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2022 Nutshells, Family

The great recipe weed-out down memory lane

April 17, 2022 No Comments

The green plastic binder bulged at the seams. It swelled and throbbed as if it had a pulse. A heartbeat. A hunger for more. “Feed me more recipes!” it demanded.

The dreaded recipe binder.

The once-tame beast had broken its bounds. Grown gargantuan and overflowed with sheets filled with ingredients and steps for meals that we would NEVER undertake. But it didn’t stop us from printing more off and stuffing them in the binder.

“Oh, this looks simply delicious. Squid ink pancakes. I’m sure we’ll make that someday.”

Chomp, chomp, chomp. “Give me more.”

Only now, when you pulled the binder out to find something, its guts spilled all over the floor in a 17-ton tsunami of loose copy paper and magazine clippings.

“AHHH, I hate you, recipe binder,” I would cry.

2022 Nutshells, Childhood, Family

Remembering the glory days of childhood money-making

April 11, 2022 No Comments

“Where did you get all that money?!?” I asked my daughter. We were leaving my mother’s house and she had a handful of cash.

“I don’t know. Grandma Evie gave it to me,” she said.

“For what?” I asked. “I’m her son! I didn’t get any money.”

“She asked me to clip some grape vines, and she gave me $30 for it.”

“Thirty dollars!” I replied. No, actually I didn’t “reply.” I spat! A combination of horrified and disgusted. “It only took you like 5 minutes. Why did she give you $30?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe because I had to climb a ladder? Like hazard pay. All I know is I sure wasn’t going to turn down $30.”

Oh, to be a kid again. No, not even a kid. My child is 16. A teenager for sure. But she still makes “kid cash.” You know, when family – and I’m talking grandparents especially – shower you in money for simple, and sometimes silly, reasons.

2022 Nutshells, Houses, yards and projects

Fear and loading in the hardware store parking lot

April 3, 2022 No Comments

“Don’t be that guy. Don’t be that guy,” I told myself over and over again.

I was in the parking lot of one of the big-box hardware stores. Most people dread going into stores like these. I dread leaving them. Having loaded far too many things onto a heavy-duty cart, and now wondering how to load it into my 2008 Honda Element. It’s a vehicle that weighs less than the store’s cart, and no longer has any suspension, thanks to continuously hauling far too many things. Its cargo area was actually intended for bags of cotton candy.

Don’t … be … that … guy!

We all know him. We’ve all seen him. Sometimes on the side of the road. After his crudely- loaded haul of hardware supplies spills onto the highway. We’ve all pitied him. Or snickered. Me? I usually commiserate.

“Dang!” I say, and do the sign of the cross. “That could have been me!”

So … don’t be that guy. Don’t be that guy.

2022 Nutshells, Animals, Travel

Leashes up for a little dog-sitting 101

March 21, 2022 No Comments

Oh man, dog-sitting. There is nothing better in life than dog-sitting. Taking in someone else’s K-9 and trying to get them to assimilate with your family. And they can’t do that. They’re dogs! They do dog things. You can’t explain things to them. You can’t say: “OK, so we have rules here. That means you can run the Kentucky Derby in the dining room and then throw up in the living room. It’s NOT acceptable!” But they don’t get it. This is normal behavior for them.

I haven’t had to dog-sit my brother’s dog, Ella, in a while. We had a porch cat who slept inside, and there was too big a risk she might eat him. So she didn’t stay over. But now that the cat has passed away, we’re back in the dog-sitting business. And it has reminded me of all the tips and tricks that every dog-sitter should know:

• The dog-walk tango. Inevitably your family will bail on you and you’ll get stuck having to walk multiple dogs on your own. When your own dog is 45 pounds, and your family member’s is 362 pounds, it will make for a challenge. Especially if the new dog walks like a drunken sailor, zig-zagging down the street from side to side, and going up on hind legs like a kangaroo at the first sign of a cat or a squirrel or a leaf. This will make you twist and turn and pirouette down the street until you’re dizzy and your neighbors are applauding your performance. “Bravo!” they shout. Only, walking two dogs who have their own speeds and priorities (pee and smell flowers vs. KILL THAT SQUIRREL!!!) is a lot like being drawn and quartered as your limbs are nearly torn from their sockets.

2022 Nutshells, Travel

No more two-timing away my time

March 18, 2022 No Comments

It was finally my time.

The college media conference in New York City had ended. The awards contest for student journalists I run was in the books. I sat down in my hotel room on my last morning in the city to relax and take it in. I had my phone and a cup of coffee.

Ah, freedom!

I remember this very clearly. I was reading a news feed on my phone. I reached over to put my coffee on the side table. I know it went where it was supposed to be because I heard a tap as it made contact. I didn’t see it. I didn’t need to – I kept my eyes on my phone. But I heard it. And that was good enough.

Then I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. My keen peripheral vision spotted something that rarely happens on land:

A tidal wave.

A giant, brown surging tidal wave!

It was coming from my coffee cup. My coffee cup on the floor.

2022 Nutshells, Animals, Family, Houses, yards and projects, In the News

A plea for more useful how-to articles on the Web

March 4, 2022 No Comments

If you haven’t noticed, the Internet is awash in how-to articles. I stumbled across a few gems the other day: “How to make a candle at home,” for those who don’t know how to flip a light switch; “How often to clean your dryer lent,” Answer: When you can’t shut the door or smell smoke; and “How to play Wordle, but look like you’re doing work,” which is actually kind of handy.

But with all the problems in the world, why aren’t so-called “experts” writing about useful topics we can actually use? How-to articles about things we might actually need. For instance, why isn’t anyone tackling these pressing topics:

• How do you get your dog to stop shedding? I came downstairs the other morning when the early morning light was starting to crack through the French doors and light up my pecan-colored floors. I gasped.

“Honey!” I called out. “When did we install carpet?”

2022 Nutshells, Technology

Blue screens of death and struggles with technology

February 23, 2022 No Comments

Technology, you’re a rotten little devil. Not most of the time. Often, you’re good and helpful and make the world a better place. Like watching cat videos on Tik-Tok.

But when you go wrong – like the other day when my computer died at work – you go WAY wrong!

It makes me long for a simpler time. When technology was less-advanced, but a lot easier to fix.

Or, it makes me wish that with all of its vast power and ability, tech could at least solve some of its own problems. Instead of always asking me to do it. Computers can crunch numbers with incredible sophistication. Pull up information from any part of the world in seconds. Display in incredible detail the depths of the known universe.

But the minute it has an issue, it starts spitting out non-sensical jibber-jabber in the form of tech-jargon and codes that require ME to look them up. Never remembering that IT is the designated searcher of information in the family.

It’s absurd, isn’t it? Like going to the doctor and he takes his shirt off and asks, “Do you mind looking at this mole? It’s turning black. Does it look serious?”

2022 Nutshells, Family, Travel

The neurotic summer trip planner gets back to work

February 14, 2022 No Comments

It’s been too long. Far too long. Too long since taking a really big trip. A test-your-mettle and get you out of your comfort zone trip. A trip that doesn’t involve just a car or a state you’ve already been to. A trip that makes you lay awake at night wondering, “What made me think a camel safari was a good idea?!?”

I want a big trip. Like an overseas trip. And with summer starting to loom, and the prospect of the world opening up after the long pandemic, I’m getting back into planning mode. Loading up on travel books for various locales. Tracking airline prices. Testing out ideas and themes on the family. (“So, is anyone allergic to camel hair … or their spit?”) Generally getting my OCD travel bug out of the closet and back into action.

It occurred to me recently that the last time we went on a really big trip was in 2019. In COVID time, that was like 15 years ago. We went to London and then drove a car around Ireland in a semi-successful attempt to not make hood ornaments out of sheep. Or drive off a coastal cliff that landed us in Boston. We were only attacked and swallowed by a hedgerow once.

That long-ago trip was supposed to be the start of some much bigger adventures with our daughter. She was getting to an age when traveling farther, and more exotically (meaning places that didn’t just serve chicken nuggets), was easier and more enjoyable. Plus, the ticking of time meant there were only a finite number of summers left to take these family jaunts in.

2022 Nutshells, Getting old ... er ... older

Holding onto my 40s, and my failing eyesight

February 13, 2022 No Comments

Come on eyes! Hold out another year. I just need one more year.

Next week I celebrate my birthday. The last one in my 40s. A final hoorah before turning 50 next year. It’s kind of scary really. And intimidating. The idea of turning 50 carries so much weight. It’s a milestone, and a midway point. When you start getting those senior discounts. Wait! What? Really?!? And I guess when people can legally start calling you a “senior.”

Ohhhhh. Cruel.

But it weighs on me for other reasons, too. Some more physical. That it might mark when “changes” start to set in. Already I can feel them.

Like my eyesight. Sure, it’s still pretty good at a distance. But up close? It’s like a steamy sauna. A foggy drive with a windshield smeared by a candy car.

Let’s call it dodgy, even with low-grade cheater glasses. Up close, things are getting blurrier. Like menus. Or fingernail clipping. I noticed this one the other day. That if I’m not wearing reading glasses, it’s all guesswork. Random snipping. I’m either taking off several millimeters of fleshy tip, or clipping 5 inches from my nearest digit. I inspected a middle finger later and it was a dead ringer for Mt. Everest. All jagged peaks and crags.

2022 Nutshells, Florida, Weather

Florida and it’s oh-so brief brushes with the cold

February 5, 2022 No Comments

Good, ‘ole Florida. Where the cold snaps come, and the cold snaps go. In the blink of a day.

One morning it dips down to a mind-numbing 28 degrees – cold enough to cause Floridians to fall out of trees – and by afternoon it’s already climbing into the 60s with bright, warming sun filling the land.

Florida, you’re so schizophrenic.

My wife’s relatives from Long Island own a diner and sent pictures of what looked like Mt. Everest from the winter storm that hit them. It was the snow they shoveled at 4 a.m. from the sidewalk in front of the restaurant.

“Oh!” we thought. “Let’s send them a picture of our bird bath. It completely froze through this morning!” They texted back, “OMG! Are you all OK? You Floridians don’t know how to deal with extreme temperatures. We hear you fall out of trees!”

And we wrote back, “No, don’t worry. The ice already melted. We’re going to the beach.”

Which is one of the many reasons why people hate us.