Those Are My Snacks

Dear Diary …
I do the grocery shopping for the family.  That’s fine.  I do most of the cooking.  So I should be the one getting the ingredients.
I’m also good at saving money.  That’s another big reason.  Send my wife to the grocery store and we’ll spend $75 on four apples and a box of crackers.  I’m not sure how that even works, but whatever … I do the shopping and it’s a non-issue.
Now to be clear … *I* make the trip to the store, *I* pick out the items, and *I* pay for them with money that *I* earn at work.
So when I come home with a can of Pringles that my son asked me to get for him … and I eat a couple … why am I hearing …
“Daddy … don’t eat those.  Those are MINE!”
Excuse me?
The Pringles that I drove to the store for … pulled off the shelf with my own hands .. and then paid for with MY money … those belong to you???
I don’t think so!
At the risk of sounding like a cliche´ dad from a comedy movie … You live in MY house and you eat MY food that I pay for with MY money!  I own you, child!
I merely give you permission to eat my morsels.  And if I wanna eat me a Pringle … I’m gonna eat me a Pringle!!
Snacks don’t belong to you.  Snacks belong to me.
OK … moving on Diary … speaking of ingrates …
We keep a bunch of random snacks in our office.  They’re for … well .. when you’re hungry.  They’re snacks.  Duh.
Well we have numerous co-workers who … much a like a rat looking for a piece of cheese at the end of the maze … Use our collection of snacks as said piece of cheese that they are looking for.  Naturally they don’t ever contribute to the bounty of snacks, but instead just use it as their own personal Old Country Buffet when we aren’t around.
You know what?  Whatever.  It’s not that big a deal, but then I hear this from one of them …
“Ugh … you guys only have crunchy peanut butter?  I hate crunchy peanut butter!”
Oh YOU hate crunchy peanut butter?  The free crunchy peanut butter that you mooch off of us?
You don’t like it?  BUY SOME CREAMY YOU INGRATE!!!!
I don’t understand people and the level of things they will complain about.  Here’s a true story from a friend of mine in the radio business …
His radio station did a contest where somebody could win a seven day Caribbean cruise.  FREE.
So they select a winner, and when he contacts her, the FIRST thing she said was …
“Well I’m gonna have to take off work!  What am I supposed to do?”
Shut up and go on the cruise.  That’s what you’re supposed to do.
I’m very sorry we have inconvenienced you with this free trip to paradise.  Please accept my deepest apologies for doing such a horrible thing to you, ya ingrate.
Till next time Diary … I say … Goodbye.

I’m Sooo Busy

Dear Diary …

The world is filled with excuses. We all make ‘em. Pretty much all of the time.

And I’m not gonna sit here and say things like “Never make excuses for anything.” That’s dumb advice. It’s also impossible, because some excuses are legit.

“Can’t come to work. I’m pukin’.”

Yup … legitimate!

But here’s one excuse that I think should be thrown out of our vocabulary … “I’m just sooo busy.”

I HATE that excuse … because it is a garbage excuse.

Pukin’ … Now there’s some real facts to back that one up.

Busy … That just means you were lazy and didn’t feel like.

“Nuh-uh … I’m really busy! I have sooooo much going on.”

AHHHH … Stop with that!

Everybody is busy. Everybody has things going on. Everybody is trying to juggle work and home and school and whatever else.

I mean … when’s the last time you asked someone, “Are you busy?” and they said “Nah … I ain’t got crap goin’ on in my life right now.” Everybody thinks they’re busy.

Here’s what I’ve learned … using “I’m busy” as an excuse is what losers do. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not perfect. I’ve used it as an excuse before, but when I think about the times I used it, what was REALLY my excuse? It was that I didn’t feel like doing it.

I had a bunch of stuff going on this weekend … I was busy. But also managed to squeeze in watching two episodes of “Chopped,” so I wasn’t THAT busy.

Look at the most successful people in this world. They always look like they have a million things going on. It’s because they DO … but instead of getting lazy and saying “I’m to busy,” they go out there and they get the job DONE.

So I’m not using that excuse anymore. And neither are you. And if you try to use it with me … you better come with a spreadsheet mapping out your entire day to prove to me that you’re too busy. Cuz I bet I’m gonna find some Candy Crush time in there somewhere.

Till next time Diary … I say … Goodbye.

Nobody Has Your Back

Dear Diary …

Nobody has your back.  I hate to say it, but that’s the way you should probably always live your life.  That’s not to say that there aren’t people in your life that have your back … most of the time … but there is no way that you can guarantee 100% that somebody else will ALWAYS have your back.  So you just need to be prepared.

Take, for example, my wife.  If you asked me … “Does your wife have your back?” … I’d say yes.  But then there are times like the other day when I decide to make a sandwich for lunch.

So I go into the fridge, pull out the container of lunch meat, and start making a sandwich.

[[SNIFF]] [[SNIFF]] … something doesn’t seem quite right.  It’s one of those times where it isn’t blatantly obvious that the lunch meat is bad … but it just … seems … odd.

It’s probably fine, but I don’t know about you, but “probably fine” is NOT how I like to describe something I’m going to eat.  Not worth the risk.  So I toss it in the trash.

My wife sees me do this and says, “Yeah I was going to make a sandwich earlier, but I thought that lunch meat seemed a little off, so I didn’t use it.”

OK fine … but why did you put it back in the refrigerator for me to potentially eat?  What makes you think I wanna play “Diarrhea Roulette” with questionable lunch meat?

See?  Didn’t have my back!  Had to watch out for myself and thankfully avoided a potential disastrous situation.

OK … moving on Diary … it’s great being a kid.  I look at my kids and see them so happy and carefree all the time.  Which of course is because they ain’t got no job or bills to worry about, plus they act like there is an endless supply of everything they want, and it’s available at all times.

My daughter had her birthday party a couple weeks ago, and we got pizza for the kids.  Now these are little kids, so we didn’t get a ton of pizza, because they don’t eat a ton of pizza.  What I didn’t take into consideration though, is that thought they may not EAT a ton of pizza, but they definitely DROP a ton of pizza.

Furthermore … kids just think the laws of physics don’t apply to them.  How many times you watch a kid crawl under a table, and then just stand up and bash their head on the thing?  And they never learn.  Like the rules of science just don’t apply to them.

“Oh my head!”

Yeah … no kidding.  Don’t go standing up under tables you doofus.

And of course, what do they do? Turn around and do it again.

“Oh my head!”

No sympathy for you!

Anyway … at the party the kids basically say, “I can take a flimsy paper plate with some food on it, and then just wing it all over the place with my hands and nothing will POSSIBLY happen to the slidey piece of pizza sitting on top of this plate.”

Oh wait … It falls on the ground?  SHOCKER!!!

“I need another piece of pizza.”

OK … fine … here you go.

Next  kid … same exact thing.

“I need another piece of pizza too.”

Uhhh … we don’t have an endless supply of pizza, ya rugrats.

So I did what any good parent would do … I pretended to get them another slice of pizza, and then just gave them the slice of dirt pizza that they dropped on the ground in the first place.

Hey … I’d expect nothing less if my kid was at somebody else’s house flinging pizza all over the place.  [[[BLOW]]]  Blow it off … here’s your pizza kid.

My son eats boogers. He gonna be picky about a little fleck of dirt on a pizza?  I think not.

Till next time Diary … I say … goodbye.

You Don’t Get to Unplug


Dear Diary …

I was on vacation recently. And I feel like I need to point that out, since none of my coworkers seemed to notice when they were blown’ me up all week asking me to do stuff. Actually, I stand corrected, they DID know I was on vacation, because everybody started their request with the same phrase … “I know you’re on vacation, buuuuut …”

Now let me be clear … I’m not here to complain about that. I get it. Just because I’m not in the office, that doesn’t mean all work life stuff automatically disappears. And furthermore, I’m here to kick some butt, and in order to do that, you can’t be laying around and binge-watching “This Is Us” for a week, you gotta have the Eye of the Tiger and be willing to put in the work.

(Then you wantch “This Is Us”)

But here’s the rub …

When my coworkers go on vacation … I can only guess that they’ve taken a trip to Mars or something for the week, cuz they are GONE. Even if there is an emergency at work that requires their immediate attention that nobody else can take care of … you got better luck trying to teach your grandma how to use Snapchat than you do getting a hold of one of these people.

And when they come back, those jerks are all, “Oh sorry I didn’t get back to you. I was on vacation and I just totally unplugged.”

NO! You don’t get to unplug for the week!!!

I didn’t get to unplug for the week when you’re up my butt asking for stuff, so you can’t go play Margaritaville without at least being available if we need you. Sorry … you might not like it … but that’s the way it is. Don’t wanna do it? Then go get a useless job somewhere else where people don’t even notice if you’re gone.

So since I’m talking about my week off … notice I’m not really calling it a “vacation” since I didn’t go anywhere. Part of the reason I took the time off is because my wife had to go out of town to see family, and somebody had to watch the children. And since there’s ain’t really no babysitters available at four in the morning, I gotta play Stay At Home Dad for a few days.

And here’s the angle most exhausting thing about taking care of children … you never get credit for doing anything with them. Ever.

On Friday my daughter got to go to a birthday party with all her friends, and they got to see a movie. Then she came home and we baked cookies, made ice cream sandwiches, and did all sorts of activities. Then on Saturday during the day she went to a friend’s house for a play date. I then picked her up from there and took her to another friend’s house for dinner so all the kids could play together there.

I mean … we are talking a tornado of fun all crammed into two days.

So when I wake up Sunday morning and come downstairs, what do you think is the first thing out of her mouth?

“Daddy are we going to do anything fun today? I wanna DO something today.”

You know what we’re gonna do today? Sit. That’s what we’re going to do today.

And I don’t know about you … actually I don’t even care about you … Daddy thinks that sounds like a TON of fun.

“But I want to DO something.”

What???? What are we gonna do? We just did EVERYTHING for the last two days … there ain’t no more things to do. We did ‘em all!! Now go play Minecraft for like 8 hours and give me a freakin’ BREAK.

No credit with these kids. Ever.

I bet I could take ‘em to Disney World for a week and the day we get home they’d be all, “I’m bored … what are we gonna to today?”

And the answer’s the same … Sit. [[Mouse voice]] HAHA kids … Mickey loves a good sit!

Till next time Diary … I say … goodbye.