Earlier this week I found myself kicking aside a cork hot pot trivet dealio in order to pull the front door open and head for work.  I walked toward the car thinking, “The stuff that just seems normal in my life at this point…”

Not really normal, I’m afraid.

Why is there a cork hot pot trivet thingie propped against my front door at 7 a.m.?  Why not?  The more appropriate question is actually why is this the first time I ever remember this happening?  Parents of boys certainly are used to collecting every other household item imaginable from wherever boys have dragged and dropped it.

If you find yourself asking these questions, I have composed a list of probable answers.  Based entirely on years of painful experience, of course:

• Where is the laundry basket?  It’s in the boy’s bedroom, under the covers.  It is command central of forts used to war against ninja invaders.
• Where is the all the silverware?  In the yard.  It’s always in the yard.
• Has anyone seen my earphones?  They are wound endlessly around the cabinet doors where puzzles are kept, forming a chain of death that no sister could ever breech.
• What happened to the new blue spatula?  It is in the bottom of the toy box.  There is no reasonable explanation for this.  Ever.

A couple of years ago we purchased new silverware to replace our “newlywed” set from like 1996.   Continue reading →

Economists debate hundreds of strategies for rescuing the soured economy, but I know the easy solution: just stop bothering boys.  Boys are the true catalyst of any economy. Why?  Because they use WAY too much of everything.  If parents stopped harassing boys because they squeeze nine ounces of ketchup onto their plate when they only have three french fries left, corporate profits would soar.  Millions of new jobs created…  But no, we keep griping the boys out, trying to affect change, and for good reason.  Stuff is stinking expensive!  Who can afford boys? Continue reading →

The problem with boys and socks is not just missing socks.  It’s missing socks and DESTROYED socks.  When running around at home, boys don’t want shoes and certainly have no idea where they left their shoes, so this does not bode well for socks.  In fact, it means socks are doomed, because boys have absolutely no interest in removing them.  Rain, mud, sleet, snow, gravel, asphalt… It doesn’t matter.  They’re goin’ out in their socks.

While wearing nothing on their feet but socks, boys will ride scooters and bikes, play entire games of basketball, chase their sisters in the rain, and spend an hour climbing trees in the neighbor’s yard.  And when they’re done with them (or when you yell something smart like “Where are your shoes??? YOU ARE RUINING THOSE SOCKS!!), boys just peel ‘em off and toss ‘em in a brown wad in the garage.  If you let them dry they’re hard as ceramic tile.  With embedded chunks of mulch and pebbles. Continue reading →

It’s ok, it’s a nice thought.  You’re allowed to have it.  Just don’t get stuck on it.  Having a boy help you clean up his mess would be such a satisfying and pleasant parenting moment… But it’s not gonna happen.

When asked to help clean up, boys usually run the other way.  Or stare blankly at you as if you’ve just asked them to compose a symphony.  Even when they do summon some energy or act helpful, do not fall for this.  Things are only going to get worse. Continue reading →

Sharing a home with boys requires you to develop cat-like reflexes, the agility of a Cirque du Soleil performer, and superhuman survival instincts.  This is because boys are the masters of household sabotage.  They move stealthily from room to room, leaving traps only the savviest of parents can avoid.  Boys are some master booby trappers.

I snapped the above photo just this morning in our bathroom.  Continue reading →

Our identical twin boys are 5, and we have spent a cumulative 4.8 months of their lives searching for lost shoes.  Pretty much the final ten minutes before any trip going anywhere is spent destroying our house in a crazed frenzy, desperately looking for a shoe.  If we ever came home after burglars had broken in and ransacked our place, it would probably be a few days before we really noticed, due to all the shoe-searching wreckage and debris we leave on a normal basis. If I walked in to find the fridge flipped over and the HDTV missing, I’d probably just grab a snack and be like “Man, she must have had a horrible shoe morning.”

Continue reading →

Do not listen to Al Gore.  Global warming has nothing to do with the oversized vehicle you drive, nitrogen fertilizers, or even gaseous methane eruptions from the rear ends of millions of cows and camels.  The single greatest cause of global warming is boys.  Americans spend approximately $250 billion per year on electricity.  As a person who has had them in his house for eight years, I would estimate that boys are responsible for around $200 billion of this.  We’re burnin’ up all the coal and oil and natural gas we can get our hands on.  The electrical grid is old and failing, mainly due to 50 years of just trying to keep up with boys.  As George W. Bush would say, “This sucker could go down.”

And when it does, it will all be blamed on boys.  Why?  I will tell you why: Continue reading →

"Doc Looks Lost" - photo courtesy Richard Perry

Why is there a dirty rock and a one-armed Spider-man on the second shelf of my freezer?  I will tell you why.  Because when a boy thinks of a new thing, the thing he was thinking a few seconds earlier completely vanishes into the black hole of lost boy thoughts, that’s why.  This pattern continues all day long, and is the primary reason there are various boy items abandoned all over my house.

The probable scenario is that the boy was running through the house thinking “One-armed Spider-man can throw this giant dirty rock!  One-armed Spider-man can throw this giant dirty rock!”  But then he heard his mother tell his brother he could have a popsicle – an event that completely supersedes any and all superhero activities – and instantly all thought processes are now “Red or blue?  Red or blue?  Red or blue?”  Plus he’s jostling for position with two brothers as they tear apart the cardboard popsicle box like a pack of cheetahs ripping into that unlucky antelope on the Discovery Channel.  The rock and the Spider-man are dropped in their tracks, never to be remembered again.  In this case, second shelf, between the blueberries and the pizza crusts, frozen solid. Continue reading →

Men be LOVING their vehicles.  Which is why it remains so confounding that boys will destroy any car or truck within a matter of very short months.  At what point do they reverse course and become men – diligently scrubbing wheels, polishing clear coats, and coating dashboards with that special protective coating to guard against harmful UV rays?  Probably when they become drivers, and buy into the myth that girls are somehow impressed by shiny cars.  But until then, boys are the ultimate destroyers of all makes and models.

I know this because I have had many vehicles destroyed by boys, including a Honda van that was one of the most immaculate used vehicles ever sold.  It was so immaculate that when first purchased from its original owner, an Air Force officer with a garage floor clean enough to roll sugar cookies on, I was informed that he had spent the previous day polishing minute imperfections from the clear coat finish with a clay detailing bar.  If you’re not familiar with the use of a clay detailing bar, this is the equivalent of washing your laundry on the normal gentle cycle, then donning a pair of steel mesh gloves embedded with finely crushed diamonds for purposes of combing microscopic fibers of fabric and debris from each of your tube socks.  It’s a little over the top.

Six months later, this van looked like it had been driven through an automatic car wash equipped with barbed wire scrubbing rotors.  Things my three boys have done to this vehicle:

• rode entire length of the van with their bike handle scraping along the paint
• smushed Incredible Hulk stickers from the kid dentist on multiple interior windows
• rode entire length of the van with scooter handle scraping along the paint
• used rear window wiper as mountain climbing device, ripping it from its hinge.  Twice.
• rode entire length of the van with plastic toy lawnmower scraping along the paint
• attempted to ride powered side doors as they were closing by dangling from outside handles
• rode entire length of the van with front teeth scraping along the paint

Ok, that last one is hypothetical, but there are so many scrapes along the entire length of that van that anything is possible.  And now, things my two daughters have done to this vehicle:

• spilled granola bar crumbs in the back seat

Case closed.  And I sure hope that Air Force guy doesn’t do much blog reading.