• You know you’ve waited too long to eat breakfast when two scrambled eggs, three pieces of sausage, two biscuits with gravy, and a cup of coffee leaves you craving protein.
• Girlie Bear asked if she could have a car today.  At that exact moment, someone walked across my grave.
• We had a two inches of new snow this morning, followed by a warm-up in the afternoon, followed by a sudden drop in temperature with high winds.  As the new snow was being blown in big clouds, Irish Woman commented on how much drifting was going on.  I told her to imagine that going on for three days, with a foot of new snow every day, and she’d have a North Dakota blizzard.  She says I’m not doing a good job selling my idea of moving home.
• I better get points in heaven for nodding sympathetically while my ex-wife detailed all of the health-related travails that her mother, Medusa, is going through.

• This morning, I woke up two hours early, forgot my eyeglasses, medicine, and breakfast, and left my wife home alone with the kids because school was delayed.
  • Tomorrow ought to be better, although school’s already delayed again.
  • Still don’t know where my glasses case is.  Luckily, I found the spare set I lost a couple of weeks ago.
• Dogs are carnivores, right?
  • Apparently Moonie has a taste for fresh fruit. He cleaned out the bananas in the fruit bowl, and several of the apples had tooth marks.

Hi, I’m DaddyBear, and I have a confession to make:

I am a heartless bastard.

I am a heartless bastard because I object to being told that everyone else’s life is none of my business, that is until it’s time to write a check to pay for it.

I am a heartless bastard because I believe that there should be shame in taking charity for one second longer than you absolutely need to.

I am a heartless bastard because I expect children, no matter their socio-economic, cultural, or family circumstances to call me “Sir” and have good manners.

I am a heartless bastard because I expect parents to provide for their children before they provide for themselves.

I am a heartless bastard because I am unashamed to tell people that life isn’t guaranteed to be easy, comfortable, or fun.

I am a heartless bastard because sometimes, albeit rarely, I will look at someone and decide that they are just not worth the calories, oxygen, and space they take up.

So, that’s my confession.  I am DaddyBear, and I am a heartless bastard.

• Want to see something well built?  Try taking apart the basement bar built by a raging alcoholic in the 1970’s.
  • This guy couldn’t dig a footer for a retaining wall to save his life, but he made sure the place he kept his booze was secure and solid.
  • Some of this wood is what I have taken to calling “iron pine”.  It’s lumber that’s so old and hard that it breaks off screws if I don’t drill a pilot hole.  I salvaged everything I could.
  • Next on the hit parade – relocating the 450 pound Coke machine.  I must really, really love my wife.
• Good – Getting a new stoneware muffin pan for Christmas that is supposed to make huge muffins.
• Good – Trying it out by making strawberry muffins from scratch.
• Not so good – Forgetting to put in the baking powder.
• Bad – Instead of a sweet, moist, fluffy treat, I ended up with half a dozen 88mm frangible semi-wadcutters.
• Koshka decided to help Girlie Bear with her homework this morning by taking a nap on top of her history textbook.
  • Girlie Bear had a long talk with her about it, but Koshka maintains that she is an expert in early American colonial history, so she can really be an asset.
  • Koshka later came to me to plead her case, and I must say, she made some good points.
• School was called today because Kentucky apparently can’t figure out how to keep the streets open and safe when 3 to 4 inches of snow fall, with temperatures in the mid to high 20’s.
  • Funny thing, states like North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Montana all figure it out pretty regularly.
• The schools are on a 2 hour delay tomorrow with no precipitation in the forecast.  
  • Temps are going to be in the teens overnight.  
  • I guess someone wants to snuggle up in their flannel sheets tomorrow instead of cowboying up and putting on their long underwear.
• Commuters were driving 14 miles an hour on the interstate highway this morning, but I saw remarkably few stupidity crashes, so I guess it was worth it.
• There was almost a foot of snow drifted into my driveway when I got home, but that didn’t last.
  • I may rarely fire up my weed eater in the summer, but I always do my best to make sure the driveway and sidewalk is shoveled.