Whatever You Want Honey

A little advice for the men who may stumble upon this post.

Over the weekend, my wife mentioned that she thought her hair was getting a little long. In another conversation she said do you think my eyebrows look bushy?

To most men, these are merely questions that require answers like, “Honey, I love your hair, no matter the length.” and “Baby, you have beautiful eyebrows.” While, at first these answers appear correct, they are not.

I know, I know. You thought you were doing good, right?

Well, what she is really saying is, “Honey, do you mind if I go to the salon to get my hair styled and eyebrows waxed?”

Your response should be the following, “Honey, I love your hair, no matter the length. Would you like for me to call the salon and get you the first available appointment?” and “Baby, you have beautiful eyebrows, should I have them wax your eyebrows, too?” Then follow up with, “Don’t worry about the bill, just take my card, then we will get dinner out, your choice.”

Nearly 99.9% of the time, this will appease your lady. The other .1% of the time, it is probably just her having her period and it wouldn’t matter what you said, because any answer would be dead wrong. Sorry. That is just the way it is.

- D

P.S. If she catches you reading this post and then you tell her the things I wrote above, everything you say will be Null and Void.

After checking a few of my friend’s blogs, I saw the entry on my friend Lisa’s blog and thought, I wonder how addicted I am to blogging. Well, after a few clicks, I found out that I may be due for an intervention.

It appears that I am 74% addicted to blogging. By the way, the number of times you blog per day/week is a factor. Last week I must have been on a blog binge.

74%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

So, yeah. I’m addicted and the needle will stay in, at least for as long as I have something to blog about.

- D

After much deliberation (and my wife’s suggestions) I decided to borrow my mom’s tent to go camping in. It wasn’t Heather’s comment about sleeping with my wife, although that would mean I’d get the air mattress all to myself, that made me decide to get the big tent. It was the fact that my brother never checked to see if our tent poles were in his shed. I wanted to set the tent up and let it air out before we went to a campsite.

Last evening I left around six to travel thirty-nine miles across the river to pick up my mom’s tent from her storage unit out in the Boonies. Becki convinced me to take along our son.

When I got to the car, I buckled in our son. I hopped in the front seat, put the key in the ignition and nothing. Thinking I must not have turned the key in the right direction, I tried it again. Nothing. No battery power.

The pastor that has his church right around the corner happened to be out so I flagged him down. He pulled his truck over and jumped the battery. It took almost two minutes of charging to get my car to turn over. But it finally started.

After about 7 minutes of driving, my little backseat driver told me he was thirsty. I pulled into a gas station, backed the car in, shut off the engine and prayed. I turned the key and it started up. I felt a wave of relief.

We went in the convenience store and I said, pick out a drink and let’s get rolling. Well, you know kids, each drink had to be compared to the next. The flavors were plentiful and the decision must have been difficult. It took several minutes of deliberation before he chose an Orange Gatorade. I already had a 20 oz. water in hand and headed to the checkout counter. When I turned around to have him put his drink on the counter, he was nowhere to be seen.

I guess I know my son pretty well (actually most any kid would have done the same thing) I went straight to the candy isle. Yup. He was picking out what candy he wanted. I am such a sucker. After grabbing a bag of gummi sharks and toting his drink we paid and got back in the car.

You guessed it, the car wouldn’t start. The clock was on so it had juice, just not enough to get ignition. Another round of begging to get a jump. (I realized that when people see you have a child in the car, their attitudes change from annoyed to compassionate.) Thankfully, I took him along.

Off we go, again. On the road we talked about the complexities of relationships, mauling bears and rhinos, octopuses, starfish and sponges as they relate to my son’s favorite show, Sponge Bob Square Pants. The conversation went from cartoons to camping after thirty minutes. Then we discussed how soon we would be at our destination. The last part of the conversation repeated itself about twenty to twenty-five times with the age old question, “How much longer, Dad?”

We did arrive at the storage unit and found the camping gear. The tent was not rolled up, so stuffing it in the trunk was the only way to go. (By the way, I left the car running just in case.) On the way back, I stopped for gas and had no problem starting the car back up again.

After eating dinner and putting the little man to bed, I set up the tent. It took me nearly forty-five minutes! Granted, I had no instructions. I am a man. I need no instructions… Ok, instructions would have been a world of help. This thing is huge!

It has three wings off the main chamber. Does that sound big? You could COMFORTABLY sleep ten men in this thing. Of course, you wouldn’t want to. Can you imagine the noise? Anyway, it is set up and airing out. Becki sprayed it with an air freshener to help with the musty smell.

So, I suppose that we will have six people and one dog sleeping in a mansion in the woods in a few more days. I cannot wait!

- D

We are traveling to the great State of Ohio to go camping with a bunch of friends this weekend. It should take about 5 to 6 hours for each one in the group to get there. It is centrally located for each of us, which is why OH was the final destination point.

We opened our tent and spread it out only to find our poles were missing. They must have gotten lost in the move to PA in November. So we figured we had six options.

The first option is to try and rig the tent to stand up by threading ropes through the guides. The end result would be a spider web effect. It may look natural for the wooded area but would look rather ridiculous to all the other campers. Maybe this option is out.

The second option would be to throw down the tent and set up some sticks inside to create a tent. Yeah, we thought the same thing. That would look equally ridiculous. It also may not withstand water and wind too well either.

The third option is to search for the poles from people that are storing some of our stuff from the move. The problem with that is, we only have a few days to hunt them down.

Another option, is to borrow my mom’s tent. The only issue is there are three of us staying in the tent and she has a three room tent that would cover the entire campsite. So, we would be hogging all the space. We are not trying to re-create a mansion in the woods either. I mean, we are not taking the kitchen sink.

Our fifth option is to borrow a friend’s sister’s tent. It happens to be the same size as our tent, which is good. But, if anything happens to it, we would have to buy a new tent. And if that were to happen, we might as well buy ourselves a new tent to avoid having to buy a new one for someone else and be back in the same boat we are in now.

Our sixth and final option is to just go out and buy a new tent. But we already have a tent that is great. If we could just find the poles all our troubles would melt away.

Oh, the decisions. Oh, the choices. I hope camping is more fun than making this decision. Did I mention they have a wi-fi connection at the campsite?? Workin’ in the woods! My kind of trip.

- D

I told you that I would likely write about our day at the park. I’ll tell you now that half the day was filled with screaming and it wasn’t because the rides were fun.

We got up late Friday morning and left the house within the hour. We headed to my mom’s house to drop off the dog because they do not allow dogs at the park. (Go figure.) The whole trip down to Lancaster, PA was a barrage of “Are we there yet?” and “How much longer?”

The boys were poking at one another, which was irritating not only to the one getting poked but to us adults in the front seat. When they started playing karate with one another, we had to stop the fun. After an hour of driving we pulled into the parking lot and you would have thought the boys had never seen anything like it before. There were tons of hoots and hollers of glee that I could not believe these were the same two individuals in my backseat.

We get into the park and my wife gets nauseous on the first ride. The boys found it hilarious but could care less because the next ride was only a few feet away. Those boys were fearless, if it didn’t spin, flip, twist or otherwise contort your body they wanted nothing to do with it.

I actually found myself aging rapidly as we traversed from ride to ride. Every little step I took a new part of my body resisted being moved.

As an adult, the only way I could think of to get the boys to sit down while I recuperated was to announce lunch time. While waiting in line to order food, my son decides that he is not going to waste his day at the park eating and announces that he will just ride the rides without us. He storms out the door of the restaurant.

His friend chases him out the door. The two grapple one another for a few minutes before I could catch up and carry my little guy back into the restaurant kicking and screaming. We ordered our food that consisted of:
3 Hot Dogs
3 Hash Browns
1 Turkey Sub (6″ hoagie roll, not a sub roll)
1 Tuna Wrap
3 Small Drinks
1 Small Potato Salad
1 Small Chocolate Pudding
For a Grand Total of $39.41!!!!!!

I nearly defecated myself. I believe my response was [to my wife], “We could have gone to Red Lobster and paid less!” I thought it was going to be expensive, but $40??? I was seriously shaken by the price.

After spending the equivalent of the contents of the Franklin Mint for lunch, our son refuses to eat stating, “I’d rather be on a ride than in here wasting my time!” The potato salad was… indistinguishable from pig slop, the hot dogs I suppose were ok, our son ate two bites and his friend ate the other two nearly whole with no objection, my wife was not impressed with her sub, but I really enjoyed the wrap.

After the lunchtime fiasco, we hit a few more rides and then were off to the water park. The guys got changed and my wife decided there were too many people for her to be comfortable (ever the introvert), so she found a quiet little shaded alcove where the decibel level came under 65.

I spent the next three hours ducking and dodging a herd of 4 to 14-year old humans who knew but one level of noise, ear-piercing. Being one of the few male targets in the lagoon area, I must have been the prime target for the spray nozzles placed in seemingly inconspicuous sections of the water towers. I was shot at, sprayed and dumped on more than I can recall. After each attack came a wailing of laughter that can only be described as hysterical. Maybe it was, but for all the chlorine and baby pee, I found little to be excited about.

As it was nearing my level of turmoil, my wife showed up to save me. She said, let ‘em know we have five more minutes. Now the hunted became the hunter. Stealthfully, I hid behind the palm tree, then under the slide, then moved to the water chute until my prey were wrangled up. Surprisingly, they went along with the charade of, “We are going to ride some more rides before we have to go.”

We got changed back into our civies and headed toward the park entrance. We did allow for one or two rides along the way. God must have been keenly aware of our weakened state of mind as it began to lightening and thunder. The rides were closing down one-by-one. We convinced them that we needed to hurry through the gift shop otherwise we could be caught in the storm.

A few minutes looking at pirate swords, toy trains and a slew of other poorly made plastic novelties and we were out of there. Twenty steps from the car and the sky gave out dropping pounds of water at a time. We made it to the car, no worse for wear and were on our way back home.

Thankfully the ride home was pleasurable.

So, a word to the wise. “If you decide to take children to a theme park, be sure to be prayed up, so that when you want to leave, ask God for rain. It can save the day!”

- D