Kids and Dogs Hate Sleep / Pinterest Is a Liar

Dear Diary …

So answer me this … And this is probably one of life’s biggest mysteries … Why do children and dogs hate sleep? Oh and not THEIR sleep … they get plenty of that. They just hate YOUR sleep. Especially on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

Why do they do this to us?

Their loyal, giving parents who spend all week bustin’ their hump for the man to pick up a not big enough paycheck, and to keep them flush with their Barbies and their Milk Bones and their Frozen soundtracks. The week finally ends, and all we wanna do is sleep until … oh I don’t know … all the way until 8 am. Oooooh … sleepin’ in!

But noooo … apparently that is an unreasonable request.

One of my dogs throws up EVERY Saturday morning at 6:30. Doesn’t throw up during the week. Doesn’t throw up any other time of day. Just Saturday. Every Saturday. And just at 6:30am.

And the 6:30 vomit alarm? Oh well you’re lucky if you make it that far, because half the time my son is already awake and just in his crib, yelling …

“Momma!” “Momma!”

And guess what he does on weekdays? Sleeps! My wife has to wake his butt up to get him ready for school.

But Saturday?

“Daaaaaaady!” “Daaaaaaaady”

The one silver lining to all of this is that it finally answers that question I always asked myself when I was 16 years old and I wanted to sleep till noon … “Aw, ow come my Mom is vacuuming at 8:30 in the morning? She knows I’m trying to sleep!” Yeah she knows … which is exactly why she was vacuuming. I stole her sleep … and I she was just returning the favor. And I will be doing the exact same thing to my children.

OK … moving on Diary …

Let me pass on a warning to all of you about something that tries to pose as helpful, but is actually evil. Pinterest. Oh Pinterest tries to be your friend …

“Hey look at me … I’m all beautiful looking and fun to use!”

It’s a liar. Don’t listen to it.

Now … If you’re unfamiliar with Pinterest … It’s a website where women post pictures of arts and crafts projects that they’re never actually going to do, but always tag them with things like “Totally going to do this.”

That’s half of Pinterest. And then the other half is a place where people post terrible recipes and trick you into making them by making the pictures look pretty.

And there’s my warning .. never trust Pinterest recipes. 99% of them stink. And even with that percentage, I am still the idiot that goes diving back in for more all the time.

Hey that looks good!

Well it isn’t.

Like the last one I made … some casserole. I don’t even remember exactly what. Doesn’t matter. Point is, when it was done it was a flavorless, watery mess. And even as I’m making it, I’m thinking “Sure does seem like a lot of liquid.”

Well sure enough … it was.

Do these people actually make these recipes? Or is it that their standards just set much much lower than mine when it comes to good food?

Cuz everything is always “the BEST cassserole EVER!” or “BEST crockpot meal” or whatever. I mean … opinions are often relative … So maybe they’ve just never eaten good food before … so them it actually is the best casserole they’ve ever had?

I dunno. Point is. Don’t trust your friend Pinterest. He’s like that bad boy you dated. He’s all cute on the outside, but he’s a big liar on the inside that will break your heart and make your tummy hurt.

That’s your bad boy Pinterest. Be warned!

Till next time Diary … I say, goodbye.

Close Your Mouth Hole

Dear Diary …

I’m here to help.

Now I know sometimes you might think … “Oh this Diary is just one angry little man ranting about things,” but that’s not the case at all.

Yes I’m angry. And yes I’m ranting about things. And yes … I’m kinda little … but that’s not the core of the Anger Diary. I core is that I’m here to help.

I want to make the world a better place. And lucky for me, I’ve got the knowledge … it’s just a process of getting you to listen to it. I’m just trying to help you during those times where you’re doing it wrong, and I have the right answer.

OK … modesty might not be my strong suit … whatever. But in all seriousness, sometimes I have good advice. Like this … Shut your mouth.

Now I don’t mean … you be quiet … you shut up. That’s not productive. I mean you need to actually … physically … close your mouth hole as you’re walking through life. Because when you’re standing there … just with your mouth open … I gotta be completely honest … you do NOT look like somebody who’s setting themselves up for success.

You don’t believe me? Go to a mirror right now … open your mouth … and then look at yourself.

“Heeeyyyy … Hi.”

Close your mouth? Normal.

Open?

“Mahhhhhhhh … bug catchin’ mouth … Mahhhhhh”

I’ll freely admit … knowing nothing about a person … I will judge them … probably unfairly … just because they’re walking around with their mouth open. Think about it … If you interviewed two people for a job … and EVERYTHING was identical about the two people, except for the fact that one sat there with his mouth open the entire interview … who would you hire? Closed mouth guy … exactly!

And I wanna stop this. I wanna give you that chance. I want you to get that job … so take my advice and shut it!

OK … moving on Diary …

As a parent, you want your kids to look up to you. And to a point, you even want them to see you as super-human. That said … you don’t want it to go to the point like my children, who apparently think I’m a magician and they can just have anything they want, exactly when they want it, without any advanced notice.

My daughter just yesterday … I’m in the kitchen making dinner …

“Is dinner ready yet?”

“No. I’m making it right now.”

“But I’m hungry NOW!!!!”

That’s great, but it ain’t ready. It’s not like I can wave my magic wand and … poof … cheeseburger. You have to be patient.

And my daughter … she fights it. And she fights with no logic, because her arguments make no sense. When she whines that she’s hungry and I tell her I’m making it as fast as I can and it’ll be done soon. Her response to me last night?

“Well that’ll take a mile and a half to be ready.”

Huh?  Mile and a half?

How do you come back from that? What unit of measurement do I even argue in to prove my point?

I’ll tell you want the point is … I ain’t no David Copperfield. Cuz if I was, I’d be making myself disappear and then reappear on a beach in Puerto Rico while somebody else made you dinner in the first place you ingrate!
Till next time Diary … I say goodbye.

Jerky Kids’ TV Shows

Dear Diary …

Today I would like to officially lodge my complaint with kids’ television shows. And no, I refuse to sound like grumpy old coot that’s going to say things like “The kids today watch crap. In my day, the TV shows were way better.”

No. I’m not gonna say that, because I know my shows, in my day, were crap too. Don’t agree with me? Go back and watch the Smurfs. It’s rubbish.

So it’s fine … I don’t expect the kids’ TV shows today to be any good. But what I do expect is for these shows to at least try to teach kids something positive. And if they aren’t going to do that … then at the very least I want them to do nothing … because nothing would still better than teaching them bad behavior. Unfortunately, too many of these shows teach them to be naughty.

Take the other day … my kids are watching Dora the Explorer. And you’re probably thinking, “Oh but that’s a good show because kids learn Spanish and also coping skills with how to deal when you hear the same song repeated over and over and over again like “I’m the map I’m the map, I’m the map.”

“I’m the map!””

OK great … you’re the map. I get it. Shhhh!

Anyway … their little lessons are all well and good, but this Swiper character who everything that’s wrong in this world.

Now Diary … if you don’t know Swiper … and you are SO much luckier than me if you don’t … He’s the jerky little fox that tries to steal everything in every episode.

Like the one that the kids are watching … there’s these two trolls getting ready for their wedding. And Swiper … he tries to swipe the bride’s bouquet. Oh no no no … don’t be messing with the bride on her big day. So they catch him, and they do their whole

“Swiper no swiping!” And he goes “Oh man!” And he’s caught red handed. And then what do they say?

“See you at the wedding party Swiper!”

NOOO!!

He tried to steal the bouquet … he doesn’t get to go to the party! How’s he ever gonna learn to stop being such a jerk? You’re totally enabling him.

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is the same thing … Sneaky Pete is constantly trying to screw over the Clubhouse gang. And what do they do? Invite him to every party, every sleepover. I mean … the guy tried to charge a toll to Santa in the Choo Choo Express episode. Dude tries to fleece Santa Claus … and what does he get? Presents for Christmas!

And you wonder why kids today behave terribly? They learn it from their little cartoon Gods. Hey kids … Act awful and hopefully you’ll get away with it … but even if you don’t … well your stupid friends will still let you hang out with them and you take advantage of them again next time.

You think Grand Theft Auto is the problem? Nope. Dora. She’s the one snowing all of us. Evil little hoochie.
Till next time Diary … I say, goodbye.

 

Teachers Are Gonna Kill Me

Dear Diary …

I’m going to approach something today, that quite honestly could get me in a lot of trouble. And that’s because it’s about a group of people who can definitely be a little bit sensitive about certain things. But I … am dumb.

So I’m gonna dive into the pool head-first, even though there’s a little picture of a guy with a circle around him and a line thru him with a sign that says “No diving you break you neck, this is the shallow end.” That’s alright … I’m gonna dive in anyway. Because it’s about teachers.

Oh God … you hear that? That’s everybody else running for cover right now. And since I’m out here on the island, let me be very … VERY … clear. I love teachers. I appreciate teachers. I respect teachers. You do something that I don’t wanna do … be around children. I barely like my own kids. And not only do you deal with them … you deal with the dreaded ” everybody else’s kids.” Oooooh. Cuz you know how that is … there’s nobody on Earth that says “Man, I just love everybody else’s kids.” Nobody ever likes “everybody else’s kids.” And that’s what you deal with all day, every day, is “everybody else’s kids.”

So know that this comes from a place of love and respect … and really I’m trying to help you with this … Teachers … you have to stop whining about going to work … in particular on social media where all of us can see it. Do it in the confort of your own home all you want, but leave it off Facebook.

And I bring this up now, because we are at the end of the school year. Like just last week, it was Memorial Day weekend. So a lotta people had a nice, long weekend. But at the same time, apparently thanks to the 652,000 snow days we had in this area in the winter, a lot of schools actually had class on Memorial Day. So all I saw on Facebook that weekend was “Sure does suck to be a teacher … It’s not fair … we have to work on Memorial Day. This is terrible. Don’t be acting all happy that you have the day off, cuz we don’t.”

And when I saw this … I had to ask one teacher … “OK … so you have to work on Memorial Day, but how many days do you have left after that?”

“Five”

“And then what?”

“Oh I’m off all summer, I’ve got two months to just relax and do whatever.”

So do you see the problem here? Big freakin’ deal you worked on Memorial Day … you get the rest of the summer off. Something tells me most non-teachers would take that deal. Cuz I would.

Not to mention that they only reason you had to work Memorial Day was because you got a ton of random days off from work in the winter time when there was a half an inch of snow on the ground and they closed school for the day. So to have to work Memorial Day was not ideal, but also not worth whining about either.

And yes … I can feel the mob of teachers that are forming right now to come and tear me a new one, so I will say it again … Teachers are awesome. I love you. You take care of our little turds, and put up with all their garbage. And you’re stressed out. And you’re underpaid.

I support you. I’m here to help … I’m just passing along a perception that a lot of non-teachers have, based on the things they hear from the teachers in their lives. Not me … don’t hurt me. I know you work hard … and you deserve the time off. One evening with my OWN kids and I need a drink … I can’t imagine dealing with all of ‘em all day long. And I know not ALL of you get the summer off, but a lotta ya do, which is pretty sweet. So soak it in, and enjoy. And come back in the fall refreshed and happy. Or at least … lie and pretend you’re happy.
Till next time Diary (I hope) … I say goodbye.