Tidy Husband

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

  1. Saturday with SpongeBob and Scrabble

    A story of experiencing the extremes of stimulation - and saturated fat.

    Today, we did a few things: One required very little use of our brain, and other was a challenge - so overall a good day.

    Also, we went to McDonalds:

    Photo by Visual Karsa on Unsplash

    The plans for this started - like all things do - as a random conversation about the new SpongeBob Movie or just about our favorite animated yellow sponge in general.

    It was suggested that somebody (me) take the child to see the movie, because who doesn’t like SpongeBob? BW - that’s who. She said she might go crazy if she had to sit through close to 2 hours of SpongeBob.

    Personally, I don’t have the hate for SBSP that BW has. I mean, I would not go plan to watch this on my own but if I was playing and the child wanted company I would sit with her. I appreciate the adult jokes snuck into the ones aimed for kids.

    Also, I have a thing for Patrick. BW says that my personality leans towards the Squidward end and she’s probably right but Patrick is still my favorite

    It was decided that I would take the child to see the latest SpongeBob Movie. I went online and bought the tickets. I refuse to pay $11.00 for popcorn, considering I can feed both of us lunch at McD’s for the same price so we ended up having a happy meal for lunch, complete with more Disney Toys.

    We brought an Apple Juice to stick in my pocket, but my super honest child did not want me to take it in with us because what if we got caught? I tried to explain that well, nevermind. I have no explanation and she’s right. Rules are rules.

    When we arrived we were handed 3D glasses because not only will I be watching close to 2 hours of SpongeBob, I will be doing so in 3D. My younger self would be more excited with this but all I could think of was: I hope I don’t barf.

    Thankfully, there was no barfing, but the child did watch most of the movie with the 3D glasses off! I tried a few times to get them back on her but she didn’t to so whatever. I don’t know how should could watch the fuzzy movie but she didn’t seem bothered.

    I think we might be hitting easy Street when it comes down to parenting while out. The chances of her acting like a Monkey and climbing under tables at restaurants or having a screaming fit in the middle of supermarket seem to be over and I’m thankful for that. We did have to have a mid-movie restroom break, but because it’s a SpongeBob Movie we didn’t really miss much.

    So yeah. We had the full suburban weekend: Happy Meal and a Movie on a rainy Saturday Afternoon at the Cinema at the Mall.

    Later when she got home she was so tired, I thought she might conk out - she even put on her PJ’s but the second wind happened about 5pm and she was back at it.

    The deal with going to the movies with Dad was that she had to clean her room, so with a ~~little~~ lot of help from BW,she got it done and we managed to get the robot vacuum to run in her room.

    BW wanted to play Scrabble, because it’s Saturday night here and that’s about as exciting as it gets here. But, tonight I had a helper on my lap. I thought this would last about five minutes on my lap and she would have a hard time picking it up but she got it right away for the most part and played the entire game with us.

    And here we are. She had a great day and it was a lot of fun for us a family to finally be able to play Scrabble together.

    I’m never going to win a game again.

    BWAAHAAAAABWAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAA,

    TH and Co.

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  2. Just the Facts

    A story about knowledge and inventions.

    Photo by Walls.io on Unsplash

    Hey Dad!

    Did you know penguins eat fish and barf it up to feed their babies?

    Did you know that you can fit fifteen penguin feathers something the size of a pea

    Did you know…..

    She was gifted a few educational Tonie figures this holiday season and now that the dust has settled from the holidays and so we are all about learning new things.

    Anything. She’s a sponge.

    Tonight at dinner there was a container on the counter:

    “What does TM” mean?

    We then went down an looong and windy road about explaining about trademarks of all things. I explained how the idea works, for example: we use the word “kleenex” interchangeable with tissue but we would not be able to use the word “kleenex” for our new company that we started making facial tissues.

    And she got it.

    This was a good thing. But, it landed us in a half an hour conversation about trademarks and how they work and what companies we would make and what the names would be.

    I don’t even have to tell you that bedtime was later because she could not turn her brain off. That little brain has been on all day at school and then she came home and get this - did not ask to watch YouTube, but instead wanted to play and draw in her room all evening.

    I don’t know what happened, but my guess is she rotted over Christmas watching so many videos that her brain had enough and started to go on strike and needed to learn something that wasn’t fed to her and the tonies let her listen and use her imagination instead of having the info spoon fed.

    After all this discussion she landed on finding a new name for facial tissues. She wanted “Puffs”, but that was taken.

    We’ve decided on “Snorko” - because that’s the sound you make when you use them.

    And that’s a fact.

    Keep learning every day,

    TH and Co.

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  3. How to Make a Robot Vacuum Climb Stairs

    We have some ideas..

    As expected, the love for the robot vacuums still runs deep here. When we’re done watching the vacuum and talking about the vacuum we watch videos of robot vacuums.

    Sad, but true.

    Photo by Denny Müller on Unsplash

    The specific video we watched was the new prototype vacuum with legs. I guess this is big news in the robot vacuum community as it was all over my news feed. 1 This new and improved model has legs that make it look like a frog trying to climb stairs.

    The child was asking question after question about the vacuum, so I showed her the video that was going around where the vacuum fell down the stairs - which shows we’re not there yet.

    Here’s the link to the video

    Then she went to bed.

    The first thing she said to me when she got up this morning was that she had an idea for the vacuum that falls down the stairs: It needs a 3rd leg on the back of the unit.

    This was the topic of discussion all morning while we had breakfast and we even made a quick prototype of the model with the 3rd leg added:

    the OJ is the third leg.

    Excuse the rough draft as we had 8 minutes to catch the school bus so there wasn’t a whole lot of time to get the measurements right and we just went with the tools that we had at hand and that included her glass of OJ and trivet

    As you can see the third leg solves all the problems with the vacuum falling backwards down the stairs and my little future engineer was certain that this would work and be the solution. Of course, the real engineers actually have to figure out how all this works, but she has filed patent number:01082026 for this idea before the somebody else swipes it.

    The child just can’t believe that they didn’t think of this. She told me that when the robot vacuum that can climb stairs gets figured out with her design that “people will get to ditch their brooms and mops”

    In the meantime, keep the brooms and mops handy because despite the marketing it doesn’t look like we’re there yet with stair climbing robot vacuums.

    Still sweeping the stairs by hand,

    TH and Co.

    1. another example of sad, but true. ↩

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  4. Just a Wednesday

    It’s been a great year so far, and that’s the problem.

    It’s only been seven days so far in the new year so there’s lots of time for things to go sideways but so far this year things have been great!

    Photo by Ryan Stone on Unsplash

    It’s so great that things here are a little more mundane than usual. This is good if you have a low tolerance to stress, but bad if your hobby is to write about the mundane when it’s been so mundane there’s not much to write about.

    Anyway, here’s a few good things that are currently happening here. Because the news is full of bad news, and we’ve had enough of that.

    Bedtimes. These have been so, so easy. It could be because after a week of rotting at home during spring break she’s been happy to go to back to school 1 or just that she’s getting older but we have had zero issues with bedtime. We talk for a bit and then puts on a TonieBox and that’s the last we’ve heard from her.

    Artwork. Artwork has always been big here, but the latest is drawing artwork on her tablet. A few months ago, BW decided to gift me her old iPad as she wasn’t using and I could always use some technology for some project. I bought a cheap knock-off Apple Pencil for it and had it sitting on my desk. The child asked about the pencil and what it was for so I fired up the drawing program and her mind was blown.

    She’s still a little rough on stuff with those tiny hands of destruction so I got her going with some draw program on her own tablet and now the first thing she does is ask to draw, and that’s awesome and encouraged here.

    The Robot Vacuum. You guys, I am in love with my robot vacuum far more than any grown man should be.I don’t know why but with our floors free of grime and dog hair things are so much cleaner. Currently our house is so clean there’s not much to do. 2

    We’re not at “sell your house” clean, but pretty close. It’s amazing. I remember when the child was smaller BW would text me that the house was trashed and for a second I thought about running away to the circus rather than going home to the mess. I like this new reality much better.

    Reading. She’s reading chapter books now. BW sits down with her and they read a chapter together. If there’s one thing I want for her to have it’s a love of reading, and BW is doing a great job encouraging that.

    New Skills. File this one under: never in my wildest dreams. I re-upholstered our kitchen chairs this week. BW had it in her head that she needed to spend hundreds on special bougie “upholstery fabric” and then find somebody to re-cover them for hundreds more.

    “Hold my beer” 3, I told her and then bought 17 dollars worth of chair covers from Amazon and grabbed a staple gun and took them to the basement with me.

    I present to you the results of my efforts:

    complete with a phone cord and snow boots because we don’t live in an IKEA catalog.

    The Soda Situation. It’s been 4 days of being soda-free. I’m not liking this, but I am getting used to it. The things I do for my child.

    Happily mundane for now,

    TH and Co.

    1. I know I am ↩

    2. The child’s bedroom is so messy though that I consider it another ecosystem at this point, so I don’t consider it part of the house any more. ↩

    3. Maybe I should have said “hold my Coke”, ↩

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  5. Don't Cry. You're Going to Argentina.

    Because we said so - that’s why.

    The Planning

    She’s known about this for a while, but later this spring the child is going to Argentina for 2 months, plus.

    Photo by Angelica Reyes on Unsplash

    While there, she will go to school.

    Everybody that we tell this to is so excited for her and says it will be an excellent experience for her. Everybody is excited for her. Everybody except for the person that’s actually going: the child.

    She’s not thrilled about this. You see, BW is working on her next book and needs to research there so the 3 generations are going to camp out together for 2 months in Argentina. The child will go to school, BW will research, and my mother-in-law will make sure everybody behaves.

    Me? I’ll be home with the dog. Somebody has to mow the lawn.

    Argentina. It’s happening. In fact, this morning I spent my morning downtown at the courthouse and state department getting her birth certificates all stamped and ready so she can travel without issue.

    We’ve booked the accommodations there. It’s happening and she is going.

    The child does not want to go for one big reason - it will be winter there.

    The last time we went to Argentina it was summer because we went in January. She wants to go in the winter again, but the schedule does not line up so she’s going in the summer - which will be winter there.

    Here’s the thing: The child thinks the winters there are like winters in Buffalo, but they’re not - some days could be 80 degrees there - or 50 degrees - which is still warm for Buffalo standards.

    The Homework

    When she got home from school, she was all about making us some math questions to answer and she came down with this:

    If you can’t see it, she writes her twos and threes backwards. BW told her that it was wrong and we would not do the homework until she got the questions right.

    This did not go over well with the child - she pouted and stomped and generally complained. BW told her that she needs to get this sorted out by the spring so when she goes to the school she can show her new friends how she writes the numbers correctly.

    For those paying attention, telling a six-year-old that she has to learn how to write correctly before she can go on a trip she doesn’t want to go on didn’t work that well.

    “I don’t want to go anyway”, she told us.

    Oh, you’re going. We offered to help her with her homework and show her how to make 2’s and 3’s and I even got out my phone to show her images of the numbers so she could follow along but she hated being wrong and was making mistakes on purpose, so that failed.

    About 10 minutes later, I hear a full on meltdown crying from her bedroom so I rush upstairs to find her crumpled up on the floor in full on tears and a paper with the questions written again. She got the two’s right but after she finished she realized that the 3’s were still backwards and she lost it.

    “I don’t want to go to Argentina”, she told me.

    “I want to go to France, ”she said.

    I tried to sell Argentina, but when it comes down to it France might have better food so it wasn’t much of sales pitch on my part. It’s a tossup actually - If you could somehow combine France for the bread and Argentina for the steak then you would have a really good steak sandwich, if nothing else.

    I don’t know how we got there, but she started calling it “Nevertina” instead while she was still settling down from the outburst. She was never going to Argentina she told me again in case I missed it.

    Then she said she wanted to go to Nevada instead.

    I told her that the odds were still in favor of Argentina. In fact there’s a better chance of us going to France than there is Nevada so she can scratch that off her bucket list.

    “We could go to Montreal for a bagel”, I tell her.

    Then BW called us down for dinner, which coincidentally was Empanadas.

    Argentina came to our dinner table instead. For tonight, anyway.

    So, yeah. Argentina - here she comes - she’s still going and she still writes her 3’s backwards. We’re still working on both issues.

    Maybe tomorrow we’ll get the threes in the right direction.

    Tired as always,

    TH and Co.

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