Month: May 2021

Dear Diary …

Ahhh story time. When you were a kid, story time was the most glorious time. You would get all snug in your bed … pull the covers up to your chin like you’re a little kid on a sitcom. And then Mommy and Daddy would read you a story …

“Goodnight moon. Goodnight light. Goodnight room.”

Or you know … whatever dork book it was that you had on hand and your kids made you read one million times. The point is … story time is great when you’re a kid.

But when you’re an adult … story time is awful.

And I’m not talking about you having to read to your kids. That ones fine. (Maybe a little annoying at times, but overall not too bad.)

I’m talking about what story time BECOMES for you when you’re an adult. Because now … story time consists of the same horrible thing every time … you get stuck going to a meeting … somebody hands you a giant pamphlet … and then proceeds to to read that pamphlet to you word for word.

And you don’t even get to fall asleep like little kid story time … adult story time makes you sit there the whole time … flippin’ to the next page … having that one read to you as well.

Why do we do this? Just hand me the packet and have me read it. I CAN read. And even if I couldn’t … I could just tell Alexa to do it for me. So why do I need to be dragged into adult story time instead?

Well I’ll tell you why … It’s because most of y’all are lazy and you wouldn’t read it in the first place. So that’s why somebody has to read it to you. So … this is YOUR fault.

Moving on Diary … I’ve decided I don’t appreciate the attitude of auto-reply email messages. They’re just smug and unnecessary.

I am out of the office until Monday … please contact blah blah blah if you have an urgent request.

Oh well congratulations to you! You got to go on a little trip or a staycation or whatever. I don’t need you rubbing it in my face. “I’M not here right now because I’m awesome. But since YOU’RE a working stiff who desperately needs me … you will have to sit there and wait. BAHAHAHA!!!”

Cuz here’s the other thing with the auto-reply … to me it’s basically a guarantee that that person ain’t ever going to actually get back to you. Oh sorry … I was out and my inbox was just SWAMPED. What did you need again? That’s ll they’re going to do … they’re going wait for you to contct them again.

And let’s not even get into the fact that half the time the auto-reply has the wrong dates on it, or ended three days ago. So like … are you here or not?

See? Smug. Don’t appreciate it.

Till next time Diary … I say … Goodbye.

Dear Diary …

As things get back to “normal” (or whatever that even means), what I do know is we see a world where at the very least people are doing more stuff. More activities, more plans, more trips … stuff like that. And I am here to report … IT’S AWFUL!!!

Oh my God! There’s so … much … STUFF!!!

Kid baseball. Dad softball. Kid dance. Wife working. Travel plans. Work events. It’s just never ending.

And yes … while it is good that we are able to get out and do things, I gotta be honest … I kinda miss the coronavirus. OK I don’t miss the actual coronavirus, or thinking we were all gonna die, or having to wipe down each individual item from the grocery store because you thought it had deadly cooties on it. Ugh. That was the worst. I stopped buying bananas simply because there’s too many of ‘em in a bunch to have to wipe down!

So I don’t miss any of those things, but I do miss the big pile of nothing we all had going on. I remember when “plans” consisted of some random person in your neighborhood deciding to play piano every night for 10 minutes and the neighbors all standing there … 200 feet away from each other while you gathered. And as far as plans went … that was it. For the week. Shoot .. that was considered “big plans.”

Now every day feels like one of those time lapse videos where they show people walking around all fast while the sun rises and sets on super speed. Except that’s real life now. Buzzin’ around like a bunch of bees makin’ honey.

For the first time in my adult life I’m genuinely excited for the kids to be on summer vacation. Not because I care about them getting time off from school … forget that … they can do homework year round for all I care. I just don’t wanna sit in car line anymore for a while!

Look … I don’t wanna go back to the way things were last year, but can we maybe at least figure out a way to have like a “mini pandemic” for a week or two every now and then? You know … one where there isn’t any actual illness, but we just stopped doing stuff just in case. I don’t know … mainly I just wanna do less stuff. How do we do that?

Till next time Diary … I say … Goodbye.

Dear Diary …

Fresh off the heels of this lovely Mother’s Day let me of course say thank you to all the Moms out there for everything you do. You’re the best. OK … we done with all the showering in praise and Mother’s Day and all this stuff? Good … cuz this ain’t about you! Sheesh!

I kid. I kid. I kid. Please don’t kill me.

Really it’s true though, this has nothing to do with Mothers Day. Mother’s Day just happens to be one of the days where this evil monster rears its devil head … the greeting card industry.

I’m sorry, but cards are just stupid. And not necessarily the card itself or the message inside, but more THE PRICE of the card itself. I’m all shopping for a Mother’s Day card … “Oooh this is nice … it says nice things … Seven dollars? NOPE!”

I’m sorry, but on no planet in any dimension should a greeting card and a steak be similar in price. I mean we’re talking about a square of paper here with some writing on it that gets handed to a person, read, and then thrown away. I just described a receipt to you … and we ain’t charging anybody seven dollars for a receipt!

And further more … where does the greeting card world get off permanently printing the price of the card right on the back of it?

Now you can’t even safely buy your momma the 99 cent card because she can just flip that bad boy over and immediately put a price tag on your love for her. [Mom voice] “Oh I see how it is! You only love your mother 99 cents? Your mother … who was in labor for 27 hours with you. You know your brother spent seven dollars on his card. Hmpf!”

And you know what else costs too much? Flowers! We’ve created a billion dollar industry out of basically a weed that you pull out of the ground, hand somebody, and is dead by the end of the week and in the trash. Oh yeah … that felt like $20 well spent!

And let’s not even get into the whole scam of event flowers for things like wedding and funerals. OK … actually we’re totally getting into the whole scam. How is it that we spend every normal day of our lives complaining “$10 for a pizza … that’s outrageous!” but when we have a wedding suddenly $3,000 for a bunch of flowers “oh that seems like a fair price!”

But hey … we’re the idiots. We’re the ones that keep dropping $7 on a card. Why? Cuz we’re afraid of the wrath of Momma … that’s why.

Till next time Diary … I say … Goodbye.

Dear Diary …

They always say “with age comes wisdom” … Which I guess means that the older you get, the more you learn stuff. And while I agree that most young people are stupid (it’s OK young people, I too was stupid when I was young people. It’s fine.) … I’m not sure if you get any smarter as you get older.

In my [mumbles] years on this planet I’ve finally learned one thing. I don’t know myself. At ALL. You’d think I would. I spend all day and all night with myself. I even get to read my own thoughts. And still … I don’t think I know a dang thing about this person.

I have one of those big ol’ chest freezers in my basement. All sorts of stuff in there … steaks … chicken … desserts … fully cooked and ready to eat meals … at least I think all that stuff is in there, because every time I go down to that freezer to find something, the only stuff on top is stupid. Everything I need is ALL the way on the bottom.

I mean … what idiot loaded this thing in the first place? Oh … wait … this idiot. How is it that I know this little about myself that the top of this freezer is filled with things I never wanna use anytime soon? And even when I pull the whole thing out and rearrange it … It still ends up this way!

Or when I take care of stuff. You would think I would know where I need to have things in order to remember where they are and find them easily, right? Nope! Diary … do you know where my checkbook is right now? No … seriously … do you know where my checkbook is right now because I can never find that stupid thing. And every time I find it I put it in a different place I can never remember.

Or when I make plans … I really don’t think I know myself, or at the very least I grossly overestimate my desire to do stuff. Diary … I have a day coming up in a couple weeks where my wife and daughter are out of town, my son is sleeping over a friend’s house, and I am going to be all alone. By myself. On a Saturday night.

So what do I do? Text a friend and say “Hey you wanna come over that night and hang out?”

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME????

Why do I do this to myself??? I know darn well that I’m gonna wish I was home all by myself, and to be clear … I HAD THAT CHANCE. And I ruined it. ME! Nobody else. Stupid stupid me.

This is why I need an assistant. I have no doubt that that person will know me better than me. Cuz I don’t know squat.

Till next time Diary … I say … Goodbye.