Life

The Policy Has Been Revised

After an evening watching a disappointing football game, we went to bed at 10:30. To keep our commitment to our hockey boys, we turned the front porch light on so they could find their way home without taking out my roses along the front walkway. We have been doing this quite often lately. Friday night, they needed to watch the team they share the rink with play before heading out for food. Last night was also about food, but with a little more wardrobe involved.

Both of the junior hockey teams we have billeted for have a tradition of rookies dressing up as girls for a team dinner. The reason for putting considerable effort into shoes, dresses, wigs, and whatever else they can find is simple: the rookie who looks the best avoids paying his portion of the ridiculous food bill the veterans have intentionally inflated by ordering food they have no intention of eating. Our Alaska boy won this year. His $50 investment in a dress, shoes, and wig probably saved him about $300. The worst-dressed rookie pays double. The guys with beards apparently start the competition about three goals down.

Back to my pre-bed routine. For some reason, my nose decided to start bleeding. This wasn’t one of those casual little nosebleeds where you grab a tissue, wipe your nose, and get on with your life. This one earned the coveted two-tissue award. I asked Judy which towel I should use so I wouldn’t bloody up my hand towel. My white hot tub robe also received some unexpected splatter. Apparently, my nose had decided that bedtime was a good time to redecorate.

Judy’s response was very casual. I know why they call her “Dr. Mom” and not “Dr. Wife.” There was no frantic call for medical assistance, no dramatic assessment of my condition, and certainly no attempt to save my life. She basically let me bleed. To minimize any overnight leakage, I suggested grabbing an old towel to put over my pillow. She fully supported that plan. The usual “goodnight kiss” was answered with, “I don’t want to kiss you tonight.”

Nothing says “in sickness and in health” quite like your wife deciding that, for the moment, you are a communicable disease.

The next morning, with a strong desire to get my walk in before church and another 100-degree day waiting for us, I got up to find the towel on my pillow completely unblemished. Apparently, my nose had called it a night. I made the coffee and toasted some of Judy’s day-old, home-baked whole wheat bread, one of her evolving hobbies. There are worse ways to start the day, although I was beginning to wonder whether I was living with a doctor, a baker, or someone who was simply waiting for me to bleed out.

After my walk, I told Judy my nose seemed to be on the mend. I also expressed some concern about what had caused such an enthusiastic nosebleed. Her nosebleeds have all but stopped 5 years ago, so I was hoping mine would follow the same path. Maybe it was simply the heat, the low humidity, or some other weather-related nonsense that our bodies apparently feel obligated to complain about.

Of course, I couldn’t resist mentioning the possibility that my blood pressure was raging and that perhaps I was headed toward a stroke or some other exciting cardiovascular event. In the past, when I have brought up the possibility of dying from high blood pressure, Judy’s response has been, “If you go before me, I won’t remarry.”

It has always been one of those reassuring little marriage statements that somehow manages to be both loving and insulting. Apparently, though, the policy has been revised.

Knowing I was still fragile from the previous night’s trauma, Judy looked at me and said, “I have changed my mind. I think I will remarry.”

I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to discuss your replacement while the current model is still standing in front of you. But apparently, there is a grace period for these things.

The good news is that my nose seems to have returned to normal, and I have no reason to believe I’m about to fall over dead. I plan to be around for many more years. There is even a decent chance I will outlive Judy. After hearing her revised position on remarriage, I’m beginning to think that may not be the news she was hoping to hear.

But I was reminded of something this weekend: if you’re going to spend a lifetime dishing it out, you have to be willing to take it when the tables turn.

Even if the tables turn while you’re wearing a blood-speckled hot tub robe, sleeping with a towel over your pillow, and wondering whether your wife has already started browsing for your replacement.

Marriage is a beautiful thing.

Something Was Clearly Going On

With less than two weeks before my daughter finds out what it is like to have a normal human body again, we decided it was a good zoo day. Yesterday’s temperatures were below 90 degrees, and this morning was in the high 60s. Perfect? No. But compared to what Oklahoma has been handing us lately, it was practically sweater weather. With the clock ticking and the opportunity to see some animals actually moving around, we figured we should take advantage of it.

We were rewarded with a great view of the baby elephant born in late June. My daughter kept saying, “Dad, look at the little one.” I saw three elephant posteriors and assumed she was referring to the smallest rear in the crowd. Once I got up and looked around the post that had been blocking my view, I finally understood what she meant. The baby elephant was considerably cuter than the collection of backsides I had been studying. Apparently, I was not the only one impressed. The photographers were out in force, carrying camera lenses large enough to require their own parking spaces. The rest of the animals may not have been particularly active, but they had apparently agreed that the best place to spend the morning was directly in front of the prime viewing areas. The bears, lions, chimps, and gorillas all seemed willing to lean against the glass or accidentally pose for whatever picture the photographers wanted. At one of the chimp viewing areas, we watched a chimp picking up Cheerios scattered on his side of the glass. Even without opposable thumbs, he was doing a pretty good job. On our side of the glass, Ellie was sitting in her stroller with as many Cheerios as she needed to remain happy. It was a strangely appropriate moment. Sometimes it is the little things that make life worth living. Apparently, for both chimps and toddlers, those little things may be Cheerios.

The expected highlight of the trip was the water jets in the Asia area. When we arrived, Ellie seemed a little hesitant. Grandpa performed a variety of highly sophisticated demonstrations designed to make the water look like a good idea without actually getting wet himself. Either Ellie’s curiosity eventually won out, or my performance was more convincing than I realized. Her mom decided to put her in her swimsuit, just in case. A couple of well-timed geysers caught Ellie in the face, apparently giving her all the evidence she needed to reconsider the entire concept. Her attention quickly shifted to a “dead” water spout that she was determined to convince to come back to life. It refused to cooperate. She also discovered that there were many directions she could wander that did not involve water at all. Grandpa did what he could to turn this into a game, because apparently that is part of the job description.

Then came the more concerning behavior. As we passed other strollers and wagons filled with items brought by parents and grandparents to cool down their kids, Ellie began displaying some impressive foraging instincts. She would walk up to a stroller, inspect the contents, and determine what might be available. She grabbed a couple of water bottles, and I refused her multiple attempts to acquire snacks that did not belong to us. Yes, it was cute. It was also a little concerning to watch my granddaughter casually inventory the belongings of strangers. My daughter, meanwhile, stayed close to our stroller, apparently determined to defend our property from the same behavior. We eventually agreed that the “cooling off Ellie” portion of the zoo experience had been something of a bust.

It was after we got Ellie changed back into her clothes that my daughter told me the real story. Ellie had lost her bunny while they were running errands the day before. This was not some random stuffed animal that had been forgotten in the bottom of a toy box. This was Bunny. Her sleeping bunny. Her snuggle bunny. The little guy who apparently doesn’t mind being dragged around by his ears, dropped on his head, or subjected to whatever other indignities come with being a toddler’s favorite stuffed animal. He is her guy. And, based on the report of a difficult night of sleep the evening before, his absence was being noticed.

Suddenly, I had a theory about the zoo. Maybe Ellie’s stroller shopping wasn’t really about snacks or water bottles. Maybe it was a toddler’s attempt to find something—or someone—to fill the Bunny-shaped hole in her life. Her vocabulary is expanding, but it is still not quite advanced enough to explain the deep emotional trauma of losing a favorite stuffed animal. So instead of saying, “Grandpa, I am experiencing significant distress because my primary emotional support rabbit has disappeared,” she may have simply decided to check the nearest stroller for snacks. This particular practice apparently started in the church nursery and has now expanded to random strangers. We may have inadvertently raised a tiny, toddling, food critic with questionable boundaries.

When I told Judy about Bunny, she immediately said, “That poor thing. She loves Bunny.” And she is right. There will probably be a replacement Bunny before the weekend is over. If my memory is correct, the original may have been the generic light-pink variety from Walmart, which means we should be able to resolve this crisis without involving Interpol. This time, though, we may want to make a few improvements. Perhaps Bunny needs a leash. Maybe some Velcro. At the very least, an Apple AirTag. I am not prepared to spend another zoo day explaining to strangers why my granddaughter is conducting a personal inventory of their strollers.

Ellie is about to be promoted to big sister, which is wonderful, but she is also about to experience a fairly dramatic reduction in the amount of attention available to her when those twins arrive. Losing Bunny right before that transition probably isn’t helping. So, yes, she needs a new Bunny. She needs something familiar to sleep with, drag around, drop on his head, and generally subject to the same treatment the original Bunny endured. She also apparently needs Grandpa to stop her from stealing bottled water from strangers, but we can work on that one later.

For now, the priority is getting Bunny back—or finding his replacement. Because if losing one stuffed rabbit has already turned Ellie into a roaming toddler forager, I would prefer not to discover what happens when the twins arrive and she realizes there are now two additional people competing for her snacks, attention, and Cheerios. We may be raising a future criminal mastermind, and frankly, I would rather catch her in the stuffed-animal phase. A new Bunny, a tracking device, and a little extra attention seem like a small price to pay for keeping the family out of court.

The Unofficial Billet Boy Survival Guide

We have had hockey boys from all over the United States and even a couple of international locations. None of them have been perfect, although some have certainly worked harder at perfection than others.

With one of our boys leaving our household yesterday, it seemed like a good time to put down a few pointers for the hockey players who find themselves living in someone else’s house for a season. These won’t guarantee universal success, but they should increase your chances of becoming a favorite billet in our house.

Remember that your billet parents are responsible for you. If you want to spend the night at your girlfriend’s house, we are probably not the right billet house for you. We actually had one boy “move” to another billet house because the billet mom there didn’t care if he stayed at his girlfriend’s house instead of coming home.

If you choose to go down that road, I recommend buttering up your current billets first. Ask if they would mind making pizza for dinner. Maybe compliment the cooking. Make everyone feel like you are really connecting with them. Then, when the billet coordinator calls the next day to say you want to move, the whole puzzle will come together beautifully.

If you are under 21, there isn’t much wiggle room on alcohol in our house. My theory is pretty simple: you are here to play hockey. If you have other priorities, we probably aren’t going to be a great fit.

And if you decide to drink anyway and think you are being sneaky, remember that you are dealing with someone who has raised four children. I have seen things. I am also sneakier than you are.

We make a pretty serious effort to cook dinner every night. And if we fail at that, we usually beg you to indulge us on the occasional “warm-up” night where dinner might be less ambitious.

So if your mother decides to send a two- or three-pound bag of chicken nuggets to our front door without warning, there are only so many complimentary ways I can interpret that.

And if you don’t eat the dinner because you claim your ADHD medication makes you not hungry, but then order a meal from Uber Eats later that evening, I am going to notice. I may not say anything immediately, but I will notice. I have been doing this for a while.

We are happy to provide your water. And if you insist on spring water instead of filtered water, you are probably going to win that argument. No matter how many times I see the people at Sam’s Club peddling those five-gallon jugs, I will continue to walk past them.

I know you like your 16.9-ounce plastic bottles. You like being able to count them so you know exactly how much water you have consumed. That’s fine. But I do think you need to finish the bottle before taking credit for drinking it.

Turn off the lights.

This one varies by boy, but I have walked into the guys’ rooms and found as many as five lights on at one time. I am not judging. I am simply suggesting that if you can flick the switch on, you can flick the switch off.

Electricity is not free, despite what your bedroom may be telling you.

Technically, you can walk around the house shirtless. But out of respect for the women in the house, please wear a shirt.

The hot tub is an exemption.

I am not unreasonable.

We used to assign jobs. One boy would load or unload the dishwasher. Another would set the table. This worked beautifully right up until the boy with the job was taking a nap, out golfing, or otherwise unavailable for reasons that were apparently very important to him.

Hockey boys do a lot of napping.

So, to simplify things for the adults in the household, we have boiled our expectations down to two rules:

  1. Help clean off the table after dinner.
  2. If you make a mess or see something that needs to be done, take care of it.

This won’t get everyone on the same page, but at least it gets everyone pointed in the same direction.

Game-day breakfasts are a little different. We know the rules are going to slip sometimes, but as much as it depends on you, refrain from using inappropriate language.

There are younger fans around, and you are in a position to be a role model to them. There are plenty of role models in the world who curse without hesitation. Be willing to stand out and be different.

Besides, if you are going to spend the season in our house, I need to believe I have at least a little influence over you.

We know you like to shower.

I am not entirely sure why you need to shower before your nap, after your nap, and again before getting back on the ice, but apparently this is important to you.

Do what you have to do. Just don’t overdo it.

Hot water is not free, and I have yet to discover a hockey scholarship that includes unlimited water usage.

If it is here, it is yours to eat. That is typically what I tell the boys.

However, if you develop a particular affinity for something in the pantry or freezer, it might be helpful to let your billet parents know about it.

If you and your billet parent both develop a hankering for the same sweet or salty item on the same night, somebody may be disappointed. If I know what you like, I can at least keep an eye on it and try to keep it stocked.

This is one of the less complicated ways to keep the peace in a house full of hockey players.

Your parents and your billet parents are on the same team.

The best boys typically had parents who understood that. We are both trying to get their son through the season safely and successfully.

If there is an injury or a bout with the flu, we try to work together. I might say to one of our players, “Does your mom know about that injury? If you don’t tell her, I will text her tomorrow.”

We aren’t there to get involved in how they parent their son. We are there to provide some on-the-ground accountability.

Sometimes a hockey player’s enthusiasm can make him think that playing through something is more important than dealing with the thing he is playing through. That is where we can help.

I can’t guarantee that I have an infinite supply of wise words, but the next hockey boy I talk to will be far from my first.

Whether we are discussing a coach’s decision, a hockey situation, or whether he should eat more vegetables, I will probably have an opinion.

On the hockey stuff, I will defer to his parents and hockey adviser.

On the vegetables, he is going to have to develop a pretty strong resolve because we are not going to stop presenting them as an option.

Eventually, he may even eat one.

If you have your own vehicle, you may not always get a spot in the driveway.

And if your billet parents’ daughter is pregnant with twins and already has a toddler running around, be a gentleman. You may have to park somewhere else and walk a little farther.

This is not a complicated concept. You are young. Your legs work.

Pay your billet fees on time.

With the Warriors organization, billet parents pay the fees directly. When we first started with the Brahmas, billet parents paid the Brahmas, who then sent us a check. Now, we are paid directly by the parents, and we fill out a form online letting the organization know we have been paid.

A failure to pay on time comes with a warning. Multiple warnings come with penalties to the player.

But please don’t do what one parent did.

Her son had wanted to be traded for several weeks. We barely knew he had actually been traded before she sent us a Venmo request to refund the unused portion of that month’s billet fees.

Not surprisingly, this was not a hockey boy we were a particularly good match for.

It is unlikely that we would ever ask for a boy to be moved from our home. But it is also unlikely that we will shed many tears when some of them move on.

And that may be the strangest part of being a billet parent.

If you are going to live in our house for any length of time, you are going to spend some time marinating in our version of right and wrong. Where we think we can have an influence, we will. If we find ourselves pushing our ideals too far, we will back off.

It was our home before it was yours.

It will still be our home after you leave.

Even if every one of our boys gets cut, we aren’t going to lower our standards just to make sure we have hockey players sitting around the dinner table. Just like with our own children, the rules can flex. Some can be partially ignored. Every boy and every situation is a little different.

But the basic expectations remain.

Be respectful. Be responsible. Be considerate. Help out. Tell the truth. And, when somebody is trying to take care of you, recognize that they are actually trying to take care of you.

We wouldn’t be worthy of the title “billet parent” if we weren’t willing to roll up our sleeves, adjust the rules when necessary, and occasionally remind a hockey player that there is a world outside the rink.

And, despite all the lights left on, showers taken, chicken nuggets delivered, vegetables rejected, and questionable decisions made along the way, we really are glad to have them.

They come into our house as hockey players.

If we do it right, they leave having been part of our family for a little while.

The Strategic Value of Corn Hole

After dinner and a dessert consisting of homemade ice cream and baked goods last night, Judy and I stared at each other at 6:30. I could feel myself moving toward a conversation about how unexciting we old people are. Then it happened. My daughter suggested, “We could play some corn hole.” This is what we had done last year, and it was the perfect solution to the boredom that was threatening to take possession of our home.

The corn hole paraphernalia was right outside our back patio door. With such easy access, it was hard to believe it had probably only been moved once since last Labor Day, when I did a sweep of the back porch. A quick inspection of the bean bags was concerning. Apparently, they had not been designed to sail 20-plus feet in a light Oklahoma wind. Fortunately, the remaining bag in the corn-hole corner contained four red and four blue bags of appropriate weight. We were in business.

Last year, the primary competition had been Judy and me against the two hockey boys we were hosting at the time. Judy and I didn’t exactly dominate, but apparently those boys had not yet discovered their full bag-tossing potential. This year, our two new hockey boys arrived with a considerably more polished game. At least, that was the story they told us about all those graduation parties.

Frankly, I was just glad my daughter had suggested doing “something.” Saturday and Sunday, our hockey boys had scrimmages against the team we used to host hockey boys for in Texas. There were moments of potential, but they lost both games. The wins and losses weren’t really important—focus on the word “scrimmage.” What mattered was what the coach saw during their limited playing time. Our returning player played in both games. The other two are still working to earn their spots, so each had an opportunity to catch the coach’s attention.

Tuesday, the day after Labor Day, is expected to bring more cuts. The boys got a little surprise last night when the group chat told them when to arrive and reminded them to bring their suits. During the regular season, the boys are shown on the big screen wearing their suits and announcing where they are from while “Enter Sandman” plays somewhere during the pregame festivities. Apparently, junior hockey has decided that announcing a teenager’s hometown while he stands in a suit to the soundtrack of a heavy-metal song is the appropriate way to introduce players. With the possibility of cuts hanging over the house, playing a few rounds of “toss the bean bag into the little hole” seemed like a pretty good way to avoid thinking about what surprises Tuesday might bring.

Our two new hockey boys proved to be formidable competitors. Both had developed a near-frisbee approach to throwing the bags—one left-handed and one right-handed. The rest of us relied primarily on an arced approach to reaching the Ohio State-flavored boards. For the first match, I was paired with our returning player, who was also an arcer. Having been told the proper distance was 27 feet, I took nine steps between the boards. Whether nine of my steps actually equaled 27 feet is questionable. What was not questionable was that arcing a bean bag that far made me look like a very weak corn hole player. Or perhaps my muscle memory was simply more familiar with corn hole boards that were much closer together.

The frisbee throwers quickly became the favorites and showed no signs of giving up their advantage until they beat us. The next game, Judy teamed up with my daughter-in-law. Judy insisted the boards be moved closer together, which allowed them to hang around considerably longer than we had. The frisbee boys continued making a compelling case for their technique. We played about six matches over roughly 90 minutes, and honestly, it was some of the best time we have spent with our hockey boys so far. For an hour and a half, nobody was thinking about who might get cut, wondering what the coach was thinking, or worrying about who might be coming back to take someone’s spot. We were just throwing bean bags, arguing about distance, and discovering that two teenagers apparently know how to play corn hole better than the people who own the corn hole set.

Once we put everything away, we filed back into the house. Our kids had already left while Judy and I attempted to put a final hurting on the frisbee boys. The hockey boys headed upstairs to shower, while the old people headed for the first-floor shower facilities. While we watched some TV, the one boy who doesn’t have a vehicle came downstairs looking for a snack. He settled on Oreos. Judy had a full tray of brownies sitting there that we would have loved for him to eat, but knowing he had to face the coach the next morning, we decided not to make him responsible for any of the adult problems in the house.

I casually told him, “If you have any reason to get picked up early tomorrow, just let me know. I’ll be around. Ideally, you can forget about this whole conversation.” He gave me a big smile with just a little stress around the edges. He understood.

Both Judy and I have mixed emotions when cuts are imminent. We hate to lose any of our boys—at least this year, we like all of them enough to genuinely hope they stick around. But there is another side to it. If a player is going to spend the entire season on the bubble, knowing the coach doesn’t expect to play him much, sometimes the kinder solution is to cut him and let him move on to whatever comes next.

Every other day, the boys come home from practice with another example. “This guy from last year got cut from his USHL team. He’s coming back.” Or, “This guy wants to leave his Canadian team and come back to the Warriors.” If the coach has a choice between keeping a bubble player or bringing back someone who has already proven himself, it isn’t difficult to imagine which direction he is likely to go.

Our boys will always be welcome in our house. But that doesn’t mean we have to believe staying here is always the best thing for them. If the better opportunity is somewhere they can develop, play meaningful minutes, and avoid spending an entire season picking splinters out of their seats, then that gets my vote. Fortunately, I don’t get a vote. I get to be the appreciative dad—the guy who gets to watch these boys chase something they care about, provide a little food and a place to sleep, and remind them that regardless of what happens in a coach’s office, they have a home here. And, occasionally, I get to throw bean bags at them.

I am grateful I didn’t begin a hockey journey a few decades ago, when I might have had to live with old people who were this competitive about corn hole. This morning, I also decided there was no reason for me to get out of bed before 7:00. Part of that was simply because I could. The other part was that I didn’t want to risk running into the boys too early and having to say, “Good luck,” again. There are only so many times you can say “good luck” before it starts sounding less like encouragement and more like a funeral director wishing you well on your way out, so I stayed in bed. Sometimes being supportive means making yourself available when someone needs you. And sometimes it means strategically avoiding the kitchen until after 7:00.

Talk To The Team

As my daughter gets closer to becoming the mother of three, I could not be more excited for her. Or more aware that I personally will do none of the work involved.

She has spent this entire Oklahoma summer—certainly the hottest one since we moved here—getting kicked from the inside by two little people who do not yet have names and somehow already outrank her in the house. Yes, I was gone for a few weeks of the summer. That does not mean I wasn’t sympathetic. I was rooting for her from wherever I was.

Of course, when your daughter has three kids, that means you have at least three grandkids. I would like credit for that arithmetic.

A friend sent me a video last week of his grandson getting ready to have a sibling. Since my friend already has other grandchildren, something ugly woke up in me. Not sadness. Something closer to a scoreboard.

I would love to tell you I am above comparing my family’s headcount to another man’s family’s headcount. I am not going to tell you that because it isn’t true.

The frustrating part is that there is nothing productive I can do about it. New kids don’t get born because Grandpa felt competitive on a Tuesday. If I want to add players to the roster, the actual work has to come from somewhere else entirely, and I am, at best, in a spoiling and snack-providing capacity.

I brought this up to my daughter while she was complaining about getting her ribs kicked from the inside and having trouble putting socks on her swollen legs. She listened to my grandchild-count predicament with the patience of a woman who has significantly bigger problems and said, “You need to talk to the other members of the team.”

The team.

Currently, the team has one active member, my daughter, and three others on the bench. Of those, only one of them are currently qualified to help me pad the stats, by my own arbitrary rule that I would prefer marriage happen first. I would welcome any grandkids, of course, but please forgive me for preferring that my kids get married before they start producing them. I don’t think that’s asking too much.

So, let’s talk about how I got here, competitive about something I have absolutely no control over.

I didn’t become a father until my thirties, which means I spent a good portion of my life watching other men become grandfathers while I was still working my way through the fatherhood portion of the program. My wife and I always assumed we’d be the kind of grandparents who leaked enthusiasm out of every pore the second a grandchild showed up.

Apparently, our other kids—the ones older than our pregnant daughter—either never noticed that enthusiasm or noticed it and decided it wasn’t worth compromising on a spouse to make it a reality.

Their loss, frankly.

Their siblings’ children are going to get the toys, the outfits, and the opportunity to have us visit more. There is a reason I didn’t lead with the visits.

More grandkids would obviously help my case when talking to my peers. It would also give me even less free time than I have now, especially since the odds of getting the other two kids’ grandkids within the ten-minute driving radius their siblings enjoy are pretty close to zero.

Realistically, it would mean my wife and I doing a lot more driving or flying to keep tabs on whatever new pieces of our extended DNA show up somewhere else. I’m willing to make that sacrifice, although I reserve the right to complain about the mileage.

So, to the rest of the team, if you’re reading this, I have no deceptive motives in mind.

We’ve already proven ourselves to be pretty good grandparents. We are soon to triple our grandchildren, which sounds much more impressive when you don’t mention that we started with one. Tripling again—or more—is something your sister is not going to be able to do on her own.

So, do everyone a favor.

Spare her body the record attempt. Go ahead and get married, have some kids, and give your sister a little competition of her own. She has set some lofty goals, but we have faith in every one of you.

And to the hockey boys: you have also been added to the team, although I realize your membership is temporary. We are only your parents for the season, which means in a few months you are going to leave, start your own lives, and—if everything goes according to plan—eventually contribute to your own parents’ scoreboards.

Just to be clear, I am not counting any future children you might have on my scoreboard. Those are your parents’ points. I have my own scoreboard to worry about.

We aren’t trying to rush you. You’ve got plenty of hockey, growing up, and other things to figure out first. We are glad to have you guys around, and we will be sorry when the season ends and you head off to whatever comes next.

But when the time comes, remember that your billet parents are going to be looking for ways to keep the family roster growing.

As much as we enjoy having you guys around, our focus has to be on boosting the score in Grandpa’s selfish little game.

So, if the Gruenbaums can’t cook and provide a bed for you next season, we hope you understand.

After all, there is a team to build.

The Day My Moral Compass Needed a Tune-Up

I know it may appear that my only contact with humans outside of my family occurs on errand days. There is more truth in that statement than I would like to admit. I do, however, still have the ability to recognize when something is out of the ordinary. Or, if that ability has quietly left the building, I at least hope to score some points when I retell the story later.

Having already drained the hot tub twice this year, I have decided to keep a tighter rein on the chemicals. Since I have no desire to learn how to test the water myself—apparently there are limits to how much responsibility I am willing to accept for my own hot tub—I wandered into Leslie’s again.

When I pulled in, I saw a car with a stroller and baby coming out of it. I was hoping they were headed to Rally House to get an OU T-shirt. Surely that would make more sense than what happened next. Nope. They were going to Leslie’s to have their water tested, too.

For a brief moment, I considered running past them and getting my water tested first. I may fail socially in a number of ways, but even I knew that would be wrong. So I waited patiently while mostly keeping my mouth shut as the baby-mama went first. My bottle of hot tub water was already set up for testing, so I stood there like a man waiting for the results of a medical procedure he had performed on himself.

When it was my turn and before the test was completed, the bottle was pushed back toward me. A little probing revealed that the employees had been having a problem with customers not getting their bottles back, resulting in a growing collection of bottles under the counter, each conveniently labeled with a phone number. Apparently, even returning a plastic bottle is now a process that requires documentation.

Eventually, the results came back. High phosphates. Organic material.

The source could have been any number of things. It might have been the hockey boys making a jet-less visit to the hot tub last time. It might have been something else entirely. I prefer hockey boy broth as the explanation because it allows me to blame someone else. The hot tub will do what it does. I just don’t want to be responsible for why it does it.

Sam’s provided most of the other entertainment for the day. After getting gas, I walked inside prepared to fight my usual battle with the compacted shopping carts. To my surprise, there were carts separated and ready to go. I made sure to thank the greeter for helping me avoid the conundrum that must be solved every time I visit Sam’s: finding a cart that is actually usable without having to perform a minor demolition project.

After that, I happily sampled the donuts. Unfortunately, the guy handing out the samples had no idea what the difference was between a cake donut and a yeast donut. He knew the flavors. He knew the decorations. But the basic taxonomy of donuts appeared to be outside his area of expertise.

What are they teaching kids in school today?

I passed on the Dude Wipes. Those are not included in our hockey boy billet fees. We determine what is covered, but we don’t get more money if we spoil them. If my hiney isn’t spoiled, neither is theirs.

The parents of our boys have been instructed to send their billet fees to my Venmo account. Since a significant portion of what hockey boys do is eat, it seems only appropriate that I use that money to pay for the food and necessary paper products we buy at Sam’s.

Unfortunately, I didn’t think of that while I was shopping.

Instead, I thought I was being clever by scanning everything as I went. Eventually, I abandoned the whole process in the Sam’s app because paying with Venmo wasn’t convenient. I then circled the cart scanning things like one of the other losers who had somehow become technology-challenged in the middle of a warehouse store.

As Sam’s visits go, this one was about average. The parking lot, however, was holding the real excitement.

After unloading the groceries and returning the cart, I didn’t pull straight out of my parking space. The steering wheel was leaning to the right. I was barely halfway out when I heard a noise.

I didn’t think it sounded like metal on metal, but the radio was on and it was Two-fer Tuesday, so I wasn’t fully committed to listening.

In an attempt to be responsible, I backed the car up and looked at the vehicle to my right. The fact that there was no additional sound of metal being rearranged probably should have been a clue, but I wanted to be a good citizen and double-check.

I saw and heard nothing that raised a red flag for driving sins. And that stupid app on my phone, had I still chosen to turn it on, wouldn’t have gathered any insurance-rate-raising data from my parking lot maneuvering.

Still, knowing I wasn’t a perfect driver worked on me during the drive home. The optimistic part of my brain was perfectly happy to believe something had shifted in the trunk. The part of my brain that isn’t quite so naïve kept asking why I hadn’t been more thorough after hearing the noise.

When I got home, that part of my brain went exploring on the passenger side of the car.

That’s when I saw it.

A previously undetected flaw in the paint screamed, “CAR DOOR DING.”

It didn’t feel like a scrape caused by some guy driving through the Sam’s parking lot as if he were the only person there. It looked more like the kind of thing that happens when two perfectly innocent cars have a brief disagreement and one of them loses.

Of course, I had to tell Judy about my possible sin.

I view Judy as my confessor. I figure my moral compass was engineered to bless behaviors that make sense only to a male brain, so I run things by her occasionally to make sure our compasses are still synchronized.

On this one, she reassured me. She didn’t see anything unreasonable about what I had done. There was no big hug followed by, “It’s going to be okay.”

I got the more practical, “Don’t worry about it.”

The other thing about Judy is that she is a non-practicing attorney. I don’t think her compass has caved in the way some legal professionals’ compasses apparently do, but her needle may be skewed a little.

Then again, all of our compasses are probably skewed a little.

I just pray that any skewing that takes place doesn’t eventually assume I am incapable of making mistakes. I have lived with this guy long enough to know he still has more arrogance than he should have. Every now and then, getting figuratively pinched by reality is probably a good thing. It knocks the overconfidence down a few notches.

Of course, that’s only the overconfidence I can still salvage after being married for a few decades.

The Eve of Controlled Chaos

Friday was an errand day—well, at least the morning was. With the hockey boys arriving this weekend, I had to finish up the grocery shopping. Earlier in the morning, Judy and I had discussed what the menu might look like for the first week. After that, we would have time to pick their brains and figure out what foods we could slide into the rotation without causing anyone to thumb their nose too high.

Our returning boy told us, “I like to eat everything.” So naturally, the first night he was here last season, we made a tomato pasta dish. (The things he liked was hence modified to be “everything except tomatoes.”) Our two Alaska brothers have already informed us that they dislike tomatoes and onions, and one of them dislikes peppers. The next few meals should help us get into the finer points of these dislikes. Is it the size? How they’re cooked? Or is it the flavor? Apparently, we are not simply cooking dinner. We are conducting a culinary research project.

The first night this year is tacos. Our carnitas have a few jalapeños beaten into a pulp, so we’ll get to test where the pepper line is. If the problem is flavor, they can fall back on brisket tacos. There is always a backup plan when you are responsible for feeding three teenage hockey players. It just happens to involve another kind of meat.

With my daughter within a month of her C-section—we are all rooting for the natural birth—I picked her and my granddaughter up so she could get out of the house and run some errands. It never hurts to have another adult available when a toddler decides to spontaneously melt down. This particular outing also resulted in one of my rare visits to Hobby Lobby.

I don’t shop at Hobby Lobby. Judy will buy craft items there, and on this day my daughter was shopping for birthday gifts for a church friend’s daughter. My granddaughter had her own opinions about what should be purchased, naturally. My daughter worked within her $25 budget and found a couple of things that seemed like they would actually feel like “her.” Ruth, my granddaughter’s code name for purposes of this blog, allowed Grandpa to push the cart while Mom did the math and performed increasingly sophisticated guesstimations about each gift’s position on the enjoyment spectrum.

As we checked out, we passed the inevitable temptation along the checkout aisle: Horehound lozenges. My daughter didn’t seem particularly excited to see them. I did. Not because I wanted any, but because they reminded me of my dad and the stash of horehound he kept tucked away in the kitchen cabinets of the house where I grew up.

Apparently, even a trip to Hobby Lobby can turn into a brief visit with your past.

The trip to Sam’s was more of a refrigerator “topping off” than a major shopping expedition. We’ll see which boys are still in our house next weekend. They started with 51, and we are told they will cut that number to 34 next weekend. Three of those 51 are staying with us, and there is also a boy trying out who happens to be the brother of a hockey player we had when we lived in Texas.

He is a goalie, so we are hopeful he makes the team. If he does, the billet coordinator has already promised that he will be “ours.” We really enjoyed his family when his older brother was ours. Most billet parents are fine. His parents were exceptional. When they came down for one of their son’s games, they were great fans and made it obvious how much they appreciated what we were doing.

That is part of the answer when people ask why we let young men stay with us when we could just eat out every night and avoid the whole cooking-and-parenting-adjacent experience.

First, we would cook anyway. We just throw a few more pieces of chicken on the grill. Second, most of the boys are genuinely appreciative. Yes, we’ve had a few entitled players enter our home. We tolerated them. And, regardless of whatever antics a kid might attempt, having parents we really liked tended to raise our tolerance level considerably.

There is a little chaos involved, but the boys also bring something we probably wouldn’t get otherwise. They are chasing a dream. Watching them work toward it gives us a reminder of what it looks like when something matters enough to work for. And when that dream takes a detour, we get a chance to help them figure out how to handle it.

The only truly “new” thing on this set of errands was voting early in a runoff primary. There were a series of tables I had to graduate through before I could finally get my ballot. At the first table, I signed an affidavit saying I wouldn’t vote again at another location during the remainder of the voting period. At the next table, I presented my driver’s license again, along with the affidavit. I believe they attached a label to it before sending me on to get my ballot.

At the previous table, I heard someone mention that about 120 people had voted. My ballot number was R103. I’m not entirely sure what the numbering system meant, but it made me wonder if the Republican ballots were winning the early-voting popularity contest. Then I remembered there apparently weren’t any Democratic runoffs, so that probably wasn’t much of a contest. The rules of the runoff simply meant the people participating were concentrated on one side.

There were only two state issues on the ballot, so I filled in the little rectangular boxes the old-fashioned way. No electronic ballot for me. I was told the ballot could be scanned with either side up. In my case, the scanner apparently preferred that I maintain my privacy and scan it face down.

I usually don’t take the “I Voted” sticker, but I thought it might entertain my granddaughter, who was already fighting a cranky mood brought on by incoming teeth or whatever other battle toddlers wage in their ongoing effort to preserve a good mood.

It did not entertain her at all.

Aldi’s was our final stop. We needed a few taco supplies—vegetable toppings for those who eat them and plenty of cheese because meat and tortillas need cheese to graduate to official taco status in all parts of the country. Tomatoes are optional.

By the time the errands were finished, I realized the day had been more than a grocery run and a few stops around town. It was the eve of another transition for our family. The boys arrive Saturday, and with them comes an eight-ish-month commitment.

We “get” to be parents again, but with some significant upgrades. They are mostly self-sufficient, although we may need to help with transportation from time to time. And if they screw up, we don’t have to blame ourselves for whatever parenting mistake supposedly caused it. We can help them navigate the challenge without taking their indiscretions personally.

If they have a great year and grow into better players and better young men, we get to watch that happen, too. Their parents deserve the largest share of the credit, without question. Our job is mostly to provide a home, feed them, encourage them, and occasionally nudge them back toward the idea that their priority right now is supposed to be hockey.

And if I ever need a reminder of just how good I can be at the nudging part, I can always ask my wife.

Yes, dear. You’re welcome.

A Plod Instead of a Skip

The “funk” happens 6 to 8 times a year. The variables change, but the result is usually the same. I do more of a plod than a skip.

I still get the “must get dones” done. The “nice to get dones” wait their turn.

I can fake upbeat for a while if the kids are around. I don’t bother faking it for my wife. She knows me too well, and pretending to be cheerful when I’m not is a lot of unnecessary work.

A bad funk also dulls my humor and makes my brain feel like it’s swimming uphill through molasses. I can still function. Everything just takes more effort than it should.

Naturally, I decided the best way to handle this was to analyze all the reasons I might be in a funk. Because nothing lifts your mood like conducting an internal investigation into your own bad mood.

One contributor is my current battle with the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I like my fantasy to have a predictable magic system. Once I understand the rules, I expect the author to follow them.

For the first four books, my son’s enthusiasm kept me going. By about 25% into Book 5, I had to admit his positive review had carried me farther than my own enjoyment.

I probably could have quit sooner, but I let optimism run high. The premise was clear after book one, and each book since has been a little more of a struggle. Vacation was good for the series, since I could read 10% or more in a day. Now the daily trickle isn’t enough to move the story forward fast enough to keep me engaged.

So I have two problems: frustration with the book, and frustration with finding something else to read. I considered starting something new, but talked myself out of it. “Andy, you don’t want to learn a new world’s rules right now. You want something you already understand.”

Well, it wasn’t the best decision.

Now I may have to wander between a couple of books before I find one that fits, with a plot simple enough that I’m not spending three chapters remembering who everyone is. First-world problem? Absolutely. Apparently the funk has standards.

Another contributor: I gave blood the other day. The blood center’s follow-up email announced, “You have a new badge.” Naturally I had to check.

Instead, I found out about the badge I didn’t get.

But I also found something that made me smile. Between double-red donations in Ohio and Texas, I’ve never had an accurate lifetime total. After moving to Oklahoma, I started giving through the Oklahoma Blood Institute instead. I logged into my old Carter BloodCare account this week and found out I’d donated more than seven gallons there alone.

That’s a lot of me being voluntarily drained and sent home with a cookie.

One of my Facebook friends is past 20 gallons. I have no idea what my Ohio total adds up to, so my real number could be higher than I think. Just finding the seven-gallon figure moved my funk down a few percentage points. Apparently even my blood donation history is conspiring against my bad mood.

Then there’s the cold.

A cold makes my brain run slow whether I’m in a funk or not. Add in the lack of sleep, and the result isn’t exactly peak performance. I can plow through what needs doing, but the list has to shrink to keep the frustration manageable.

And then there’s chess.

My son and son-in-law both play at Chess.com. I’ve taken the Duolingo approach: too shy for real people, so I play the AI. I generally hover around 800-900 ELO.

Every time I get close to 900, hope creeps in. Maybe I’m getting better. Maybe I’m finally figuring this out.

Then the AI decides it’s had enough of my nonsense. Does it call me a loser? Of course not. It just does some voodoo with its queen and cleans my clock in under a dozen moves. Once it’s beaten me back down to 800, it puts its “idiot hat” back on and lets me win a few with my low-end strategy.

I don’t have the commitment to go deep into chess. I just want to keep my brain active. Unfortunately, the “you are horrible, maybe you’re not horrible” cycle accounts for a surprisingly large share of my funk.

This is clearly another first-world problem.

Then the hockey boys started arriving Saturday. The last arrived Sunday afternoon.

Thirty-four boys made it through the July camp that picked the roster pool. Now they’re competing against each other and against 17 more boys for a final spot. Fifty-one boys chasing a limited number of spots is a good way to wreck a teenager’s sleep schedule.

The late arrivals were probably off the coach’s radar for one reason or another. But what if they deserve a spot too? I’d hate for one of our boys to get cut because a late-comer showed up and pushed him off the roster.

The older I get, the softer I get. If the boys are in my house, I’m cheering for them. Next Friday night, when the cuts happen, our house could lose one of three beds. I feel for them, living with that uncertainty.

As my wife put it: “They are young. They can handle it.”

She’s probably right. I’m glad I’m not still young, though. I wouldn’t want my life’s direction hanging on something my older brain knows won’t matter in five years. Getting cut from a hockey team isn’t going to determine the rest of anyone’s life.

That doesn’t mean I won’t hate seeing any of our boys go.

Somewhere in the middle of writing all this, something strange happened. My mood improved.

Maybe it was the seven gallons of blood. Maybe it was laughing at my own chess career. Maybe it was admitting how invested I am in a house full of teenage hockey players. Or maybe it was just getting all of this out of my head and onto a page.

Whatever it was, the funk started losing its grip.

That might be the real lesson here. You can’t be satisfied with every part of your life every day. Some days are just plod days. The book frustrates you, the chess computer questions your intelligence, the cold fogs your brain, and teenagers remind you that life can turn on someone else’s decision.

But there are good things happening around us too. Sometimes it just helps to stop and notice them.

So I’m going to address the envelope, put the funk inside, and send it back to the return address.

Unfortunately, I know who lives there. Eventually it’ll find its way back to me. It usually does.

But for now, the shift has begun, and I’m going to enjoy it. Besides, I’ve got a book to quit reading and an AI chess player to lose to.

Another Chance to Make an Impression

Yesterday was my triennial visit to the blood donation center. I just learned that word and I’m proud of it. It actually means every four months, not every three years, but “quadrennial” sounds like a made-up word and “triennial” sounds like I read something once.

The place is full of the heavily pierced and tattooed, all of us there to hand over a pint for the greater good. There’s nothing sneaky about it. Somebody out there needs blood, and in exchange, the center offers free air conditioning and snacks, which is honestly a better deal than most gyms.

I watched the self-recorded video of my visit afterward, the way you’d review game film if the game were “old man talks for ninety minutes while a machine drains him.” My conclusion: they don’t invite me back because they enjoy my company. They invite me back because I do the double red donation, and they’ve decided my blood is worth the price of listening to me.

The initial screener was the same woman from last time. I’m fairly sure we talked hockey during that visit. This time she engaged with me, but not overly, the way you’d engage with a dog that keeps bringing you the same tennis ball. I think she clocked pretty quickly that I was just a lonely old guy who’d talk the leg off anyone who made eye contact.

My blood pressure ran a little high. I blamed needle anxiety, which is a generous way of describing a lifelong hobby of mine. I also may have stretched the truth slightly on the questionnaire. If I’d mentioned our recent trip, I’d have had to list every country, in order, with exact dates in each one, and there was no chance of that. Naming them out of order and guessing at the timeline would have exposed the true state of my memory, and honestly I felt I was sparing both of us the paperwork. I hadn’t done anything else on the naughty list, so skipping the travel questions felt like the fastest route to the gurney.

Which brings me to the business end of the donor center, and my technician, who I’d also worked with before. She started off friendly. Then I kept talking, and I watched recognition arrive on her face like a slow-loading webpage. She survived the appointment. I think it cost her something.

I probably didn’t help my case by opening with “I’m your next victim.” Then I called myself a secret shopper, which didn’t confuse her so much as make her wonder if her performance that day was being quietly graded. It wasn’t. I just like watching people recalculate.

They hand you a squeeze ball while you donate, and mine came shaped like a basketball. I told her I’d have preferred a football. Turns out she agreed. “The Norman donor center gets footballs,” she said. “They have a budget for that. We just take what we’re given.” She’d made peace with it, in the way people make peace with things they complain about constantly.

For reasons known only to the blood-donation industrial complex, technicians aren’t allowed to let you watch the monitor to see what’s actually happening in your arm. Instead, there are little spinning knobs that mean things, sort of, if you squint. Double red donation is basically alchemy anyway, since what goes back into you isn’t what came out. My tech tried to walk me through which knob spins during a withdrawal and which one spins during a return. You squeeze the ball on the withdrawal, not the return, a fact I nearly learned the hard way. We got it sorted before I blew a vein, which I’m choosing to call a win.

I think I ended on a decent note. When the machine gave its final beep, I announced, “I survived another one,” and got an actual smile out of her. We never quite bonded, but I’m already workshopping better material for next time. This is apparently what passes for a hobby now.

So why do I keep doing this? There isn’t one clean answer, and not every part of the experience is the center throwing confetti and begging me to come back in sixteen weeks. But you don’t donate blood out of boredom either.

The t-shirts help. I get a new one every time, and while not all of them are “wow,” a couple have earned a permanent spot in my drawer. The latest one connects blood donation to the dog days of summer somehow. I’m apparently in my t-shirt era, though at this point I think every era of my life has just been a t-shirt era. Congratulations to me, I’m now a t-shirt connoisseur.

My cholesterol has also never been an issue, and giving blood is a nice reminder that I did pass along at least one good gene. When my kids bring up whatever genetic flaws they inherited, I remind them, “If your cholesterol’s fine, that’s me. You didn’t lose the whole lottery.”

On my way out, the front desk person, who must have missed my check-in while on break, sent me off with, “Thanks for your help on that double.” I have no idea if she actually knew that or just says it to everyone, but either way, I fell for it completely. I didn’t book my next appointment, but I’ll probably be back before Christmas to keep the friendship going, see what jokes show up on their own, and hope I don’t lose an entire vacation to “amnesia” again.

Return to Sender

The house to the north of us is full of kids. Not all of them play soccer, but the ones who do have made it their life’s mission to kick a ball against our shared fence as often as humanly possible.

We have the pretty side of that fence. They have the ugly side. This works out great for them, because you cannot make ugly any uglier. Kick that ball as hard as you want, guys, that side was already at rock bottom before you got here.

Now, when I say these kids kick the ball against the fence, I don’t mean a gentle little dribble bumps into it now and then. These are high schoolers. The ball doesn’t roll into the fence, it arrives. Full windup, full commitment, like the fence owes them money.

One kick doesn’t do much. Kick after kick after kick, though, and the nails start screaming uncle. Or if they’re not quite screaming yet, they’ve at least developed an attitude about it. Not all boards are created equal, and apparently some nails just got handed inferior wood and told to make it work.

Eventually the boards give up, and my fence loses its smooth look on the pretty side. I wouldn’t call it “unsmooth,” exactly. I’d call it “those darn kids are kicking their soccer ball again, and would you look at that, the fence is not enduring this assault unscathed.” I like making things more dramatic than they need to be. We all have our flaws.

So every other month or so, I grab a hammer and go pound the boards back into shape. My carpentry skills are rudimentary at best. I know what the hammer is for in a theoretical sense. Hitting the actual nail head, dead center, on purpose, is a separate and much rarer skill that I have not acquired. The fence has three coats of HOA-approved stain on it, and around every nail that keeps losing its argument with a soccer ball, that stain is losing its luster right along with it.

The fence itself, though, is a manageable problem. I deal with it every couple of months and move on with my life. The real issue is the balls that end up in our yard, because now I have to decide what to do with them.

The neighbors directly to the north are a married couple, and they’re both police officers on two different local departments. I have decided this is not the household to walk up to and complain about a soccer ball situation. So when I’m out in the yard, or when I spot a ball sitting there the next morning, I chuck it back over the fence like a good neighbor. Sometimes, if they’re still out there playing, I even get a “thank you” for my trouble.

While my wife and I were traveling recently, my daughter-in-law took over plant-watering duty. I told her that if she found any balls in the yard, just toss them back over. She sent me a video of five balls sitting in our grass. Four soccer balls, and one mystery ball that apparently volunteered for the mission because they’d run out of actual soccer balls to sacrifice.

This past weekend, with the temperature sitting comfortably in the 90s, my wife and I were trying to enjoy the hot tub, which is its own kind of ambitious. While we were out there, I looked over toward the house on the other side of ours. Up until that moment I’d been fairly confident that every single ball that ever landed in our yard came from the police house. But a little doubt crept in.

The house catty-corner to us, the one with the slightly annoying weather station poking into our yard that we get zero access to the data from, had a soccer ball up on their roof, and they were making a whole game out of throwing it up there. I genuinely cannot think of a single scenario where a ball comes off that roof and lands in our yard. But knowing there’s now an active second source of soccer balls in the neighborhood does change the math a little. Not enough to unseat the police house as prime suspect. But it’s there now, quietly present, every time I pause before lobbing a ball back over a fence.

Bottom line: I’m glad the kids are active. I’m glad they’re outside doing something instead of staring at a screen. And honestly, for their sake, I’m glad they have so many soccer balls that launching one over the fence doesn’t mean the game’s over, they just grab another. I just wish the balls came with a mute button and a low-impact setting, so my fence boards could stop taking the brunt of teenage enthusiasm. But I know, I know. Another one of my first world problems, and I really should be grateful for it.