What’re We Talking About?

They say distance makes the heart grow fonder, and I suppose that’s true.  I think distance also brings things into a sharper focus.  After a trip to see my wife and daughters (who are living apart from me until the end of the school year), I notice things distinctly that I hadn’t really picked up on before.

My 9 year old is the household historian.  She tells me everything that has happened since my last visit.  With the enthusiasm of a beer-seller in a football stadium, she’ll shout her way into any conversation to finish telling everyone’s stories for them, complete with her own embellishments of course.  She, in fact, has so much news that the rest of us can barely get a word in edgewise.

My 13 year old has reached the ego-centric teenage years. No matter what the conversation is actually about, it will automatically steer back to her and her friends.  Here’s an example: “Before I got on the plane today, I stopped at Chester’s Hamburgers for the first time,” I said.  “Oh, was it good?” says my wife.  “It was amazing! Changed my life,” I replied.  Kylie jumps in with, “When I was having lunch with Collin and Kelly yesterday… so-and-so was picking on what’s-her-name and we were starting to get mad and I told them blah, blah, blah.”  Totally not listening to the conversation at all.

My wife is all business.  With me gone, she handles all the finances and bill paying.  It’s not a complicated process, but over the years I’ve developed a system of systems.  She expects me to be able to rattle off usernames and passwords, account numbers and websites at will.

I usually end up with a splitting migraine after about the first hour, but I wouldn’t trade that time for anything.  I’m looking forward to the time when they are all here with me in South Texas and I’m back to so ingrained in their lives… that I can ignore it all again.

Face-ing The Facts

I get a kick out of Facebook. It’s fun to reconnect with old friends and make new ones. I like reading through the Live Feed and finding out what’s on everyone’s minds. My hometown has discovered Facebook within the last year or so. Quite a few of my old classmates are on and many of us have reconnected. It’s fun to find out what everyone is up to and go through their photo galleries to see what their kids look like.

I find the “Suggestions” area to be somewhat suspect, though. Surprisingly, just because someone I know has a sister who has a co-worker who was tagged in a photo at a bachelor party with someone who also is a fan of Tim McGraw… does not mean we’re friends. The funny thing is because so many of my former classmates are on Facebok, three of the biggest d-bags in my high school have somehow managed to get FB pages and they keep popping up in my “Friend Suggestion” box.

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but if you delete those people, they keep showing back up. It’s like an omen. “You will ‘friend’ these people and you will like it!” No thanks. I went to a relatively small high school. There were about 180-190 kids in my class and I would say I at least got along with all but three of them… you guessed it, the three that keep showing up on FB.

Does Facebook have a “guy”, like that dude Tom on MySpace that I can write? Everyone wants a Dislike button? Forget that. I want a D-Bag button on the Friend Suggestion box so that if you click it, they go away forever. Who’s with me?

Wardrobe Malfunction

Since we’ve made the move to Texas, my morning show partner Jesse has been giving me grief about my clothes – every day!  Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no paragon of fashion, but my wardrobe tastes haven’t really changed much in the past few years.  Either way, my style can certainly use an upgrade.

When it comes to buying new clothes, I have a few challenges.

• I’m style-challenged: I usually try to scope out the window displays at the mall and find a look that I like.  This becomes a bit more difficult though because Jesse and I do several appearances together and I can’t be wearing the same style as he is. (I know… I’m embarrassed to write it, but it’s true. LOL) Both for the reason that it’ll make us look goofy and he’ll think I’m copying him. Ha ha ha
• Not much choice: There are few options for men out there in the first place and with the challenges I mentioned above, and the fact I’m short and pudgy, not much looks good on me.
• I’m cheap: While I LOVE shopping for my girls and buying them new clothes, I’m pretty tight with money on clothes for me.  I was shopping for something new to wear last week and every shirt I looked at was $65-75 bucks! Is it made out of platinum?  Don’t these people know we’re in a recession? If I can’t get it at Old Navy or Target, I don’t buy it.

Couple these factors with the fact that my wife and daughters are living five states away and can’t pick out my clothes for me, and as you can see, I’m pretty much hopeless.  Oh well, t-shirts and jeans are timeless!

Making a Crockery of Me

My wife and I have come to an impasse.  We have a simple rule at our house.  If one of us cooks, the other one cleans up.  Now I’d say my wife cooks 90% of the time, which has me doing dishes the majority of the time.  I have no problem with this arrangement.

What I do take issue with is that during the time that I’m not home – when I’m not using any dishes or eating any food – all those dishes get piled up and left for me.  Most of the time, I just do them without complaint.  After a particularly messy group of pans, including a crusty crock pot ended up left for me, I decided to take in-action.  I did all the dishes and cleaned up everything EXCEPT the crock pot, which I left in the sink.

It’s been three days and so far neither of us is budging.

My resolve is weakening though… it grosses me out.  Plus I really wanted to make pulled pork this weekend.

The Rocking Chair is Ready

So George Jones says stars like Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift don’t represent true, traditional country music.

“They had to use something that was established already, and that’s traditional country music. So what they need to do really, I think, is find their own title, because they’re definitely not traditional country music. And there’s quite a few of us that are going to hope that it comes back one of these days.”

Now I’m a big fan of Classic Country.  I’ve been listening to country music for a big part of my life and playing country music on the radio for 20 years.  That doesn’t make me an expert, but I think it qualifies me to have an informed opinion.  That opinion is: SHUT THE HELL UP!  Have you ever noticed that you rarely (if ever) hear artists past their prime in other formats complaining about the new generation?  It used to irritate the #### out of me when Waylon Jennings did it (God rest his soul) and it still bugs me now!  Every successful artist in every format goes through a career cycle of Introduction, Growth, Success, and Decline.  The exceptions in all of recorded music can probably be counted on one hand.

All current music formats evolve.  Even when George Jones began recording music in the late 50’s, Country music had come a long way from the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers.  And a lot of his early singles crossed over to the Pop charts, too.  Hmmm… makes his current comments smack of hypocrisy, no?

By contrast, Carrie Underwood says, “I’ve had people tell me, ‘I never listened to country music until I saw you on “American Idol,” and now I’ve been to a Rascal Flatts concerts, and I went and saw so and so.’ And it’s wonderful that we all kind of have our place in country music and we all pull listeners in for different reasons, and because of that we can hear everything.”  Very classy lady.

I’ve got news for any “haters”: the music industry is just that, an industry.  One that continuously evolves to get new people interested and invested in their product.  As a professional in the Country format, I thank God for Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood every day.  Artists like George Jones definitely helped shape the Country music of today, and that is their legacy. 

Don’t taint it with sour grapes.

Halloween Headache

Scary prices make me feel wicked!  So my girls Halloween costume parties are coming up at their respective schools.  This means it’s time to take out the annual loan to go and purchase new costumes.  While Halloween in general in one of my favorite holidays of the year, this ritual is one of my least favorites.

First there is the cost.  Can you find a more cheaply made product in the entire world than a Halloween costume?  Polyester or that flimsy plastic crap fabric, every corner cut possible.  And all this shoddy workmanship can be yours for a mere… FIFTY BUCKS?  You can put $49.99 on the package, but it’s still Fifty bucks!  I spent an hour last night trying to convince my 12 year old daughter that the discounted $20 Batman costume was cool, to no avail.

And what perv designs these things?  My girls are 8 and 12.  The costumes for the 8 year old are ok, but for the tween?  Hello! or should I say Hell-no!  Every costume is slutty.  Low cut tops and micro-mini skirts.  Don’t get me wrong, at a bar costume party I’d be all about it… but not for my kid.  She’s 5′2″, so she fits into a junior medium or a ladies small.  Apparently you have to be a DD to fill out the tops, though.  Seriously? 

Well, $90 later the greek goddess and zombie prom queen are all set to go.  I’ll have to seek my reimbursement in trick or treat candy.

Handy Man?

Every other weekend is my wife’s weekend “on”.  She works at Target, and usually pulls mid-day shifts on both Saturday and Sunday.  On these weekends, my kids never want to do anything with Dad, they just want to play with their friends.  This leads to every other weekend being “Honey-Do” weekends.

This weekend my list was simple enough: Clean the garage. However, that turned into $100 at Home Depot and an entire weekend of work.  My garage isn’t that cluttered or dirty, but there isn’t much room with a truck and van in there. Plus, there were a lot of things in there that didn’t belong.  The main job would be finding a place for all this stuff. 

The Shed!  Trouble is – that’s full of crap, too.  So I throw out a contractor bag full of crap and pile the rest in front of the shed.  Garage is done.  Now the shed needs to be cleaned out.  First trip to Home Depot: shelving for the shed.  Everything out into the yard, clean, everything back in.  This is when discover that the guy that owned my house before me left me a treasure trove of leftover building materials, everything from cement and grout to plywood and 2×4’s.  This is when I get my next bright idea… I’ll use some of this material to build a workbench in my garage.  Minus the wood I’ll use later, I clean out the shed and re-stock everything.  Thus ends Saturday.

Sunday starts with me heading off to Home Depot again for hinges, carriage bolts, wood screws, etc.  As I mentioned above, my garage is not very spacious, so my new workbench will have to fit accordingly.  I “designed” one that is 3×6 and will collapse… on purpose. It has removable legs on the front and hinges holding it on the wall.  When I’m not using it, I just remove the legs and fold it down.  Unbelievably, it actually worked!  It took me most of the day to build it Sunday.  Then, of course, I did a few projects on my new bench.  Re-wired an extension cord that I cut in half with my hedge trimmer and built a new screen for my back door.

Those are two of only possibly five “handy” things I’ve done in the past four years… so the workbench may end up collecting dust… or my wife may come up with many more things to repair in the future.

Where There’s Smoke…

…my wife’s baking carrot cake.  OK, I should point out before I begin that my wife is a great chef and rarely has a cooking calamity.  This weekend, however, will live on in infamy in the Shannon household.  You see my lovely baking bride tried to burn our house down… twice!

Saturday started off as a normal enough day.  I was rescreening the windows that had been damaged in the summer’s hail storms, the girls had friends over, and my wife decided she wanted to bake a carrot cake.  Things progressed well until she put the cake in the oven to bake.  For reasons I cannot explain – the cake batter bubbled up and all over the inside of the oven, where it promptly began to burn.  Smoke everywhere.  We have a security system in our house, so when the smoke detectors started going off they started calling the house to see if we needed assistance.  We got all the windows and doors opened and got everything aired out.  Amy threw the cake away and I took everyone out to Village Inn for pie.  Crisis averted.

Sunday.  After breakfast, I noticed the kitchen still smelled a little smoky, so I peeked in the oven.  I saw that all the cake goop that had escaped was still “caked” all over the inside of the oven.  I asked Amy if cleaning the oven was in her pans for the day.  That was not met with enthusiasm; apparently it was still too soon.  Later that afternoon, once the house was again full of neighborhood kids, I walked in from outside to find my house completely filled with smoke again!  I rushed to find the source of the smoke and zeroed in on our smoking stove, which was set to “clean” mode!  As I’m trying to turn the damn thing off, one of my daughter’s friends says, “there a fire in there!”  Sure enough, there are two foot flames shooting up inside the oven!  Mass chaos ensues.  I’m trying to put out the fire, kids and pets are evacuating the building, the security company is calling every few minutes.  It took well over an hour to get all the smoke out of the house, which still smelled pretty smoky when I left this morning.

Once everything cooled down… I cleaned out the oven myself, the old fashioned way – with a wire brush and oven cleaner.  I even had to take the oven apart to get everything out from under the heating element.

Next time my wife is craving carrot cake, we’ll head to the bakery.

Child-ish Behavior

We’re Foodies at my house.  All four of us like watching the Food Network and eating at good restaurants.  We love trying new recipes and even cooking things together.  Up until now, this has seemed harmless enough.  Well, my wife and oldest daughter went to see “Julie & Julia” last week and it’s beginning to cost me a fortune.

The movie itself:
Movie Tickets – $18
Popcorn & Sodas – $25

Then my wife needed to have Julia Child’s book:
Mastering the Art of French Cooking – $40

The book says the most important thing is a set of excellent cutlery, so off to the store for that:
Chef knife set – $200

What’s next, Culinary School?
Culinary Arts tuition – $28,017
Pastry and Baking Arts tuition – $26,334
Culinary Management Diploma program – $12,900

So, that’ll run me around $70 grand! Trust me; I won’t need a whole table-full of chopped onions to make me cry.  In fact, my eyes are starting to sting right now.

That Dog Won’t Hunt

I have the world’s only self-disciplining dog.  She is a ~4 year old Boston Terrier/Dachshund mix named Shadow and we’ve had her since about April.  We got her from a family that was giving her up because they had a baby on the way, and were afraid they wouldn’t give her the attention she needs.  They got her from the pound.  Her history before that is a little fuzzy, but we think she may have been mistreated.  She is a terrific little dog most of the time.  Lots of love and kisses for everyone, well trained, very happy little dog.

Like all pets, she misbehaves occasionally.  She has an addiction to lip gloss like crack cocaine.  If the girls leave a tube on the floor of their bedroom, she’s on it like white on rice.  She also attempts to beg from the dinner table and sniff at the garbage.  This is usually easily deterred with a stern command (much like my kids-LOL).

Yesterday, after dinner we went out for ice cream.  Normally, we would either kennel the dog, or take her with us.  For whatever reason, we forgot about her.  We came back 1/2 hour later to a mess.  She had knocked the lid off the garbage can and strewn some trash around the kitchen.  The dog was nowhere in sight.  I called her name – not angry – just making sure she wasn’t puking somewhere. No response.  My wife calls, my daughter… nothing.  So I went to look for her throughout the house, and guess where she was.

She had shut herself in her kennel as punishment.

Funny, but we sadly won’t be able to leave her alone in the house unkenneled ever again.