The Official Newspaper for Foster County
The Official Newspaper for Foster County
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Every year a few weeks before Christmas, my sweet wife asks me what I’d like for Christmas. And every year, I tell her, “Nothing! I’d rather spend our money on the kids,” meaning our three now semi-grown (but fully-spoiled) daughters. Of course, my noble answer is a huge lie meant to make me seem less Grinchy than I really am. There are lots of things I’d like to have for Christmas, but until our daughters graduate from college, or Elon Musk makes me his personal charity project, I may as we...
It’s that time of year (while I’m still digesting Thanksgiving giblets and deviled eggs), that I unveil my yearly Christmas list of things that I really don’t want, but will probably get, anyway. Receiving what you don’t want for Christmas is traditional for fathers like me. When I was a kid in the 1970s Christmas shopping for my dad, I’m pretty sure his list never included Brut Soap on Rope or the Smokeless Ashtray by Ronco. But it doesn’t hurt to wish – and then be plagued by disappointmen...
Since the chaos of election season has ended, and we’ve stopped receiving daily text messages asking us to contribute a few dollars to our favorite candidate’s legal expense fund or celebrity endorsement financing plan, we can turn our attention to more important matters, like gravy. Seriously, though, I’ve read several articles recently warning that Americans should avoid discussing political topics during holiday gatherings in order to avoid conflict, hurt feelings and damaged sheet...
Now that Halloween is over and I’ve almost polished off that jumbo bag of snack-size Almond Joy bars that I “forgot” to distribute to trick-or-treaters, it’s time to start thinking about Thanksgiving. And speaking of gorging on holiday fare, Thanksgiving is an occasion when Americans express our deep appreciation for our country’s blessings by eating most of them. In preparation for this event, I like to adorn the house with a few decorations that remind my family of the historical significance...
This summer, my wife and I took a vacation with our three semi-grown daughters to one of the most expensive places in America. No, we didn’t visit our local insurance office. We toured several beautiful and fascinating cities in New England. Our first stop was Newburyport, Massachusetts. We hadn’t planned to visit this charming coastal city, but after deplaning, securing a rental vehicle ginormous enough to accommodate the US Olympic Team (or our luggage), and heading north to our first pla...
I’ve heard it said that things happen in threes, especially tragedies, deaths and doses of Pepto Bismol after a big Tex-Mex dinner. My own three defining experiences over the past few weeks can’t be described as tragedies, per se, so I’ll refer to them as catastrophes, instead. First was/is the great Graves dishwasher incident, or saga, or ongoing fiasco. In our home, we tend to hang on to appliances until they die of natural causes–and sometimes we invoke extreme resuscitation measure...
Now that two of my daughters are away at college and the one still at home basically views me as an ATM in an unfashionable neighborhood, I’ve tried to find myself a hobby. Since I’m not interested in activities that involve getting out of bed before noon on a Saturday, that pretty much rules out most manly-type-outdoorsy stuff that would require me to sweat profusely in a tent, clean an animal carcass or have one of my friends pluck a tick from a region of my anatomy that I can’t reach. Inste...
Because I’m a professional practitioner of the pedagogical arts (known in some parts as fancy book learnin’), I’m privileged to enjoy a Spring Break holiday that usually falls during the same week my semi-grown daughters are also out of school. Back in the good old days when the girls still spoke to me with actual words, we would spend our Spring Breaks together – playing at the park, riding bikes, or sharing the trauma of a Disney character’s parental death scene. This year, instead of...
Well, it finally happened. No, I didn’t go bald, get divorced or accidentally go to work without pants. I got COVID! Recently, I had been badly congested for a couple of days, but I chalked it up to our yearly East Texas orgy of yellow pollen that mistakes my sinus cavities for some kind of pine tree Playboy mansion. Then the headaches started, like my frontal lobe was hosting a rave party for Diet Coke and Mentos. I don’t typically have headaches (other than my three semi-grown daughters), so...
Having raised three daughters, I’ve gained, in the words of Liam Neeson, “a very particular set of skills.” Unfortunately, none of these skills would be useful in the event of an international kidnapping. Because two of our daughters (and some of our credit cards) are now in college and one is deep in the bowels of high school, I feel like an abandoned appliance that seemed pretty nifty at first, but the novelty quickly wore off. (Think – the Baby Yoda waffle iron.) Below are a few girl-da...
A couple of days ago, I retrieved one (of about a hundred) of our family doglets’ chew bones from the seemingly unreachable chasm under my youngest and quietest daughter’s bed using an ingenious invention of my own making – namely a straightened-out wire clothes hanger. This same apparatus also comes in handy for retrieving various undergarments (along with a metric ton of lint) that somehow fall behind – and then underneath – our washer and dryer. The clothes hanger/wonder hook prompted...
Now that my age has surpassed the mid-century mark and I’m more ancient than virtually all professional athletes, everyone in my department at work, and even my pastor at church, I’ve noticed that the old memory is not what it used to . . . . Wait. What was I writing about again? My cognitive decline became all too obvious the other day when I was at the Verizon store upgrading to one of those newfangled iPhone jumbo-large-print editions with a camera powerful enough to take photos of the por...
Disclaimer: No pets die in this column (but they sometimes smell like they did). As I write, I’m trying to relax in my recliner on a cold winter’s day next to a roaring fire, yet my feet are freezing because a large, semi-elderly cat named “Missy” – AKA “The Loaf” – is lounging on the fireplace hearth directly in front of the firebox and hogging all of the heat. “How did I reach this state?” you might wonder. So do I. When my middle daughter was six years old, she looked up at me with her big,...
Yes, it’s that glorious season that so many pumpkin-spice addicts claim to be their favorite. I must admit that, I, too, succumb each year to the autumnal charms of fall, except for my seemingly never-ending battle with leaves, or, as I like to call them – tree dandruff. So what is it that ironically draws us to a season that marks the end of long, carefree summer days when the sight of a shirtless dad bod outdoors is slightly less disturbing? Let’s get the obvious one out of the way first, the...
According to my extensive research (approximately five minutes on Google when I should have been folding underwear), the Chinese zodiac system assigns an animal symbol to each year. It is believed that people born in a given year have the personality of that year’s animal. For example, based on the placemats at my favorite Chinese buffet, I was born in the Year of the Dog, which means I am loyal, honest and difficult to housebreak. Although it has absolutely nothing to do with the Chinese zodiac...
These days, getting all three of my semi-grown daughters together for a family activity is like herding cats who have cars, jobs at coffee shops and their own debit cards. So, when our girls were able to pencil us in for a quick weekend trip to San Antonio, my wife and I jumped at the chance . . . or sort of hopped. Our backs hurt. Our justification for this little getaway was back-to-school shopping, which has come a long and expensive way from a new box of crayons and a Hello Kitty lunch bag....
My car is currently in hospice. I’m trying to keep it comfortable and provide a reasonable amount of care, but I’ve accepted that it’s probably approaching the end of its life. With the expenses of two daughters in college and one in the prom dresses – driver’s ed – manicures – cell phones – Starbucks throes of high school, we need to keep our geriatric family vehicle alive for as long as possible. My car is paid-for, which means, of course, that it has been steadily disintegrating since the day...
When my three semi-grown daughters were young (and since I work in the lucrative world of public education), we’d spend our spring break holidays riding bikes to the park, making dad-sized pillow forts in the living room, and raiding the gift shop at the zoo. Now that two of the girls are in college and one is in high school, those days (and our gift-shop cash) are long gone. This year, I spent most of my spring break competing with my youngest daughter to see who could sleep in the latest w...
Along with identifying as “Swifties,” ignoring the reported Chinese threat of bad dancing posed by TikTok, and pretending that plant-based meat is actually edible, many young people in America are engaging in another fascinating trend – not driving. According to recent surveys, around 20 percent fewer teens of driving age are getting their driver’s licenses as compared to the glorious 1980s. Much to the relief of my insurance premiums, our youngest daughter, who recently turned 16, is one of...
One of my fondest childhood memories of Christmas in the 1970’s was riding around in the family station wagon, “Bessie,” to look at Christmas lights while I whined to my parents about needing a snack – again. There was something magical about a familiar evening landscape transformed to a radiant wonderland at the expense of someone’s lumbar spine. My dad always made sure that our house was exemplary in its presentation of illuminated holiday décor, and even now, his legendary displays m...
For those of you who don’t know, my more respectable gig for the past quarter century, or so, has been teaching college English. (Scary, I know.) Teaching English is sometimes like teaching a teenager to drive a car – including the sensations of intense frustration, looking away in terror, and dreading a catastrophic pileup of letters, words, and sentences. Take, for example, these 100% real writing samples I’ve collected from my students over the years. I truly love them all – the student...
I have a problem. I misplace my wallet – a lot. In fact, if losing wallets was an Olympic sport, I’m pretty sure I’d be investigated for doping. And according to a 2018 survey by Money- Tips, I’m not alone, joining the 62% of survey respondents who said they had also lost their cash taco, or had it stolen. I relapsed again recently on a Saturday morning road trip with my wife and some friends, trying to convince myself that I would enjoy attending a college basketball game more than sleepin...
I was recently invited to speak at a local women’s organization meeting in my hometown. Apparently, I was pretty much their last option, right behind the auto-warranty telemarketer and the tax auditor. Since I couldn’t imagine what I would discuss that might interest a women’s group, I went for the obvious–my lifelong, chronic case of the girl crazies. In my younger years, it had always been my dream – even my goal – to be surrounded by women, and now I live in a house with four of them; I wor...
