Tidy Husband

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

  1. A Year Driving an Electric Car

    ” You want a Bolt?”, asked BW when I floated this idea by her.

    BW already had the Tesla, so it wasn’t as if I was completely off my rocker. We already had the charging unit and one electric car in the stable so I thought having another one for me would make sense.

    By this time I was putting a lot of miles on the Honda CR-V and also putting a lot of gas in it – about $40 a day. This wasn’t exactly too hard of a sell.

    I think it’s the fact that she had a preconceived idea of what the Bolt would be like and when we test drove it, it was actually better than we thought.

    Now that I have had it for a year, I have some thoughts:

    1. It’s cheap to run. I switched our electric plan to get the cheap rates at night and my Tim Horton’s coffee costs more than to fill the car with electricity for the day.
    2. Mileage: I get about 200-ish miles – about the same as the Tesla. In the winter, it’s about 15 percent less due to the cold weather. I don’t drive long distances and 200 miles is more than enough city driving for one day. If I run out of juice, I come home and take a nap.
    3. It looks like a small car – and it is, but I get compliments all the time about how roomy it is.
    4. It has heated seats and a steering wheel. I feel like I’m living in the future.
    5. I never use the brakes; I use regenerative braking all the time. My brakes will rust out before they wear out.
    6. Because it’s a small car, tires are small and cheaper. Replacement tires cost about $100 a corner.
    7. I’ve saved well over $1000 on oil changes this year.
    8. It’s got all the features one could want and big 10 inch screen
    9. It’s peppy. I think the 0-60 speed is 6.5 seconds. My first car’s 0-60 speed was 15.6 seconds. This is like driving a really smooth go cart. It’s small and nimble and torquey.
    10. No engine. Not much to break down. I’ve got some weird clicking noise in the front end which is a common thing, and not prohibitively expensive to repair – less than all those oil changes

    You never forget your first love.

    Lastly, it’s quiet. No motor noise is a weird thing when you first get into it because we’ve been so used to an engine in front of us making noise and changing gears shifting and brake noise and with the Bolt, it’s all gone. Just a whirr…and even that noise is due to safety regulations. It would be even quieter without.

    I’m looking forward to another year with the Bolt. It’s a great value for a small commuter car, which for most of us is enough. I even make more money driving for Uber in an electric car than I would with a regular car, and I don’t have to fill it up with $40 of gas a day.

    I’m never going back to an ICE car.

    Go Electric!

    TH and Co.

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  2. A Penny for Your Thoughts

    Tonight, I get the child to bed (or so I thought) and I get into the shower and when I get out, I find the child awake and up and the wife in bed. Essentially, backwards of how things should be. I should have a sleeping child and an awake wife.

    First, I steer the child back into the general direction of her bed and then I go into our bedroom and ask BW why she’s in bed?

    “I’m bored”, she tells me.

    Bored? How can you be bored? It took me twice as long to make the bed tonight because the child found a penny somewhere in the house and it was a full-on event. I answered more questions and played more games about this penny:

    “Hey Dad,Why is it so dark?”

    “Hey Dad, it spins! Did you know that?”

    “Hey Dad, I just found another penny!”

    Hey Dad “Make a wish”

    (I wished for her to go to bed)

    The questions just kept coming. I finally did manage to get the bed made, even if it did take me twice as long and know we know all about pennies.

    So my repsonse to BW when she told me she was bored was:

    “How can you be bored? You have a $500 iPad that has the entire world at your fingertips”

    I mean really, if a 5-year-old can have just as much fun with 2 cents she found on the floor than she can at Disney on ice , surely you can find something to do to keep yourself entertained.

    Here’s a few suggestions for Boredom:

    Start a newsletter! You get to write every day and hope to build an audience over time. You know a lot of stuff about a very niche topic. Share it!

    Heck, I don’t know a thing about parenting and I started a newsletter. I have an audience and everything!

    Don’t want to write? How about reading? Ever hear of Wikipedia? I know, you can’t take it as gospel, but I bet you could learn a thing or two. I have read all about the pencil, the jos louis history or how the silicon wafer came to be that is powering the thing that you’re holding in your hand.

    Or, while you are waiting for your new needlepoint kit to show up from Amazon learn about the history of it. You like history!

    The internet isn’t just about Facebook and Amazon. It’s about learning and connecting to people. It’s the fact that you don’t need permission to start. Start learning or creating or expanding your horizons now

    Heck, there are so many rabbit holes of knowledge just a few clicks away. I just don’t understand bored.

    Fighting boredom doesn’t have to mean being online either. Take up drawing. One day you could be this good:

    It’s a drawing, eh.

    You won’t become an overnight success with your drawing but over time you get better. The artist of the drawing you see above took 5 years to get this good. Success wasn’t born overnight you know.

    Meanwhile, the child never seems to be bored. The toys get strewn around and played with and the cleaning up is a little iffy, but today when I came home, I was greeted with bread and chocolate cookies made out of play doh. Today she has painted, gone over to her friends and played there, played outside alone in the driveway with a stick singing to herself. And then there’s the penny – that was a good half hour of entertainment. Last I saw her, she was in bed singing to her stuffed animal. She was entertained from start to finish today.

    How about cleaning? There’s always something that needs a tidy. God there’s so much here to do I can’t even start writing it down and I’m getting heart palpitations just thinking of the home improvements that could happen.

    YouTube! has lessons on anything and everything you could possibly want to know about. I don’t call it YouTube University for nothing. You could probably learn to program with YouTube for free, or needlepoint!

    Heck, if you’re really bored watch TV! We never have the TV on because there’s so much stuff going on who has time or the energy to invest into a series or show? But if that’s the only thing you can think of I suppose you could. It’s not my idea of entertainment but it could be yours.

    I have just never understood “I’m bored”. I mean there’s so much to learn and do and we only have so much time on this planet to do it. The possibilities are endless.

    Just. Do. Something.

    Until next time,

    TH and Co.

    bought stamps but they came printed as labels which I thought was weird to say the least.

    bought stamps but they came printed as labels which I thought was weird to say the least.

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  3. Disney On Ice!

    BW had bought tickets some time back and I had completely forgotten about this big event until earlier this week. We kept it as a surprise until this morning, and even then we just stated that we were going to a costume party. It wasn’t a lie as there was going to be people in costumes and it would be a party.

    We had tried to get her to behave all week by dangling this big surprise in front of her all week but it didn’t really work so hot so that backfired.

    When it was time to go finally, she didn’t want to as she was watching her tablet.

    “Oh No”, we told her. “You will want to go to this. Trust us”

    Once we got there and she realized what the big surprise was she was of course excited and spent the entire time on the edge of her seat.

    Mickey and Friends.

    About 10,000 Frozen Fans.

    Olaf is my favorite

    Surprisingly, she didn’t ask for any of the crap they were selling on the way out so that’s a plus. If she keeps behaving well like today – as I say: good things might just happen again.

    Keep skating,

    TH and Co.

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  4. Trunk or Treat!

    Back in the day we had Halloween. Our parents would spend many a late night making our costumes by hand so we could travel the neighborhood in search for candy without an adult anywhere to be seen.

    In 2024, it’s Trunk or Treat and it’s a little different.

    From what I can gather the PTA puts this on and parents donate their time and trunks (or hatches technically, as they were all SUV’s) to distribute candy in a safe and early (this is the good part) start to the Halloween season.

    There were about 20 or so trunks and surprisingly a fair bunch of kids. Last year she was in pre-k and there were maybe 20 kids there, but now there were hundreds of kids. Lots of adults were dressed up too which is something you wouldn’t see my parents do. Different times.

    Oh, Look it’s an Avocado!

    This was her idea. I think she won trunk or treat this year. Yes, the pit is removeable

    About a month ago she declared that she wanted to be an Avocado for Halloween. BW did a quick Amazon search and found this suit for her. It’s a hit let me tell you. It’s hilarious to see her walk in it. She looks like a green Weeble.

    We even saw Santa Claus@

    We even saw the Jolly Old Man himself. He didn’t have his reindeer with him as it looks like he traded up to an SUV. It was good of him to come down from the North Pole especially when the Peak

    This was a great little adventure for a few reasons:

    1. The candy wasn’t an insane amount.
    2. It’s early. She was still in bed a good time.
    3. That costume takes about 3 seconds to get into and out of. No adding face paint or having to clean it off later.

    So there we have it. Our first practice Halloween is under our belt with just enough sugar in her to make bedtime only slightly annoying.

    Oh! No screaming tonight. Its’ amazing what a good night’s sleep will do.

    Happy Halloween Practice Day!

    TH and Co.

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  5. No Dessert Thursday

    It started almost immediately after she came in the house from school. I do not know what was going on, but she’s just been a little…well, you know. Not a well-behaved child, that’s for sure.

    The first struggle was trying to take her sling off of all things. When she came in the house. You would think that we were trying to get her to put it on, but nope. She went to the Doctor’s yesterday, and she’s allowed to take it off when she’s home. We still have a few weeks of healing on that arm to go and it wasn’t helping things by fighting us to keep it on.

    She was then asked to feed the dog because it’s her job.

    “No”

    “I’m sorry, what did you say? I asked

    She proceeded to protest. I explained to her (read: idle threats) that mommy has the best-est biggest event planed for Sunday for the 3 of us, but if she keeps being like the little turd she currently is then we can give her tickets to her friends so they can go.

    That didn’t work.

    “Go to your room”, I said.

    She figured out that I meant business and so made a big fuss of feeding the dog full of drama and emotion. The dog didn’t care how the food happened as long as it did.

    Then I told her to go to her room. She thought she was golden because she fed the dog, but nope – that doesn’t reset the clock. You still misbehaved – You even fed the dog with an attitude.

    Cue the screaming.

    I finally get her to her room and then more screaming and more and more and more. You get the idea.

    Finally, she settles down and she wants to play. Nope, not until she apologizes, I explain. Apologies happen and are accepted.

    Then just as we were sitting down to dinner, her friend up the street came to the door and wanted to play. Bad timing, she’s just eating dinner.

    Dinner was pretty uneventful. She was warned it was no dessert Thursday so that was easier than I expected. She even ate most of her dinner. There’s hope.

    After dinner, she was just finishing the last bite, and her friend was at the door again wanting to play. BW answered the door and told the neighbor kid that the child could not come out because she was misbehaving.

    OMG YOU GUYS.

    She went ballistic when she heard that. I guess in her mind we were all good but nope, you don’t get to stomp and scream and then expect to go out and play. That’s not how it works.

    I’ve never seen anybody get so red. I thought she was going to explode.

    Tantrum mode has been activated. Holy.

    Finally, I got her to settle down so she could breathe again and then by then she’s absolutely exhausted. This works out great, because: bedtime!

    She brushed her teeth and then I rubbed her back a bit while she was in bed and she’s out before 6pm. I’m parent of the year!

    She came a few times wanting this and that and there was some protest about wanting a night light on but as I write this I am doing so uninterrupted, so I am calling that a win for today.

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