Here’s a hint that you’re a twit who just needs to stop:

• If you’re wearing faded tiger striped fatigues, because, and I quote here, you just can’t get out of the habit,  and you’re younger than I am.
• If your shopping cart has more beer in it than food, and you complain that there’s not enough room for the bag of diapers your wife wants to get.
• If you’re caucasian, 40-ish, and wearing a flat-brimmed University of Kentucky baseball hat turned 45 degrees off the center line of your face.
• If you are wearing see through clothing to the grocery store, whether or not you are in good shape, regardless of gender.
• If you’re being frog-marched out of Walmart in handcuffs because you got caught shoplifting candy bars again and the manager finally decided enough was enough.
• If you argue with the young man making your sandwich that you should be able to buy a 3 inch sub at half the cost of their six-inch sub.
• If your OCD is so bad that you have to touch every piece of produce in a bin.  That’s OK, I wanted to go to another store to buy tomatoes anyway.
• If you have a bikini/tattoo magazine open across the lap of your little girl in the shopping cart while you’re waiting to check out.
• If you drop your spit cup in the toy section of the department store.
• If you tell your eighth grader that you will sign a permission slip for her first tattoo as a reward for graduating into high school.

I swear I saw or heard every one of these things in a two hour stretch today.  And people wonder why I want to move somewhere where the nearest human being is 10 miles away.

• Got up early enough to wake the rooster today. Since it’s going to get quite hot this weekend, we, meaning Irish Woman, figured it would be a good idea to get all the outside work done this morning.  So today I truly did more before 9 o’clock than most people do all day.
• Girlie Bear is going to have a sleepover tonight.  I need better hearing protection
• Weed whackers are tougher than Vibram Five-Finger shoes.  Maybe I ought to wear boots when I’m doing yard work, but I hate wearing shoes in the summer and those are the closest I can get to barefoot.  And girls dig scars, anyway.
• Shadow does not care for the weed whacker.  I eventually had to put him in the house because he would scoot past me to bite the head with the spinning bits, causing several yipes as he got nailed in the nose with thick plastic line going around at about 200 rpm.
• We sold the extra 36 packages of shingles that have been sitting under the carport for months this morning. I now have a mantra running through my head:  I do not need a new gun, I do not need a new gun, I do not need a new gun…..
• Someone bring me the head of a Chrysler automotive design engineer.  In order to replace the fuel filter on either of our cars, I have to replace the entire fuel pump.

When you hear your beloved wife open the back door, say oh-oh in the direction of the kiddie pool, and you hear her saying “get out, get out” as she closes the door behind her, and all children and pets are accounted for, you really ought to go see what’s going on.  Or you could continue to sit in the comfy chair, enjoy your cold beverage, and watch a tired 4-year-old run laps.

Fatherhood means you always choose plausible deniability over actively seeking out trouble.

• Painting and drawing on a big cardboard box with Boo was almost as much fun as it was when I was 4.
• If you leave the cover off of the sand box overnight in a neighborhood with a lot of stray cats, you don’t get to be angry with your husband when you find the inevitable results.
• A sign of parental love:  Volunteering to use the minivan to transport multiple teenage girls to the mall and back.  
• Teenage girls, when grouped together in an enclosed space such as a minivan, become just as goofy as teenage boys.  
  • Not quite as obnoxious, but much more talkative.  
• I got in touch with my inner hipster this afternoon and checked out Trader Joes.  
  • Not bad.  Kind of a lower-cost Whole Foods
• Trader Joe’s Cookie Butter on a sliced granny smith apple is an outstanding snack. I must be careful.  
  • This stuff is almost as addictive as Nutella.
  • So is extra spicy ginger beer.
• While sitting on a bench at a nexus of the mall and waiting for the girls to meet me at the appointed time to be transported home, I noted that I could smell Starbucks, Cinnabon, a perfume store, and Abercrombie & Fitch.  That is not a combination that I ever thought I would encounter, and one that I hope I never encounter again.
• Sitting and people watching at the mall for half an hour will remind you why you consider yourself a misanthrope.
• When going up to the feed store to get a new water dish for the dogs, Boo was fascinated with the prods and crops used for training and controlling horses.  I’m not sure what that portends, but it’s probably not something I want to think about.
• I don’t know if it’s in the Guy Code, but “Thou shalt not make a suggestion about home improvements to another man’s wife that will make that man spend three times as much money, time, and sweat to get to a satisfactory end state” sure as heck ought to be listed in there somewhere.
• Mental note – Universal ceiling fan remotes aren’t.

Just a few reflections before bedtime

• Alton Brown, of the Food Network, is a shooter.  I did not know that.
• Peanut butter fudge ice cream is an excellent headache cure
• Potato plants are as cute as little kittens when they first pop up.
• To a house cat, a frog on the porch is better than cable TV.
• After a blind taste test, I can now say that my dog prefers the crusts off of the pepperoni pizza over those of a cheese pizza by a margin of almost two to one.
• Boo knows how to climb trees.
• The siamese is quite capable of opening the trash can and fishing out whatever it is she didn’t get when she was meowing her fool head off.
• If the 4 year old doesn’t have pizza sauce on his lips but the labrador retriever does, you have every right to be suspicious

The other day, I noticed a billboard for a local lawyer.  He touts his years of military service and has the tagline “Call the Colonel!”.

I also saw a truck for a lawn service, with a picture of the owner in his Navy uniform complete with ribbons.  He advertised his services as veteran owned and operated.

For me, knowing that a business is veteran owned and operated has a positive impact on my decision.  However, I’m uncomfortable with overt displays of military symbols in advertisements.  I feel almost the same way about that as I do when I see someone in uniform making a political statement.

My question for the veterans and active duty servicemembers out there is this:  When you see things like this, where someone is promoting their service so as to make their business stand out in the crowd, does it bother you?

Is there an acceptable level of promotion of veteran status or service?  If so, where is your line?

Does it make you more or less likely to use their services, assuming that their cost and reputation are as good as others?

For the non-military folks out there, do these kind of advertisements have any impact on your purchasing decisions?

• When did network equipment manufacturers start making their gear out of cast iron again?  Seriously, the stuff I helped install today was just as big and heavy as the stuff I helped install in 1995.
• It is usually not a good idea to argue with the nurse and insult her intelligence 30 seconds before she tries to get an IV in your arm.  No, I didn’t do it.  I’m just occasionally able to learn from the misfortunes of others.
• To the nice young gentleman in the grocery store:  Talking like Yoda to your girlfriend while all of us are standing in line was cute the first couple of times you did it.  After that it was annoying, and it proves that she can do much better.
• Children have a sixth sense for when their parents are tired.  Boo’s normal response is to demand a wrestling match.
  • Tonight he learned how to do a flying headbutt off the couch when I am prone on the living room floor.
  • I got him two out of three falls, but that little guy fights dirty.
• Nothing will make a retired gentleman who is obsessive about his lawn take a bigger fright than seeing a four-year-old walking around in the yard next door with a handful of white-headed dandelions.
• Driving on the freeway today was like watching Chihuahuas trying to mate with great Danes.  Every guy in a compact car seemed to be playing chicken with the back-end of a semi.
• One gallon of strawberries, two tablespoons of honey, and four teaspoons of fresh lemon juice make for a very pink, sloppy mess.  We’ll see if it makes tolerable fruit leather after a day or so in the dehydrator.
• Commenting to my wife that it looked like I had butchered a rabbit as I was cleaning up from making strawberry leather was probably not the smartest thing I’ve ever done.

When I get to heaven, I’m going to sit down and drink whiskey with Ian Fleming, Teddy Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill.  Something tells me that getting those three telling stories would make for a great evening.

• Even when they gallop, giraffes look like they’re moving in slow motion.
• It was difficult to explain to Boo why mama goose did not want to let him pet her new goslings.  No, I did not let him figure that out on his own.  I have a goal of not taking a child in for stitches this summer.
• I will always remember this day as the day that Boo got to the bottom of the Louisville Zoo and decided he just couldn’t walk back up to the top.  I will also remember today as the day that I decided that he served me better as a son than he would serve the zoo as Purina Lion Chow.
• Carrying the 50 pound 4 year old up the hill was harder than carrying a 85 pound rucksack up the side of a mountain.  Must have something to do with weight distribution.  Or maybe the 15 years of extra age and weight.
• My horse didn’t win the Derby.  Of course, I didn’t actually bet money on the race.  I’m smarter than to listen to my own advice when it comes to racehorses.
• Sheesh.  You take the kids away with you for an afternoon, advise your wife that she should take advantage of this and go do something just for herself, and what does she do?  She cleans the house, goes to the hardware store, and stops to pick up dinner.
• I’m surprised that Colonel Sanders lived as long as he did.  One would think the man would have keeled over and started bleeding chicken gravy.  His wife could cook the heck out of a chicken.  I only had one plateful of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, corn pudding, and a yeast roll and I feel like I’m going to pop.
• Walt Disney made some wonderful movies, but there is at least one moment in each one that would make Chuck Norris burst into tears.  We watched Dumbo this evening, and it made the 4 year old and the 40 year old tear up.