House Husbandry

The Chaos Doesn’t Care That I’m Getting Better

After my Monday rebound on the health meter, I briefly believed I was proving my wife wrong. She’d been quietly predicting a longer recovery than I wanted to admit, and I was walking around like I’d just won the argument without actually saying, “I told you so.” She enjoys being right the way some people enjoy pickleball: casually, competitively, and with a suspicious amount of strategy. Fortunately, she decided a healthy husband was more valuable than a correct one, so she put on her “supportive spouse” face. If you ever meet her, please don’t let her know you know this. I need plausible deniability.

Feeling better meant I got to do normal‑human things again: I took my walk, hopped on a couple of Zoom calls, and tagged along with my daughter and granddaughter to the zoo. Six miles on a body that had been dragging for weeks. It felt like the comeback tour. I might have been insufferable for a few hours.

Tuesday had notes.

The good news was I slept through the night. The bad news was my energy evaporated before I could even decide what to do with it. Babysitting duty was coming later, so I chose the no‑walk option and pretended it was “strategic pacing” instead of “I can’t move.” I’d love to say I used the time wisely, but all I really accomplished was navigating the administrative obstacle course required to host hockey boys again in the fall. Background checks? Done. “USA Hockey Safe Sport” training? Also done—most of it aimed at people who actually see the boys in locker rooms. Apparently, I’m part of the extended safety net: the guy who hands out snacks and, if necessary, phone numbers for people who fix bigger problems.

Ellie arrived and we slid into our usual routine: constant snacking, nap avoidance, and me conserving enough energy for the playground run. On the walk there, she demanded frequent sips from my water bottle. I could refuse—I’ve been sick for weeks—but her parents aren’t particularly germ‑shy, and she’s been marinating in my personal germ broth for the same amount of time. Also, I’m terrible at telling her “no.” I know that’s a bad grandpa move. My current self‑diagnosis is long COVID, so odds are she already has better antibodies than I do.

At the park, a potential playmate was waiting. Her grandmother, Malinda—same name as my own grandmother, which earned me instant points—was already mid‑conversation with a woman walking her dog while her granddaughter tried to pet it. Once the dog walker escaped, Malinda turned her attention to me. Her grandma instincts were strong; she stayed half a step ahead of me to catch Ellie if she tripped. With my germ‑rattled brain and slow‑motion reflexes, I welcomed the backup.

Her granddaughter loved the slide, which meant Ellie needed to love the slide too. I lifted Ellie past the first giant step and let her instincts take over. The playground’s first landing was not designed for Andy‑sized humans, so I performed a sort of hunched shuffle that was heroic in spirit if not in appearance. Malinda warned me to keep my feet wide, so I wouldn’t go too fast. She claimed she once landed on her fanny. I’m not entirely sure I have a fanny, but I took her advice. She went first and absorbed most of the water on the slide, so I only got the “lightly damp and mildly undignified” version. Ellie and I survived two runs. The second one just required a deeper stoop and a quiet prayer.

Back home, we tackled lunch—the official one, not the Cheerios she treats as an emotional support snack—and then I followed her as she dismantled tissues and anything resembling organization. After a very dirty diaper where she “helped” spread the diaper cream, she finally went down for a nap. My wife suggested I do the same. Earplugs in, thunder shaking the house, I accepted the challenge.

An hour later I woke up thinking, “Why is it freezing in here?” The thermostat app swore nothing had changed, but the air said otherwise. I had that first quiet suspicion that the HVAC system had gone rogue. I did what any reasonable person does: ran through my standard “If I were an HVAC system trying to hide my misbehavior, how would I do it?” test. My final move was simple—cut the power. A rascal can’t rebel without electricity.

Not wanting to sleep in a house slowly turning into a meat locker, I called an HVAC company. I picked one with good ratings and an “& Sons” in the name. Maybe it’s marketing, but something in me trusts people who sound like they also attend each other’s Thanksgivings. The tech on the phone walked me through a few steps that matched my diagnosis, then added phrases like “lightning can do wonky things” and “sounds like a motherboard problem.” If it were a grandmother‑board problem, my wife would’ve solved it instantly—or at least acted like she could.

The technician came out the next morning. After an hour and a half of poking around, he had mixed news. He could rewire around the problem and get us running, and the part itself should be under warranty. He started on the workaround while I called the original installer to schedule the warranty visit. Their answer: “Sometime Monday, if we can fit you in, thirty‑minute notice.”

Vacation is in two weeks.

By the time I added up the labor for two technicians, we were approaching 75% of the cost of just replacing the motherboard outright and being done with it. So we went with the sure thing. Yes, it cost more. But I don’t have to spend the next two weeks playing thermostat man while the temperatures climb and the warranty visit exists in the mystical realm of “sometime Monday.”

My wife thought it was the right call. She was right.

She usually is.

Somewhere in there is the theme of this whole stretch of life: my health finally creeping in the right direction, while the rest of the universe keeps throwing toddlers, lightning, and circuit boards at me just to see what I’ll do. Apparently “feeling better” doesn’t come with less chaos. It just means I’m well enough to show up for it.

The Glue That Could Not Hold

This morning I became that neighbor. Not the fun one who waves from the porch with a coffee mug and mysterious confidence. I became the guy who steps outside to defend his landscaping like it’s a national monument.

I was waiting for the HVAC technician — because nothing says “adulthood” like scheduling strangers to fix things you only vaguely understand — when I wandered into the den and glanced out the window. And there it was. A scene unfolding in slow motion.

A man.
A dog.
My freshly edged, freshly mulched tree circles.

Not just any mulch, either. This was mulch I had curated. Mulch I had arranged. Mulch I had glued, because the tree sits so high above street level that the whole setup is basically a ski slope for wood chips. I had bought that “mulch glue” stuff — a real product, somehow — that promises to keep everything in place as long as you don’t, you know, touch it.

The problem was the mulch itself. It was older, dry, and apparently had the hydration needs of a marathon runner. The moment the glue hit it, the mulch said, “Cute. Try again.” So I did. Two or three coats later, I had something that looked like a cross between a landscaping project and a craft experiment gone wrong. But it held. Mostly. Right up until this morning.

Because this morning, the dog was not just sniffing. He was committing. He was on top of the mulch mound like he had been training for this moment, paws going, nose down, sending mulch into the air in what my memory insists was a majestic brown cloud.

So I walked outside. Sheepishly. Because no one wants to be the neighbor who says, “Excuse me, sir, your dog is compromising the structural integrity of my glue‑dependent mulch ecosystem.”

But that’s exactly what I did.

I launched into a full explanation about how the glue only works when the mulch pieces stay united — a sort of mulch‑based community model — and how once it’s disturbed, the whole thing reverts to “every chip for itself.” I’m sure this man woke up hoping to learn about adhesive failure at 8 a.m. on a weekday.

He apologized. The dog looked mildly offended. And I walked back inside feeling like I had just scolded a toddler for touching a museum exhibit.

Then I saw him pull out the poop bags, and I felt even worse. Here he was, being responsible. And here I was, the old man who isn’t anti‑dog, just aggressively pro‑plants.

It’s true: I don’t have a dog. But that doesn’t make me an animal hater. I simply choose hockey boys, grandkids, and my own kids over adding another creature to the chaos. That’s not cruelty — that’s capacity management.

If the neighbors eventually stage a protest outside my house and my gallon of glue ends up a wasted investment, so be it. I know how it started: I just wanted my roadside tree to wear a nice little mulch skirt without flashing its weed mat to the entire neighborhood.

If that makes me the weird neighbor, at least I earned it honestly.

The Remarkable Adventures of an Unremarkable Morning

There’s a meeting at 9:00, and I have a small window before I put on my babysitting hat. So naturally, I ate a bagel, drank two cups of coffee, and chugged the last of a quart of orange juice left over from last month’s wedding shower — because apparently cleaning out a refrigerator is a noble act of self-sacrifice rather than the most basic form of adulting imaginable. Nobody asked me to buy a quart of orange juice for a party. My wife bought the party supplies. My conscience would bother me no matter who did the shopping. I drank it anyway.

Then I scurried outside.

The 4.5-mile walk had to be done before 9:00. I already knew my meeting was starting at 9:05, minimum. Knowing he’ll be five minutes late has never once made me log into Zoom five minutes late. I don’t understand myself either.

The first obstacle was a forklift hauling lumber for one of the new houses going up on the other side of the neighborhood. Our side is the older part — mature trees, individual mailboxes, the kind of street where the mail carrier drives from box to box. The new side has consolidated mailboxes, one big cluster where you can knock out six streets in three minutes. Efficient. I’d be a disaster at it. The numbers would run together, and anything less than five mistakes per day would be a good day. Not my problem, because I don’t have that job, and this is why.

The forklift detour wasn’t much of a detour. What it actually cost me was thirty seconds of my audiobook, paused while a yard crew fired up a leaf blower to redistribute freshly mown clippings to somewhere other than the driveway. Somewhere, presumably, but I didn’t stay to confirm.

The wildlife situation required judgment calls I’m not sure I was qualified to make.

Oklahoma is flat. When it rains, the water has to go somewhere, and at the neighborhood level, that means toads and turtles living in the drainage areas, occasionally making ill-fated decisions about road crossings. I saw a baby turtle sitting dead center in the street. I saw a large turtle just off the curb. I stood there for a moment, fully aware that a decent person would move them.

I did not move them.

I have a thing — a completely reasonable and well-established thing — about touching animals that could carry germs that might somehow, in some freak sequence of events, find their way into my mouth or my granddaughters. I know how that sounds. But I grew up watching a turtle crawl under a sliding wooden door and disappear, and something in me was permanently shaped by that. The turtles were on their own. I am sorry. I walked faster so I didn’t have to see what happened next.

Four rabbits in the park. No squirrels — our trees aren’t mature enough yet for what I can only describe as “tree rats” to fully establish themselves. They have earned my dislike, and I won’t apologize. .

At the park, a young woman was doing sprint intervals on the soccer field within the walking path. I’d seen her the other day running full laps, and today she was going hard, then walking, then going hard again. I admire that kind of self-motivation — the kind where you show up and push yourself with no external pressure, just because. I don’t have that relationship with exercise. I walk because it’s a good time to listen to books and because I’d feel guilty if I didn’t. It’s not suffering, but it’s not ambition either.

The highlight of the entire walk — maybe the entire week — was watching the OKIE811 utility locator do his job.

I assumed these guys walked around spraying paint on the ground and bending over to stick the little flags in. Reasonable assumption. That is not what this man was doing. He was marking a gas line (yellow flags, per the Universal Utility Color Code), and when he finished the spray, he reached into his vest, pulled out a flag, and with one smooth downward flick of his wrist sent it arcing through the air so that it landed perfectly upright in the ground.

I applauded him inside my head as I tried not to stare.

I have no idea if the rest of his flags that day went in on the first try. Maybe he fumbled twenty of them the moment I turned the corner. But what I saw was a man who had mastered something so specific and so useless outside of his exact job that it became a kind of art. I thought about how many thousands of flags you’d have to throw before your wrist just knew the angle. Nobody is going to put that on a highlight reel. And I loved it.

The last stop was my son’s house. He and his bride are finishing up their honeymoon, so I let myself in through the garage, removed my shoes at the door (they have an Asian household — shoes stay outside; I assume the mounted cameras confirm compliance), and found all their houseplants arranged in the kitchen sink with their vines draped across the drying racks in what I can only describe as a botanical hostage situation. I’d like to think my daughter-in-law staged this deliberately before they left. The alternative — that the plants organized themselves — would require a conversation I’m not ready for.

I turned on the spray nozzle and gave them all a drink. They may be sun-deprived, but they weren’t dying of thirst on my watch. Small win.

The walk takes a little over an hour. I listen to my book, I sweat a little, I make no meaningful impact on local turtle populations. By most measures, it’s an unremarkable way to spend a morning.

But I keep showing up for it. A forklift reroutes me, a utility worker throws a flag like a tiny javelin, a turtle makes a bad decision at an intersection I hope he saw the other side of — and somehow that’s enough. More than enough. I’m not sure when ordinary started feeling like something worth paying attention to, but at some point it did, and I think that might be the whole thing. You live long enough, you stop waiting for remarkable, and you start just noticing what’s actually there.

That’s a pretty good trade.

Hot Tub 3.0: I Finally Got It Right (Mostly)

I take my hot tub water to Leslie’s for testing every week. Sometimes monthly, when I’m feeling particularly confident in my abilities as a hot tub owner—which, as it turns out, I should not be. Cyanuric acid has never technically failed me on those tests, but it shows up on my report card the way my kindergarten teacher’s notes did. Not quite a problem. Just a little glare. A suggestion that maybe you could do better.

This week’s test was unnecessary. I knew the water was fine. I went anyway, because I had a plan, and I needed the ritual of confirmation before I could commit to it. The plan was simple: Andy empties the hot tub for the third time, but smarter than the last two.

That is a low bar.

I bought the Purge, which is a product designed to flush the pipes and biofilm before you drain. The night before, I added it to the water, ran the jets briefly while I sprayed out the filters, and watched in mild horror as bubbles cascaded over the sides of the tub and started a very serious attempt to take over the backyard. Five minutes of filter-spraying produced enough foam to threaten the pergola. Eventually it settled down, and I buckled the cover back on to hold the temperature at 95 degrees like the instructions said.

Morning comes. I stretch the hoses toward the street, drop in the submersible pump, flip the switch, and stand there feeling like a man who has his life together. Then I pick up the Purge instructions to give them one last look, and I find a line I’d skimmed past the night before.

“Run the hot tub pumps to flush out the pipes before emptying the tub.”

The pump is already running, but the water level is still high enough. I flip on the jets, let them circulate for a few minutes, and quietly note that catching this before the tub was half-empty probably counts as personal growth.

I ate breakfast. Did some unimportant things. Came back about an hour later.

The hot tub has seating recesses built into it, which is what separates it from being a very expensive, very shallow bathtub. Those recesses, however, do not drain on their own. When the water level drops below the seats, you’re left with little puddles of the exact stuff you were trying to get rid of, like a hoarder who survived the eviction.

This is where the wet/dry vac came in. It’s lived in my garage for years, hauled from Texas, where its entire career consisted of vacuuming acorns. This was its first water. I hosed down the sides of the tub, vacuumed out each seat recess, dumped that water into the lowest point where the pump was still running, and repeated until there was almost nothing left.

Then the pump hit its depth limit, and I had a thought that felt, in the moment, like genuine engineering: drop the pump directly into the vac tank and let it empty that too. No hauling. No sloshing a heavy vac across the yard. The pump did the work while I supervised, which is my strongest skill.

For context on why this matters:

HT 1.0, I dealt with the entire hot tub using five-gallon buckets, hauled by hand, over and over, and never got within a foot of the bottom. HT 2.0, I had the pump, which helped, but I was lazy about the seat recesses and left behind enough shingle granules to form a small gravel path. (The hot tub sits under a pergola with gutters. Rain still finds a way. It always does.) HT 3.0 ended with clean pipes, almost no residue, and no buckets. It was the first time this process felt like something a competent person might do.

I went for a walk while the tub refilled. About an hour, I figured. When I got back, I thought, “I’ll let it fill a little more while I play online chess.”

Chess, apparently, required my full and extended attention. By the time I turned the hose off, the water level was higher than intended, and when I flipped the fuses back on, the pump had to take a couple of dry gulps before the water reached it. A minor thing. Noted for 4.0.

The water temperature at fill was 73 degrees. It takes time to climb back up to soak-worthy, but by evening we were both in the tub, my wife and I. 35 years of marriage, celebrating with chlorinated water and clean plumbing.

There was a problem. The water was a little high—my fault entirely—and my wife couldn’t sit in the recesses without the water reaching her chin. I offered to remove myself from the equation. My body, as I may have mentioned, takes up a meaningful amount of space. She said no, it was fine.

That is love. Gargling hot tub water voluntarily so you can spend a few minutes together outside. She has many good qualities. Being married to me is just one of the things she tolerates.

Hot Tub 4.0 will involve filling through the filter housing to avoid the dry-pump issue. I’ll read the directions first next time. Maybe.

For context on why this matters: I documented the original bucket disaster—The Hot Tub Hero—if you want the full humbling backstory. HT 1.0, I dealt with the recesses using five-gallon buckets, hauled by hand, over and over, and never got within a foot of the bottom. HT 2.0, I had the pump, which helped, but I was lazy about the seat recesses and left behind enough shingle granules to form a small gravel path. (The hot tub sits under a pergola with gutters. Rain still finds a way. It always does.) HT 3.0 ended with clean pipes, almost no residue, and no buckets. It was the first time this process felt like something a competent person might do.

Saturday Was Going to Be the Day

After three or four orders, a couple of borderline-needy phone calls to make sure I still got the sale price on things I forgot to add to my cart, and a few middle-of-the-night “what if I moved the flower bed?” brain spirals, this past week was supposed to be the week: all the new plants in the ground, finally.

The tracking number swore they’d be here mid-day Thursday. Then mid-day Friday. Then late Friday afternoon, like a teenager rolling in after curfew. So Saturday became Planting Day by default.

Armed with two cups of coffee and the kind of optimism that only caffeine can buy, I started sorting through the new “friends” I’d be spending the day with. Not required, technically, but I’ve learned it’s wise to get everything laid out before the shovel hits dirt. Inside each box, the plants were grouped in threes — because when I landscaped in my younger years, everyone got brainwashed by the same doctrine: plant in odd numbers. Three, five, seven. Apparently plants are as awkward in even numbers as middle-schoolers at a dance.

I didn’t honor that maxim with every purchase, but when I broke the rule, I did it on purpose. By the end of phase one, every plant was grouped with its brothers and sisters. I had two types of echinacea, which required some label archaeology to make sure no cousins were accidentally bunking together.

I rewarded myself with a break inside. My son is “camping” at our house until after his wedding, and he brought his Starbucks-style coffee maker with him. He made me a latte, mostly because I tried to look like the kind of person who appreciates a latte. About twenty minutes later, the caffeine had opinions about me sitting still, and I was back outside.

First up: three phlox around the roses in the front yard. The roses were thriving, but the rest of those beds were living in a depressing mix of clay, brick chunks, and sand — way more of all three than anyone needed. I shoveled out the junk, mixed the reusable pieces with new soil, and tried not to judge Past Me for cutting corners.

One of the phlox and a couple of the coreopsis in the backyard looked rough — parched, almost shriveled. Those coconut-husk plantable pots are great in theory, but when the pot is bone dry, the plants don’t have enough tears left to cry. If they don’t perk up by Monday, I’ll contact the nursery. Based on their email yesterday, they seem like reasonable people.

After watering, wrapping up the hose, and then unwrapping it again to spray off mud I’d allegedly missed — my wife’s request, and she was right — I moved to the backyard.

The backyard still required some jockeying. I kept hearing a voice in the back of my head: if you get too creative, you’re going to be cutting a lot of new holes in that weed mat. Not using a weed mat would be more flexible, but this is Oklahoma. Bermuda grass does not accept “no” as an answer. One year in and it’s already burrowing through like it’s just another minor inconvenience. Clay and sand out, fresh soil in — same drill everywhere.

Thirty plants by afternoon. My body was filing complaints. I’d been kneeling on a mulch bag all day, and my legs are no longer amused by repeated ups and downs. By evening my fingers were cramping from jamming soil into gaps around each plant. Those cramps were just the physical footnote on one simple fact: planting in my seventh decade hits different. My work gloves would have helped, but I couldn’t find them — my son had probably borrowed them, and I chose not to pursue it.

After a breather, Judy suggested a trip to Home Depot to fill a few gaps. We picked up marigolds and a pink hydrangea she loved. It rang up higher than expected, but we shrugged and paid. Beauty doesn’t come cheap.

Unless you go to Costco next.

A bigger version of the same hydrangea, cheaper by double digits. A very enthusiastic employee — Costco’s unofficial hydrangea whisperer — informed us that hydrangeas are basically the mood rings of the garden: shift the soil acidity and the blooms go from blue to pink. She also mentioned morning sun only. I mentally scheduled the return before we left the store.

With two slices of Costco pizza on Judy’s lap, we swung back by Home Depot to return the overpriced original, and headed home.

Post-pizza, I finished the job. Butterfly bush in the open spot, the hydrangea tucked into the covered corner near the gas line, marigolds up front in the clay-heavy soil where they’ll either surprise me or confirm my concerns. I still need to get those roses at Costco this week. It’ll sting at checkout, but every one of these plants is out there for Judy.

The outdoors is my lane. Judy’s lane is the indoors — laundry, dishes, cooking — and she does it well and loves the color these plants bring into our lives. She goes out of her way to compliment my efforts even when she’s being generous with the grade. Despite my many flaws, she keeps nudging me toward better, quietly and consistently, without making it a speech. I’m grateful to have a woman with that much patience in my corner.

The sore muscles are the tax. The joy is shared.

The Great Frost of March

This is a further explanation of one of the titles included on my “semi-retired” business card. (Mulch Magician, or in English, Plant Enthusiast)

I spent my Sunday losing a staring contest with the Oklahoma wind, and Monday wasn’t much of a reward. When the first half of March decides to play “Full-on Spring,” you can’t really blame the plants for being fooled. With the weatherman now projecting 90s by next weekend, these plants have a choice: adapt or audition for a “do-over” with a second sprouting.

I wasn’t about to let my winter efforts go in vain, so I staged a late-night botanical rescue mission. Here is the breakdown of the battlefield, from the most over-engineered to the “hope for the best.”

The Rose Fortress

In Texas, I rarely worried about the roses. In Oklahoma, the wind/temperature combo makes you forget how tough they actually are. My wife loves them – which is the only motivation a man needs to haul 5-gallon buckets into the yard at dusk.

To protect them without crushing the stems, I had to get creative:

  • The Frame: 5-gallon buckets (and one bigger bucket to help clear the most ambitious sprouts on the rose closest to the door) served as pillars to keep the blankets from flattening the bushes.
  • The Ballast: To keep the buckets from becoming wind-borne projectiles, I filled them with two gallons of water.
  • The Perimeter: I used bags of topsoil to pin down the flapping edges because the wind laughed at my initial attempt to “tuck them in.”

The Amaryllis Gamble

Last year, these were safe in pots. This year, I got bold and put them in the ground. Ten of them were just starting to wake up when the cold hit. I huddled them under a blanket weighted down by a garden hose, betting on their proximity to the house to provide a few extra degrees of life-saving heat. The azaleas nearby already had pink blooms peeking out; I’m just crossing my fingers they weren’t scarred by this weather curveball.

The Potted Survivors

These were the easy wins. I moved the geraniums and petunias into the garage and threw a blanket over them. Was the blanket unnecessary? Probably. But after keeping them alive all winter, I wasn’t going to get soft now that spring is technically on the calendar.

Casualties and Survivors

I lost a couple of rose blooms to the initial chill, but everything I was actually worried about — or my wife was, if I’m still pretending I don’t have a soft spot for the garden — is still standing. Tonight brings another freeze, though mercifully a shallower one. My buckets are full, my topsoil bags are in place, and my garden is currently under house arrest until the sun returns in the morning.

I’m ready for the do-over. I just want those blooms to be there to greet her the next time she walks out the front door – partly for the beauty of it, but mostly to prove that my over-engineered blanket-fort was a tactical masterpiece. After all, if you can’t beat the Oklahoma wind, you might as well out-anchor it.

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.

Hockey Boy Broth

When we moved to Oklahoma to be near our soon‑to‑arrive granddaughter, we bought a house with space for a backyard hot tub. A few months later: hot tub, pergola, grill, generator — the full “we can survive anything but a direct tornado hit” package. Part of the deal was that my wife would handle the chemicals. This was a great plan until it wasn’t.

Somewhere between the third and fifteenth water test at the pool store, I became the reluctant caretaker of the tub. Over time, I learned enough to keep the water clear and the employees from greeting me by name. I even became a semi‑competent “hot‑tub whisperer,” spraying filters, checking levels, and pretending I knew what alkalinity actually meant. My wife and I enjoyed the tub a few nights a week, letting the jets work on our aging joints. The jets are its whole personality.

Then the hockey boys arrived.

They live with us during the season — not our kids, but “our kids” for those months — and they discovered the hot tub like explorers stumbling upon a natural spring. They didn’t use it constantly, but when they did, they treated it like a giant, silent crockpot. No jets. No circulation. Just two teenage athletes sitting motionless in 104‑degree water, marinating like slow‑cooking briskets.

I tried to explain — gently at first, then with the passion of a man who has seen too many water‑testing printouts — that the jets are not optional. The jets keep the nasties moving. The jets are the sanitation system. The jets are the difference between “spa” and “soup.”

They nodded politely and continued soaking in contemplative silence, scrolling through hockey reels, texting, singing, or simply existing in the tub like two large dumplings. If I’m lucky, I might get thirty seconds of jet activity before they settle back into their preferred mode: simmer.

And that’s when it hit me. Chicken broth. Beef broth. Vegetable broth—all available at Walmart. Human broth? Not on the shelves for a reason. Yet here I am, steward of the simmering teenage stock, responsible for skimming the surface and restoring balance to the backyard cauldron.

Still, as much as I complain — and as much as my wife wishes I’d complain less — I’m glad they’re here. Their presence breaks up the quiet, gives the house a pulse, and reminds us that life is more than routines and chemical levels. I’d rather manage the broth from the hockey boys who live with us for the season than from strangers we don’t love.

So I sigh. Then I smile. Then I go check the chlorine.

Toast, Utensils, and Marital Diplomacy: A Slice of Life

Let’s be honest: the kitchen is not just where we prepare food—it’s where domestic philosophy is forged, sometimes on the blade of a butter knife. In my household, we follow a sacred code: “Help the dishwasher out as much as you can.” It’s a noble creed—one that my wife and I mostly share, with a tiny, chocolate-hazelnut exception.

Toast: The Great Equalizer (Almost)

Both of us are toast fans. (We even had a toast song, but that’s a story for another day—and possibly another genre.) While my heart belongs to a bagel with peanut butter, toast comes in at a very respectable second. My wife? She’s all in on toast, topped with Nutella. Frankly, you can’t go wrong with either.

The Knife Dilemma: Peanut Butter vs. Nutella Protocol

Here’s where the marital kitchen harmony wobbles: the post-spread knife ritual.

  • My method: I lick both sides of the knife clean. Some might call it overkill; I call it preventive maintenance. That knife comes out of the dishwasher so clean, it could double as a dental mirror.
  • My wife’s method: She wipes the knife clean on her toast. Efficient, elegant, but perhaps a smidge too trusting of the dishwasher’s powers.

The Empty-Nester’s Dilemma

Back when the house was full of kids, the dishwasher ran daily, and any rogue Nutella or peanut butter never stood a chance. Now, with fewer meals and fewer cycles, any residue has time to harden into something the dishwasher considers “character-building.”

My Heroic Intervention

This morning, as the Nutella knife was headed for the dishwasher, I sprang into action—tongue first. I gave that knife a pre-wash so thorough, the dishwasher sighed in relief.

Let it be known: if the dishwasher fails to deliver, it’s not for my lack of effort. Some people talk about making sacrifices for their marriage. Me? I just lick the knife.

In summary: Marriage is about compromise, teamwork, and occasionally, making sure your appliances don’t face impossible odds. And if you ever need someone to clean up after toast, you know who to call.