Tidy Husband

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

  1. Just Add Water

    And a sunny summer day mixed with some imagination and you’ve got a recipe for fun

    Today the child played in a bucket of water

    Yes, a bucket of water. This goes to show you don’t need all the crap from China to entertain your kid. Here’s how this all went down:

    I was washing the car and under the spout of the garden hose we keep a bucket to keep the drips. I found her playing in it but the location wasn’t optimal for water play so I placed the bucket and the foam airplane she has under the shade in the front yard.

    She wanted me to play with her in the water with the airplane for a while so I did, but then my attention span for “let’s pretend” is much shorter than hers so I left her to her own devices.

    The next time I see her, she’s doffed her Crocs and is sitting in the bucket of water - happy as a lark and singing a song that only she will hear. She was out there for a good half hour or so and she came in soaking wet and covered in sidewalk chalk because body painting with sidewalk chalk is a thing here.

    I got her in the shower and washed off the chalk and we put on outfit number 2 for the day.

    We all know this. The kids will play with the box and not the toy. There’s some toys that get more play than others and she doesn’t play in buckets and boxes all the time - we have stuffed animals and board games and toys from McDonald’s just like everybody else.

    But, if all the toys are not in sight and a bucket is all there is then the bucket becomes the toy.

    The fun today was as easy as the pancake mix I used to make breakfast:

    Just Add Water.

    Until Next Time,

    TH and Co.

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  2. I Am Still Not Making Much Money with Substack

    This shouldn’t come as a surprise. June 2025 Income Report

    It’s a few days into a new month here so I thought I would report in on the earnings of my newsletter as some others with great big subscriber lists make it look so easy

    Photo by Pepi Stojanovski on Unsplash

    It’s not easy.

    I write each and every day here and yet I have nothing to report. I think the difference between those folks and myself is that they write stuff to make people interested in the topic whereas I just write about bedtimes mostly.

    News Flash: nobody cares about bedtimes.

    That’s not completely true. I actually have some regular readers that are not related to me that read regularly and this alone makes me want to write when I don’t want to write and would rather sit on the couch with big bag of doritos. Thanks to each and every one of you.

    But Dorito eating doesn’t move the needle. Consistent writing does.

    I suppose I could write about topics other than bedtime and I guess if I wait long enough that will start to happen but for right now we’re all about the bedtimes here.

    I’ve thought about some other topics to write about to make a quick buck but I’m not interested in politics or AI or whatever the flavor of the month is to write about it. Besides, this is the long game here and I’ve only been writing here for a few months.

    The Money

    The fact that I make any money with this at all is truly amazing. This was just a lark a few years ago and I’ve written on and off here without any traction but now I’m up to 66 readers and 3 of them actually pay me. That’s just wild.

    According to the image above things are pretty much the same this month vs last. Views are down and so is the open rate but I’m blaming that on summer. Who wants to read newsletters in June?

    I have plateaued at 60-ish subscribers it seems. I guess this is OK. I would like to hit 100 by September but that would a

    The fact that sixty-six of you subscribe to this is truly fantastic and I thank each and every one of you.

    Amazon Commissions

    This one’s easy. If I write about actual stuff, I sprinkle in a link or two to Amazon where you can see it, and if you buy anything at all on Amazon within 24 hours since you clicked - I get a small commission. I sometimes make about ten bucks a month, but not this month.

    This month I made nothing. Not one sale, which is odd because there’s been a few clicks, so people are clicking but not buying. For a while some kind soul was doing some of their grocery shopping there and I would get a commission on spices and shampoo.

    I think this means I still owe Jeff 8 bucks and we’re running at a loss here.

    The 3 paying subscribers pay me 2 bucks a month for the family rate because they are the only ones paying me so there’s that.

    Here’s how it all breaks down:

    Paid Subscribers: 3 x $2.00 = $6.00

    Amazon Earning: $0.00

    Total - $6.00. The same earnings as last month.

    That’s the update for June 2025. Here’s to a more profitable July. With the bar so low it shouldn’t take much to get there.

    Until Next Time,

    TH and Co.

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  3. Back in the Day: Fireworks Displays

    When seat belts were optional and patient parents were a thing.

    This might be seen through some rose colored glasses, but I remember being shuttled to almost every fireworks display at the Dundas Driving Park.

    Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash

    Dundas is a small valley town about a 10 minute drive from where we lived in Hamilton, ON and every time there was fireworks - we went. It’s been said that the GenX generation was the forgotten generation as we were the kids with the house keys around our neck and way to much unsupervised play.

    This was true, and memory might be incorrect, but we also got to go to a lot of events and of course we didn’t celebrate the fourth, but we had our own party. This was a different time to be sure with different rules:

    The first being lack of seat belts. They may be there, but they were just decorations.

    We slid across the vinly back seat of the Ford Country Squire - complete with wood paneling as we drove down the valley to Dundas. Sometimes we would be able to bounce around the backwards facing rear seat.

    By MercurySable99 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=134471747

    There were no brand name or even no-name snacks for the fireworks display. We had home-made popcorn that was made with a pot, some popcorn and some hope it didn’t burn 1

    If we were good we might have been able to bring a Pop Shoppe drink to wash it all down. Of course there was never a lack of a can/bottle opener around so that was never a problem

    We would somehow find a parking spot big enough to slip that huge monstrosity of a car into and grab our snacks and blankets and got on what seemed like forever of a walk that was probably only four blocks. It always confused my little mind that although it was called a driving park we had to park a 1/2 mile away and walk.

    The best part of the night was staying up late and making new friends while running around and playing in your pajamas. The fireworks seemed like almost an afterthought - we had snacks and a red woolen blanket that always itched in the heat of the summer evening.

    If we behaved that evening we would be treated to a soft cone at the Dairy Queen on the way back to the car. As an adult I think my Dad should have parked on the other side of the street so we would not walk by the DQ and save them a wait as a hundred other parents and kids had the same idea. I know better than to take a tired kid to a lineup for ice cream at 10 at night, but my parents were younger so maybe there’s that.

    As you read this now it’s my turn to take my over tired little one to see the local fireworks with her PJ’s on but the similarities end there. She will be driven in an electric car which still feels like living in the future. The snacks will be some store bought snack which she will not need, but YOLO. We draw the line at soda though so a water bottle will do for all of us.

    Maybe she’ll see a friend there, or make new ones. There will be no Dairy Queen (we have ice cream at home) but there will be family and memories to be made and maybe one day decades from now she can regale her readers with the memories of back in the day at the fireworks display.

    May your fireworks not get rained out and your blankets not be the itchy kind.

    Until Next Time,

    TH and Co.

    1. I must have been paying attention because I am now the official popcorn maker in the house. ↩

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  4. The Silent Treatment

    Keep Quiet or Else

    Today I missed the whole bedtime routine and this rarely happens. I ended up working late and came home just as BW got her into bed. We have a surprise visitor for her when she wakes up: her grandmother is here!

    She has no idea that this is happening.

    The trick is to keep her asleep until morning. Hopefully the summer camp did it’s job and exhausted her. The problem is fireworks. Whomever decided that celebrating starting a country with fireworks never had small children that go to bed at a decent time.

    As I write this, BW is guarding the door in case she gets woken up by these pesky fireworks. We have the noise blocking headphones at the ready for when she wakes up from the noise.

    Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

    Speaking of noise,

    Last night was a looong night here. First, we had a big summer storm that woke her up with the thunder and then a few hours later the band-aids she had put on earlier in the evening on the smallest injury on her knee - fell off.

    Normal people would live without the band-aid because whatever, but no the child: they had to be replaced at 1am because she’s six. I did what any parent would do: I feigned sleep and let BW take care of it.

    I wish I could write that this was the end of the sleepless night but nope, at 5:45 this morning she came into my room and wanted breakfast. I tried to explain that it was 2 hours until she could go to Camp and that she really should go back to bed

    Cue the screaming.

    Sigh. I got up and washed my face and when I came back into the bedroom she had crawled into my bed and fell asleep.

    Now it’s before 6am and I’m awake and without a bed to sleep in. I made the best of the situation and found a couch that would do in a pinch.

    At 7:30am she finds me and tells me to wake up.

    She then spends the morning telling anybody that would listen that “she had a nap” in my bed. NO, that’s not a nap - a nap isn’t continuing your night in Dad’s bed. A nap happens in the afternoon and it’s something that she will not take even if it’s in her best interest to do so.

    “I’m going to tell my camp counselor I had a nap” she tells me.

    Yeah, that’s great. If anybody needs a nap it’s Dad.

    Here’s hoping for a restful night,

    TH and Co.

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  5. Back in the Day: Roll Up Windows

    When air conditioning was an option and sweating came as standard equipment.

    I don’t know about you guys, but here at home both BW and I drive with the windows up and the climate control on. It doesn’t matter the season because inside the car you can be the same temperature all year round and not have to worry about windows other than looking out of them while driving.

    Photo by Ryan Graybill on Unsplash I bet this old Lincoln had power windows.

    Tonight on the way home from camp the child asked if she could roll down the windows. Sure, no problem.

    The problem with just having one window down is you get that buffeting thing going on, so I rolled down all the windows in the car and OMG you would think she saw Santa Claus (I bet Santa spends summers in a Lincoln with the windows rolled down)

    Then when we pulled up to a stoplight it got considerably less windy because: science. She loved it.

    I did all the rolling down/up of windows from the driver side because I have her locked out for both safety and sanity. I then unlocked her window switch and told her to roll down the window more. OMG she didn’t realize the car could do this! There’s a button?

    Then she asked: “Hey Dad!, back in the day how did you roll down windows?”

    I told her we used levers or rollers or - nevermind…it was hard to describe when driving so I just rolled down her window again and let her enjoy the breeze on the way home from a great day of summer camp

    Just wait until she hears about car keys back in the day.

    Until next time,

    TH and Co.

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