Why? Ok, but why? It is not like we are talking about different species of dog or different types of bird. We are talking about a kitchen utensil. I am here to contend that the rubber, and sometimes silicone spatula, should have its own distinct name in order to differentiate it from the pancake flipper spatula.

Yes, you thought right. This is a momentous event. Once again, we are on the cusp of creating a new paradigm in kitchen organization and classification. We here at WTDA are always on the cusp. What would be the perfect name for our little, fellow scraper? Scrapula? Flapula? Rubber Scrubber? E petuti scrapa? I think we should call it a rubber paddle… or for you Spanish speakers, a paleta de goma.

Hey! Hand me the rubber paddle, I need to scrape the bowl!

Sold! Rubber paddle it is! Spread the word! So let it be written, so let it be done!

Other kids though, they are quite different. As a matter of fact we had a child over that was quite found of condiments. Not only that, the boy loved cheese, he wanted it on everything. He asked for cheese for lunch and dinner, but the kicker was when he asked for it on his pancakes. Pancakes!!

I believe his words were “I would really like this with cheese”. I can’t understand if he was serious or just buying time to avoid actually eating his breakfast. Either way it sounded real nasty!

Why are our kids like this? They seem to only be attracted to the worst foods and/or the worst foods for you. I mean, our cheese was good… we don’t fool with that crap yellow cheese, no sir, we like our cheese raw… from raw milk, it’s delicious! So maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. I mean, you could do way worse– like hot sauce!

If your kid wants to cheese it, just tell them to chill out. Food is made to be different! And no ketchup either! No matter what, unless it’s with french fries fried in avocado oil. No ketchup on the toothbrush either!

Happy parenting!

For those of you who are newly married, single looking to get married, or somewhere in between, you need to be warned. If you like your mother-in-law, and I do, and by like I mean I don’t hate her… If you plan on staying with her instead of your own mother, oh boy. What happens here doesn’t make much sense, unless you are post-menopausal and angry with the world. Your mom will think that you like your mother-in-law more than her. We all know how crazy this is! You may want to stay with your in-laws for a host of reasons like: they are central to friends and activities, they are supplying you with a fully furnished apartment for your stay, and they will let you sleep past 9 am (but not without a guilt trip when you wake up). Then, of course you are going to make the logical decision.

Your mother may not see this as the practical decision, as a matter of fact she will just take it as spiteful and make constant mis-judgements on your character and the character of your wife. It doesn’t matter how wrong she is, or how many times you tell her to move closer to civilization. She won’t do it and she will blame you for your lack of compassion when it comes to her own failures at house hunting.

If this isn’t making any sense to you, you must be single or an only child, or maybe even just a jerk… either way, nobody cares what you think.

If you are looking to settle down with a nice girl, please, for the love of pete, make sure her family is at least 400 miles from yours. I honestly think it would be easier. Yeah maybe not practical for vacation time, taking off two full weeks within 60 days. BUT it will make the drama subside a little… at least I think it would. My mom is probably just looking for something to disapprove of.

If you are wondering what I’m going to do, you are in for a treat. After staying with my mother last time I was in town and realizing she and my dad were content to just sit and watch TV, I decided that I will make a rigorous schedule that will keep us moving and wear all of our family out as only I know how to do. If I can’t make the drama go away I will make them so annoyed they won’t want me to stay. Practical jokes are the gifts that keep on giving.

Why is the mail stack so dreaded? Because it clutters my room bringing eye-soreness to the gaze that would fall across the landscape of my desk and bed. I like my desk spic and span… despite the occasional accumulation of dust which I may or may not be lax to clean.

Perhaps a daily regimen is need!? Yes, I am exclaiming and asking in the same sentence. You see, as I excitedly go to get the mail each day, I look through it and sift out what I deem to be the most important pieces of mail that need the soonest attention. If a piece of mail does not make the cut, it gets thrown into the mail stack in my room. I then proceed to leave it sit there for a week and at the end of the week I go through the stack opening the mail and reading and discarding as necessary.

Sometimes during the weekly purge I will still separate the mail further into types of mail categories such as: bills, newsletters, updates, and solicitations. Then I would attack the stack categorically. Did you just hear that? Attack the stack. Nice. So you can see if I am attacking the stack categorically and then if something should draw me away from my attacking (like an afternoon romp in the park), at least I would have gotten through the most important part of the stack and left the least important part of the stack in stacking up.

I think one of the biggest holdups is getting newsletters from organizations that you are involved in. I want to read the newsletters, just not at the exact moment that I receive them, and thus they end up languishing in the mail stack. Bills can be the same way as I like to keep them until I pay them and I might not be paying them right away.

Perhaps the answer is to have designated compartments, containers, or cubby holes that can neatly store your mail, combined with a daily regimen/strategy with which to keep said compartments, containers, or cubby holes from overflowing. You know what I am talking about, don’t you? The people who have the sweet looking, magazine cover, stylish mail organizer and it is just overflowing, stuffed-to-the-max full of envelopes in a jumbled mess. And so the moral of that story is that more stuff will not solve all your problems.

Welp, what do you do about the mail stack? Or do you not even have problems with the mail stack? Maybe you do not receive enough mail? Are you involved in enough life-living to receive mail?

For instance, my wife has a slight clumsy gene that comes and goes every now and then. This — among other things, comes out in our kids.

As a matter of fact Elijah, our oldest, had a run-in with a slide the other day. This made him cry and run and hide… which he does when he doesn’t want people to see him cry… which he gets from me. Well, I tried to console him and had him laughing and playing in his hiding spot under the stairs at the playground. That’s when I said, “I am coming in there to get you”. He then got so excited that he turned and ran straight into the staircase. Which, of course, led to another fit of crying and hiding.

The clumsy side I can’t claim, but the run and hide part I have to claim. The sad thing is I don’t know why…

If you want kids, think about the bad stuff about you that they will make worse. Just food for thought when considering procreation.

So… I let the ol’ lady out of the house, but more so I let her out of town. Crazy? I know! She asked real sweet like, and it was cute, so I told her she could put her shoes on and step away from the stove and have some fun. By fun I mean take your phone and check in with me every hour and also that I will have you followed so that no other guy can even look at you without me knowing. Too much?… maybe so, but we all have our love languages, mine just happens to be “smother her”. Don’t be jealous, one day you’ll meet someone.

I’m now home with my two boys on my own, which is not so bad when she has all my meals cooked and organized, my clothes laid out and ironed, and my car vacuumed! It was rough… I mean I had to still change the little ones diaper, put breakfast in a bowl, get dressed and pay the babysitter (thanks Tim!). Taking the kids to work was a little bit of a challenge. I mean I had a babysitter for a partial day, but I still needed to do my night classes at the community center. After getting home around 6:30pm I bathed the little carpet munchers and fed them too. After my meeting ( Tim and I smoking a cigar and playing poker). I put them down at 9pm which was a treat for them because they usually go to bed at 8:30.

Another treat for them was that they got to sleep in my bed. I only did this so if one of them fell out all I had to do is reach over the edge and pull them back up. I would never have to leave the warm bed, and warm it was with two little boys in there. The night started off well enough, but at about 10:30 pm I noticed that my arm was dead because of the 2 yr old was curled up on it. I moved him over about 18 inches but he made it back over to me around 12:30 am. So I moved the oldest to the bottom of the bed and gave him another blanket. Now the boys are sleeping feet to feet on their moms side of the bed. Awesome! I can sleep now.

All was going well until about 2:30am when all the sudden I found that I had feet on my head and neck. 4 of them to be exact! After nudging them to move over, I get a nudge back, in the form of a kick to my face. which is better than a kick to the groin. After about 10 minutes of re-organizing them and a stuffed animal by the name of squidward, I now have a boundary where I can sleep. After a quick restroom break (shut up Tim) I get back to bed and get my remaining 3 hours in before I am awakened by the lack of blankets anywhere on the bed. At this point I give up entirely and go brush my teeth and make some coffee.

The moral of the story is no matter how lazy you become, there is never a reason to put your kids in your bed. Unless you don’t like sleep, or you, in fact, like being kicked in the face, don’t do it! If that’s you, I’ll bet you have a lot of friends!

There was poop all over the place, green goo that can only be described one way, bile from the pit of satan port-o-john! What is worse, the older boy sat there enjoying sponge bob and his square pants, all while his little brother was pooping out of his pants. It looked like an “A” bomb full of pooh went off. Dad did the only honorable thing he could, he left and went to work till he was summoned to scrap pooh from the ceiling. A job he did with honor, and a wash cloth over his nose and mouth.

If you are out there and you hear the distress of a boy calling for his mother because of something his brother did and it involves pooh, run… just run!

I want him to learn lots of instruments, but piano must be first. Why? I am glad you asked…. Because it takes more work. Doubt that? Then, Mr. Smarty pants you try it. Either way, this is the order of play when it comes to instruments in our house.

-Piano
-Drums
-Guitar
-Bass (by this time it will be cake)

When it comes to sports, there is a list that must be followed whether he likes it or not.

-Football
-Baseball
-Hockey
-Rugby
-Polo
-Water polo
-Golf
-Field hockey
-Frisbee golf
-Competitive swimming
…..maybe soccer, but not if I can help it.

There is always a list, even when you think there is no list, there is always a list. If you doubt this, ask your wife or any respectable woman, she will tell you. So fellahs, you learn to play the piano and suddenly the women won’t be so hard to figure out. Just play one note on the piano and suddenly she is fixed!

It is important to monitor the kitchen towel, especially if you have unobservant roommates or family members, as they may have inadvertently wiped up chicken blood, or, perhaps, maybe coffee was spilled on the counter and the towel was set in it and then placed right back on the handle without anyone noticing.

Some people like to have two towels in the kitchen, one towel to use for hand drying, and one towel to use for drying dishes. I think the two towel method is useful for maintaining a cleaner towel for longer periods, although, while you may be able to stretch the usefulness of the clean towels, you now have the extra work of watching, swtiching out, and washing two towels as opposed to one. I like having two towels in the kitchen just so I can use one to snap people in the bum, but that’s just me. Towel snap!

So, as you should have been able to glean, the most important thing for excellent use of the kitchen towel is keeping it clean. The second most important thing is to allow it to dry properly in between uses. Sure, sure you will have times when you need a towel to clean up a dirty mess, but then that towel will go straight to the wash and will not be a regular customer of your hands or dishes for the next week.

If you fail to clean your towel or allow it to dry properly, it will develop a a terrible smell that will haunt you in your dreams. The smell will overtake your every thought and permanently bind you to its will. You will never again escape its clutches. It will be the farthest thing from the most interesting smell in the world, and yet, everyday you will think you smell the smell, even when you do not.

So, during the in-between times, your cool air is coming from a fan. For ultimate cooling, I set the fan in the window at night. Last night was one such night. It was a nice night, light winds and little humidity. It was the kind of night where we had all the windows open. Little did I know…

And then it hit me. In the middle of the night. The wind was so cold that my nipples were piercing my sheets. My wife actually asked me to stop scraping her with my nails. I assured her that those weren’t my nails.

Some would say that it was as cold as a well-digger’s knee! Alas, I tell you that I was cold enough that I could not make it to the fan without significant shrinkage. Nobody likes shrinkage, it’s like a frightened turtle.

When you suspect that the temps will be lower than 60 degrees overnight, turn that fan away from you! If you want to, you can even take the fan out of the window all together. I know it sounds crazy, but you can just sit that fan on the floor. Then you can worry about cooling the house down in the morning after you get out of bed and get dressed. This will be far less painful for your nipples or your turtles.

Take care and remember, you don’t have to do what I do, just do what I say.