The Post-Easter Egg Hunt

We learned a few things this year when we had our annual Easter egg hunt. We do a traditional event with a few real hardboiled eggs that the kids colored the day before, and then a lot of snap-together brightly colored hollow plastic eggs filled with jelly beans, M&Ms, and miniature candy bars. The eggs are hidden by the Easter Bunny, and the kids go haywire trying to procure as much sugar as possible in a limited timeframe.

The first thing we realized was our kids are surprisingly bad at finding small semi-hidden things. I always figured they would be really good at it, since they are closer to the ground. Not so. Most of the time, we had to stand over the egg, pointing to it, because verbal directions were just not cutting it. “It’s the only bright pink thing in that otherwise completely green and brown bush! Come on, dude! How hard is that? I can see it from all the way across the lawn!”

Maybe they’re all colorblind? That would explain a lot of the shirt/shorts/socks combinations that Son Number Two comes up with. My wife thinks their lack of ability to find things stems from the fact that they share my DNA. Many times she has accused me of going completely blind as soon as I open the door to the refrigerator or the pantry.

“Honey, where’s the hot sauce?”
“In the door, right in front of your face.”
“No, I already looked there. It’s not in here.”
(Sound of wife coming to the refrigerator, sighing heavily)
“Here it is.” (Handing me the hot sauce 0.13 seconds after arriving at the open refrigerator)

I have been certified completely un-blind by the DMV, so it is obvious to me that she has these things ingeniously hidden somewhere and then pulls a David Copperfield when she steps in front of me to retrieve the obviously hidden item, magically making it seem as if I am a doofus and it was right in front of my nose the whole time. I have no idea why she does that, but she’s good at it. She could have her own gig in Vegas.

Anyway, the second lesson we learned this Easter is to count the eggs before you hide them. If we had done that, we would at least have some idea of how many are still missing, because we have no idea where they were all hidden. That brings us to the third lesson we learned: Be careful who you have doing the egg hiding.

My wife and mother-in-law had spent the night before Easter filling the plastic eggs with candy, and as previously stated, neglecting to keep a count. On Easter morning, we all woke up, had breakfast, and headed for church. Not really one for a lot of churchin’, my father-in-law volunteered to stay behind and play the part of the Easter bunny. It had been on-again off-again rain in the early morning, and it was not clear which direction the weather was headed, so to be safe he opted to hide half of the eggs inside the house, and half of them outside. He did a very thorough job. The only problem was that apparently, as soon as an egg was hidden, its location was immediately erased from his memory.

Well, we got home from church and the kids immediately went at it, gathering as many eggs as they could while running at top speed. It was like watching a polo match without the horses or giant croquet mallets. Little colorful eggs getting kicked everywhere by children too excited to slow down long enough to actually pick them up on the first try.

When we had seemingly run out of places to look, the kids finally slowed down enough that we thought we could get a rough count of the findings.

“How many have we found?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t trust the boy’s math.”
“How many did we make?”
“I don’t know. A lot.”
“Dad, how many did you hide?”
“I have no idea.”
“Do you think we got them all?”
“I have no idea.”
“Does this look like how many we made?”
“I can’t tell. They’re all open now so it looks like twice as many.”

After some conferencing by my wife and her mom, and some rough guesses as to how many the kids had found, and some unanswered questions to the hider remaining unanswered, we decided we had probably not found all of them. The kids were already knee-deep in candy, so they didn’t really care, and we were getting hungry, so the Easter egg hunt unofficially ended with some debate about whether or not it was really finished.

I am here today to tell you that it was not.

We had rounded up and bagged all of the kid’s candy after they had devoured as much as they could get away with, and put it in the pantry for safekeeping and future orderly distribution. Later that day, however, the kids were a little too quiet upstairs and I went to investigate. I found them sitting silently around a pile of plastic egg shells and empty candy wrappers, chocolate smeared on their faces, dazed looks in their eyes, just one or two milligrams of sucrose away from three simultaneous diabetic comas. They had stumbled upon a previously unexplored section of the game room, and came up with two or three eggs each. So much for dinner.

The next morning as I was heading out the door to go to work, I found about six neighborhood kids in my front yard shrubbery. Most of them scattered like roaches when the light comes on, but the few brave souls who didn’t make a break for it informed me that a kid on his way to school had noticed a plastic Easter egg under one of our whatchamacallit bushes, and upon further investigation, had apparently hit the mother lode. It wasn’t too long before we had nine or ten kids searching our front yard and by all accounts, doing quite well for themselves. My apologies to their teachers that day!

After work that evening, I made a concerted sweep of both the front and back yards and came up with another basket full of eggs that had gone undiscovered the previous morning. Much to the boy’s dismay, those went into the trash under the guise of candy going bad if it stays outside too long, what with all the ants and ticks and fleas and whatnot. Everything except any mini Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, of course. Those don’t go bad, and need to go into Daddy’s tummy.

Well, I thought that was that. I had surely found them all.

I am here today to tell you that I had not.

The next evening I mowed the grass. The front lawn was uneventful, but the back lawn was downright exciting. In a surprising and painful kind of way.

About midway through the back lawn I ran over what I can only guess were two or three candy-filled plastic Easter eggs that had somehow remained hidden through all the various searches. If you have never hit a plastic Easter egg with a lawn mower blade spinning at 3600 RPM, I can assure you it is eventful.

Any chocolate that was in the eggs was instantly vaporized into a cloud of shiny gold and silver tinfoil dust. The plastic egg shells splintered into roughly 8000 individual shards of pastel-colored shrapnel and assaulted my shins and ankles with a fury that any military superpower would envy. Luckily, this all happened very quickly, so the other projectiles were away from the energy source and heading for their targets before the egg shell shrapnel had dropped me fully to the ground. It was the jelly beans that were the real weapon. Thankfully, I only took a direct hit from one of them, and it was on the side of my shoe where it was only able to cause major damage to one of the bones in my foot. The rest of the jelly beans dispersed from the bottom of the mower at about 400 MPH in all directions. Thankfully, our wooden picnic table took the majority of the beans heading toward the house, saving our sliding glass door from certain death. Many of the others were slowed slightly below lethal velocity by ricocheting off of nearby toys, trees, and bushes, but one or two of them got away clean and had a straight shot at the fence.

There are at least two holes in the fence that I’m pretty sure were not there prior to the jelly bean Claymore mine touching off under my mower. I’m pretty sure at least one of the high-velocity treats hit the neighbor’s dog… or one of their kids. I heard a high-pitched yelp, anyway. I would have investigated further, but I was down and crawling for cover.

The moral of the story is simple: If you’re going to hide eggs, people, keep an accurate count! And a map! And shinguards.

Besides my injuries, and possible unknown injuries to our neighbor’s pet or offspring, I have one more real concern. We know for a fact that there were eighteen hardboiled eggs that the kids colored, and we have only accounted for thirteen of them.

We are just praying they are all outside. We’ll find out soon enough.

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

Wordy Endings

We all know about the dreaded “Dear John” letter, and maybe you have even received one in your day. Chances are, if you have, it went something like this:

Dear John,

When we first started dating I thought we would be together forever. But, as the months have passed, I have found us growing farther and farther apart. I have tried my best to work through our differences, but it is clear to me now that we just want different things out of life.

I don’t want to drag out a failing relationship any longer than necessary, so I am leaving you. You will always have a spot in my heart, but I must move on. I wish only the best for you in your life without me.

Jane

Things are a little different these days, with more and more segments of our population seeming to have their own languages. Among other things, these new forms of communication have drastically altered the way some of us say goodbye.

As an example, here is a recent “Dear John” letter from a corporate executive:

Dear John,

As we efforted to leverage our core competencies to grow a win-win valueship, at first I was convinced we had a winning solution set with massive back-end upside.

However, as mission-critical as your role has been in the framework of our enterprise, it seems that I am tasked with the lion’s share of the heavy lifting. Even in times of narrow bandwidth and actionable strike points, when we needed to be “all hands on deck,” you remained unincentivized. At the end of the day, we need to effort to be future-proof, and our current paradigm cannot be scaled to leverage a win-win without a dynamic, value-add synergy.

I have “opened the kimono” on our valueship and actioned to effort a paradigm shift in our synergy, but to no avail. After gaining some tribal knowledge from our core associates, it seems we are at a tipping point with our core values and core principles, and despite my immersion in the efforting, at the end of the day, without buy-in from your side, our valueship just doesn’t have a long tail.

Therefore, I am hereby diverging our win paths and dissolving our current enterprise. Going forward, I will be efforting to leverage my core competencies in new markets.

Best regards,
Jane

If you thought that was cryptic, get a load of this “Dear John” letter from a local realtor:

Dear John,

When we first started dating, I thought our relationship was as solid as granite. You had fantastic curb appeal, you were well maintained, low maintenance, and very well appointed. We were both “original owners,” and I thought that meant our relationship would be a great investment.

As the months went buy, however, I have begun to notice some quaint features about you that are too numerous to mention. When I realized our relationship needed TLC, I was willing to negotiate. Maybe I was just being a motivated buyer, or maybe it was a seller’s market, I don’t know which, but I was willing to put in the sweat equity to keep us from being back on the market.

I had thought you were a gourmet, but it turns out you are more “granite feel” than “sub-zero.” I thought you were a low-maintenance man who was in move-in condition. In reality, you seem to have a lot of deferred maintenance and are more of a fixer-upper than I had anticipated.

At this point, with what I have found after the initial inspection period, I am going to “back out of escrow” and make an offer on another fully furnished model. He’s a ranch style guy who has gorgeous features and really shows well. Sorry for the short sale on our relationship, but I have to move quickly. He’s priced to sell and going fast!

Bringing your dreams home,
Jane

Yikes! If you thought that was hard to follow, wait until you read this recent example of a “Dear John” text from an unidentified teenager:

To: Jonny327
From: cool-jane-girl99
u used 2 m8k me :)
u used 2 m8k me LOL
now u m8k me :(
i m de-friending u on fb and xing u from my contacts
:( :( :(

As much as I don’t like the new abbreviated texting language, all things considered, I like the third option the best. You can’t understand any of them, so if you’re being dumped, at least the text is a faster read. They say brevity is the soul of wit. It may also be the soul of breaking it off!

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

SWITCHEROO

If you have been on a freeway in the last 20 years, I think you’ll agree that we need a better solution to the obvious problem of rush hour traffic congestion. You may be someone who believes that the gasoline automobile is a detriment to the environment in some way, or you may be someone who just really doesn’t like only going 7 MPH on a road that was designed for 70 MPH. You may even be both. Whatever your point of view, I think we can all agree that there are just too many cars on the freeways during commute hours.

It seems pretty obvious at this point that our governments – on a city, state or federal level – have become far too cumbersome to do much of anything worthwhile on a public works basis anymore. I doubt any government entity anywhere could get a 10-foot by 10-foot backyard redwood deck built inside of a year, so simply building us some new or wider freeways to relieve the congestion is probably out of the question.

Fortunately, as with most of life’s little quandaries, I have a plan. It’s called Smidge’s Wonton Interstate Traffic Congestion Household Employee Relocation and Optimization Operation, or SWITCHEROO. And, like almost every other aspect of your life, the IRS can help with this, too. The fact that we must drive to work is not going to go away, so let’s all just severely decrease the amount of miles we need to drive. The IRS already has very detailed records of who goes to work, where they work, and where they live, so the math is almost done already. We simply link up the IRS databases with the new SWITCHEROO algorithm, and let the computer tell us where to go.

Here’s how it will work: The computer will crunch the data and find matched pairs of gainfully employed people. To keep things on a somewhat equal footing, the computer will match men with men and women with women. I’ll explain why in a minute. The algorithm will note that Joe Blow works within one mile of John Smith’s house, and John works within one mile of Joe’s house, but they both live over twenty miles away from their own jobs. Since Joe could be the CEO of a bank, and John could be in charge of the sour cream gun at a Taco Bell, switching jobs doesn’t make any sense. I mean, can you imagine if a bank had someone in charge who was making risky decisions? Unthinkable!

The smart thing to do is to have Joe and John switch houses.

Now, this program is meant to ease freeway congestion, not to cause a nationwide family upheaval, so the families will stay put. Only the workers will move. This is why we have matched men with men and women with women. Joe and John will switch houses, and inherit whatever family situation comes with the house. John may be a lifelong bachelor who suddenly finds himself with a wife and three kids. Joe may instantly become single again after many years of marriage. Who knows what new and exciting home life may await you when you get your SWITCHEROO relocation notice in the mail!

Every attempt will be made to match the switching pair’s ages as well, but there can be no guarantees. It will be quite a challenge just to keep the pairs the same sex, so age may become an issue in some instances. But what is life without fun challenges, right? The twenty-one-year-old single girl from the big city may suddenly find herself as the mother of a nineteen-year-old. If that teenager happens to be a girl, a wonderful friendship could result. If the teenager is male, all we can do is just hope his father has control of the situation.

Suzy, the twenty-something newlywed may suddenly find herself married to Fred, the eighty-something widowed Wal-Mart greeter. In that case, I think we all need to look on the bright side and say, good news for Fred!

Besides the age issue, sexual orientation is simply too complicated a subject to be entered as a parameter in the SWITCHEROO program. Also, as far as I know, the government wouldn’t have any record of this kind of personal data anyway, would they? Probably not. As with all large-scale operations such as this, there will be some unavoidable hiccups. A husband and father of four kids may suddenly find himself living with a gay man. Again, I think it’s best to look upon these unforeseen consequences as fun little challenges. This could be an opportunity for both of them to start dating again, or an opportunity for one of them to discover a whole new lifestyle. Who knows!

Besides the fun new interpersonal relationships that will develop from the program, an unexpected and pleasing change in your financial situation may result as well. Since the IRS has loads of data on your finances, as with the age issue, the SWITCHEROO program will make every effort to match income levels whenever possible. We must not lose sight of the main goal of the program, however, which is traffic elimination. For that reason, the program will optimize the moves based first on commute distance, and then attempt to factor in all the other ancillary issues such as age and tax bracket. Again, I think we need to keep sight of the goal, and take whatever disparities are inadvertently caused in stride.

Your 850-square-foot dark and gloomy apartment might suddenly become a sprawling 8000-square-foot estate house with a full-time maid. On the other hand, your overwhelming $5000 monthly mortgage payment might instantly become a trifling $150/month space fee for your new double-wide at Shady Acres Mobile Estates. It will be important to focus on the positives as we move forward with this invaluable operation.

Speaking of positives, the possibilities are almost limitless for unexpected and interesting changes in the lives of our commuting workforce.

Do you have massive personal debt? It could be wiped away forever.
Hate your neighbors? Get new ones!
Unsuccessful in raising your own kids? Get a fresh start with a new batch.
Only time will tell what powerful and inspiring stories will result from this much needed program.

SWITCHEROO should be a boon for our economy as well, since untold millions of hours will be freed up each day to devote to work instead of driving. No doubt, each and every one of us will use this new found time wisely and in the best interest of our employer, helping spur on a vibrant and flourishing America.

I know what you’re thinking. “It will never work. It will be too messy. I won’t be able to understand the forms.” Not to worry, folks. We have thought of everything. The IRS will handle all the paperwork for you. There won’t be one single form for you to fill out, because you don’t even have to apply for the program. You’re already signed up! All you have to do is report to the address shown on the SWITCHEROO relocation notice that you will be receiving shortly, and you’re done. Your transition to your new life will be seamless, effortless, and a whole lot smoother every morning without all that driving!

Have fun with it, America, and enjoy your new life! I can’t wait to see where I’m going!

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

Don't Keep the Change

Lately, when I go to the local 7-11 to get my daily tanker-truck-sized barrel of soda, a strange thing has been happening. They have been resisting giving me my change. For a while now, if they owe me a penny back in change, instead of giving it to me, they will simply close the cash register drawer and look at me as if the transaction is complete. Sometimes if I stand there long enough with my hand out, they will hand over the copper coin, but often they will just continue to stare at me with a blank expression. In those cases I simply retrieve my rightful change from the "give penny - get a penny" change dish on the counter. Invariably, if it is a certain male clerk working the register that day, he will laugh at me!

The other day, one of the female clerks stepped it up a notch. She owed me two cents back and did the same thing. Register closed, blank stare.

Now I know what they’re thinking. It’s just a penny and we all shouldn’t have to bother with it. And I know what you’re thinking. Take it easy, Scrooge McSmidge! It’s just a penny. Loosen up a little!

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not such a miser that I am incredulous about being shorted a penny. What I am is logical, and what I am incredulous about is the lack of logic associated with beginning to ignore change in any form. If you take a minute to think it through, you have to ask, “Where does it end?”

We have already clearly delineated the end point in the dividing up of the dollar. We all decided not to go any further than 1/100 of a dollar. One cent. That’s where we stop. (With the exception of gas stations which use 9/10 of a cent in a ridiculous attempt to trick you into thinking their gas is one cent less than the other guy’s. Seriously, fellas, you’re not fooling anyone!) So if we all decided that one cent is where we’re going to draw the line, then what happens when someone starts ignoring the lowly penny? The logical progression is easy to follow.

There are two possible motivations for the anti-penny behavior. Either they are ignoring the penny because it is a physical coin that they don’t want to deal with, or they are ignoring one cent because it is an amount they do not want to deal with. Both scenarios are fraught with problems.

Problem Number One: If you are attempting to ignore pennies because you don’t want to deal with the physical coin, then you have a legal problem. As long as pennies are still in circulation, then it is legally OK for me to pay you with pennies, and therefore your convenience store penny phase-out program is doomed. You don’t feel the need to give me my penny back in change, but I am quite sure you won’t just give me a case of beer for free because I want to pay with 2000 pennies. So you are both philosophically and legally in a bind.

On the other hand, if you are attempting to ignore the idea of one cent, based on its perceived smallness or insignificance, you run into an even stranger dilemma. Problem Number Two: Besides the obvious problem of deeming the building block of the entire monetary system as invalid or worthless, there is a math problem that is ugly. If you deny me my one cent, you are saying in essence that we are only working with whole dollars, because the dollar is the only logical end to the anti-cent sentiment. They have already begun the progression by trying to ignore my two cents change, so why couldn’t I make the case that if I’m five cents short, or ten cents short, what’s the big deal? It’s just ten cents. Two cents, ten cents, what’s the difference? Give me my soda! If I can ignore ten cents, why not twenty-five, and so on, and so on. As soon as you are willing to ignore cents in any amount, you are defaulting to whole dollars.

The whole dollar system would work fine in theory, as long as everything in the store is priced in one dollar increments. The big problem is, that isn’t going to happen any time soon. I’m not willing to pay a dollar more for the 44-ounce soda than I would for the 32-ounce one, and the store won’t sell them both at the same price, so here is the dilemma my local 7-11 is faced with. If they really want to start ignoring cents, then they must be willing to deal in whole dollars. If they can’t price everything in increments of a dollar, then they must be willing to round. That’s where it gets ugly.

Rounding will not work for one very obvious reason: If you are going to round up, you must be willing to round down. I am not willing to pay a dollar for something that is priced at 51 cents, and I’m quite sure that 7-11 is not prepared to accommodate the hordes of bums and teenagers that would flood their stores to “buy” all the items priced under 50 cents for free.

I might try to spend an extra three minutes or so one morning explaining to the clerk why their change ignore-ance program isn’t going to work, but there’s a problem with that, too. At my 7-11 there is enough of a language barrier across the counter that I will never be able to adequately convey my point. My only hope is that this written explanation gets circulated through my store as well as every other convenience store in America, and someone can properly translate it when necessary.

Until then, I guess I will just have to keep my hand out and demand my pennies, until the clerk gets around to reading my two cents.

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

El Arbol de Muerte

Our house came with six fairly good-sized trees. Two in the front yard and four in the back. It occurred to me the other day that I know absolutely nothing about them. I have no idea what kind they are. I know one of the two in the front yard is some kind of pine tree and all the others are the kinds that lose their leaves. That’s all I’ve got.

We’ll get to the reason why it occurred to me that I didn’t know anything about them in a minute. When I realized my lack of knowledge on the tree subject, I also realized that they are the only things I own that I don’t know a single thing about. I can’t think of anything else that I own that I am so wholesale ignorant about as my foliage. They just came with the house.

I could tell you at least seven details about my fence right off the top of my head. I know lots of really un-interesting facts about the water heater. I know the tonnage of my air conditioner, and the BTU rating of my furnace. I know what the roof is made of, the R-value of my insulation, and all about the inner workings of the toilets. Those things all came with the house, just like the trees did, but for some reason, I have no knowledge, nor do I have any interest in gaining any knowledge, about the trees.

Actually, it’s not just the trees, but the bushes as well. I couldn’t be less interested in them. When we bought the house a few years back, one of the first things I did was figure out the automatic watering system. There are in-ground sprinklers for both lawns, and a drip-line system that runs around the entire outer edge of the property, servicing all the trees and shrubbery. The first thing I did was turn off the drip system.

I simply do not feel the need to spend my time and money maintaining a drip line system and buying water for flora that should be able to survive just fine without my help. Plenty of trees and shrubs out there survive on just the water God sees fit to give them, and I don’t think mine should have any kind of special treatment above and beyond that. I don’t want to coddle them! I figure, if they survive, great. If they don’t, then it wasn’t meant to be.

Truth be told, I really only water the grass because it’s not socially acceptable to let it go native, either. I really don’t like spending my money hydrating something that grows perfectly fine on its own, just because my neighbors and my wife think it should be green year-round and be mowed every week during the summer. But, in this life, you must pick your battles.

As you may have guessed, I don’t exactly have a “green thumb.” I don’t know if my inability to care about plant species identification and welfare stems from my lack of ability to cultivate them, or vice-versa, but either way, it’s just not there. That became abundantly clear to me last year when our garden failed miserably.

Now, don’t misunderstand. I do water the garden. I have no problem with that, because the garden usually pays me back with produce. Our past gardens had done OK, producing what I considered a healthy amount of tomatoes, zucchini, and the occasional jalapeño pepper. Last year, however, we grew exactly one strawberry, four tomatoes, and zero zucchini. Most of the plants themselves grew a little, but produced basically no fruit at all. If you have ever grown zucchini, then you know its plant is like a weed. Normally, you have to be careful how close you plant them to everything else, because they will grow at a rate of three feet an hour and take over the whole garden. Last year they got about eight inches tall and quit. How could that have gone wrong?

I was lamenting our garden’s plight to a friend at a late-summer dinner party last year, and she began giving me some pretty startling facts.

“Did the zucchini plants ever flower?”
“Yes, but then, no zucchinis grew and the flowers just withered and fell off.”
“OK, well you would have had male flowers and female flowers. The flowers just never pollenated each other. You probably didn’t have enough bees.”
“I don’t have any bees that I know of. Am I supposed to have some?”
“Well, if you don’t have enough bees, you need to pollenate the female flowers by hand.”
“Excuse me?”

This was news to me. I have to do stuff? I though these things just took care of themselves, like my trees and bushes. And I’m not sure I want to pollenate by hand. The zucchini plants and I have a professional relationship, and getting involved in any kind of pollination activities seems much too personal. I think I’ll just go to the store instead.

Anyway… back to the trees. The thing that got me thinking about how little I really know about my trees was something Son Number One said the other day. One of the trees in our front yard (the one that loses its leaves) turns bright white at the beginning of spring. It sprouts a million tiny white flowers that make for a really nice looking tree for a few weeks, but there is one problem. They smell like death.

These beautiful little flowers give off the unmistakable aroma of rotting flesh. That whiff you get when you walk out into the garage and your brain says, “Dead rat.” That’s what the tree smells like. We have a lot of them in my neighborhood, so for the first few weeks of spring, our street is really pretty, but really stinky.

Number One and I were on the way to kindergarten the other morning, and he pipes up from the back seat, “Hey Daddy. Look at how many death trees there are around here!”

My son was just repeating what he had heard me call the trees, but it got me thinking. Maybe I should learn their real name before we get a call from a concerned teacher.

“Why is your son talking about a ‘death tree’ in his front yard? Is there something you need to tell us, sir?”

On the other hand, the real name, whatever it may be, won’t tell the story even half as well as, “Death Tree.” If that isn’t their real name, it should be. The plant nurseries might disagree with me, however. Something tells me sales of “death trees” might lag a little behind Japanese elms. Maybe they could use the Spanish name.

“El Arbol de Muerte” has a nice ring to it. Come to think of it, I’m going to start telling the boys that’s the name of the tree. They won’t know the difference, and they’ll sound a lot smarter!

Ignorance is bliss, as long as you don’t sound stupid, right?

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

Mexi-nadian Timeshares

My folks own a timeshare vacation property in Palm Springs. It’s a wonderful place, owned and operated by Marriott, and they love it. Every time I get to stay with them at one of Marriott’s first-class properties I always think back to the first timeshare presentation my wife and I attended. It was a little different.

We were thirty years old and newly married, vacationing with good friends in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. We all signed up to go to a timeshare presentation on the first morning of our trip, in order to gain free passage on an all-you-can-eat-and-drink catamaran “booze cruise,” and free desert ATV rentals. (Wisely, they had scheduled those activities for two different days.)

We were to be served a complimentary breakfast while we chatted delightfully with the sales representative about the merits of Mexican timeshare vacationing, then we would be whisked off to our all-expense-paid fun in the sun. During the sign-up in the hotel lobby, all I heard was, “Free beer, free food, free beer, free food, free boat ride, free beer, free ATV.” I was in.

The next morning we met our delightful sales representative at the hotel’s restaurant and had our breakfast. The breakfast was great, but our delightful sales representative turned out to be a Canadian Tony Danza look-alike with slicked back hair and a cigarette hanging from his lower lip. He kept talking about how owning a timeshare in Cabo was really just “pre-paid vacation insurance.” I couldn’t get him to explain what he meant by that. Every time I asked, he would say, “You know what I mean,” and move on to another topic. The only actual piece of information I was able to extract from him was that this was not the type of timeshare where you actually own a piece of the property. It was just an annual fee to be able to rent a hotel room at the resort.

After our delightful breakfast and hotel room tour, we were invited back to the sales office to further discuss the amazing opportunity that lay before us. I politely declined and asked Tony Danz-eh if he had our booze cruise tickets handy. He informed me that the free swag was not available until after the full presentation, so off to the sales office we went.

Now it was time to talk turkey. Dollars and sense. In this case, Canadian dollars and sense. It turned out that the entire operation was staffed with Canadians. Apparently they had become fed up with cold weather, and Mexico has either non-existent or very lax anti-discriminatory labor laws, because there wasn’t a non-Canuck among them.

Our delightful sales representative finally got down to brass tacks, and threw out the number for the big-time, all-access pass to vacation paradise. All of our future vacations would be completely insured in a pre-paid manner for a mere $30,000. I didn’t bother to ask if that was in American dollars, Canadian dollars or pesos. I just laughed out loud.

We were thirty-year-old newlyweds who had recently purchased our first home. I think between us we had about $8.50 in the bank.

After my wife helped me gain some measure of control over my previously uncontrolled laughter (by kicking me under the table), I explained our financial situation to our salesman and told him that we could not afford to “buy in” to the timeshare today. I also informed him that I still didn’t have enough information about the “fabulous pre-paid vacation insurance” deal that he was offering us, and that I would really like some written literature about the resort.

Apparently, this was not the kind of operation that puts facts down on paper because no matter how many times I asked for timeshare informational literature, my request was met by a change of subject. After our salesman decided that he was making no ground with us, he called in the big guns. The closer was summoned, and the real dealing began.

Apparently, unbeknownst to our original salesman, the Smiths had just unfortunately had to sell their long-held timeshare due to an illness in the family, and that had freed up some once-in-a-lifetime deals that could be ours today at rock-bottom prices. Our ticket into the club was instantly 50% off, down to a measly $15,000. I repeated the process of explaining why I could not afford that amount and, no matter what the cost, I would not be writing any checks until I had some literature to read over and a night to sleep on it.

My requests for literature signaled to the closer that further price slashing was obviously in order, so we then learned of another unfortunate family, the Johnsons, who had recently been forced, due to uncontrollable circumstances, to give up their treasured timeshare, opening the door for us at a mere $5000 price tag.

Three or four unfortunate family situations later, our closer got to the final number. We could buy our way out of the delightful timeshare office for $1200.

“Could you go ahead and write us a check for that right now?” We were asked.

Let’s see, here. You started at $30,000, and got all the way down to $1200, and apparently I’m “buying” the same thing? I still don’t know what “pre-paid vacation insurance” means, and I’m getting the feeling you don’t either. I haven’t seen one shred of paper with any writing on it, and you seem petrified at the thought of giving me a day to think about this glorious opportunity that you have laid out before me. No one, including you, seems to know exactly what the Joneses just gave up that you are trying to sell me, and to top it all off, I have been in this office for over an hour and no one has offered me a free beer.

I’m in Mexico, dude. I didn’t even bring my checkbook. And even if I had, I wouldn’t write you guys a check for a dollar. American, Canadian, or otherwise. Go get me my booze cruise tickets.

The moral of the story: You can’t trust Mexican Canadians. At least, that’s what I took away from it.

The two hours we lost that morning turned out to be totally worth it, however. The booze cruise alone was reward enough for being subjected to the Canucxican timeshare hornswoggle. As we sailed back to the dock after a half-day of fun in the sun, while sipping my umpteenth free beer, it occurred to me that the Canadian sales team would probably do a lot better if they made their pitch after the booze cruise, instead of before.

“Pre-paid vacation insurance” almost starts to make sense if you’ve had enough alcohol.

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

Low Fashion

I know that traditionally, complaining about “the clothes the kids are wearing these days” is a sure sign that you are getting old, but in this case, I think I can be granted an exception to the geezer club. I am here today to talk about some disturbing fashion trends, and I think you all will agree with me, and you’re not old, right?

Some time ago, I wrote about the recent phenomenon of people leaving the house in their pajama pants, going to the store, and thinking nothing of it. I still maintain that this behavior signals the end of civilization as we know it, but I don’t want to rehash that subject. Instead, today I would like to talk about actual clothing meant to be worn outside. Specifically the hip new casual wear.

T-shirts, for starters, have digressed in my opinion. I have always been a fan of T-shirts with words or logos on them – a style my grandpa did not understand or approve of, I might add – but today’s shirts have gone off track. T-shirt logos should be centered on the front or the back, or placed over the heart where the shirt pocket would go. These are the only three acceptable places for words or a logo, in my opinion.

T-shirts these days are starting to have logos and designs that are all over the place. Logos are off-center, and the artsy designs seem to consist mostly of swirling thorny vines, stylized fleur-de-lis, roses, ribbons with writing on them (usually something like “desire” or “passion”) and skulls. If you squint they look like the remains of a beauty queen and her sash after dying from being caught in a rose thicket.

Most of the newer designs are all climbing over the shoulder and onto the back of the shirt, making the wearer look as if they are tilting to one side. They look to me as if the person running the sewing machine got the fabric mixed up and sewed two backs together on accident.

What passes for a T-shirt design these days is getting really vague. I saw a woman the other day wearing a shirt that was otherwise plain, but had writing over one of her shoulder blades near the neckline. It said “fun-loving,” and appeared to be hand-written with a felt-tipped marker like a Sharpie. Was this a commercially produced garment, or was this woman labeling her shirts to correspond with a particular personality trait that she thought the garment highlighted? A few years ago, the answer to that question would have been simple, but these days I can't tell.

Now, I know logically that today’s T-shirt designs are just another trend in fashion, and my resistance to them is surely a sign of my age. I just happen to be too young for that to be the case, so today’s T-shirts are all wrong. End of story.

T-shirt trends are not the real issue here. I just had to get that off my chest, so to speak. The real problem is with the pants. Not so much the pants themselves, but the wearers.

There have been a lot of bad trends in fashion over the years. Togas, kilts, lederhosen, powdered white wigs, knickerbockers, Members Only jackets, Izod golf shirts worn with the collars up, parachute pants, acid-washed jeans, etc., etc. The list is too long and painful to go through.

Of all the weird fashion trends over the years, however, one thing has remained constant. No matter how goofy the look, the clothes always fit. Some were baggy, some were skin tight, but they were all manufactured to actually stay on the wearer.

The most disturbing fashion trend in the history of the world is today’s young men who wear their pants with the waistline hanging down below their butts. Even more so than outdoor pajamas, pants-below-the-butt signals in no uncertain terms that a segment of our youth is a total and complete loss. There is no hope for someone who would willingly relegate themselves to constantly having to grab their pants to keep them from falling to their ankles, and walking like an arthritic penguin when they need to use their hands for something else. This is truly the decline of civilization as we know it.

The insane part is, most kids I see with pants-below-the-butt actually have an oversized belt on the pants, making the pants even more top-heavy and susceptible to falling. The irony of the situation is, the level of brain function (or lack thereof) that it must require to put a belt on your pants-below-the-butt, compounding the falling down problem with the very device that was originally designed to solve the problem, would actually preclude the wearer from ever actually learning what “irony” means.

That’s really too bad, because from what I’ve seen, the kids who are wearing pants-below-the-butt, in my estimation, are the ones who will most likely attempt to run from the police on any given day.

The funny part is, after you’ve been easily tackled by a police office who is wearing a 50-pound belt, because your ½-pound belt made your pants drop to your ankles and trip you up because you had to let go of it to pump your arms to gain some speed, you end up in a jumpsuit with an elastic waistband.

Irony is totally lost on many of its victims.

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


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The Hydration of a Thirsty Nation

“Why is everyone so thirsty all of a sudden?” That’s what my grandpa used to ask me. “Nowadays everyone carries around their own personal bottle of water. They all must be really thirsty.” He was amazed and amused by the sight of it.

Nation-wide thirst has, indeed, increased dramatically in my lifetime. Think back to when you were a kid. Do you remember anyone ever walking around holding their own personal bottle of water? No. Because personal water bottles didn’t exist. Somewhere along the line – in the late 1980’s, I think – companies first produced the portable plastic personal bottle of water, and we have been a nation on the verge of dehydration ever since.

The invention of the personal bottle of water was huge -- bigger than the cell phone, probably -- because it spans all the generation gaps. Every single man, woman, and child needs their own bottle of water today. Everyone from the eighty-year-olds to the one-year-olds can be seen fighting off imminent dehydration with their very own 0.75-liter Evian life insurance policy. This was a massive double-play for beverage companies, because not only does the target market consist of everyone, but they had finally figured out how to get people to pay for something that was otherwise free. That really made my grandpa laugh.

I began to realize how truly water-crazy we have become when my kids started playing organized sports. Every kid on my son’s soccer team arrived at the first practice with their own water bottle. Some kids had those Thermos-type one-gallon jugs with the flip-top spout. They played soccer for about three minutes and then had a ten-minute water break. When I was a kid playing soccer we practiced for an hour and then you were more than welcome to go find a drinking fountain somewhere if you were thirsty. On game days, the parents brought orange slices. You weren’t allowed to leave the field to find a drinking fountain, so you got any liquid you might need from the orange pulp.

With my son’s team, they cancelled a few of the practices because it was too hot. I was left thinking, “Are they actually worried anyone will overheat? Between all the players and coaches they will have 400 gallons of water within arm’s reach. They could take what they don’t drink and fill a small swimming pool if they get too hot.” Oh, well.

And, don’t even get me started on T-ball. If there was ever a sport that requires as little movement as possible on the player’s part, it’s T-ball. I have never seen any of the players actually break a sweat, yet our entire squad comes equipped with giant personal tankards of liquids. We are constantly rotating kids off the field in the middle of games to go pee, and the floor of our dugout is like a Dasani minefield.

And not content with just plain old water anymore, many parents opt for sports drinks to keep their kid’s electrolyte levels acceptable. I know the electrolyte levels of us kids was always a big concern for my folks.

The shift in our perceived water requirements is a strange thing. Back in the day, if you were ever thirsty when you were outside playing, you found a drinking fountain or a hose. Nowadays, moms and dads actually follow their children around the playgrounds and parks with bottles of water, forcing them to drink water even if the kids protest that they’re not thirsty. On any given 70-degree day you’ll hear, “You have to drink some water, Billy. It’s hot out here!” Many of today’s moms may not believe this, but farmers used to work all day in the fields, only drinking water at meal times. Many of today’s moms also may not believe that pee is supposed to be yellow, not clear.

I used to work with a guy who was a coffee drinker and a smoker. He had been with the company for years running one of the machines out in the shop. One day I wandered over to his workstation holding a cup of water. He asked me what I was drinking, and when I told him, he said, “Huh. I can’t remember the last time I had a drink of water.” He was dead serious. He thought about it for a while and decided that he hadn’t had so much as a sip of plain old water in over 10 years. Wrap your head around that one, Mommy!

My wife is one of “today’s moms” who feels the need to keep herself and our three boys maximally hydrated. I am starting to think an over-abundance of water in the body sort of feeds on itself like a crack addiction, because no matter how much water we give him, Boy Number Two is constantly complaining about being thirsty. He is also the one that needs to go to the bathroom every eight minutes. Strangely enough, he is also the one who has had the most potty-training issues and nighttime “accidents.”

It occurs to me that our potty training might go a little smoother if our boys weren’t experiencing a level-nine bladder emergency every time they need to pee. In fact, I’m not sure that any of them have ever had just a simple urge to pee. It’s always been a zero-to-sixty rush to the toilet to unleash a fire hose.

They say the human body is about 60% water. I’d ask them to re-check. I’ll bet these days we’re more like 80%. And I’ll bet my boys are pushing 95%.

There goes one of them now, sprinting to the bathroom.

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
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Fun-raising

My oldest son is in kindergarten, and two out of our three boys are playing T-ball this year, so I have begun a new chapter in my life. I now shake people down for money. The different organizations usually call it "fundraising,” but let’s be serious about what we’re doing. Extortion. Coercion. Racketeering. That’s more like it.

When you need to demand cash from people in the name of children’s sports and education, there are three main target groups, the first of which is your family. The grandparents are easy money. They’re good for whatever you’re selling. We don’t even ask anymore, we just put them down for ten of whatever it is. Now, when they call, they just ask how much they owe us this month.

Your brothers and sisters are a little harder to convince, however, since they are likely in the middle of their own fundraising activities and were just about to call you. In the end, you just trade money. The extended family is hit and miss, because a lot of them have stopped answering the phone.

Your next target group is your co-workers. This is where the term, “I gave at the office,” comes from. As with many events in your youth, you don't really understand the circle of life moments you're living until you are completing the circle many years later. When I was in my twenties and my bosses and older coworkers came to me with the Scholastic book fair order form, or the Girl Scout cookies, I always made sure to buy as much as I could after doing some quick math in my head to make sure I would have enough money left for beer. The reason I obliged their request was purely political, however. When your boss comes to you selling something for his cute little daughter, you say, “Yes.”

What I didn’t understand was that I was just prepaying to cover my turn, ten to twenty years down the road. School and sports fundraising at the office is really just a giant book/cookie/raffle ticket/magazine pyramid scheme. I bought your ticket into the club, now it’s your turn to buy mine.

The third target group is the neighbors. This market lets you use a different and very persuasive technique: Taking the kids with you. Who could say no to the cute little five-year-old with the big blue eyes explaining all about how they need to raise money to fulfill their lifelong dream of hitting a ball with a bat? Anyone who answers the door is toast. The problem is they have the option of pretending they’re not home. Make no mistake about it, when they see you coming with the kids, holding an order form, they know what’s about to go down.

“Daddy, didn’t we just see him come home? How come he’s not answering the door?”

“He must be in the shower, son. Let’s go. I’ll have a little chat with Bob later.”

“How come the curtains are moving?”

“Probably the cat. Let’s go to the next house, son. WE’LL COME BACK TOMORROW AT DINNER TIME SO WE’LL BE SURE TO AVOID MISSING BOB AGAIN!”

“How come you’re talking so loud, Dad?”

“Never mind.”

Going door to door in the neighborhood is a fun and enlightening experience. My sons have no idea how valuable an education in human behavior they are receiving simply by standing on someone else’s front porch, asking for money. There are three types of neighborhood buyers: The people who are buying your five-dollar raffle ticket because you brought the kids with you and they don't want to say no; the ones who are thrilled about the opportunity to help out and happily purchase a ticket; and the ones like me, who have simply resigned themselves to the fact that this is just part of having kids. We don’t bat an eye, we just hand over the cash.

If I didn’t need to take the boys with me as a sales tool and for their own education, I would approach it completely differently.

“Look, Bob, here's the deal. I need to sell twenty of these raffle tickets. You’re only on the hook for one. You won't win the big screen TV, or the $500 gift card, so let's not kid ourselves. We both know the odds. Just give me the five bucks you were going to spend on your latte tomorrow morning and I promise to buy whatever the hell your kid is going to be selling next week, OK? You and I both know your waistline could use a few less lattes anyway, partner. You’re welcome.”

It would really be a lot simpler if we just self-funded these things, but what would that teach the kids?

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

Ten-Year Warranty

Ten years isn’t as long as it used to be. When I was a kid, ten years was a lifetime. That’s probably because when you’re ten years old, ten years is literally a lifetime. When you get to twenty, ten years still seems like a pretty long time, and thirty seems really old. When you finally get to thirty, you don’t feel old at all, and you are starting to have an appreciation for how much time seems to be speeding up, but forty still seems like a long way off. Well, I’m almost forty now, and I can assure those of you who are still in your twenties, I only turned thirty about six months ago. At least, it sure seems that way.

A lot has happened since I turned thirty. I got married and had three kids, for starters. I was a carefree youngster ten years ago. Now I’m a really responsible guy known around the house as, “Daddy.” Our oldest son is six, but that’s impossible, because there is no way I’ve been a dad for over six years. We only had him a couple of years ago, max. At least, it sure seems that way.

The passage of time has a way of accelerating as you grow older, and apparently it really kicks into gear around age forty.

I noticed the other day that almost everything we bought or received right around the time we got married seems to be falling apart. The waffle maker is shooting craps, the gift-registry china is all chipped, the blender leaks, the ridiculously expensive duvet cover (that’s fancy-talk for blanket) is showing signs of wear, and don’t even get me started on the bed itself. Our California king now has two deep sleep-valleys on either side and a large mountain range that resides directly between us. If I want to visit my wife on her side of the bed, I have to get climbing gear and mount an expedition over the king-sized continental divide.

As I’m noticing all these heavily used items recently, I keep thinking, “This thing can’t possibly be worn out yet! We’ve only had it for a year or two.” That’s the problem with this time acceleration phenomenon we all face. If I stop and think about when we got the item in question, I realize it’s almost a decade old. But it still tends to be really aggravating, because it doesn’t seem at all possible that it could have been that long.

However, the things in the house wearing out are, unfortunately, not the biggest concern I’m facing right now. It’s the who in the house that is wearing out that has me really worried. Namely, me. I, myself, happen to be deteriorating at an alarming rate, and that is much more concerning to me than what has happened to the duvet cover.

When I was twenty I was damn-near bullet-proof. I could see like an eagle and run like a cheetah. My hair looked cool, my waist was slim, and my muscles were like steel springs. If I broke my leg at 4:00 pm it would be healed by 8:00 the next morning, and I bounced out of bed every day ready to tackle the world. I was poor and stupid, but I was quick and tough.

When I was thirty, not much had changed from that. I wasn’t quite as poor, and I was a whole lot smarter, but I was still virtually bullet-proof. Actually, I was probably only bullet-resistant at that point, but I still felt great every day.

Now, not even a full ten years later, I am a train wreck. My belly has become quite a bit fatter, while my butt seems to be disappearing. The vast majority of the hair on my head has left for good, and much of it seems to have migrated onto my neck and upper back. I have intermittent neck pain that can be temporarily relieved by cracking the vertebrae in my neck so loudly that it makes my wife jump. I’ve got a calcium deposit on one of my elbows that you could chalk like a pool cue, and my knees hurt when I go up and down stairs. I have a form of arthritis in one of my big toes that prevents it from bending backward properly, and my podiatrist tells me it will require surgery to fix. My good cholesterol is low, my bad cholesterol is high, and if I sit on the floor for more than three minutes I will be sore for the next three days. My lower back is completely shot, and I now actually wake up more sore than when I went to bed. I can throw my back out while sleeping. One of my shoulders pops in and out when I swing my arm, and I can now only sleep on my back because my arms go totally dead when I try to sleep on my sides. My night vision has noticeably deteriorated, and my hearing is going, evidenced by the volume of the TV these days. My teeth are slowly falling apart, my brain is rapidly slowing down, my taste buds are dulling, and I have developed some really wicked seasonal allergies that if I fail to treat with prescription drugs, can make me wish for the sweet release of death.

When I turned thirty, I had an ingrown toenail. That was the full extent of my medical problems.

I’m not complaining, mind you, just marveling at how fast things can change. I know all you sixty-year-olds are laughing at me right now, saying, “Just wait, buddy. It gets worse.” At this point, I just hope I make it that long to find out!

The upside is, the way time seems to be accelerating, it will only be three or four years until I’m sixty. At least, it sure seems that way.

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

A Shotgun Wedding?

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I thought I would regale you with the heartwarming tale about the night I met my wife. Unfortunately, the night I met my wife was pretty un-eventful, besides the fact that I met the love of my life. So instead, I will regale you with the shocking, explosive, frightening, and downright weird tale about the night after the night I met my wife. It’s a tale of a bar, a truck, a barefoot man, a policeman, a bathrobe, and a shotgun.

I met my wife in a bar. It was only my first or second time at this particular bar, but she had been there for thirty-two nights in a row. She and her best friend were going for a combined personal record. It was her initiative and dedication to the endeavor that drew me to her. We were both college students in San Luis Obispo, CA, and she was working at a pizza place that summer. She would get off work at midnight and meet her friend at Bull’s Tavern to shut the place down. We met one evening, talked until closing, and said goodnight.

I thought she was really neat-o, so having heard about their record-breaking attendance goal, I had a good idea of where I might find her again the next evening. After missing her a few times, between the bar and the pizza place, we finally connected, and had another delightful evening of bar-booth conversation. This was the kind of bar where “delightful conversation” means you sat in a red naugahyde booth, taking turns shouting into each other’s ears, in an attempt to carry on a conversation over the AC/DC blaring out of the jukebox.

After the last-call light came on at 2 am – this was back when we could stay up until 2 am – we walked back to the pizza place where my truck was parked, and carried on our conversation in the cab of my Ford F150. By about 3am I had convinced her that kissing me wouldn’t be so bad, and just when I was about to plant one on her, a sonic boom came rolling down the street. It would have been much cooler if we had heard the explosion as we kissed, but you just can’t plan for these kinds of things.

She said, and I quote, “That sounded like a 12 gauge!”
I replied, scoffing-ly, “There is no way that was a 12 gauge shotgun. It was probably just a car backfiring.” In my head I was thinking, “Cool. She knows her shotguns. But that couldn’t have been a shotgun.”

Roughly four minutes later a barefoot man in a bathrobe came walking down the street carrying a 12-gauge shotgun.

Now, if I can paint the scene for you. It is past 3:00 in the morning, and the town has completely shut down. We are the only car parked on the street, directly across from the pizza parlor. The only other car that we can see belongs to a police officer who is parked in a parking lot across the intersection from the pizza place. The police officer is standing outside of his car, chatting with a man on a bicycle. They have apparently not heard the big bang, and seem very relaxed. The pizza place is located on the corner of the intersection, and the man in the bathrobe with the heavy artillery is walking past the pizza place, toward the cop, but neither one of them can see the other yet. We are parked across the street and have a clear view of both of them, and a pretty good idea of what is about to happen. Between the five of us, we are the only people still awake in the whole town, and two of us are a whole lot more awake than we were a minute ago.

The bathrobe-clad gentlemen rounded the corner and came into view of the police officer, and they saw each other at about the same time. We were positioned at just the wrong angle, so when the cop drew his weapon, he was pointing it right at us. We both did that thing where you slide down below the dashboard in case the bullets start flying, but foolishly keep your head up high enough to see, because you don’t want to miss the action.

The policeman immediately started asking the nice man to kindly set his shotgun down. By “kindly asking,” I mean he instantly began shouting, “Drop the #$*%&@ gun right now! Drop it, #$@*&%!!!” I thought he was handling himself very well given the surprising circumstance he had just found himself in. The bicyclist he had been talking to before the rude interruption did something that still to this day I cannot believe, even though I saw it with my own two barely-visible-above-the-dashboard eyes. He dropped his bike to the ground and fit himself completely underneath the front bumper of the police cruiser. Next time you see a police cruiser, take a look at the ground clearance. I think it might have been Houdini himself in that bike helmet.

Well, the nice man with the 12-gauge didn’t drop his gun right away. He just sort of stood there, trying to have a conversation with the cop. He was holding the gun at a 45 degree angle toward the ground, not exactly pointing it at the cop, but not exactly pointing it away from him, either. As the police officer walked closer and closer to the man, yelling commands louder and louder, I was sure we were about to witness something very unpleasant on what had, otherwise, been a really nice night.

Thankfully, for everyone involved, the man finally decided to set his shotgun gently on the ground, and seconds later, the police officer set his knee not-so-gently on the man’s neck, and the stand-off was over. As Captain Bathrobe was led to the police car and Harry Houdini extricated himself from underneath the Caprice Classic, I started the truck and drove my date home in stunned silence.

Fortunately, she didn’t hold the incident against me, and we continued to see each other. We searched the local paper for two weeks straight after that night for some mention of the incident, partially to prove to people that we weren’t making it up, but mostly to find out for ourselves what we had seen. Why was there a man firing a shotgun in sleepy, downtown San Luis Obispo, and why was he then walking the streets with that shotgun, barefoot, in a bathrobe? We never found a single mention of it, and to this day, have no idea what happened.

We graduated and parted ways, and met again six years later at a mutual college friend’s housewarming party. We have been together ever since. After meeting her father, I finally understood her knowledge of shotguns. And after getting to know my father-in-law, I have a strong suspicion that he and my wife might know more about that night than they are letting on. I know he owns a 12-gauge, and I’m pretty sure he owns a bathrobe.

Where exactly was he that night? Out looking for her, perhaps?

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

The Event Planning Calendar

My mother-in-law recently threw a party for her father – my wife’s grandpa – for his 93rd birthday. Between friends and family, more than 60 people were invited to what was surely one of the biggest and most important family events of the year. She threw this party on Saturday, February 5th.

In late January I had been wandering through our kitchen and happened to peruse the calendar for upcoming events. When I noticed that we were scheduled to be at my wife’s folk’s house on Saturday the 5th, I immediately questioned my wife.

“Why does this say we will be in Morro Bay next weekend?”
“It’s my grandpa’s birthday party on Saturday.”
“Excuse me?”
“IT’S MY GRANDPA’S BIRTHDAY PARTY!” (Sometimes she mistakes my incredulous voice for me being hard of hearing.)
“I heard you the first time. I just don’t believe it.”
“Why?”
“Why?!? The 6th is Superbowl Sunday!”
“Oh.”

Oh? That’s all I get? I couldn’t believe it. Allow me to explain… The birthday party was being held 317 miles away from our house. It takes us five hours to get there if there is no traffic and no pee breaks. This is California, so there is always traffic, and we have three kids, so instead of no pee breaks, we have about thirty pee breaks every 100 miles. (To be fair to the kids, more than a few of the pee breaks are instigated by their soda-drinking parents.)

I stared at my wife, and she just stared right back. It was obvious I would get no help from her in rectifying this mess.

I called my mother-in-law.

“Is your dad’s birthday party really on the 5th?
“Yes, why?”
“Because the 6th is the Superbowl!”
“Oh, whoops.”

Whoops?!? Again, not the satisfying solution to the problem that I was looking for. I realize that she had more logistics to worry about than just my schedule, but come on. Who throws a party for out-of-town guests on Superbowl weekend? It became clear to me that I would be waking up on Superbowl Sunday six to seven hours away from my television. I had already invited people over to our house to watch the game. I could cancel that plan and stay in Morro Bay to watch the game with my wife’s family, which would be fun, but I would have to take a day off work to do it. I like to use my sick days for when I’m really sick, or when there is a meeting I need to avoid, so I didn’t want to burn one on this.

This event scheduling debacle really highlighted for me the need for a universal nationwide calendar of blackout dates for party and event planners. I mean, come on, ladies! The Superbowl is only the single-largest and most watched sporting event of the year. I would have thought you might have heard it was coming up.

We obviously need: The Universal Event Planning Calendar of No-Go Dates Due to Sporting Events and Other Guy Stuff.

The calendar would include the obvious sports that every American party planner should already be aware of; namely, NFL and college football, NBA and college basketball, major league baseball, golf, hockey, and Nascar. It would also include the lesser-known but still relevant sports, such as the Olympics (both summer and winter), pro rodeo, soccer, minor league baseball, Indy cars, tennis, curling, rugby, logging competitions, boxing, Scottish highland games, lacrosse, and the Tour de France.

We will need to include hunting and fishing seasons on the calendar as well. Nothing spoils a wedding faster than an absent groom who’s off in a duck blind because his fiancé forgot to check the calendar. Seasons that should be included are deer, elk, moose, duck, pheasant, salmon, and steelhead. Again, the calendar will need to include the slightly lesser-known, but equally important seasons for dove, quail, snipe, ground squirrel, mockingbird, catfish, opossum, mongoose, tree squirrel, and tiger shark.

In addition to the obvious sports and hunting categories listed above, the calendar will also need to include major non-sporting events. Whether us guys choose to attend personally, or catch all the action on TV, these events cannot be missed. They include Octoberfest, all three of the triple crown horse races, any major WWF, WWE or MMA fight, the world series of poker, and the running of the bulls. A few lesser-known events will, again, need to be included if this calendar is to be deemed at all credible. These include Novemberfest, the all-Mexico bull fighting series, the inter-Irish pub darts championships, Septemberfest, the world series of canasta, and Decemberfest.

Basically, if you want to throw a party or have a wedding, you need to do it on Saturday, July 23rd. That’s our only open date.

If the birthday party had been on July 23rd, I wouldn’t have had to haul my kids out of bed at 3:30 in the morning to be home in time for the pregame show! Could someone get started putting that calendar together?

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

Soap

My wife has been couponing. This is a new sport for shoppers involving laying out thousands of dollars on ranch dressing and ketchup, because the price was so low, “it was practically free,” and then giving them away to friends and family because you ended up with five hundred bottles of each. She swears to me that we are saving money by stocking up on things we don’t need, but I remain skeptical.

One item in particular became a point of contention recently. She came home with six big squeeze bottles of “Men’s Hair and Body Wash.” I asked her why in the world she had bought me liquid body wash, to which she answered the typical coupon addict’s response of, “It was so cheap, they were practically giving it away.”

My main problem with that recurring answer is that there is a certain amount of money between “actually” and “practically” when it comes to giving things away at the store.

She then told me that she planned to stop buying bar soap for the shower. I was to immediately begin washing myself with liquid “Energy Wash” that would “Recharge and Energize without Drying.” (With mint extracts!). I politely explained that that was not going to happen, and she should return the bushel of body wash to the store. She calmly informed me about the coupon return policy restrictions, and politely inquired as to why I was such a stubborn jackass. I told her that my bar soap worked just fine, and then went on to state my case about how I don’t think we’re actually saving money when she buys things we don’t need, just because they are on sale. She didn’t see it my way.

After a few days and approximately three hundred requests from my wife for me to “try the damn body wash,” I gave in.

One of my main objections to using body wash was that I didn’t want to have to use her weird looking, pink, loofa-like, spongy, spidery, half-sandpaper/half-shammy-cloth thing-a-ma-jig that hangs on a rope from our shower handle. It looks like someone tied a pink fishnet into a knot the size of a grapefruit, and the only thing it does is collect shockingly cold water and dead skin cells. Besides being disgusting, it is a tool that I just don’t want to have to use.

I like bar soap. Bar soap is ingenious. You pick it up and use it, and when it disappears you know it’s time for a new one. It is self-cleaning, and there are no appurtenances, tools, holders, delivery containers, devices, or spongy loofa things. It’s just you and the soap. Simple.

She listened calmly to my hesitations about using her squishy pink bacteria farm-on-a-rope, then she rolled her eyes and explained - in the same voice she uses when she is helping one of our children figure out a ridiculously simple problem - that I obviously did not need to use her bath sponge. I could just squirt the body wash into my hand, and proceed to soap myself up. Since the body wash was apparently un-returnable, I gave in and told her I would give it a try. She thanked me profusely in the same voice she uses to thank police officers for speeding tickets.

The next morning, it was go time. I hopped into the shower, strangely enthusiastic about my new cleansing adventure. Maybe I would love the body wash. Maybe I would discover a whole new world of instant morning refreshment. It was, after all, “energy” wash that promised to “recharge and energize” me through the deft and patented use of non-drying mint extracts.

Here’s how my body wash experience went:
1) Grabbed bottle of energizing body wash from shower caddy.
2) Unscrewed the large blue bottle top on the squeeze bottle and stared down into the ¾” diameter opening.
3) Thought to myself, “How does this work? This stuff is going to come out of here fast.”
4) Smelled the energy wash. Mmmm. Minty.
5) Further pondered the large opening.
6) Examined the large blue bottle top in my other hand and finally noticed the flip-top cap on top.
7) Screwed large blue bottle top back onto bottle and flipped flip-top open.
8) Looked at much, much smaller squeeze-bottle delivery hole and decided that was the way to go.
9) Squeezed large handful of bright-blue minty energy wash into my right hand.
10) Flipped flip-top closed and set bottle of energy wash back in shower caddy.
11) Washed top of left forearm.
12) Ran out of minty energy wash.
13) Did some quick math in my head.
14) Decided that if I needed to keep opening the bottle and getting more minty energy wash every three seconds, I would be 2-1/2 hours late to work.
15) Left minty energy body wash in shower caddy.
16) Picked up bar of soap.
17) Washed myself.
18) Put soap back in soap tray.
19) Turned off water.
20) Toweled off.
21) Threw bottle of super-minty energy-style hair and body wash into trash can.

I informed my wife that the experiment had failed, and as a side note, that it did nothing to energize me at all, mint extracts or not.

She informed me that I was a Neanderthal and just simply did not know how to use body wash properly.

I’m a pretty smart guy. What am I missing, here? How is body wash supposed to be even remotely as convenient or useful as bar soap? I asked my wife that question, which she refused to answer. She just mumbled something about how cheap it was. I guess in the couponer’s mind, price goes a long way toward necessity and usefulness.

As far as the “recharge and energize” claim, I still haven’t figured that one out. Maybe it’s caffeinated and I was really supposed to drink it.

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

The English Sea

The nice folks at the Roseville, California public libraries have inexplicably asked me to host the kick-off event for their 23rd annual Youth Poetry Contest. Apparently, they consider my children’s book, My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, to be full of children’s poetry. I just thought it was full of rhymes, but who am I to argue? After all, they are the professionals here. They are even billing me as, “local poet, Marc Schmatjen.” Who woulda’ thought, huh?

Thankfully, they were wise enough not to ask me to judge the event. I will simply be in charge of leading a large group of young children through some rhyming exercises and teaching them about the different kinds of poems. I figured that I could pull it off with a little luck and a lot of ad-libbing, so I accepted the job.

In honor of the event this Saturday, I thought I would try my hand at some poetry. We’re going off the reservation a little this week, but I don’t want you to worry. I doubt that this will be a permanent thing!


“The English Sea” – A Poem of Sorts

Here in the English Sea, it is tough to grammatically wade.
When you hear English, you see, context must be weighed.

Sounding out a word ewe herd? There may be many ways, not just one.
Four instants, there are three ways to spell too, and two ways to spell won.

Consider this:

A bird with the flu, flew up our flue,
But our brand new gnu knew what to do.

You’ll want to cry foul, but alas, my poor dear,
It’s just a wayward ailing fowl and an African deer.

The sentence is sound, it’s grammatically right,
Although its content isn’t something I’d write.

The words all disagree when eyed on the page or the pane,
But they are pronounced with true sameness. I’d call that a pain.

They have a real name: Homophones, don’t you know.
Do they make the English language neat and tidy? No, no, no!

To know your way through them, you need lots of know-how.
Are they easy and intuitive? No way, no how!

Some of them can serve to make sentences sweet.
To hold up your whole body is a feat of your feet.
And the presence of presents makes your birthday neat.

Some of them serve to make sentences insane.
If he rode down the road, you’d see him holding a rein,
But if he rowed down the road, then you’ve had too much rain.

But most of them serve to make you feel like you’re losing.
They’re right there, but they’ve left their chairs there. Is that amusing?
It is certainly not. That’s just downright confusing.

Dew knot give up yet. Try this little tail:

The heir to the throne was thrown through the air.
He gave his horse too much rein and regretted his err.
He ended up in the mud on his derriere.
But the err the heir dared was minor, he swore.
A riding faux pas in the rain, and a seat that was sore.
He knew an err in the reign could cost so much more.
It wasn’t so bad to be thrown from one’s steed,
The heir and his father, the king, both agreed.
To be thrown from the throne would be much worse, indeed.

Sea, now that wasn’t sew bad.

In order for your assistants to kindly deliver your correspondence on your stationery,
It would be of great assistance if your correspondents would kindly remain stationary.

On second thought, theirs no hope too bee had.

It doesn’t make sense, it’s hard not to err,
When many of the scents travel over the air.

My advice is two get reel good at math before you are grown,
Because this language will only make ewe moan and groan.

English has never made sense, and now you see it too,
Unlike dollars and cents, one and won don’t make to.


I really hope I’m not banned permanently from the public library system after this!

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

The Tooth Fairy

It is really starting to amaze me what kids will believe. I mean, we just got through Christmas and the whole Santa Claus thing again. Here’s the story, kid: A fat man in a red suit who lives at the top of the world with a bunch of toy-making elves came to our house in a sleigh pulled by flying deer. He landed on our roof and came down our chimney while we were all sleeping and delivered Razor scooters.

Now, never mind the logistics of a round-the-world trip with six billion stops in one night. That is the easiest part of the story to swallow as far as I’m concerned. We have a concrete tile roof with no snow and a 35-degree pitch, yet my kids think someone landed a sleigh on it. Apparently, flying deer make sense to them, and the fact that our gas fireplace chimney is really just a 3-inch diameter pipe doesn’t faze them. I guess they figure if the fat man can get here with flying deer, he can fit himself, two Razor scooters and a soccer ball down a hole the size of a water glass.

I have to cut them some amount of slack regarding Santa, since it’s undoubtedly the most popular world-wide myth being perpetrated on children. It’s easier to fool them because we parents have our story straight about Saint Nick.

We are currently dealing with another benevolent, magical house-visiting stranger, but this one is weirder. Weirder than a man who lives with scooter-producing elves and flying caribou, you ask? Yes. I’m talking about the Tooth Fairy.

My six-year-old, Son Number One as he is called, has been losing his baby teeth for a while now. He recently lost number three and four, which happened to be his two front teeth, so he now looks like a really unfortunate beaver. When he lost his first tooth about a year ago, we introduced the Tooth Fairy to the boys.

Here’s how the conversation went:
“Now that you’ve lost this tooth, we need to put it in an envelope and put it under your pillow.”
“Why”
“So the Tooth Fairy will come and bring you money.”
“The Tooth Fairy?”
“Yes. The Tooth Fairy comes and takes your teeth out from under your pillow and leaves you money.”
“Oh, OK.”

OK?!? What do you mean, “OK?” Don’t you have about a bazillion other questions?

Who is the Tooth Fairy? Is the Tooth Fairy a he or a she? Where does she live? How does she know where we live? How does she get in the house? How does she get into our room? How does she know which room is ours? How does she get under my pillow? Why do we leave the tooth under my pillow instead of out on the dresser? How does she even know I lost a tooth? There are three of us in this room, so how does she know which pillow? Does she just check under all the pillows? Why does this happen at night instead of at lunch or at school?

And the biggest unasked question, in my opinion…“WHY?” Why does the Tooth Fairy want my teeth? Why is she willing to pay for them? What does she do with them?

I mean, as an adult, I would immediately question her motives as well as her under-the-pillow drop spot. Santa can do his thing downstairs by the fireplace all night as far as I’m concerned, but if you’re telling me someone will be getting under my pillow while I’m sleeping on it, some serious questions are going to be asked. And if I don’t like any of the answers, the Tooth Fairy is likely to find a gun under that pillow, not an incisor.

But, a simple, “OK,” is what I got from my boys, and they woke up in the morning excited about Number One’s shiny new dollar coin. They are really gullible! That reminds me… We parents really need to get on the same page about a few things regarding this tooth-hoarding nymph.

For starters, we should all come to a consensus on amount of money given per tooth. Back in my day it was a nickel or a dime at my house, but some of the kids at school were getting quarters. I always thought that was a little weird. Why did she pay Billy more for his stupid teeth?

Nowadays, with the inflated price of health care, we’re up to a dollar per tooth with my kids, but I have heard some parents saying five dollars. Besides the fact that I have three boys and would go broke at five dollars per tooth, it just seems like too much. At those prices the kids might start getting suspicious and asking more questions, and I think we can all agree, nobody wants that. Also, if the price gets too high, we’ll have kids in the garage pulling out each other’s teeth with dad’s needle-nose pliers, trying to score enough cash for a new Nintendo. Not good.

We also need to agree on what she does with the teeth. We should get our story straight for the kids, but mostly we should all figure out what to actually do with the teeth. My wife and I are currently saving them in an envelope, but neither one of us can figure out who’s idea that was, or why we’re doing it. What are we saving them for?

Come to think of it, I’m out four bucks so far, and all I have to show for it is four used teeth that I don’t really want in an envelope. Maybe my boys aren’t the gullible ones in this situation.

Why ARE we keeping these? Why are we paying our children for their old teeth? Those are really the big unanswered questions here. I have four tiny teeth in my dresser drawer that I don’t want right now, and I would really like to get those questions answered before I’m down sixty bucks, holding sixty baby teeth, and wondering, “What now?”

Let’s all get together and discuss. I can meet on Thursday evenings.

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

I Have a Dream - A Father's Version - Part 2

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. It is a Father’s Dream.

I have a dream that one day the people at Lego will take pity on my bare feet and finally round the sharp corners on their little plastic blocks.

I have a dream that one day my sons will pee in the toilet, instead of peeing on and around the toilet.

I have a dream that my sons will begin to think about putting a toy back where it goes, instead of throwing it over their shoulder when they’re done with it, or when they hear, “Dinner.”

I have a dream that eventually the daytime decibel level in my house will drop below the equivalent of a rock saw being destroyed by a jackhammer on a freight train.

I have a dream that one day we will be able to get my four-year-old tired enough that he will sleep past 5:30am.

I have a dream that someday soon my sons will be able to get out of bed, no matter what the hour, and go poop or get a drink of water without having to tell me about it.

I have a dream that I will change my last diaper on my child before I am old enough to need them myself.

I have a dream that the people who predict college tuition levels to rise 250% over the next 15-20 years have actually been smoking crack, and college is really getting cheaper.

I have a dream that somewhere, out there, there is a sippy-cup manufacturer that can actually make a container for milk that doesn’t leak when turned upside-down and slammed on the table by a two-year-old.

I have a dream that someday I will walk into my office and not find that my computer login name has been changed to bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbAW#4e5c by one of my sons randomly pushing buttons.

I have a dream that one day, taking the boys with me on an errand will not automatically add 45 minutes to that errand.

I have a dream that I will never again hear the words, "Daddy, help! I fell off the toilet while I was peeing." That I will never again have to deal with the cleanup of that unfortunate incident.

I have a dream that I can someday stop having to explain to the 911 dispatcher that my son was just playing with the buttons and they do not need to respond to my cell phone’s location.

I have a dream that a pharmaceutical company somewhere will eventually produce a safe and reliable children’s tranquilizer for short-term knockouts, so that we parents may sign escrow documents, or talk to the bank teller, or read the paper in peace.

I have a dream that someday I will hear about what actually happened at school, instead of hearing, “Nothing.”

I have a dream that the next call I receive from the principal will be to congratulate me on something outstanding my son did, instead of to discuss another “incident.”

I have a dream that someday we can find a food group that all five members of the family will willingly eat, besides bacon.

I have a dream that my three boys will somehow moderate their food intake to fit my budget, and not eat the entire contents of the refrigerator in one day. My six-year-old can eat a whole chicken, so I guess… I have a dream that someday soon food will get a lot cheaper, and giant refrigerators will go on sale.

And when this happens, I will sing:

Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

Because teenagers clean up after themselves, are better behaved, quieter, and eat less, right? Right!?!

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

Resolutions

My wife had been after me all week to tell her what my New Year’s resolutions were, and apparently, “I don’t have any,” was not an acceptable answer, so I was forced to find some. I did some quick internet research and came up with a list of the most popular resolutions in America. Not wanting to appear like I was slacking off, I have adopted all of them. Bring it on, 2011!

Spend more time with family and friends
Since the only two things I do are work and hang out with my family and friends, the only way to accomplish this resolution was to quit my job. Done.

Go to the gym more
OK, let’s not start talking crazy. I modified this one slightly to fit my lifestyle. I resolved to drive past the gym at least twice a week. If I go the long way to 7-Eleven, I can go by the gym on my way to get my 94-oz soda. Baby steps, people!

Lose weight
I am all about this resolution. I have been keeping my eye on the new MacBook Air, and I think it’s time to pull the trigger on that bad boy. That should get rid of about five pounds compared to my old Dell.

Quit smoking
I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do this one, and frankly, I really don’t understand why I need to. I mean, what’s better than ribs? Answer… nothing. Still, I guess I could rotisserie more chickens or something like that. I’ll have to think about this one some more.

Enjoy life more
Uh… hello? Didn’t they pay attention to the first one? I just quit my job. This one is kind of redundant, don’t you think?

Quit drinking
No problem there. This one requires no action on my part. I only drink beer, and everyone knows, beer doesn’t count. It’s more of a food group than a beverage, really. They can’t possibly mean beer, can they? I mean, what would I drink while I was smoking? Or rotisserie-ing?

Get out of debt
This one may be a little tricky, since I just quit my job, but I have at least resolved to stop taking payday loans to cover my gambling losses. That should help. I will, instead, borrow money from friends and relatives. That should cut down on my principal and interest payments significantly.

Learn a new language
I have actually been meaning to do this for quite a while, so this resolution thing should really be the boost I need. I am going to learn to speak Number Three. I am constantly having to ask Son Number One and Son Number Two what the heck Number Three just said. Everyone in our house can understand our youngest son, except me. My wife will really appreciate it when I finally crack the code! It should also really help him when he’s trying to tell me stuff like, “My head is stuck,” or “You’re sitting on me.”

Help others
This one sounded like a lot of work, and appears to involve talking to other people, so I decided to modify it slightly. I have resolved to give my sons 30% fewer smart-ass answers to their questions. That should help them learn more actual facts, and should satisfy this category.

Stick to a budget
Budgets have never really worked out for me, and since I am unemployed now, the idea just seems silly. I mean, how can I have a budget when I don’t have a paycheck? Hello! So, I have modified this one to be “Stick to a system.” Namely, my horse picking system at the track. I figure without any future paychecks, I will need to really buckle down and get serious at the track if I’m going to feed the family.

Find my soul mate
This one required some modification. For starters, since I already have a wife, finding my soul mate might involve a messy divorce. Plus, one of the main reasons I got married in the first place was so that I could stop dating. In light of these considerations, I have decided instead to find my soul mate of beer. My beer mate, if you will. Yes, that one perfect beer that compliments everything in my new and improved life. I don’t expect the search to be easy. On the contrary, I think this quest may take a lifetime, but I’m willing to put that kind of time in for such an important resolution.

Find a better job
Again… hello? I just quit my last job. Don’t they even pay attention to their own lists? I have found a better job; namely, no job. Duh!

Be less stressed
Let’s see, here... I’m an unemployed guy on a quest to find his beer mate. This one should not be a problem.


On second thought, when I presented this list to my wife, she looked a little stressed. That sometimes has a way of coming around to bite me, so the “Be less stressed” one might be a little more difficult than I thought.

She keeps muttering something that sounds like, “You quit your what?” and her face seems a little redder than normal. Maybe she should think about quitting her job and going on a quest to find her wine mate. I’ll suggest that to her. That might get me some extra points in the “Help others” category, too.

I can’t figure out why she seems so upset. After all, this was her idea.

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

Holiday Observations

I had the chance this holiday season, as I hope many of you did, to slow down a little from my normally busy routine and enjoy life a little more. As this year has wound to a close, I was able to reflect a bit on life, and the holidays, and I have made some observations.

Here are a few of my deep thoughts for you to ponder:


The number of days remaining until Christmas is inversely and exponentially proportional to my desire to get within three miles of the mall.

It’s really too bad that the guy who came up with “Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg” isn’t getting royalties. That really caught on with the kids.

My wife asked me this year what kind of deals would need to be offered to get me to go to the 4:00am door-buster sales on “Black Friday.” After a little thought I decided that if Target was willing to pay me about $2000 to take something out of the store, I might go.

There is a tipping point in late November when my attitude about the homeowner who leaves his Christmas lights up year-round changes from mild disgust to unabashed admiration.

The LightKeeper Pro is the best invention, ever invented by anyone, ever.

When people refuse to say, “Merry Christmas,” but go with, “Happy Holidays,” what holidays are they talking about?

If we supposedly evolved from monkeys, how come there are still monkeys? (I didn’t necessarily say they were all observations about the holidays… just observations I made during the holidays.)

Fruitcake is a lot like the Broadway musical “Cats.” People either love it or hate it. There is no middle ground.

There is quite a bit of build-up to Christmas Day, but no good mechanism for dealing with the bone crushing anticlimactic feeling of the day after Christmas. Perhaps this is why the English invented Boxing Day. Sadly, we’ll never know, because no one knows what Boxing Day really is.

Junior Miss sizes are not the same as Women’s sizes. When a guy buys his wife pajamas in a size she wears, but that size turns out to be a Junior Miss size, those pajamas will not fit that guy’s wife.

On an unrelated note, my local department store should do a much better job of delineating between the Junior Miss section and the Women’s section, so a guy can figure out where he’s standing.

Putting lottery scratcher tickets in your spouse’s Christmas stocking can either be a pretty fun, cool gift, or the most worthless, let-down of a gift ever.

The person that came up with the idea of replacing the wrapped box with the gift bag and tissue paper should get a Nobel Prize.

We had carolers come to our door this year. As I understand it from the old song, they used to demand figgy pudding. This group asked for $5 toward some drinking water project in Africa. What’s up with that? Still, it’s probably for the best. I don’t even know what figgy pudding is, but I had five bucks.

“I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” is a great concept if you’re staying home. If you’re travelling, however, it’s a different story entirely. I can assure you that when you’re caught in a blizzard on Interstate-5, off the port bow of an eighteen-wheeler blowing road-slush directly onto your windshield, and your wipers can’t keep up, you’re dreaming of a very dry, very hot Christmas.


Have a safe, happy, and productive New Year, everybody!

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2010 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!