Tidy Husband

Eligible for the seniors discount and the Happy Meal deal at the same time.

  1. Thirteen

    Ever since I started this blog BW has decided that every day I should write and profess my love for her when I write instead of writing about the every day and the dog, kid, etc.

    But today – being our anniversary will be different:

    BW: I love you.

    There. done. Happy?

    Seriously though, I/we could not be happier. I brought home flowers and pink mini cupcakes because nothing says I love you like cheap flowers and unneeded calories.

    We’re lucky. In the past 13 years we’ve – dare I say it? Figured it out?

    We’re not perfect and we still struggle, and we’ve had our share of adventures and struggles, but I have to tell you that 13 feels pretty good.

    As I write this BW is asleep upstairs while the child is trying to. I am sure the dog has found something to chew on that she shouldn’t, and I am down here in my man cave trying to build an audience.

    There’s flowers on the table, the child has been relatively well behaved and we’re indoors on a cold winter night with the heat on and high speed internet and our bellies full of cupcakes.

    To quote that Christmas movie: It’s a wonderful life.

    Up Next: 14

    Permalink

  2. Press One for English

    Today my insurance documents expired so I had to print out a new copy, toss it in my glove box and then update it in the uber app so I can drive people around the beautiful city of Niagara Falls.

    It’s 2025 so I just have to download the document, print it and take a photo and then upload it with my little pocket computer also known as my phone.

    Simple, yes?

    Not exactly. For some reason I was getting the message that my documents don’t match.

    Oh, I thought. Maybe I took a crappy snapshot. Nope it’s fine. I uploaded the correct document with all the needed info.

    I got rejected again.

    So I call support. 3 times

    1. Hi, I’m {insert name here} How can I help? Then that was all I got. They disappeared
    2. This guy was pretty helpful actually and had me upload it to him so he could upload it on his end. A double upload must be better right? I mean, he’s there to support me and help me and.. nevermind. Rejected again
    3. I somehow hit the random support tech lottery and finally got a supervisor. It was like finally meeting the Wizard of Oz. She actually was helpful and fixed the problem and even called me(I know!) on the phone to tell me that she approved my documents.

    I should not have to play tech support roulette to get the help I need or to search high and lo on the website/app for an actual phone number. If I wanted to talk to AI I could have used it myself. I wanted to talk to a real person that has empathy and understands my problem.

    Phone support is one thing that has not improved over my lifetime and it’s a shame. AI is not the answer. I fear the day a 911 call will be answered by AI.

    Your call is important to us.

    Anyway, all is good now and this means that I get to wake up very early in the morning and go pothole-dodging in Niagara Falls for another day.

    Oh, speaking of Uber, this happened today:

    Employee of the Month

    Thanks for choosing Uber. Have a nice day!

    Permalink

  3. A Better Day

    7:30 am

    “Dad, wake up”.

    I open one eye.

    She hands me this:

    This is what an apology looks like. It reads “Yes, Dad”.

    Apology accepted Pumpkin.

    And the rest of the day was easy-peasy from there. 13 hours of sleep is magical for a very tired six year old that doesn’t quite realize she’s tired.

    She watched her tablet (of course) and didn’t protest too much about my breakfast choice vs hers. (Cheerios vs pancakes)

    Usually Sunday mornings she goes swimming but we didn’t go as the roads looked slick and the risk/reward ratio for getting there was too hign. I don’t think anybody in the house was too concerned about missing swimming.

    She was just a pleasure all day today. If every day was like this – talk about winning the lottery.

    Today was just a day of laundry/cleaning for the most part and so she entertained herself for the most part today but 0ne time I came upstairs and found her like this:

    This is what happens when you leave an empty laundry basket unattended.

    She had tucked herself in the laundry basket with a blanket and was happily watching YouTube Kids.

    When I showed her the picture later she said: “Oh yea. I was watching the parasite show”.

    Parasite Show? Maybe I need to check the age setting on the tablet.

    Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t write about the superbowl which is happening right now as I write this. I wonder if BW has any fingernails left.

    We made her a deal: After dinner if you put your PJ’s on you can watch the Super Bowl with us. She put on her PJ’s and her fluffy pink polka-dot robe and joined us where she went to town on the charcuterie board BW had made for the game. She may have hoovered half a bag of sour cream and onion chips by herself, but we’ve all done that and survived.

    At half-time she wanted to go to bed where we started to look for birthday present ideas for her friend Ethel’s upcoming birthday next month. A makeup kit is in the running so far.

    That’s it! I have no idea of the score of the game but I don’t hear much crying coming from the next room so I guess that’s a good thing?

    Fly Eagles Fly!

    That’s supposed to be a smile. We’re working on it.

    Permalink

  4. 100 Days of Winter

    100 days

    That’s how many days she will have attended school soon. I don’t know the actual 100th day but it’s coming soon.

    She came home with a project where she had to bring a 100 things in a bag to school. That’s boring. We upped the game and decided we would glue 100 things to some poster board.

    100 pennies? We don’t have the budget for that.

    100 bananas? That’s been done.

    We decided on the 100 crayons for a few reasons. First, is that we will not even notice 100 crayons missing from the house. I don’t know where they come from: I keep tossing them when nobody is looking and I’m pretty sure they are the dog’s primary food group. And even after that we still hundreds left:

    But the art project is done. We waited for the glue to dry and then gave every crayon the wiggle test and then glued more if we needed to. We hope that it will make it to school with all 100 attached.

    5:45 AM

    This the time the child got up. I was getting ready to go and uber for a few hours in the early hours when I heard the footsteps. She was awake and wanted to watch her tablet. Ya. No. Go to bed.

    She didn’t go to bed. She fought me all the way but she eventually did go but it took me too long and she struggled and kicked again. The kicking is horrible.

    30 minutes later, just as I am leaving she comes down again. Nope – still no tablet.
    I finally caved at 6:45 am and let her watch so I could go work. Only to find out the car did not charge overnight. It’s the first time it’s done this so I would assume it’s on me and not the car as it’s charged since. Of course, she didn’t notice I had gone and come back because she’s on the tablet.

    3 Hours

    That’s how long it took the tire place to install new tires on my car. This place used to be good but got bought out by discount tire so they now suck. The good news is I got them half price due to the tire warranty. There’s no way I get the warrantied mileage out of these due to the heavy and torquey car I drive. My new tires have even a longer warranty but I have low expectations for these too.

    Of course the upsell for the “needed alignment” for $150.00 happened. Guess what a new tire costs? $150.00. I drive over hundreds of potholes daily and the alignment would not stay aligned by the time I got to the first stop light in the city I drive in. I’ll just keep rotating them and over time they will all be worn out again and save the $150 for the new set down the road.

    The constant upsell gets tiring after a while.

    6:00 PM

    That’s the time she put herself to bed. She was pissed off at me as I told her we were not going to play before bed as we usually do. There’s consequences and if you give me a hard time at 5:45am about wanting to watch your tablet, I am going to reciprocate when you want something later in the day.

    I keep telling her the more she says “yes, Dad” the more fun she will have but she doesn’t seem to get it lately. It’s a struggle.

    Of course, when you’re up from before six am you’re begging for bed 12 hours later so she went to her room and got her PJ’s on and brushed her teeth and then asked mommy to read a book. She never asks mommy for the evening routine, but seeing as she wasn’t getting her way she was going to ignore me and you should have seen the look she gave me. If looks could kill…

    Here’s hoping I am back in her good graces in the morning.

    Just not at 5:45am please.

    Permalink

  5. Friday Night Freakout

    She had a great morning this morning and happy as a lark and agreeable to everything so it kind of shook us when she freaked out over pizza of all things.

    I blame the tomatoes.

    You see, every Friday night we have pizza here that BW lovingly makes from scratch. Usually it’s just cheese/pepperoni – the standard fare. But the child asked if we could have “green pizza” (pesto) instead. No problem.

    Dinnertime comes, and we unplug the child from the tablet. Let me preface say that this is a very tired child who had a week of school and 2 physical therapy appointments and two days of physical education.

    Well.

    She takes one look at the pizza and cries “That’s not GREEN PIZZA”.

    You see BW committed the cardinal sin of putting tomatoes on half for us and despite the explanation that it was green on half that was not good at all and a full 0n meltdown occurred.

    This was the big meltdown. The one where she’s in her room and starts speaking in tongues and ranting about all the way that pizza is so effing wrong! It’s not green!

    We’ve learned to just let the storm pass as there’s no sense getting into it because all regular brain cells and emotions are on some other planet. Press 2 for meltdown or hang up and call 911.

    The storm passes. We eat just the green part of the pizza. Everybody. Not one tomato was so much as looked at.

    She eats the cheese off her pizza and then goes: “What’s for Dessert?” as if she had kiddo amnesia and the hellish existence she put us through never happened.

    I told her there was no dessert after that show of emotions. This did not go over well and instead triggered another show of emotions. Not as bad as the first but she still professed her dislike with my decision.

    That’s it. Bedtime. You’re so tired.

    We managed to get her to brush her teeth. Of course, now the toothpaste that she’s been using for months now all of sudden tastes funny and it’s yucky. We have other toothpaste so we somehow managed to get some small amount of fluoride applied at least.

    Then she went to bed without too much protest. When I left there was some, but it was half-hearted at best and I haven’t heard a peep from her since so I think my tired theory was correct.

    Also: She explained to me what was wrong with the pizza. Here’s what she wanted:

    Not like that. LIKE THIS!

    It was red pepper she wanted and not tomatoes.

    BW, please take note.

    Permalink

Every post → · RSS feed