Family

Values Don’t Retire

My wife and I are somewhere in the foothills of retirement. Not even close to the summit. There are still detours on this road, and honestly, we keep choosing them. We could draw a straight line to the finish — coast, let someone else worry about the spring weather.

But here we are, babysitting a ten-month-old and still figuring out health insurance. And I wouldn’t trade it.

Faith Is a Verb

Every time our kids gather around the table, we say a prayer. That’s not a performance — it’s just what we do. Faith comes up again before the meal’s over, usually more than once. We counsel our kids, married and unmarried, on building something with a Godly foundation. But we learned a long time ago that advice requires a listener. Acting on it? That part belongs to them.

We’re conservative Christians. We attend a church that reflects that — not perfectly, but pretty close. Our kids know where we stand. They also know we can’t believe for them. My granddaughter, as much as I adore her, will have to find her own faith someday. Her parents’ belief won’t carry her across that finish line, and neither will ours. What we can do is make sure the example exists. Doing nothing, after all, is the easiest thing in the world to imitate.

The Tangible Stuff

I’m not going to pretend grandparenting is purely a spiritual exercise. My granddaughter needs a babysitter, and I technically have “spare time” — though I’m not sure where I’m hiding it. My wife works remotely, so we tag-team diaper duty in shifts that would make any grandparent proud.

And yes — her job keeps us from raiding our savings for insurance premiums until we hit 65. These aren’t just financial decisions. They’re the quiet argument I make every day to my kids without saying a word: this is what showing up looks like.

Respect Isn’t Political

Everyone has value. The prisoner. The foster kid. The garbage man. We did foster care for six years — that wasn’t a hobby, it was a conviction. The political lines blur for me here. But the bottom line is simple: treat me and my country with respect, and I’ll meet you with kindness. As a Christian, at a minimum, I owe you a prayer. We’re all sinners. Just not all saved.

Generosity Without the Receipt

Could I give more? Absolutely — most of us could, and I’d be a fool to claim otherwise. We give to causes, including our church. Our kids know we give. They don’t need to know the number. The impression matters more than the invoice.

Commitment Is the Whole Game

Marriage is the biggest bet most people will ever place. We’re honest with our kids about it: it’s not easy. It requires two people willing to grow up and reckon with the fact that their decisions now affect someone else’s life, too. We hold an old-fashioned view on this. A marriage with a Christian foundation is simply better, in our experience. That’s not a lecture. It’s just what we’ve lived.

The Promotion We Didn’t Know Was Coming

Somewhere around the time your kids leave the house, you stop being a parent in the daily operational sense and get promoted — if you’re lucky — to trusted counselor. We’re hoping to earn that promotion unanimously.

We weren’t perfect parents. Our advice isn’t flawless either. But if our kids can feel the gist of how we’ve lived — if they’ve seen our convictions match our words, if they’ve watched our marriage hold — then it’ll be hard for any of them to look back and say, “Nobody told me that.”

You were told. You were shown.

We’re not trying to make our kids into copies of us. We’re trying to make sure they don’t walk into the world without a compass. Call me boring. Just don’t accuse me of raising kids who’ll make the world worse. We fought too hard for that. And if they pass something worthwhile to the next generation of Gruenbaums?

That’s the whole point of the journey.

The Sunday Vortex: A Sacred Trust (and a Lot of Bacon)

I ask myself, “Am I really living in Oklahoma?” more often than you’d think. Usually, it’s somewhere between church, junior hockey logistics, and negotiating a meal that works for seven people—one of whom has apparently decided bacon is the enemy. That’s Oklahoma life. The clock runs it, the weather comments on it, and the menu is always up for debate.

The Granddaughter Tax

Sunday mornings start at Bible study and church, where our daughter and son-in-law reliably end up beside us. The real perk, though, comes at the end of the service: a brief, glorious window with our granddaughter. I made some nonsense noises until she reached for me, and I want to be clear—that is a win.

I make no claims to being her favorite person, but I am absolutely certain I am her favorite grandpa. (I’m also her only one, but I’ve learned not to audit the wins. You take them.)

Diplomatic Dining

One phone call with my daughter confirmed the headcount. The plan: bacon pasta. The complication: one vegetarian at the table. Her solution was delivered with the energy of someone explaining gravity to a confused golden retriever: “Pull out some of the pasta before adding the bacon, Dad.” I said, “Of course,” like I’d always known that. I had not always known that. The vortex does things to your brain.

The Wind’s Opinion

I managed to squeeze in my walk before the cooking started—a small miracle. After a mid-90s Saturday, Sunday was manageable, though the Oklahoma wind let me know about it for thirty minutes.

To drown out the gale, I’m working through a women’s mystery on Kindle Unlimited. It’s not my usual lane, but it’s included in the subscription, and it’s kept me out of the WWII concentration-camp romance spiral my wife has apparently completed in its entirety. We all make different choices.

A Word About the Hockey Boys

If you’re not familiar with junior hockey, here’s the short version: we host young athletes—gap-year guys sharpening their skills before college hockey—from late summer through May. They are large, they eat aggressively, and they usually solve our bacon problems by limiting themselves to a pound (It is a lot!), so we just make a little more than that.

This weekend, the “supply chain” was offline. The boys played in Amarillo on Friday and Saturday before trekking down to Odessa. They were mid-trip on the long haul back to OKC today, and while I rooted for them from my living room TV, the scoreboard wasn’t kind. With the boys on the road, I was forced into a rare position: I had to cook bacon that didn’t first have an appointment with breakfast.

The Bacon Manifesto

I cook bacon in the oven now. Parchment paper on the bottom, grease pooling in a shallow golden layer, the result being what I can only describe as perfect floppy bacon—cooked through, never burnt, yielding. Yes, the house doesn’t smell like a diner fire right away, but the taste is entirely there. This is what growth looks like.

Between the bacon, the banana cake my wife had staged for the oven, and the focaccia already doing its thing on the counter, the kitchen was finally catching up to what a Sunday is supposed to feel like.

Why It’s Worth the Chaos

Broccoli roasted, focaccia out, and the bacon supply retired with dignity. We sat around a table that had needed some diplomatic negotiating to populate and celebrated our granddaughter’s latest month-iversary (two days early, but who’s counting?).

We do a lot for the hockey boys, and we’re glad to. But for the family meal, there is something that feels less like an obligation and more like an anchor. The week is loud. The vortex is always spinning. We’re pretty lucky to have this one on our weekly calendar.

Crack Cookies

This is a further explanation of one of the titles included on my “semi-retired” business card. (Oven Overlord)

Our top-secret weapon for a post-dinner win comes in a bucket from Sam’s Club.

It’s a tub of Pillsbury chocolate chip cookie dough so user-friendly that even a “hockey boy” could manage it — provided he could find the kitchen. We choose to ignore the manufacturer’s optimistic suggestion of “76 cookies per tub.” In this house, we measure servings by “emotional necessity,” which usually caps out at about four trays.

The strategy is non-negotiable: the cookie must hold together just long enough to betray you. A one-inch perimeter of stability — just enough integrity to transport the cargo — wrapped around an inner inch of pure gooeyness. Science. Probably.

We recently put the bucket to the test over two meals. The first round was a tactical recovery mission. Dinner had been Hamburger Helper — a fuel-only situation, full stop. The boys inhaled half the cookies before bed. My pride insists they were carbo-loading for the long journey up the stairs. My gut knows better.

My own approach is considerably more refined. I tell myself I’m practicing moderation by using a spatula to surgically extract a center that wasn’t cooling fast enough to disengage from the pan. It’s not gluttony if it’s quality control.

The second half of the tub was reserved for higher stakes. The kids were over for a proper comfort meal — roast beef, mashed potatoes, and actual vegetables. It was the first time we’d all been together in weeks, so the cookies weren’t just dessert. They were bait.

My technique is a humble “scoop and hope.” One of my kids, however, treats cookie dough like a precision engineering project — rolling multiple scoops into one Mega-Ball for maximum gooey-density. I don’t argue with the process. I focus on outcomes. With my wife running point on the inner gooey, the rest of us took a tactical walk to let the oven do its work. We all knew it was a distraction. We went anyway. The cookies would be ready when we got back, and that was enough.

When we got back, the cookies did exactly what they were designed to do. Between the milk and the ice cream, the evening didn’t just end — it lingered.

Babies eventually need baths. Adults eventually need to wind down. But for a few extra minutes, nobody was checking their watch or heading for the door. Turns out three inches of underbaked dough is the only thing fast enough to catch time and slow it down.

Crack cookies or not — it was the highlight of my week.

The Gruenbaum Guarantees

We all spent twenty‑ish years under the same roof, breathing the same air, tripping over the same shoes, and negotiating the same dinner table politics. You’d think that would produce six carbon‑copy humans. It didn’t. What it did produce — according to my second son, who has always had a running comedy routine in his head — is a set of “Gruenbaum Guarantees.” Not rules, not traditions, not even expectations. More like… tendencies. Family traits that show up often enough that you start to think they might be genetic, even though the real culprit is probably twenty years of shared kitchen counters and car rides.

Here are a few of the classics.

Pretty Good Banana Bread

If you’ve met us, you’ve probably eaten our banana bread. Hockey boys, exchange students, neighbors, hairdressers, the folks at Leslie’s who tested my pool water — the bread has fans on four continents, which is more than I can say for some of my luggage.

The recipe calls for six bananas, which means it produces enough loaves to feed a mid‑sized village. When the kids were in school, the ratio was six small loaves to one big one, mostly so teachers could get their cut. And if that ratio happened to give me some rounding flexibility, I didn’t complain.

Bottom line: we make good bread, and we hand it out to people we like. Or people we should like. I don’t always check the list too carefully.

We Are Active

This one starts with me, which feels both accurate and slightly unfair to admit. Work flexibility helped. When the kids were young, walking was something I did with intention — part of the time spent praying for people, moving through the neighborhood with actual purpose. Somewhere along the way I traded that habit for audiobooks at 2x speed. The results are shorter-lived but more immediately satisfying. I’m working on feeling worse about this.

Judy’s path was longer. Early marriage meant aerobics and swimming, then injuries and life made consistency harder to hold onto. She’s building it back now, with retirement on the horizon and a swimming and weightlifting routine that runs four to six times a week. She figured out what I already knew: the time to start is before you need to.

The kids took the general idea and ran with it — sometimes literally. Three of them have finished half marathons or longer. When my daughter ran her full marathon, I walked alongside her for a stretch, then finished the course on foot while she pulled ahead at a jog. I stayed well clear of the official finish line. Found her eventually, along with Judy, her husband, and a small crowd of people who had done the harder version of what I’d done. My youngest has entered powerlifting competitions. My son and his fiancé have built their life around walking and yoga.

For the ones where the activity level is harder to gauge, I take comfort in the dogs. Two of my kids have them — my oldest has two in the house — and dogs, whatever else they do, require daily walking. I’ll count it.

We Read

My wife sticks to her genre lane but is rarely without a book on the nightstand. My oldest son doesn’t always have one going, but when he does, the pages smoke. And a perfectly normal question when we all get together is “what are you reading?” or “any recommendations?” — asked with the same casual expectation as asking about the weather.

The Gruenbaums are readers. It snuck up on us, but here we are.

We Clean Our Plates

This one took time. Not every kid arrived at the table as an enthusiastic eater — the crockpot and mashed potatoes were traded for the oven and a near nightly pan of roasted veggies. Adulthood expands the palate. The ratio of protein to greens on our plates isn’t what it used to be, and honestly, that’s fine.

These days there’s almost nothing they won’t eat. My wife might actually be the pickiest one of the bunch, which she would contest on principle.(Her list of “won’t eat foods” is definitely the longest.)

A vegetarian is marrying into the family soon. She is fully welcome. She is also fully expected to clean her plate — though given that she uses more hot sauce in a single meal than the rest of us do in a whole year, I’m not particularly worried about her appetite. The girl commits.

My standard remains: clean plate, and if there’s bread nearby, use it to mop up the juices until the plate is almost clean enough to put back in the cabinet. Almost.

We Are Planning, Going On, or Dreaming About a Vacation

This one is universal. We may not travel every year — pandemics have opinions — but someone in the family is always in research mode. I like a cruise ship with daily excursions. Others prefer hiking destinations that require actual exertion, which I respect in theory.

My wife has planned two land‑based trips to Alaska that never made it out of the planning phase. We did eventually cruise there, so I count that as a win. She does not.

Our youngest is in Portugal right now. Another is in the “let’s give my parents some grandkids” phase, already dreaming of the day travel becomes possible again — ideally with parental support. My son and his fiancée are planning a trip to India after the wedding. And another son is a camper who still jumps at a big trip when the calendar cooperates.

If we’re not packing, we’re planning. If we’re not planning, we’re researching. It’s a cycle. We’ve made peace with it.

At 30,000 feet, we look pretty similar. Even at 10,000 feet, you can still see the family resemblance. But zoom in close enough — the reading choices, the preferred adventures, the way each kid approaches a problem — and the differences show up fast.

I wouldn’t want cookie-cutter kids. And they would revolt if anyone told them they’re just like their dad.

They’re not wrong to revolt. But they’re not entirely right, either.

When we gather, we don’t compare step counts or race times. We talk about books. We talk about travel. And there’s usually banana bread on the counter, waiting for the moment someone decides they have just enough room left for a slice.

Maybe it’s DNA. Maybe it’s twenty years of modeling, nagging, and hoping certain things would stick.

Either way — similar enough to recognize, different enough to keep things interesting.

The Illusion of Travel Control

My daughter’s flight was postponed again. What started as a clean six-day babysitting stint for granddaughter Ellie (and Grandpa Andy) has quietly stretched into eight — and honestly, I’ve stopped checking the flight tracker. When they land in OKC, I will know.

Nobody made a bad decision here. This was a collaborative disaster — a joint venture between Mother Nature, Spring Break crowds, and whatever dark energy the TSA stirred into the blender this year. Credit where it’s due: it takes a village to strand a family.

They were already down badly before the delays started. The baby’s ears hurt, and she wailed the whole first flight. Their Orlando-bound plane got rerouted to Jacksonville due to the weather. At that point, the vacation feeling exits the chat. Their luggage allegedly went to OKC, but actually took a personal detour to DFW and got a motel there. Hotel scrambles. Gate changes. A baby who does not care about any of this and simply wants her schedule honored.

Parenting is a full-contact sport under ideal conditions. Doing it in an airport terminal, without your gear, running on cold coffee and evaporating optimism — the difficulty multiplier goes sideways fast. I’ll retell their specific calamities once they finally drop off Ellie, if they can describe it without breaking into a cold sweat. What I know already would have had me snapping at anyone who got between me and my seat.

We Were Always a “Let’s Get This Over With” Family

My wife and I were never emotional travelers. Survive first, process later — that was always the policy. And somehow, across twenty-something years of family road trips, we processed a lot of flat tires.

We once drove from Texas to Ohio and caught a flat before we’d even cleared Tennessee. AAA swap, plug at a tire shop, McDonald’s to distract the kids with breakfast — standard chaos protocol. We hadn’t even left the parking lot when a second tire quit on us. We ended up in an elaborate multi-mechanic shuffle that eventually got us to Ohio, just a few hours behind schedule and significantly more familiar with local auto shops than any tourist should be.

Then there was the Carolina trip. We spent a night hunting for a hotel on the West Virginia Turnpike, finally falling into bed around 2:00 AM — only to wake up to another flat. The highlight was the tow truck driver who couldn’t fit all four of us in his cab. His solution? Hoist the van onto the flatbed with us still inside. We spent the ride elevated above traffic, waving at passing cars like we were the grand marshals of a very sad parade.

Even cruises weren’t safe. We disembarked in Galveston, ready to head home to DFW for laundry and yard work, when one of our tires embraced a nail with the quiet resignation of something that had simply had enough. We spent the next couple of hours eating Mexican food and watching the Olympics on a big screen while the tire got mended. Honestly? Not the worst afternoon we’ve had.

The Illusion That Makes It Bearable

Here’s what I keep coming back to, though. Every one of those tire stories was ours. We drove into them. We loaded the kids, took the route, made the call — and when things went sideways, we were the ones considering pulling out the jack before remembering our AAA membership.

Granting full trust to an airplane hands all of that to a system you can’t negotiate with. When it breaks, you’re just cargo in someone else’s problem. My daughter couldn’t reroute. Couldn’t drive around the weather. Couldn’t do anything but stand at a gate with a wailing infant and wait for a screen to change.

Yes, they skipped the long haul to Ohio. But when you’re watching the adults hit a wall while trying to keep a baby content in a terminal, those West Virginia flat tires start sounding less like disasters and more like a reasonable trade.

At least when you’re stranded on a turnpike, you drove yourself there. Her parents may need a while before they’re ready to find out if the skies are actually friendly. Ellie, for her part, would probably have been fine either way.

The “Pepper Incident” and Other Liquid Legacies

When I was growing up, my family was not known to waste much of anything. My kids realized long ago that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree on that one. We ate our “warmups” (leftovers), and one of the biggest tragedies of my youth was the infamous “Pepper Incident.” My mom had chopped up a batch of peppers and froze them alongside every loaf of bread and pack of buns in the freezer. Whether freezer bags just didn’t seal as well back then or it was a secret plot to get me to eat less carbs, the result was a catastrophe. For months, every hamburger or hot dog bun I touched had a distinct, inescapable “pepper vibe.” It ruined the protein and ensured I wouldn’t become a fan of peppers for decades. In fact, it got so bad I started opting for plain bread—which, in those days, my father bought in “old” bags at a substantial discount. If we didn’t freeze it immediately, that bread was destined to host its own thriving mold colony.

The Mystery at the Dinner Table

But I digress. My mother’s efficiency didn’t stop at peppers. She’d often drain the juice from canned fruits because the recipe didn’t require it. What do you do with a cup of random fruit juice sitting in the fridge? You pour it into the Kool-Aid container with whatever flavor was already there.

Dinner became a game of Russian Roulette for the taste buds. I wasn’t one to hold back. After the first sip, I’d ask, “What exactly did you mix up for us tonight?” My mother didn’t mean any harm; she was just being efficient. But those flavor potpourris made an impression—one that would eventually haunt my own children.

Upping the Ante: The Bus Stop Games

When my sons were in elementary school, they took a shuttle bus to a pickup location near our home. To show them I was thinking about them, I’d bring a snack and a drink. The snack was the easy part. The drink was where I “kicked it up a notch.”

The game was simple: “Guess What You Are Drinking?” At my disposal, I had various fruit juices, every Kool-Aid packet known to man, and a set of food coloring bottles. I’d create concoctions that looked like pond water (minus the floaties) but were guaranteed to be drinkable. This was before the pickle juice craze, so I kept it somewhat civil.

The heart of the game was “taste-budding out” the flavors dancing over their palates. I’d offer partial credit—when you’re mixing two types of Kool-Aid, a splash of pear juice, and blue food dye, you can’t exactly expect perfection. They participated because they knew I wasn’t required to bring a snack, and perhaps because of the unspoken rule: If you don’t drink today’s mystery, there might not be one tomorrow. (I never did mention that part to their mother.)

The “Fun Grandpa” Era

I’d like to say I made everything fun for them growing up, but I didn’t. Like anyone, I had my cranky days. But as I spend time with my granddaughter now—occasionally offering a capful of Gatorade as a “chaser” after her bottle of formula—I hope I lean heavier into the fun side of the ledger.

If you can’t be a perfect parent, make sure you mix in enough quirky and fun to help the natives forget the days you didn’t quite “nail it.”

Amen Ambassador

This is a further explanation of one of the titles included on my “semi-retired” business card. (Amen Ambassador)

I’ve been involved with a program called “Let’s Start Talking” (LST) for a good number of years now. My daughters and I even trekked to Hungary almost a decade ago for a mission trip under their banner, but my real “boots on the ground” work happens right here at my desk with my “readers.”

What exactly is a “reader”? In my case, it’s a revolving door of international men who want to polish their English. Before COVID, this involved actual human contact at coffee shops or libraries. These days, it’s mostly me staring at a webcam. We use LST materials that cleverly disguise English challenges—like the dreaded verb conjugation—inside biblical lessons on sin, grace, and salvation.

I’ve worked with men from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Vietnam, and Ecuador(all pre-Covid and in person). I’ve learned about their customs, tasted their food, and generally enjoyed the “armchair traveler” lifestyle. I did have one female reader from Hungary once (early-Covid), but that taught me a lesson in boundaries. She was preparing for marriage and telling me things about her fiancé that made me want to bail out of the conversation. I figured any marital advice she needed should come from a woman, not me. I arranged a “handoff” to a female teacher, but she apparently wasn’t a fan of the trade. She never showed up again, though I see her on Facebook with a baby now, so she clearly survived my attempt at mentorship.

The Current Roster I currently have three regulars. They are all academically driven, though their personalities couldn’t be more different:

  • The Long-Hauler (Asia): I’m keeping his specific country a mystery to avoid any international incidents. We’ve been at this for five years. I’ve “walked” with him through a doctorate in Europe and watched his son grow up via pixels. We spend 40 minutes talking about everything from personal pictures to politics before I “cherry-pick” devotions that contain enough big words to keep him on his toes.
  • The Enthusiast (Brazil): He’s been around for about four years. He is the walking definition of the Brazilian stereotype—emotional, enthusiastic, and loud. He’s met my granddaughter on Zoom (he asks about her every call), and I’ve met his mother. She doesn’t speak a lick of English, but she’s promised me a world-class meal if I ever show up in her kitchen. He is a fantastic, high-energy contrast to my more reserved Asian reader.
  • The Academic (Poland): He started with me in high school and is now a university student. He’s an only child who passionately describes every meal and movie in his life. Because of the age gap, I have to work a little harder to stay “relatable” (pray for me). He’s Catholic by heritage but mostly just a moral guy with no real interest in faith. I keep showing up anyway. Even if the conversations aren’t always “deep,” we both usually learn something by the time the timer hits zero.

The Logistics of Grace Aside from “showing up,” the hardest part of being an Amen Ambassador is basic math. Keeping track of time zones is a nightmare. Europe changes their clocks on a different schedule than the US, and my Asian and Brazilian readers don’t change their clocks at all. I much prefer the 9:00 AM meetings over the 8:00 AM ones—mostly because my brain functions significantly better with that extra hour of blood waking it up.

Could I do more? Probably. But at this stage, my wife and I have agreed that our own kids and grandkids are our primary mission field. We’re working to give them a foundation that won’t crack when life gets messy. If I’m held to account on the other side of the grave, I’ll be fine knowing my family came before any other “mission goals” I might have entertained.

God might have other things He’d like us to take on, and those may have to live in the “regret” folder of my mind for now. But I refuse to let my family be part of any regret.

The Grey-Parenting Manifesto: All the Joy, None of the 2 A.M.s

Ellie has been with us for nine months now, and as her 30-hour-a-week “intern,” I’ve become an expert in her particular brand of chaos. We’ve moved past the “laying on a mat” phase—which lasted roughly eleven minutes—and bypassed tummy time entirely. Now, we are firmly in the Beeline Phase.

If I’m holding an apple, she’s coming for it. She’ll spot it from across the room and begin a determined crawl—the kind that says, I have a destination and you are in my way. Somewhere in the approach is a binky-muffled petition for a bite.

Since she has no teeth, “eating” is a generous term. She presses her lips against a peeled slice and creates an impressive vacuum seal to extract the juice. Her expression the entire time says, Of course you want to share this with me.

The House Patrol

When she isn’t hunting fruit, she’s on patrol. Ellie is curious to a fault—the kind of curiosity that assumes every drawer, cabinet, and doorstop is hiding a state secret. She wants to hold my fingers as we walk through the house to visit her favorite “stations.”

If there is a doorstop in my den, it must be strummed like a fine Stradivarius. It’s the same expression she gives the piano: I want on that bench, and I have opinions. When she reaches the one door that’s always closed, she studies it carefully. She concludes I am definitely hiding something and files a formal complaint with her eyes.

The fact that she drags me along for all of it, I’ve decided, is the whole point.

The Great Parenting Amnesia

Watching her hit these milestones has triggered a specific type of grandparent guilt: I have absolutely no memory of my own four children doing any of this.

If you asked me when my kids started crawling, I’d tell you, “Uh… before they started driving?” I have no recollection of their first words or their eating habits. Did they burp? Probably. They’re alive now, so I assume they were fed.

Whenever my adult children catch me staring at Ellie in wonder and ask, “Dad, don’t you remember me doing that?” I look them dead in the eye and say, “Of course I do. I was just testing you.”

In reality, I’m blank. I have the converted MiniDV files sitting on a Google Drive to prove I held the camera, but it feels like someone else handled the first ten years of their lives while I was busy worrying about the mortgage.

The High Chair Tactical Maneuver

Feeding Ellie is not a meal; it’s a structural engineering problem. Her mother is far more tolerant of “free-eating” than I am. My strategy is a pincer movement: sneak spoonfuls of yogurt in while she self-navigates an animal cracker (or “koo-kwee”).

It rarely goes to plan.

If she decides the yogurt isn’t for her, she ejects it. If I try to catch the spill, she blocks it with an incoming cracker. The result is a yogurt-based adhesive that bonds dissolving crumbs to her face, the tray, and my sleeve. Cleanup is a battle. The second I remove the tray, she conducts a frantic audit of her bib’s crumb pocket to see what survived. Between her constant movement and a deep-seated hatred of the washcloth, cleaning her is a four-man job currently handled by one sweaty grandpa.

Why I’m All In

We moved to Oklahoma knowing grandparenting was on the horizon. With our daughter and son-in-law navigating career and education changes, the math solved itself: a volunteer grandpa is cheaper, closer, and—if I may say so—better.

“Grey-parenting” isn’t the same as parenting, and that’s the beauty of it. We handle the bottles, the bibs, the “good poopies,” and the doorstop concerts. But the 2 a.m. wake-up calls? Those go back to the professionals.

If thirty-ish hours a week is the price of getting a second pass at the magic I was too distracted to notice the first time around, that’s not a sacrifice. It’s a pretty good deal—even if it means surrendering the occasional apple.

The Grass is Greener (When Someone Else Mows It)

As a homeowner for a number of years, I’ve done my share of mowing — push mowers, riding mowers, and as a kid, one with a turn radius so bad I had to convince myself it was a feature. With nearly two decades of Ohio lawns behind me, I still never managed the perfectly straight lines required to meet the standards of certain people I am married to.

Moving through Texas and Oklahoma over the last two decades, I’ve made my peace with the regional grasses — or at least stopped taking them personally. It doesn’t really matter if I have a beef with St. Augustine or Bermuda. Unless I want a yard full of wildflowers that the HOA would ban before they even bloomed, the grass has to get cut.

In Texas, I pushed a mower nearly every week and convinced myself I was good at it. St. Augustine has wide, flat blades that sprawl over the sidewalk and turn a “quick trim” into a full, sweat-soaked hour. Eventually, I had a moment of clarity: someone else could do this for money. I wasn’t great at trimming. I was worse at small-engine maintenance. And paying a crew for the season meant the yard got mowed while we were on vacation, without me making frantic calls and getting the “We don’t take temporary clients” rejection.

Oklahoma brought new grass and new logistics. Last year’s guy was ideal — $50 every two weeks, Venmo payment, maybe one conversation a month. Rain delay? We bumped the schedule. He went on vacation? Same. It was the perfect No Contact relationship: professional, low-maintenance, mutually beneficial. We understood each other completely and had almost no reason to speak.

He retired from the side hustle this spring — full-time fireman, finite Saturdays — and handed me three names on the way out. One was eliminated immediately for insisting on mowing every seven to ten days. Bermuda doesn’t grow that fast, and honestly, neither does my budget. The remaining two came down to one variable: the spring scalping charge. Bermuda grows low enough that a proper start to the season means shaving it down close to the dirt to clear out last year’s dead thatch. Both guys charged to scalp; one was discounted. That was the whole decision.

There was, however, one new wrinkle: my son. He recently bought a house on the street directly behind ours, and he has determined — much earlier in life than I did — that mowing is not for him. Whether this is genuine wisdom or a defense of his programming hands against mower vibration is still under debate. Either way, we were choosing together, which meant I had a co-signer on whatever call we made.

We will discuss the final decision tonight when he comes over for dinner. To scalp or not to scalp? Having gotten the scalp for the same $50 bi-weekly fee last year, I am hesitant pay extra. However, my bot friends say it is a good idea. Whatever happens, my son and I are going to get this decision done.

And if he decides to spend part of that Saturday installing a new ceiling fan for his dad, I’m certainly not going to argue with him.

The Two‑Tub Manifesto: Ice Cream Logistics & Ethics

In our house, ice cream isn’t dessert — it’s infrastructure, and I’m the one managing it. The kids and the hockey boys treat it like a competitive sport, my wife and I have slowed to a gentleman’s pace, and somehow I’ve ended up as the guy responsible for keeping everyone’s emotional stability frozen at 0°F.

We are a Blue Bell household. People can make their Braum’s arguments, and that’s fine — for road milkshakes. But if it’s living in my freezer, it’s the Little Creamery in Brenham or nothing. Standards matter.

The System

To keep the peace, we run a strict Two‑Active‑Tubs policy. Two flavors in play, two waiting in the wings, and no one gets to freelance. Active tubs must be mainstream — Cookie Dough, Cookies & Cream, the classics that won’t start a family meeting.

Introduce fruit, nuts, or a limited edition with a personality? The whole system collapses. Suddenly, we’re a four‑tub household. The boys are “just sampling.” I’m standing in front of the freezer like an overwhelmed air‑traffic controller.

We also aren’t above strategic bribery. Warm brownies are the standard lure for the “I’m not having dessert” crowd. But even we have lines: you don’t pair a brownie with Banana Pudding ice cream. That’s chaos disguised as whimsy.

The Hardware & The Heat

We’ve retired the traditional rounded scoop. Whether it’s Blue Bell’s density or our freezer’s commitment to cryogenics, the scoop just bends in protest. We are an Ice Cream Spade family now. I didn’t choose this identity; physics assigned it to me.

But even the spade has limits. A brand‑new, deep‑frozen half-gallon is basically a dairy glacier. Is it ethical to give the tub a three‑second microwave warm‑up just to break the surface tension? I’m not taking a position. I’m just saying philosophers have written entire books about less.

The Moral Dilemma

The real test of character happens at the sink. When you’re the only one getting a bowl, you face two paths:

  • The Saboteur – he assumes no one else wants any and drops the spade straight into the bottom of a dirty sink like a barbarian.
  • The Citizen – he rinses the spade with hot water and sets it in the dish rack for the next person, because we all have to live here.

Will I revoke ice cream privileges from the Saboteurs? No. But will I sigh loudly enough for them to hear from the living room? Absolutely. Better them than my wife.