humanity!

We were not able to meet Scott Robb or his family, which is a shame, because I really wanted to be invited to their house for dinner, just to see if, as I suspect, they serve the salad in the bed of a Ford F-150. They probably have dinner rolls the size of couch cushions.

Oh, well. We’ll just continue to eat regular-sized food and dream.

So, anyway, today, as you thank God that you’re an American, you can also take pride in the fact that the pioneering, adventurous, giant vegetable-growing spirit is alive and well in this great country of ours.

You can also be thankful that you got more sleep than I did last night.

And that you’re not a caribou.

Happy Independence Day!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

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

Hazard Pay

This weekend I met the man with the most dangerous job in America. Actually he was a high school kid, I think. He looked to be about thirty to forty years younger than me, and approximately ninety to a hundred years younger than I feel, so that would put him around high school age.

He was obviously too young to fully grasp the gravity of his situation, so to speak. No experienced adult male would have ever signed up for the job this kid had.

We met him on a magical day. We got season passes to our local water slide park this year, and Saturday was opening day of the season. We arrived early and staked out our chaise lounges, and then the boys and I rushed off to The Riptide. It's the park’s brand new ride, and the boys and I have been salivating over it all winter.

It’s an enormous water slide - easily the tallest in the park - with four-person “quad tubes” so you can experience near-death with three of your closest friends, much like the time you let Steve drive the car on spring break.

You are in charge of getting your own quad tube to the top of the stairs, and they are apparently made out of equal parts ballistic rubber, lead weights and more lead weights. I can envision a system where two adults would be able to carry the massive tubes up the stairs together, but unfortunately, the boys weren’t much help. After a few minutes of tripping over each other and almost crushing Son Number Three with it, I reluctantly told the boys that I needed to carry the tube up the stairs myself.

The Riptide is a very high water slide, so we needed to climb up a lot of steps to reach the top. I lost count when I came close to blacking out, but it was probably about three thousand stairs. I didn’t have my Fitbit on, but I’m pretty sure I burned an entire HomeTown Buffet’s dinner rush worth of calories on that one climb.

The slide takes you down a steep tube and then rockets your terrified party of four up a gigantic vertical wall, where you hang motionless at the top for just a split second before your stomach catches up to you. Then, through a miracle of engineering (or a nightmarish trial and error period), you slide back down, directly into another cavernous tube that takes you around a 360-degree turn and into a huge pool of water, where lifeguards await to accept your deepest gratitude for being alive. It is awesome!

We finally reached the top of the stairs and made it onto the platform high above the park. After I had managed to get my heart rate back under four hundred and my blurry vision cleared up, I saw him. The man with the most dangerous job in America. Just a scrawny kid with a whistle around his neck and zinc oxide on his nose. He wasn’t the one who was directing traffic at the entrance to the slide, so it wasn’t immediately clear what purpose he served.

He welcomed us to The Riptide and then asked me and the boys to all step up onto the four-foot-square industrial scale located on the corner of the platform.

Apparently, in order to keep groups of fun-loving patrons from shooting straight up off the top of the vertical wall and into orbit, or missing the exit tube and dying a horrible death under a nine hundred-pound quad tube, The Riptide has a weight range. Your group's total weight has to be between two hundred and seven hundred pounds in order to ride. This kid’s job was to enforce the minimum and maximum weight limits.

Let me get this straight, kid. They've got you stationed up here on a platform, seventy feet off the ground, with no safety harness or anything, and your job is to ask groups of women in bathing suits to step on a scale so you can weigh them?

I’m not sure $8.50 an hour constitutes hazard pay. Good luck, kid. You’re a braver man than me.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen

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Nursing School

My kids only have two more weeks of school left and I am not happy about it. Actually, they only have one more real week of school since the “last day” is the Thursday after the Memorial Day holiday. With no school on Monday, and an all-school field day on Tuesday, Wednesday will be filled with movies and games, and the last day is a half day, so it doesn’t even count.

Although, the one “real week” we have left isn’t really much of a week. The Friday before the Memorial Day weekend is a total write-off, and we have a couple minimum days in there too. Basically we’re in the elementary school equivalent of the last two weeks of your job before your official retirement date. You still show up to the office, but nothing productive is going to happen.

I’m not concerned with the lack of education that will occur in the next two weeks. I’m concerned, as always, about them being home all the time. School is very helpful to me. When they’re in school I can get things done. When they’re home they always want stuff.

“Dad, can we go to the park?”

“Dad, can we go to the pool?”

“Dad, can we play inside since it’s 105 degrees out?”

“Dad, can you feed us food?”

“Dad, can you come out of your office?”

“Dad?...”

“Dad, where are you?”

That’s going to get even more annoying if they ever find my hiding spot. I wish they would bug their mom for stuff but she’s a high school teacher, so during the summer months she automatically gets the better hiding spot.

Besides being in charge of them for the entire day, the main thing I’m concerned with as the school year draws to a close is the lack of medical notes I’ll get over the summer. Elementary schools are very good at notifying you of the dangers posed to your children by everyday life. I have a stack of “information letters” here on my desk just from the last few weeks.

How am I supposed to know if my children were exposed to hand-foot-and-mouth disease over the summer if I never receive a warning letter? Or conjunctivitis? Or fifth disease, whatever the hell that is.

“Son Number One has a cough.”

“How are we supposed to know what it might be? It’s July! We have no letters!”

And head lice. Don’t even get me started on head lice. Although, we tend to shear our boys like sheep over the summer, so that one shouldn’t be a problem.

It’s the absence of the head injury form that I’m most worried about. Son Number Three’s head comes into contact with hard objects, including other heads, so often that the school nurse has me on speed dial. She called the other day and didn’t even tell me who it was. She just said, “I’ll give you one guess why I’m calling.”

As she was handing him yet another concussion form to take home, he asked her, amazed, “How many of these forms do you have?”

The problem is he’s a little squirrelly when it comes to giving us information. (Possibly because he’s eight years old, possibly because of all the head injuries, probably a little of both.) I’m just not confident that over the summer I’m going to hear about every collision involving his head and a solid object. I can easily see a scenario where he’ll be playing down the street, collide with a parked car or a tree, knock himself completely out, wake up, cry for a while, see a butterfly, forget he’s hurt, chase the butterfly for two minutes, then tell me about it a week later.

I guess I’ll just have to hang on to one of these head injury notification letters for the summer and go through the concussion symptom awareness protocols every night just to be safe.

On the plus side, the short hair helps with more than just head lice. It makes it pretty easy to spot the goose eggs, too.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen

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