Tidy Husband

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

  1. Date Night

    A story about going outside on a Saturday night

    This really wasn’t up for discussion: BW wanted to go see Hail Mary.

    Photo by Brian McGowan on Unsplash | this was my attire for date night.

    There was a time when I could rhyme off movie titles and actors and the like but now if it’s not on the side of a Cheerio box I have no idea what the cool kids are doing when it comes to popular culture.

    “A movie?” I asked “Like outside?” I asked her incredulously.

    She replied that yes, this was happening and that I would be partaking in the fun

    “What about the child?”, I asked.

    She had a babysitter all lined up - BW is an expert outdoor planner. Nothing ever goes wrong when she’s in charge. Oh, speaking of charging - do you guys know what the going rate is for a fourteen year old to raid your fridge while you’re out?

    If you thought gas prices were high ….

    I really can’t remember when we went on a date - just the two of us ~~bickering in the car on the way there~~ holding hands at the dinner table looking dreamily into each others’ eyes.

    It’s been a while - the hand holding and the whole date thing. The bickering happens on the daily here.:)

    Once I realized that this date night of ours was going down I asked if I got any choice in the movie we were going to see. I was told no.

    “It’s a space movie”, she says.

    “ I don’t like space movies”, I reply.

    She tells me I will like this space movie and we’re going. She bought tickets and the popcorn will be waiting for us when we get there. This is a done deal.

    We get to the movie theater and it was uneventful for the most part. BW ordered too much popcorn and too much candy and I drank a cup of Coke the size of our hot water heater in the basement that had the capacity many times over that of an old guy’s bladder.

    BW spilled half her popcorn on me so that was fun, and then when I asked if there were any M+M’s she told me no. So that was nice - sharing is caring - unless chocolate is involved, apparently.

    The movie was fine. It was more than fine. It was fun! It was 3 hours long though so be sure to not order the hot water tank sized drink unless you want to get a UTI.

    Meanwhile back at home…

    The house did not burn down. My phone did not ring. The child did not go to the hospital and all was fine.

    The ladies made Kraft Dinner together, watched Zootopia and colored Easter eggs and played Nintendo while we were gone - then we handed the babysitter all our money and BW drove her home.

    I’m pretty sure the child had the most fun on “ our date night”.

    Mind you, BW can’t get her mind off all the fun she had, but that could just be the digestive problems due to too much popcorn and chocolate.

    Me, I never want to see a cup of Coke that big ever again.

    She did text me that this is what she wants for Mother’s Day so I guess the movie made an impression because now she’s in love with another old and crusty looking guy.

    Until Next Time,

    TH and Co.

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  2. We Made Easter Pancakes

    Martha Stewart would be proud.

    If you haven’t figured things out yet, I’m not one of those parenting blogs where the mom gets up at 5am and irons the kids clothes and then makes the kids school lunches in tidy little bento boxes. Those Mommy bloggers know big words like fondant, and blogger analytics.

    Meanwhile at our house - the child comes downstairs looking like the she came out of the dirty laundry pile and I toss her a baggie of yesterday’s cucumber sticks for a snack and get her out the door on the bus just in time again.

    We march to a different

    Today though…

    We added color to our pancakes:

    Truth be told, Dear old Dad didn’t really feel like making 3 colors of pancakes on a Saturday morning, but here we are - she was having none of my convincing that we could just have normal colors and save on the 300 dirty dishes this was going to produce.

    So…. she mixed the colors:

    And I did the flipping - and the cleaning of the three hundred bowls and spoons this little project took. The cleanup took way longer than the eating did, that’s for sure.

    I may not be at bento box blogger dad status, but she loved the pancakes and I love her - so for us that works better than a blogger award ever would.

    Look out Martha - here comes the new generation.

    TH and Co.

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  3. The Great Bamboozler

    A story about a headache and selective memory.

    BW has a headache. This doesn’t mean she lost her memory.

    Photo by Nik on Unsplash

    When I come home, BW is in bed. I stopped on the way home and bought some pizza dough. Usually we’re spoiled with homemade pizza dough but the chef was out with a headache so - desperate times.

    I come home, assemble pizza, bake pizza and feed pizza to the child. When dessert comes time comes around the child tells me “maybe later”. Oh, Okay. Weird, but whatever.

    Child disappears, I clean up the kitchen.

    A little later the child comes down the stairs looking for dessert. BW hears this conversation and tells her no. Why? Because the child had dessert first tonight and conveniently forgot to tell me.

    Cue the screaming.

    You see, as soon as the child got home from school she was whisked away for a haircut. I don’t know all the particulars but essentially the child had junk food and sweets before and after the haircut. I think chips and twizzlers were involved.

    Once I learned of the sugar count in her bloodstream I too nixed the dessert too

    Did I mention there was screaming?

    The screaming was short lived because she heard both BW and I tell her no and she knew she was caught…she didn’t lie - she omitted. Yes - that’s the word - she omitted.

    She committed to the deal she had made with mommy about no dessert. she had all that junk before dinner and then omitted the parts where she had all that crap when the haircut story was related to me.

    When she was protesting, I told her that there’s nothing I can do because mommy is the boss. Full stop.

    Also … nice try on the bamboozling attempt - but you got busted.

    Until next time,

    TH and Co.

    PS> We had an orange before bed. I call it a compromise. Nobody goes to bed hungry here

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  4. The Countdown Begins

    I have 50 days to get my mind around this

    I have a problem

    I have no idea what’s going on with the straw. I didn’t ask.

    50 days from today, I will watch BW and the child leave the house and get on an airplane and go to Argentina For 2 and half months.

    That’s a long time without the ladies around. They will be in Argentina. BW will be working and researching and writing. The child will be at school and the dog and I are left behind to fend for ourselves. - We’re going to be really chummy with the pizza delivery guy soon and buy Cheerios in bulk.

    For a long long time this trip was a far away idea. For an example: one day I might turn 60 and then before you know it, you’re 60. The time goes by too fast lately.

    And now I have 50 more sleeps to go,. 50 more bedtimes where I grab a stuffed bunny and pretend to have it whisper into my ear and then tell her what the bunny says. This never, ever gets old and we did this tonight for the first time in a long long time and she loved it. She also told me she wants super mario getaway 8 or something like that so we’re at a crossroads - sometimes she’s a bunny loving child and then others she’s a pro gamer.

    Back to the story. The ladies are getting ready. A lot of the logistics have been done like passports and airplane tickets but there’s a big one we’ve been working on lately and that’s getting the child to speak spanish.

    We’re not asking for her to recite war and peace in the language, but more just the day to day stuff like being able to say her name, how old she is and how to say “6-7” in Spanish. You know, the important stuff.

    Tonight we didn’t stop at the language though. BW told her about the school she’s going to go to and in a lot of ways it’s a school like she has here but in other ways, not so much:

    Two items she learned tonight blew her mind:

    The first is that she will be walking to school every day.

    The second is that she will be wearing a uniform.

    At first the eyes got really wide in disbelief that this was going to happen and soon - walks and uniforms included.

    The benefit is that I guess I too will learn a bit of Spanish. I’ve already learned the term for “sit down”,. This term is used a lot in our house now that we have a very excited girl who’s off soon to Argentina.

    Get ready Argentina, she’s coming and we’re counting the days

    In Spanish, of course.

    Until Next Time,

    TH and Co.

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  5. It's Wednesday and We're Boring

    And we are okay with this.

    This doesn’t happen often, so no news is the news

    Photo by Jonathan Gong on Unsplash

    I have absolutely nothing to write about. This is a problem when your goal is to write every day about the mundane: there’s days where the mundane is..well..mundane.

    Now that I think of it the child was exceptionally well behaved today - suspiciously so.

    I woke this morning to find her going downstairs for breakfast fully dressed and with teeth brushed and hair too!

    Now that I think of it, maybe this is the news of the day - the headline could read:

    The Child Finally Gets It and is Dressed to Go To School On Time. Dad is Shocked!

    I just realized that the child will have no idea what a newspaper even is - she thinks that the “Okay Google” is another family member and that all the news comes from YouTube.

    This means that nobody under 30 will get this headline reference and I’m okay with that because my readership skews older anyway - if anything this site has probably scared the younger generation from even having children. 1

    So…yeah. I’ve got nothing today.

    1. The child was behaved
    2. I’m not in trouble with BW
    3. The dog was …as behaved as it’s going to get.

    Heck, even the robot vacuum followed the instructions correctly tonight.

    I’m ending it here on the high note while I can.

    Check back tomorrow for more news..

    TH and Co.

    1. I warned them about the kinetic sand. ↩

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