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.

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.

My Little Entrepreneur

I have two daughters.  One is 12 (going on 16) and the other is 8.  My youngest is Gillian, who loves to come up with money making schemes.  The trouble is she doesn’t quite grasp the concept.

The first time she decided to start her own business, she set up a lemonade stand in our driveway.  Of course, she decided to do it in the early afternoon… on a weekday.  There wasn’t a soul in our neighborhood.  I think only one car even drove by in the hour she was out there.  I was out there washing my truck and luckily I had recently taken the Light Rail and had a pocket full of dollar coins.  So, I drank the whole gallon of lemonade myself and paid her a $1 for each glass.

I came home a few weeks ago and she was outside with the neighbor girls behind a card table selling “ice cold” water and snacks.  I found out they were doing pretty brisk business – selling the water for a dime and full snack bags of Nutter Butters or Ritz Bitz for a quarter.  The neighbor girls supplied the products.  Her “share” of the profits was about $1.30.  I figured that my neighbor’s had NOT given their daughters permission to sell their snacks – so I made Gillian give the money back.  I tried to explain that selling snack bags that cost 60 cents each for 25 was bad business.  Boy was she pissed!

To somewhat make amends and to teach her a lesson in economics, I took her to the grocery store to bankroll the next sale.  First, we bought some frosted cupcake cookies.  20 cookies for $3.50.  I told her these were a premium item and that she should charge a quarter a piece, thus netting a nice $1.50 profit.  We also bought a package of 3 dozen Double Stuff Oreos for $2.99.  This is the item to get people coming to the stand… and at a dime each; they’d still make a little profit.  Where they make the pure profit is on the water/lemonade at ten cents a glass.  Honestly, who can eat cookies without washing it down?  Confident I had instilled some economic knowledge into my young daughter, we went home with our purchases.

The next day I came home from work to find all the neighborhood kids congregated in my yard.  My chest puffed out with pride as I thought of the life lessons and money making savvy I had passed on to my daughter.  When she came in the house a few hours later I asked how much money she had made.  NOTHING!  She and the other girls gave everything away to their friends or pigged out on the cookies themselves!  So all they got for their labor was a stomach ache.

…and I’m out six bucks.

Father’s Day Wisdom

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating… “I LOVE being a Dad.” No matter what kind of day I have at the office or what’s going on in the adult world, my kids can brighten my day with a smile, a giggle, or a hug. I am constantly amazed by how smart, funny, and beautiful they are, especially with my genes.

As I reflect on Father’s Day coming this weekend, I realize I’ve learned a lot from my kids:

• Anything that begins with, “(Child’s name) has something to tell you” is NEVER good news.
• You can yell your child’s name at the top of your lungs and they won’t hear you, but they can hear a text message on their phone anywhere in the house.
• Home Depot makes you have to pee.
• Siblings get along famously, until the phone rings and you’re on an important call. Then all hell will promptly break loose.
• If you give your children a choice between two things (i.e. where to go for dinner) they will always have opposite choices… ALWAYS!
• If your child volunteers to go with you to run errands, they always have an ulterior motive.
• For some reason, parental absence is considered permission.
• You can explain how you want a chore done in detail, and you’ll still end up redoing it yourself.
• If you plan an activity with your child, five minutes into it… one of their friends will knock on the door wanting to play.
• Kids have an uncanny way of knowing they’ll hate any food item without testing it.
• No matter how late your children are up the night before, they will be awake at the crack of dawn.
• Ketchup makes everything taste better.
• Lowes makes you have to pee.
• No matter how much money Dad & Mom pay for a vacation, kids would always rather swim in the hotel pool.
• There is some sort of magical transformation that occurs when your kid becomes a teen that turns you from funniest guy alive to biggest embarrassment.
• How bad your child “has to go” is directly proportionate to how far way the nearest restroom is.
• People that call them the “Terrible Twos” don’t let their kids live to be three.
• The volume level of your children in the morning is directly proportionate to how badly you want to sleep in.
• “Going before you leave the house” makes no difference.
• The same kids that have to be dragged out of bed at 7am to go to school, wake up on their own at 5am on the weekends.
• Kids love to share. If they’re eating potato chips, and take a swig of your soda… they’ll always leave some for you.
• There’s always room for ice cream.
• You can never have too many bouncy balls.
• If you fall down where no one sees you, wait until you have an audience before you start to cry.
• If Dad says no, ask Mom. If Mom says no, ask the grandparents.

Feel free to chime in with your own… I could go on all day. Go hug your kids and if you don’t have kids… call your folks.

Cornhole?

My neighborhood block party was held over the weekend. As usual, no matter how long we attempt to wait, we end up being some of the first people there. As I finished setting up my cooler and lawn chairs, my neighbor asked if I wanted to play “corn-hole”. What does that word conjure up for you? While it may make you chuckle like a 12 year old (I did), it’s actually a real game with rules, regulations, and even its own association.

Cornhole is a lawn game where players take turns tossing bean bags at a raised platform with a hole in the far end. My understanding is the game originated in the Midwest where the platforms are usually made of plywood and the bags are stuffed with feed corn – thus the name.

A corn bag in the hole scores 3 points, while one on the platform scores 1 point. The way we played, bags cancel each other out. For example, if Player A has three bags on the platform and Player B has two on… Player A gets 1 point. First to 21 wins.

My 8 year old and I decided that it would be fun to build a set, so we trekked out to Home Depot and bought the plywood, 2×4s, etc. and built a set together in the garage. Then we painted it. The hardest part was finding the bean bags. You can order them online rather inexpensively, but we wanted to play right away. I found a set at Sports Authority for $25! All in all, it ended up costing me around $75 for supplies.

Now if it would just stop hailing long enough for us to be able to play. LOL.

The Dating Game

I have two children – both girls.  One is eight and one is twelve.  There is nothing I enjoy more than being a dad.  Aside from the whole “paying for two weddings” thing, having girls is great.  I love taking them shopping, to plays and musicals, shopping, getting their hair and nails done, shopping, etc.

There are moments as a dad of daughters that every man dreads.  The first is the day you have to take them shopping for bras for the first time.  That begins the era of policing every item of clothing they buy.  You must make sure the neckline or the waistline isn’t too low.  Prepare for rolling eyes and complaining… it’s unavoidable.

The second would be when you have to deal with the arrival of “that time”.  We were on our way to go hiking, and made a pit stop at a gas station to grab water and snacks.  All of a sudden, my kid comes running out of the restroom and announces loudly what she thinks has happened.  I calmly bought the needed supplies, gave them to her… and went out to get mom out of the car.

Thankfully, my wife decided she wanted to care of the “birds & bees” conversation.

Which brings me to the latest hurdle.  She’s 12 1/2 years old and over the weekend she wanted to talk to my wife and me to set up a timeline for when she’d be able to get more independence.  Specifically, she wants to know when she’ll be able to:

“Go to the mall with her friends without us”
“Have a ‘boyfriend’ she can hold hands with”
and “Go on group dates with several friends”

My life just got very complicated.  I’ve been curled up in a fetal position all week.

Space time continuum?

(From wikipedia) The concept of spacetime combines space and time within a single coordinate system, typically with three spatial dimensions: length, width, height, and one temporal dimension: time.

Now I didn’t finish college, so I don’t really understand that stuff, but I can surely grasp the concept of time slowing down to a crawl at the beginning of a new year.  At my house the countdown to Christmas starts a few weeks before Halloween.  Seems early, but bear with me.  My girls are still young enough to be excited about trick-or-treating, so the countdown is always on for that.  My birthday is in early November.  My oldest daughter’s birthday is around Thanksgiving.  Two weeks later we’re celebrating the youngest daughter’s birthday, and then it’s just a short two weeks to Christmas.

Just about everybody looks forward to the holidays.  Even the people who rally against religious holidays can look forward to a couple free days off(Hypocrites).  Things just seem to slow down.  We all take more time to think about family and friends.  Sure the gift buying and traveling can be hectic, but especially between Christmas and New Years Eve we all find ourselves dozing off on the couch while watching football.

Then, just as our bodies start to get used to sleeping in, staying up late, and lounging around… it’s back into the rat race.  And nothing to look forward to until Memorial Day weekend.

No wonder this week is moving so slow.

Mele Kalikimaka

My youngest daughter turned eight last week.  Having a birthday close to Christmas can be kind of a bummer.  We always go out of our way to make it special.

This year she wanted to have a bowling party, but we waited too long to book it and two weeks out they were booked solid.  So instead we decided to have a party at home.  With the weather taking a turn for the frigid, we hosted a Luau.  It was really cute.  I had a dozen second graders in my house all wearing grass skirts, flower leis, and flower ring on their heads.  They did the limbo, some beach ball games, and pin the coconut on the palm tree.  We did kind of tie in the holiday season, though.  Instead of a birthday cake, Gillian opted for a huge sheet sugar cookie.  We cut it into segments, picked up some of that squeeze frosting, and let the kids decorate and eat their own cookies.  That was a LOT of frosting, believe me.

I’m sure it was a bit of a shock to leave our house and step out into temps in the teens and snow.  The kids all had a blast… and I’ll be picking up pieces of dried grass out of my carpet for weeks.

(Mele Kalikimaka – Merry Christmas in Hawaiian)